man could wear a burlap sack and look incredible. I knew just looking at it what it would smell like, and I wished I could put my nose to the blue cotton.
He’d lost weight. His muscles were more defined. His dimples didn’t show, because he didn’t smile.
He looked good—but he looked sad.
He’d get over it soon enough. A few babies from now and he wouldn’t even remember me.
He didn’t make any move to get out of my path. I looked away and walked past him, and he stood like a statue, eyes on me. Then suddenly a hand shot out and touched my arm. It trailed lightly down my forearm as I walked on, across the top of my hand, over my fingers, and then it was gone.
I didn’t jerk away because that would have been acknowledging that he was even there.
But the few seconds of contact moved through my whole body.
I felt it the rest of the day.
THIRTY-FIVE
Josh
I took off my glasses and pinched the bridge of my nose, setting the book down on the table by Brandon’s hospital bed. “Sorry, I gotta take a break. Shantaram is long, man.”
It would take me a month to read it to him, but it was the book he’d started at the station before the accident, and I knew he’d want to hear it.
It only took me a minute before my thoughts slid back to Kristen. My mind always slid back to Kristen.
At least at work I had distractions. I picked up extra shifts when I could so I wouldn’t be at home, staring at the walls of my studio, thinking about her or worrying about Brandon. I went to the gym on my days off after visiting the hospital. I went all day sometimes. I’d unpacked my apartment, bought a couch and a TV. Tried to stay busy.
But inevitably, no matter what I was doing, I was thinking about her.
And now, without the book to read, sitting there with Brandon in the middle of the night, I had nothing to do but think.
I checked my watch: 2:12 a.m. I pictured Kristen, sleeping on her side under her flower bedspread. Her hand tucked under her favorite pillow—the one with the beige flannel pillowcase. Stuntman Mike curled up on top of the blanket in the tangle of her legs. The clock on her nightstand giving me just enough light to see her long lashes across her smooth cheeks.
I mentally pulled the blanket up to her chin and kissed her forehead and saw her eyes flutter open as she smiled at me.
Fuck, I missed her.
“I wish you could talk to me,” I said to Brandon. “Tell me what to do. I need you to wake up and straighten me out. Or even better, wake up and straighten her out.”
I dragged a hand down my face. When I saw her today, it just confirmed what I already knew. I wasn’t ever going to get over her. I wasn’t ever going to not miss her.
She was punishing me for a crime I didn’t even know I’d committed. For things I had said and things I wanted before I knew what they’d mean later. Every comment had been a nail in the board across the door she’d closed on me.
“I don’t even know how to begin to convince her,” I said. “She won’t even speak to me.” I snorted. “Leave it to me to be in love with the world’s most stubborn woman.”
I tried to think about what Brandon’s response to this would be. He was always so level-headed. He would know what to do.
The more I tried to sway her, the further she distanced herself. The more I told her I loved her, the more she shut down. And I didn’t know how to stop it.
I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, and I peered around the cold, sterile room. Beige walls. Gray machines around the bed. Some I recognized, some I didn’t. The only sounds at the late hour were the faint jingle of a phone ringing in the nurses’ station, the ping of an elevator, the faraway sound of the wheels of a cart, and the gentle beep of Brandon’s vital signs monitor.
They wouldn’t allow any flowers or personal items in the ICU, but Sloan had snuck in an engagement photo. It sat on the table next to the bed. Her and Brandon on the beach, the surf crashing around their feet, her tattooed arm over his shoulder, them looking at each other.