by Mia Malone
“He got the house and half of everything you’ve saved over the years?” he asked as if I hadn’t just explained that.
Jacob didn’t look happy, and I got that it sounded terrible, but he didn’t know the whole truth.
“My dad has put some money away. It’s legally just mine, so Dave didn’t get any of it,” I explained.
“Your dad set up a trust fund for you?”
“Dad has some pretty crazy ideas, so yeah. It’s not a trust fund exactly, but every now and then, he makes some money, and it goes into an investment account in my name.”
I felt my mouth widen with a smile when I thought about my parents. They’d been gone for months this time but were due back in a few weeks, and I’d missed them.
“Huh.”
There really wasn’t anything else to say without going into lengthy explanations about my parents, which would lead to an even longer explanation about my dad, so I brought out ingredients for lasagna, and then we cooked.
Meggie joined us and accepted the pretty inane story about how Matthias had had a rough week in the office, and we should let him sleep. Jacob left when she did, and I heard them laughing for a long time out by the cars. My girls loved my parents and missed them when they were traveling, so it felt good to hear her laugh with Jacob.
“Hey.”
I turned and smiled at Matthias, who winced.
“Tylenol?” I said with a small smirk and pushed the bottle I’d already put on the kitchen counter toward him.
“Yeah.”
“Food?”
“Fuck, yeah.” He grinned crookedly and pulled me into his arms. “Sorry for coming home drunk.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “You were cute. I got fantastic sex against the wall. Had a good evening with your dad, and yes... we did laugh a little at you.”
I scooped up lasagna while he brought out a bottle of sparkling water, and then we sat at my small dining table.
“Nina,” he said suddenly and put his knife and fork down.
“Yes?”
“About the wall...”
“Yes?” I repeated.
Why did he look so serious suddenly?
“We didn’t use protection.”
Oh.
“I’m on the pill,” I said.
“Good. I didn’t have sex in a long time, but I wasn’t sure about... I got tested after the divorce.”
I couldn’t hold back a small giggle, and his brows went up.
“I know,” I said.
“You know?”
I explained how I had seen the paper in his office, which made him put both his hands over his face and groan.
“It was good, though. It made me realize that I probably should get tested too, so I did,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t think Dave did anything, and I used protection with both milquetoast and buddha-man, but –”
He made a strange sound, and I realized what I’d blurted out, so I stopped talking and tried to think of a way to cover my stupid words up.
“You had sex with milquetoast and... buddha-man?”
“Um.”
“That’s a pretty stupid sound.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted. “You know I went on a few dates after the divorce, and... yeah.”
I winced, but Matthias burst out laughing, which I hoped meant that he didn’t mind my oversharing.
“Milquetoast is something I can figure out, babe.” He grinned and started eating again. “But, please explain about Buddha-man.”
“Have you heard about tantric sex?” I asked, and he started laughing again.
He kept laughing when he heard about my experience, but there was something in his eyes that I recognized.
I had always been competitive. Friendly teambuilding exercises at work had turned into bloody battles when I was younger, and it was one of the things I’d found cute and endearing about Dave when we met.
He simply didn’t care.
This had stunned me at first, and I’d waited for him to stop pretending, but he never did, and over the years, I understood that not being first over the finishing line when we went running wasn’t a big deal for him. Or a deal at all, actually.
My whole family was all like me, and Layla more so than anyone else I knew. She hid it under a veneer of polished, housewifey excellence these days, but it was there.
So, I recognized it in Matthias’ eyes and wondered if he would want to –
“You want to try it again?”
Yeah. He definitely wanted to.
“Now?” I asked in a mini-squeak.
“Hungover, so no,” he said with a wry grin. “Another day?”
“Okay,” I said, and added in a voice that suddenly had turned husky, “I think I’d like that.”
“You will,” he said firmly.
Yeah, I thought. Competitive.
He finished his lasagna, and I poured me another glass of wine.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Nina, you can ask me anything,” he said. “You know that.”
I hadn’t known that, actually.
“When we met that first time, on the island? Why didn’t you just tell me about Jackie?”
Chapter Eleven
Parental surprise
Nina
As it turned out, I could apparently not ask Matthias about anything. Not if the anything I asked about included his ex-wife, at least.
He muttered something about not knowing why he hadn’t mentioned his marital status during the days we spent together on the island.
I called bullshit, but I did it using nicer words and mostly in a gentle voice.
The tone was apparently not gentle enough because he shared curtly that his belly hurt, and he would go to bed.
“You could just say that you don’t want to talk about it,” I said and forgot to be gentle, so it came out in a snap.
“Okay, Nina,” he growled, and gave me an arrogant glare. “There are things in my life I just don’t want to fucking talk about.”
“Okay,” I said, but I did this to an empty room since he’d disappeared into the bedroom.
He was asleep when I crawled into bed, and when I woke up the next morning, he was still sleeping. When he hadn’t gotten out of bed by lunchtime, I caved in and made him a latte.
“I guess I deserve feeling like shit,” he said with a sleepy smile. “Not drinking whiskey in a while.”
