by K. L Randis
It hit me that Jackson had none of those things.
No one kept him. He was a yacht lost at sea, beautiful to look at from afar—so no one would ever consider asking if it were sinking. He was abandoned, drifting alone among a lullaby of waves, waiting for something or someone to find him and bring him home.
“You and my mom would have a lot in common,” I said finally.
“She’s military?” he asked, impressed.
I shook my head. “She can’t remember things sometimes.”
Jackson inched closer, facing me, our ankles touching each other in a silent hug. “She can’t remember things…sometimes?” he asked, hopeful.
“All the times, actually,” I said.
He didn’t speak when I looked away, a single tear sliding down my cheek. “She loved the beach. It was her favorite place in the whole world.”
“Is she able to do day trips? Get out every once in a while?”
“Never. She’s in a home. I wish I could bring the beach to her sometimes,” I answered, mumbling the last word with every bit of guilt it carried.
“When was she diagnosed?”
“Two years ago.”
“And how much time…?”
He didn’t have to specify what he meant. Alzheimer’s prognoses ran anywhere from four to eight years, some longer or shorter depending on other factors.
“They’re giving her another year, max.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m devastated about it,” I replied. “There’s so much she missed.”
He nodded, wrapping his arms around my legs. “Do you get to see her a lot?”
“Not nearly enough. She’s in a home in Wilmington.”
“An hour away, at least,” he said.
“On a good day.”
He sighed. “There’s only one thing we can do then.”
I looked at him with a blank expression. “What do you mean?”
“There’s only one way we can deal with this.” He got to his feet, extending his hands to me.
I took them and he hoisted me up off the ground. Sand trickled down my legs and I didn’t bother to brush the rest away.
He bent his head down in defeat, hands on his hips. “I was hoping it didn’t have to come to this.” Inching closer, he was able to rest his cheek against mine, his lips almost touching the height of my cheekbone. “I just don’t think there’s anything else we can do at this point,” he whispered, holding his position and puffing soft flutters of air against my ear.
My heart raced. “What do you want to do?” I whispered back.
I heard the familiar beep of a stopwatch below us. “Tag, you’re it,” he hissed.
Smacking my ass, he turned and took off down the coastline.
“Oh no you—Jackson!”
My legs were pistons, zip lining me up the coast to be on his tail with a pace I didn’t recognize. “Not this time!” I yelled at him. My arms swooshed in rhythm at my sides, an aching but elated heart pumping me faster and faster.
Jackson moved with the strides of a gazelle, meticulous and choreographed movements pushing him forward. “You can’t beat me!” Jackson yelled over the waves. “You’re not fast enough!”
I absorbed his taunts, closing the gap between us.
“You haven’t trained hard enough!” he yelled. “You don’t want it bad enough!”
I gritted my teeth as I paralleled his body, unleashing every muscle to advance me further.
“You want to win? THEN WIN!” he screamed.
Forging ahead, I kicked piles of sand at his thighs as I passed. Adrenaline coursed through every vein and I could hear Jackson trailing ten to fifteen feet behind me.
“You’re only as fast as you want to be!” he yelled.
Runner’s high hit me hard and I smiled with tears rolling down my cheeks at the same time. Winded and reaching my max, I stopped.
Too suddenly.
“Woah!” Jackson cried out. “Cant stop, can’t—”
Jackson plowed into me just as I turned around. With reflexes like a cat, he wrapped one arm around me while bracing our fall with the other. When we hit the ground I was laughing so violently Jackson thought he had hurt me.
“You okay, Thomas the train?” he asked, realizing I was fine.
“Oh, don’t ever do that again,” I said, breathing deep into my gut to control my panting.
“Don’t what?” he asked, looking at his stopwatch, one arm still around me. “Make you beat your record time in sprints?”
“No I didn’t,” I said, grabbing his wrist. I stared at the numbers, having shaved a whole thirty seconds off my fastest time. “That’s amazing!”
“You’re amazing,” Jackson said, moving his thumb across my temple, looking at me with eyes that truly saw me.
I never understood what it was like to be seen, truly seen, before that moment. When someone can breathe life into you with their eyes, neither of you saying a word, and you can feel physically feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up in response. His eyes saw my insecurities, my hurt, and my ambitions in a profound way because I never had to say them out loud.
He just knew.
“You’re going to get tired of me winning these races all the time,” I said, putting my hand on his cheek.
He shook his head. “Not a chance.”
Barely having to move his face any closer, our lips eagerly touched. The sound of the waves faded, and the soft motion of Jackson’s lips rolling over mine were all I could feel.
Chapter Seven
“I want more of this,” Jackson said.
Looking up from the book I was reading I tried to focus on the context of his statement. He had his back leaning against the bay window of his living room, feet crossed at the ankles. Running shorts hung at his hips, threatening to fall further with every slight movement of his torso.
“More what?” I asked
“This. More of you.”
