One Day Soon

by A. Meredith Walters

  I looked at Yoss. He had shoved his hands into his pockets and had moved off to stand by the picnic tables.

  “I don’t think I’ll be going to the dance,” I said. I wanted them to leave. That feeling from earlier resurfaced. The one where I felt as if I were missing out. I didn’t like it. If I let those feelings in, I was pretty sure I’d lose it.

  Becky gasped. “How can you say that? It’s our junior year!” She turned to Yoss. “Tell her how important it is! It’s Homecoming! It’s a rite of passage to go!”

  Yoss didn’t say anything and I didn’t like the look on his face. At all.

  “I don’t know. Things are different now,” I said as way of explanation.

  Fiona and Becky exchanged another look and I knew that I’d be the source of a lot of conversation later.

  “Becky! Fiona! Come on already!” someone yelled from the other side of the park.

  Becky grimaced. “I guess we should get going. I’ll see you around, Imi.” She leaned in to give me a hug, but I evaded her. She frowned, taking a step back, seeming offended.

  Fiona wiggled her fingers at Yoss, who stared at her blankly. “See you guys.”

  Then they were gone and I was relieved.

  “God, I had almost forgotten how annoying they could be,” I laughed awkwardly. Yoss was watching my classmates with a strange look on his face.

  I walked over to where he was standing and put my arms around his waist, going up on my tiptoes so that I could kiss his lips.

  He stood stiffly in my arms, not holding me back.

  “Yoss, come on, say something,” I pleaded.

  “You should go to your Homecoming dance,” he said dully. Emotionless.

  “Uh, I don’t think that fits into my current social calendar,” I joked, though it rang hollow.

  Yoss reached behind his back and disentangled himself from my arms, holding me away from his body. “You should go back to school next week,” he went on.

  “Yoss, don’t be ridic—”

  “You have another life, Imi. A decent one. One that you should be living. Not hanging out with a bunch of fucking skids that sleep in a goddamn warehouse.” His voice rose and I flinched.

  “Why are you saying this? You know why I left home. I have nowhere to go—”

  Yoss shook his head. “You have a home, Imi. You have friends. School. Homecoming. You have things the rest of us don’t. What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

  “Don’t talk to me like this, Yoss! Don’t you dare!” I cried, trying to reach out for him again, but he held me off.

  “I don’t get you, Imogen. What sort of person chooses to live out here? What kind of girl attaches herself to a guy like me instead of sleeping in a warm bed and having a normal life? What’s wrong with this fucking picture?” he yelled, turning away from me.

  I let out a choked sort of sob and covered my face with my hands.

  Yoss looked back at me again and his face softened.

  “Stop crying. Please,” he said. “It’s just that you don’t belong out here, Imi. You should go home.”

  Bug stirred in the grass, stretching out. “Shit, how long was I asleep?” he asked, sounding groggy.

  Yoss and I both ignored him.

  “I’ve lived my whole life being shoved aside. I thought I had finally found someone that wouldn’t ever make me feel like I wasn’t wanted.” I was crying in earnest now. I couldn’t help it. Maybe if I were less emotional I’d have known what Yoss was trying to do. If I were more mature I would have seen that he was only thinking of what was best for me. He wasn’t trying to get rid of me. He wasn’t tossing me aside. He only wanted me happy and safe. Yoss was putting my needs above his.

  Because Yoss needed me. I didn’t know it then. I could only recognize my own pain. But later I would come to realize that he possibly needed me more than I could ever need him.

  But my sixteen-year-old heart only heard rejection. I only saw the boy I loved telling me to leave him behind.

  I wasn’t reading between the lines. I wasn’t hearing the truth that was right in front of me. I was slightly broken. Overly vulnerable. I had lived a lifetime of neglect and minimal love. I couldn’t see past my experiences to understand what real, selfless love looked like.

  Teenagers aren’t known for being astute and I was no exception.

  “Do you want me to go? Is that it? You’re tired of me already, Yossarian?” I shouted.

  He flinched at my use of his full name.