“You don’t look too good,” I said quietly, not sure how to act.
We’d had a fight last night, hadn’t we?
Or, not exactly a fight perhaps, but a disagreement, which we’d had many times before, but this time, it had felt real.
“Gut hurts a bit,” he admitted.
A couple of Tylenol later, he felt well enough to go pick his dog up from his daughter, and then he texted to let me know that he wouldn’t join me on what had become our usual Sunday night run. Instead, he was going to sleep, and we’d apparently talk on Monday. I wasn’t entirely sure what we’d talk about, but he hadn’t seemed upset when he left, so I assumed we were okay.
I didn't enjoy the run, which partly was since I'd gotten used to having someone to talk to if we did an easy lap or compete with if we felt like pushing a bit harder. Mostly it was because I kept looping his angry words around in my head.
“Okay, fine. Not a big deal, and now I know,” I mumbled to myself as I went through my stretches.
Talking about Jackie-the-jackal was apparently a big no-no.
It wasn’t as if I was all eager to dissect my marriage to Dave with him, so I decided to let go of the whole thing, and just pretend it hadn’t happened.
I still wished he’d been a bit nicer about it, though.
***
Matthias
He had fucked up.
Thoroughly.
She surprised him when she asked about Jackie, and he hadn’t handled it well. To his defense, he felt like shit and had more than once vowed to never drink alcohol again
in his entire goddamned life.
He wasn’t going to wonder if he’d caught the flu or something because that’s what teenagers asked themselves instead of accepting that they’d had one too many, so he simply popped a couple more pills before leaving for the office on Monday morning. Nina acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary when he called her from the car, but there was a faint hesitation in her voice, which he didn’t like. It was totally on him to clear the air, so he’d talk to her about Jackie that night, he decided. He wasn’t sure how to explain why he’d been such a fool, but he’d try.
The day passed by in a blur of meetings and more painkillers, and he started to wonder if he should go home and spend the rest of the afternoon in bed, wallowing in his misery. Len stopped by his office, though, and shared with considerable glee that his hangover had been gone by lunchtime the day before, so Matthias grit his teeth and braced for the pain he knew would hit his gut when he heaved himself out of the chair.
“Bud, you don’t look so good,” Len said quietly as they walked together to a meeting Nina had called for to talk about a few invoices or something. “Do you have a fever?”
“Might,” Matthias ground out.
The ache in his belly burned like fire, and his knees felt wobbly, so he was about to add that he was probably not hungover but actually sick when there was a loud crash from the open landscape outside the conference room.
Several voices were suddenly screaming loudly, and they started running.
“Shit,” Len snapped. “Anyone hurt?”
Matthias ignored how it suddenly felt as if someone twisted a knife around in his belly, and surveyed the mayhem in front of him. A large file cabinet had tilted forward, and the only thing preventing it from falling to the floor was the fact that it was leaning precariously on another, smaller cupboard.
And the fact that it had partially hit Peggy on its way down.
Binders and papers were scattered over the floor, and people were running around.
“Everyone, back off,” he roared. “Tom. Len. Get to the sides and hold it in place, so it doesn’t fall further.”
The two men moved immediately, but then Len shouted, “It’s fucking heavy, Matty. Need a few more to help.”
Matthias pointed at a younger man who dealt with their business intelligence and then at Dane, who came running. Then he focused on Peggy.
“How are you doing, Peg?”
“Peachy,” she croaked out. “I know I shouldn’t kick the damn thing shut. Never thought it’d kick back.”
Their eyes met, and he saw pain but also a calmness that was quite impressive.
“This is not fucking funny, Peg,” Len barked out and added a few select curse words.
“I have something stuck in my arm, Leonard,” she snapped back. “You think I don’t know how supremely unfunny this is?”
“Let me take a look,” Nina said.
There was another admirably calm woman, Matthias realized.
“How bad is it?” Peg said, and the two women looked at each other for a second.
“A small piece of metal from the drawer went into your arm, honey,” Nina said quietly, twisted carefully to take another look and calmly said, “You’re lucky. It went into the fat.”
“I do not have fat arms,” Peggy protested.
“No,” Nina said slowly. “Except they’re not super skinny and the –”
“Nina,” Len roared. “For fuck’s sake.”
“Can you raise the thing?” Matthias asked loudly. “If you do it slowly, I can hold her arm and...”
He looked at Peggy and saw that she understood what would happen.
“Shit,” she whispered. “That’s gonna hurt.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” she said with a wince.
“Hold on to me,” Nina said and grabbed her hand.
Then she placed her other hand on Peggy’s elbow, and Matthias ignored his aching stomach and leaned forward to look.
Nina had been right. The metal had gone into the arm just under the skin, and it would hurt pulling it out, but it didn’t look like it had done any critical damage.
The cabinet suddenly made a creaking sound, and Peggy pushed out a soft moan.
“Matty, we have to raise it now,” Len ground out. “It won’t hold much longer.”
“Okay,” Matthias said.
They should wait for help, but there wasn’t any time. Nina pulled off the scarf she had around her neck, bunched it up in her hand, and their eyes met.