I wiggled my toes under a weighted, gray blanket draped across my lap. Sinking into the couch a little more I observed the scarce décor of Jackson’s apartment. Our completed and routine morning run combined with the blazing propane fireplace in the center of the living room were all the makings for a lazy Sunday morning.
“Well I’d imagine having more of me would make running the Boston Marathon much easier,” I replied, wrinkling my nose. “I could put one of me at the beginning of the race and one near the end and POOF, I’d win by a landslide.”
Acknowledging my deflection he looked out the window, nodding. “I think we’re past the point of thinking this isn’t something more, aren’t we?” He moved toward me, never breaking eye contact. “I can’t be the only one wondering where this is going.”
He knelt down in front of me, parting my knees with his hands as he inched closer, wrapping his hands around my waist. “That’s not what I meant and you know that, Pip. We see each other five or six times a week, so what are we?”
“Well, you’re my running buddy.”
“You kiss all your running buddies?”
“Not the way I kiss you, if that makes you feel better,” I joked.
“Do you make the train noise for everyone too?”
“Only when they’re wearing ear buds so they can’t hear me.”
He lowered his head. “Why? Why can’t you let me in? Where’d Thomas the train go?”
I turned my head away from him, studying a tiny dust ball on the floor near one leg of the couch across from me.
“Pip…?”
“This works,” I said, the familiar racing of my heart contradicting my words.
“This is killing us,” he said, inching toward my lips. “We run, yes, but something’s here, you can’t deny that.”
“What?” I asked
He paused, musing over how to answer without sounding vulnerable. “I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”
I felt like a con artist, staring back at his unguarded face as I tried for the
millionth time to find the words to tell him how I really knew him, how I had seen him at his worst, and that I would understand if he never wanted to see me again. The words hung on the outer edge of my lips, dangling like a low hanging fruit. A exhale of air was all that escaped.
“Here, I have something for you,” Jackson said, moving into the next room. I could hear the slide of a kitchen drawer, some rumbling, then he appeared carrying a box the size of a laptop with a bow attached to the top.
My heart dropped. “Jackson…” I said, eyeing the box with wide eyes.
He looked down at his hands, then back at me, all at once realizing that he was overextending or crossing some invisible boundary he couldn’t see. “Oh! No…I mean, I’m not trying to be sappy here. I just wanted to do something nice. You’ve been working so hard and…”
His vulnerability is what kept me from telling him the truth. He was, at his core, a gentle but fragmented person. There were times I all but convinced myself to own up to how I knew him, but the moment I pulled into his driveway or saw his eyes light up when I approached him on the beach to run I just couldn’t. I didn’t want him to know I knew the whole Jackson until he was ready to tell me. There was a part of me that also knew I wouldn’t let him in completely until he was able to have that discussion with me. If he couldn’t trust me with the worst of himself, I couldn’t give him the best of myself. We remained suspended in a continuum of expectations, swaying between salty kisses, morning runs, and protein pancakes.
He opened my clenched fist and put the box in the center of my lap, placing my hands on top as he pulled away. “You don’t need to open it now, open it when you’re ready.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “I need to head out, we on for a run tomorrow morning?”
“Already? I was hoping we could maybe spend the afternoon together and grab a bite to eat in town or something?”
I averted the notion. “Yeah, it’s just that I’m on call all afternoon for work and I promised Meg I would meet up with her and Phoenix for lunch already.”
“You two are always running off to play babysitter, so I take it you like kids?”
“Goodbye, Jackson,” I said, playfully pushing his shoulder and giving myself room to stand. “We on for tomorrow morning?”
Jackson nodded, pulling me to my feet and planting a kiss on my forehead. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
His breath was heavy on my cheek as he pulled away and for a second I considered throwing the box onto the couch and staying a while longer.
“What do you think this is?” I asked.
He pulled my hips into him, cradling my backside in his hands and pushing his nose into mine. “Well, this is your ass.”
“Thanks for the anatomy lesson.”
My shirt lifted as he slid his hands up my side. “And this is your stomach.”
“Noted,” I said, dropping the box onto the couch to close the space between us.
“And these…” he said, pulling my face closer and grabbing my lower lip, rolling over it with his tongue. “I’ve been thinking about these all day.”
I grabbed onto his elbows, pushing his hands harder into my sides. I walked him in a circle, positioning him toward the couch and pushing his forearms down so he would sit.
He crashed into the cushions as if his legs had disappeared. “Oh, crap, are you okay?” I asked. “I didn’t think I pushed down that hard.”
“You didn’t,” he said, the tone in his voice changing. “It happens sometimes.”
“What happens?”
“Beautiful women who try and seduce me make my legs give out.”
“Oh, so you do have a kryptonite?” I said, teasing. I straddled him, wrapping my arms around his neck and placing kisses from his collarbone to his ear. He stiffened a little and I pushed away from him. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just don’t want to make you late. Maybe you should go then.”
“I can spare a few minutes.”
“Okay, so why don’t you open the box?”
My cheeks flared. I nodded, studying his demeanor. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” he replied, a clear shift in his voice. “I just think you should open it.”