  I hated crying. I found it to be a useless waste of time. Tears solved nothing. But I couldn’t stop them from flowing down my cheeks.

  Bug sat up, looking between Yoss and me. “Whoa, guys, chill out. It’s all good,” he tried to placate.

  “Yes! I want you to go! I want you to leave! Of course I do!” He took my hands and pressed them to his mouth. “Do you think I want this for you, Imi?” He kissed my palm. The inside of my wrist. I could feel his hands trembling. “God, I love you! So much! I’d give anything for you to have better than this! So even though it would rip my heart out to watch you go, I want you to! I think you’re staying here because of me, and I can’t live with that! Fucking hell, Imogen, you can’t live with that either!”

  Was he right? Was I staying for him?

  Was I living this hell on earth because I couldn’t bear to leave him?

  “Guys, seriously, don’t do this. Imi is just like us. She’s family, man,” Bug argued, picking at his lip in agitation.

  Yoss stared down at me, his eyes red, his cheeks wet. “That’s where you’re wrong, Bug. Imogen is nothing like us!”

  I wished that statement didn’t hurt as much as it did.

  “You’re not the same as the rest of us. You’re so much better. You’re so much more.”

  We were both shaking, but I was resolved and nothing Yoss could say would sway me. “You want me to go, then I’ll go. But I can’t go back to my mother. I won’t go back there. Don’t you get that?”

  “You need to go to school. You need to be safe. Don’t you get that?” he rasped, his voice breaking. Cracking into pieces.

  “I love you, Yoss. I won’t leave you,” I swore. And I meant it. I wouldn’t. Not now. Not ever.

  Yoss closed his eyes as if in pain. “I know, Imogen. That’s the problem.”

  Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into his chest. I tucked my head underneath his chin and sobbed into his shirt. He ran his hands up and down my back and I found myself finally able to relax.

  Bug left at some point, but neither of us moved. We cried. We held on. We felt the broken pieces start to mend.

  “Can we go somewhere? Just us?” I asked.

  “Anything you want,” he said softly.

  I cupped the side of his face. “Don’t ask me to leave again. Promise.”

  His face contorted and he shook his head. “I can’t—”

  “I need you to promise me, Yoss. I don’t push you about your past, don’t push me about mine. That life, that world, it’s gone for me. I can’t go back. You of all people should understand that. So promise me Yoss that you won’t fight with me about this. I need to know you want me here with you. Always. I need to know you love me. It’s the only thing that will make all of this easier.”

  I wasn’t playing fair. A part of me knew that.

  Yoss leaned down and kissed me, taking my doubts and my fear of rejection and erasing it all.

  “Promise,” he murmured against my mouth.

  It wasn’t the first lie he ever told me.

  And it wouldn’t be the last.

  Present Day

  “Do you have any other movies on that thing besides Fiddler on the Roof?” Yoss asked moments after I arrived in his room. I had waited to see him until the end of the day. I hadn’t been putting it off. I wanted to see him. I needed to. But I wasn’t quite sure of the reception I’d receive.

  Yoss had kissed me.

  It left things unsettled
. A little bit awkward.

  It was now almost six o’clock and the sun was setting. The sky was awash in fierce shades of red and gold.

  I hadn’t been sure what to expect when Yoss saw me again. Asking what movies I had was pretty far from my list of possibilities.

  I looked down at my laptop bag slung across my chest. I had brought it with me to take notes in his case file.

  “Uh, yeah, sure I do,” I said as I sat down beside his bed. I pulled out my computer and put it on the table, turning it on.

  We should talk about the kiss. About the things we had said yesterday. We should talk about his health. What he was going to do once he left the hospital.

  I’m not avoiding, I told myself. I was simply allowing us the opportunity to talk about things beyond life and death, choices made and piles of regret.

  We’d talk about movies.

  And that was okay.

  It seemed I wasn’t the only one who needed a break from the heavy stuff.

  Yoss started to laugh minutes later.

  “What?” I asked in confusion.