“Just do it,” she said quietly. “It’s worse waiting for it.”
“On my count, are you ready?” Matthias called out and got shouts of confirmation back. “Three, two one, go!”
Security had arrived, and they helped to push the heavy piece into an upright position. Peggy pressed her lips together but didn’t make a sound as the sharp metal slid out of her arm. Nina held her scarf against the wound and moved them away from the cabinet.
“Let me take a look,” Len said and pushed both Nina and Matthias out of his way. “Christ, Peg. What were you thinking?” he snapped as he twisted the arm around. “She was right,” he added. “Shallow and mostly through –”
“Call my arm fat, and I’ll clock you.”
“Shut up,” Len snapped. “Let’s get you to the hospital. Did anyone call an amb –”
“I am going there in a regular car.”
“For fuck’s –”
“No need to curse.”
Matthias assumed the angry woman couldn’t be too badly hurt if she felt well enough to get into an argument, so he looked around the room.
“We’ll take Peggy to the hospital,” he said. “Roger. Secure the damned thing and find out how the hell this could happen. It should have been secured properly to the fucking wall.”
The fact that the CEO of the company dropped the f-bomb on him made the head of security bark out a flurry of orders.
Then Matthias ground his teeth together and helped Peggy to her feet.
“Thanks,” she murmured. “I hope it wasn’t my fault.”
“No way you could kick it hard enough for that,” Matthias said. “We’ll find out later what happened. Let’s go.”
The drive to the hospital was a bit blurry, and Matthias wondered how much fever he had, but he held it together until they were in the waiting room, and Peggy had been wheeled away on a gurney.
“How are you feeling?” he heard Nina say, but it felt as if her voice came from far away.
His stomach roiled, and there seemed to be tiny yellow sparkles in the air around him.
“Gut hurts,” he managed to say.
Then he leaned forward and threw up.
***
Nina
I was not fast enough, so when Matthias suddenly puked, he did it all over me. Then he fell forward, and I tried to catch him, but he was too heavy, so I went down with him. We landed in a heap on the floor, and I heard Len shout for help.
People came running and quickly rolled him off me, so I scrambled to the side to let them help him. Someone poked him in his belly, and he pushed out a ragged sound, which turned into a curse when they raised his right knee slightly.
“Get me a gurney and call the OR!” a doctor-looking man shouted. “I suspect his appendix will rupture any minute if it hasn’t already.”
Before I knew what happened, they were disappearing down the corridor, taking Matthias with them, and I sat on the floor, covered in vomit and with a throbbing eye from where Matthias’ elbow had made contact as we landed on the floor.
“Jesus,” Len said and stared at me. “What the hell just happened?”
“I guess he wasn’t hungover,” I mumbled.
“Come,” Len said. “Let’s find someplace to wipe off your shirt.”
“I need to call Jacob.”
“Bathroom,” he said firmly, and the smell of vomit reached my nostrils, so I nodded and followed him down the corridor.
We cleaned me up as best we could
in one of the bathrooms, and then Len took my keys to fetch some clean clothes for me. I talked to Jacob, who would take the next ferry over to the mainland. Then I spoke with Matthias’ younger brother, who turned out to be in San Francisco, a fact that made the man curse the golden state, Delta Airlines, and for some reason, a man named Joaquin. I assured them both that I would let them know as soon as I got news about Matthias.
Then I called Matthias’ son, Simon.
“Hey, Simon. My name is Nina Petrie, and I’m –”
“I know who you are. Is Dad okay?”
Sharp as a tack had been Jacob’s description of his grandson, and he hadn’t been wrong.
“Matthias is fine,” I said, hoping I wasn’t lying. “We are in the hospital, and they just rolled him away to remove his appendix.”
“Which hospital?”
I told him, got a curt, “On my way,” in return, and then he hung up.
The surroundings were depressing, and I stood there, not sure what to do. I didn’t want to bother the staff who probably wouldn’t know anything yet anyway. I still smelled faintly of puke, and a mix of fear and adrenaline rushed through me, making my knees shake a little. Layla had gone with Teddy on a business trip to London, and I tried to figure out the time difference, but my brain didn’t seem to work properly, so I gave up.
Then I picked up my phone and closed my eyes in relief when a familiar voice full of laughter and strength answered.
“Nina, my darling!”
“Mom,” I said quietly. “Things are a bit messy. Can we talk for a while?”
***
“I don’t give a shit. I am not sitting in a goddamned deck chair with a fucking blanket over my legs.”
“It’s cold,” Jacob said.
“That is why God gave us the Internet, wi-fi, laptops, and consequently...” Matthias glared at his father and put what I thought was a pretty annoying finger in his face. “Working. From. Home.”
“You’re on sick leave.”
I thought Matthias would hit Jacob and decided that it was time for me to intervene.
Again.
Matty was not excellent at convalescence, one could say.
Which one often did when he was not in the room.
“Sweetie –”
My placating voice wasn’t placating him at all, and he rounded on me, albeit gingerly on account of the stitches on his belly from where they had indeed removed his appendix.