I didn’t mean to pout when I slid from his lap to the couch, but the awkward silence that fell between us was weighty enough to tell me he wasn’t in the mood. He barely glanced in my direction as I ripped open the side of the box, the cardboard crumbling apart. “Jackson, this is perfect!”
“Is it? It’s nothing, really.”
I meddled through the box, sorting through the Gu packs, Slim Jims, and high performance socks that were delicately wrapped in tissue paper. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I know,” he said, finally resting his gaze on my face. “I wanted to. You’ll need them for the race.”
“I do love Slim Jims. Now I don’t want to leave, this was really sweet,” I confessed, staring at the time on my phone, knowing I had somewhere to be before going to visit my mom late that afternoon.
“But you have to?”
I hesitated, fighting with the voices in my head. “I have to.”
“If you must. Maybe we can meet at your place tomorrow? Change it up a bit?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Well that doesn’t make much sense, you’re closer to the beach. Plus my house stinks like bodily fluids and dirty scrubs, not attractive.”
“So I guess it’s my place then? Same time, same place?”
“You promise to slap my ass every time you outrun me again?”
“If you’ll have me.”
“I’ll have you,” I said, raising my lips to his.
***
I took my time heading to the nursing home, letting people pass me who were headed to more time constrictive destinations. The smell of tulips from the flower shop on the passenger seat next to me reminded me of nostalgic mornings making banana pancakes with my mom when I was too young to remember most of anything else.
An extra deep, white mixing bowl would be propped between my legs as I sat perked on the counter next to the griddle with Mom handing me eggs to crack. Only half of them made it into the bowl, so she wiped away the excess that was dripping down my legs and handed me another. She told me that life was like an egg, delicate and messy all at the same time.
I didn’t get the reference at the time.
“Boy, do I get it now,” I whispered, finally maneuvering into the parking lot.
“Knock-knock. Hey you!” I said, poking my head around her door and waving the tulips. “How are you?”
“Oh!” she said, somewhat startled. Standing at the foot of her bed she looked from the down comforter to her window, then back to me. “Am I okay?” she asked, looking down at her plaid shirt, pulling it out to check the fabric.
“You’re okay,” I assured her, making my way to place them on her nightstand.
“Tulips,” she said, recognizing the flower.
I paused with my hands wrapped around the stems, not wanting to turn around and face her. “Yes, tulips,” I responded with my back to her. “Do you know why I brought you tulips today?”
The silence was deafening but I didn’t want to break the moment, so I hovered in position waiting to hear her response.
“It’s Sunday.”
I turned around, my face flushing as my heartbeat skyrocketed. “Yes, it’s Sunday, why do you get tulips on Sundays?”
My question was met with pressed lips and a heightened left eyebrow. “My daughter brings me tulips every Sunday,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Who am I?” I blurted out.
She stared, studying my face and nodding as she came to her decision. “You’re lovely.”
I pressed harder. “Why would your daughter bring you tulips on Sundays?”
“Well, I taught her to do that. Ever since she went away to college, I told her to bring me tulips on Sundays. It was the one thing I ever asked of her.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“I
wanted it to become routine.”
I paused. “What do you mean?”
“It had to become routine, her bringing me flowers. How else would I get her to visit me?”
“I don’t think much could keep her from you,” I said, my heart aching. Throughout college and afterwards, my mom would insist I brought her flowers every Sunday. It was a non-negotiable. She promised to pay my tuition if, in return, every Sunday I would show up to her house—no matter where I was—to bring her flowers. It was a small sacrifice to make; I got a nursing degree and weekly memories with my mom.
“When I’m gone,” she said softly. “How else will I get her to visit my grave once a week when I’m gone if I didn’t make it part of her routine? I love her so, I wanted to make sure she came to see me even when I’m not here to tell her to do it.”
My eyes welled up. “Do you know who I am?”
She narrowed her eyes, lowering herself to her bed as she considered the question.
“No tricks today, Pippa. I’m waiting for Roger to get home and I have dinner to make before we go play poker at the firehouse. Did you call Mom today? She was complaining you never call her anymore.”
I nodded, lowering myself to a wooden rocking chair nearby to clutch my chest. “Okay, no tricks today,” I promised, choking back tears. “I just wanted you to remember one more time. I needed to know you could remember me.”
I knew at this point I was talking to a wall. Her lucid moments were sporadic and fleeting depending on the weather and her mood. A heap of emotions consumed me and I swallowed hard, looking out the window to center myself.
“You’re crying,” Mom said.
“I am.”
“Does your heart hurt?” she asked.
“It does. So much.”
“Tell me about it,” she said, patting the bed beside her.
I nodded, making my way to her bedside. When I sat down she took my hand into hers, rubbing the top of my knuckles. They were warm and inviting, like sliding my hands into a pair of gloves that had been worn for years.
“It’s all right to feel sad, we all do sometimes,” she said.
“I have no one,” I admitted. “I’ve been so busy keeping people out so that they wouldn’t disappoint me that now that I need someone I feel like everyone but no one is there at the same time.”