  Yoss coughed and inclined his head in the direction of the screen. “Is that really a bunch of panda bears in Kiss makeup?”

  I started laughing too. Hard. And then I made an unfortunate noise with my nose. It was completely mortifying.

  “Did you just snort?” Yoss asked, smirking.

  “I did not snort. And if I had, way to point it out,” I muttered.

  “I remember how you used to snort when you’d laugh and your face would turn a bright shade of red. Sort of like what it’s doing now.” Yoss leaned closer to me, examining my flaming cheeks.

  I waved him away with my hand, making him laugh again.

  Yoss seemed in good spirits. I noticed his color was better. He was still jaundiced, which was a result of the hep B, but his eyes were brighter. He had shaved. It was strange and nice to see his face underneath all that hair. The curve of his chin. The slope of his jaw. The determined set of his mouth.

  And even though he was still grossly underweight, he was looking more like the Yoss I remembered. A little older. A little harder. But still Yoss.

  “Where did you find that?” he asked, pointing to my desktop background.

  “It’s amazing the things you find on the Internet when you should be doing actual work.” I grinned. His mood was infectious. It always had been.

  I was more than a little surprised by his attitude. He had been seesawing between bitterness and depression with little room for any other emotion. It had been eight days since I had walked into this room and found him lying in the bed, badly beaten, barely hanging on.

  Eight days since my past had crashed head first into my present.

  Eight days since I had realized that second chances did happen.

  I was still trying to decide what to do with this chance now that I had been given it.

  I was walking on shaky ground, struggling to figure out how much of what Yoss and I used to be still existed.

  I had to know if I was setting myself up for a whole new level of heartache.

  Losing him once had almost destroyed me.

  Losing him again would surely annihilate me.

  “So you what kind of movie do you want to watch?” I asked, showing him the list of downloads on my laptop.

  Yoss leaned forward, his arm brushing mine. Having him so close was a special kind of torture. It was a relief. It was agony.

  Because the sixteen-year-old girl I used to be wanted to hold his hand in that intimate, innocent way that I had always done before.

  The thirty-one-year-old woman I was now wanted to do so much more than hold his hand. Because my body remembered what it felt like to have his weight on top of me. Sometimes, in the darkest hours between night and day, I would close my eyes and I could almost feel him…inside.

  “Shit, you have The Parent Trap on here. Is it—?”

  “The Hayley Mills version of course,” I interjected.

  Yoss glanced at me with a smirk. “Of course.”

  “I have Freaky Friday and Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang on there as well,” I told him, leaning over and pointing to the screen. I could smell the soap on his skin. The scent of the hospital shampoo. And the underlying thing that was all Yoss.

  “And Escape to Witch Mountain. Damn, Imi, you’ve got a hell of a collection,” Yoss enthused.

  “You know me and old movies. It’s sort of an obsession,” I said.

  “Did the ex watch these movies with you?” Yoss asked suddenly and I looked at him in surprise.

  Why was he asking about Chris?

  It came out of nowhere and I couldn’t tell his intention by his tone.

  Yoss was instantly contrite. “I shouldn’t have asked that. Sorry. That was a dumb thing to bring up.”

  “Why did you?” I asked.

  Yoss wouldn’t look at me. His jaw tightened as he stared hard at the computer screen. “How about That Darn Cat? I haven’t seen that one since I was five or something.”

  Obviously he wasn’t going to answer me. Yoss had always been adept at evading my questions.

  I clicked on the movie file for That Darn Cat as Yoss lay back onto his pillows.

  The opening credits started and Yoss smiled. We watched the screen in silence.

  “No, Chris didn’t share my love for old movies,” I said after a while.

  Yoss continued to stare at the movie playing on my computer and made no comment.

  “Chris and I had a shitty relationship. He never really got me. He never tried to. We were together because it was easier than being alone,” I admitted.

  Yoss licked his lips, his fingers curling and uncurling on the blanket. “Why did you marry him then? Why did you go through with it if you didn’t love him?” he asked softly. No accusation for once. Just curiosity. And maybe a little bit of pain.

  Should I tell him?

  I had given him a lot of my truths in the past few days. Maybe it was all too much for him.

  So I remained quiet. Yet slowly, so slowly, Yoss reached out and took my hand.

  Simple. Intimate. Familiar.

  Curling fingers through mine. Palm to palm.

  “I wished we had had more time to watch movies together,” Yoss said, eyes still focused on the screen. But his hand was holding mine. I wished he would kiss me. Not like yesterday. That kiss, while wanted, felt angry and desperate.

  I wanted a different kind of kiss.

  But I liked holding his hand almost as much.

  “Living in a warehouse doesn’t lend itself to a lot of movie watching,” I remarked.

  “We can watch them together now though.” Yoss finally looked at me, his dark hair falling into his eyes, making him look so much younger than his thirty-three years.

  “Yeah, we can.” I squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

  We watched the movie. We held hands. We enjoyed every single minute of this second chance moment we were given.

  And the sun continued to set, reminding me of many other sunsets we had spent together.

  “Hayley Mills was kind of hot,” Yoss mused, his eyebrows rising.

  “Oh is that your type now?” I laughed.

  Tightened fingers. Palm to palm.

  “Nah. I’m partial to dark hair. And I’m definitely a sucker for black eyes and tiny freckles right here.” He brushed his fingers along the bridge of my nose where I had a smattering of freckles from too much time in the sun.

  Yoss tucked my hair behind my ear, his thumb running the length of my cheek. My skin erupted into gooseflesh as he pressed the tip of his finger against a small birthmark on my collarbone. “Sometime, when I’m trying to go to sleep, I remember this mark. And how you would tremble when I kissed it.”

  Something heated in his eyes. Molten. Hot.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this Yossarian. His moods shifted and twisted continuously. I held my breath waiting for the tide to turn.

  So quiet. Not enough air.


  He closed his eyes and moved away. When he opened them again, they were sad. But resolute. He shook his head and turned back to the movie.

  “It’s getting to the good part,” he said, sounding slightly strangled.

  I crossed my legs, feeling a throbbing there that I hadn’t experienced since I was seventeen years old.

  Shit.

  I heard the door open and I sat back in my chair, putting distance between us.

  Dr. Howell pulled back the curtain and gave us a smile. “It looks like I’m interrupting movie time,” he said with a smile. I quickly reached over and turned off the computer, feeling strange that he walked in during such a tense moment.

  I clicked the mouse and the screen went black. I pushed the table to the side and sat up a little straighter.

  “Good evening, Yoss. Imogen, how are you?” Dr. Howell asked.

  “I think Yoss may be going a little stir crazy, so we were just watching a movie. That Darn Cat. The one with Hayley Mills. Have you seen it?” I prattled on like an idiot. If I was trying to cover up the odd mood in the room, I was doing a really bad job.

  “I can’t say that I have,” Dr. Howell remarked with a smile before turning his attention to Yoss who seemed overly amused by my nervous blathering.

  “How are you feeling?” Dr. Howell asked him.

  Yoss rubbed his hand over his nicely healing cuts and stitches. “I feel better actually. Not so tired. I didn’t throw up today, so that’s a bonus.”

  Dr. Howell nodded and made some notes in Yoss’s chart. “I’m glad to hear that. The new medication is helping to decrease symptoms. Your color seems a bit better too, which is good.”

  Dr. Howell turned to me. “Nurse Rogers told me that you took Yoss for a walk around the hospital yesterday.”

  “Yes, I did. It wasn’t long. Just up to the roof and back.”

  Crap. Was I going to get into trouble? Had I overstepped my boundaries?

  Of course I had.

  I was overstepping my boundaries all over the place.

  “I hope that was all right. Yoss wanted to walk around for a bit. I thought it would be good for him.”

  Dr. Howell waved a hand. “I think it’s a very good thing for Mr. Frazier to get up and about. Now that his internal injuries and the biopsy incision are healing it’s best for him to get some exercise. It’s just important that as he’s recovering he not over-exert himself.”