Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
He holds my gaze, his seeming to say, You’re right, I dropped the ball. But I won’t drop it again. Not ever. I swear.
Clearing my throat, I look to the window, to the mirror on the wall, to the empty chair in the other corner, anything to keep from looking at him. I can’t start imagining things with Blue again.
I can’t start…projecting, or whatever it was I was doing before.
Promising myself to get some real therapy in addition to all the self-help books I’ve been reading, I nod. “Okay, so we’ll figure something out. Find a place for you to sleep in the music room or something.” I risk a glance his way. “But just for a little while.”
He nods, looking relieved.
Relieved to be able to help a friend…
He really is a good man. But maybe he’s a good man like Clover’s dad is a good man, a good man who just doesn’t have a knack for romantic relationships. Or fatherhood. As much as a part of me longs for him, I don’t want that kind of “good.”
Even if he is the best kisser in the entire world.
Then just kiss him, the inner voice pipes up again. Do more than kiss him. Do it as many times as you can while he’s under your roof, and get it out of your system. Then, you can go back to being friends who co-parent or…whatever.
I snort at the absurdity of that thought.
Then cough.
Then choke on the water I sip in an attempt to stop the coughing.
Blue is gently rubbing my back in circles that make me tingle—despite the coughing—when Wella comes back to take my vitals.
So far, this homecoming is off to a great start.
Just great.
Chapter Eleven
CLOVER
I’m officially part cyborg.
Dr. Romanescu showed me the post-op X-rays, pointing at the pins and screws with her pencil like she was conducting a symphony about blunt force trauma. Titanium rod down the femur. Two screws in the tibia. And that’s just the leg. My arm has its own hardware, a sleek titanium plate and six screws to keep the bone from twisting. Gotta keep that sucker locked down. Don’t want that inside bone becoming an outside bone.
Ha. Outside bone.
It seems funny right now, what with all the drugs and all, but I know it won’t later. Later, I’m going to freak out about leaving the house okay, and coming back very not okay—very almost dead, in fact—and with injuries that are going to fuck up my life, and my bass-playing and clothing design dreams, for a long time to come.
Maybe forever.
“Now and forever, forever,” I whisper-sing to myself in a floaty voice. “I’m your man.”
It’s part of a song. A meme song, I think, but I can’t remember the rest of it. Just that. No name, no artist, no context. Just snippets of sound floating in and out of my fuzzy head.
Everything is dreamy and weird, and I’m pretty sure the ceiling tiles are alive. They keep moving, but subtly, so I can’t make out where they’re headed. But they’re definitely up to something. Something shady…
Every one of their beige asses.
But I’m keeping an eye on them. I’ve been tracking their movements for several minutes, in fact. Or hours?
Years?
The morphine turns time into a flexible thing. It’s never and always, and the water stain in the corner is for sure laughing at how broken I am. As if it has any room to talk. It looks like a rotten kidney bean.
Bean…
It’s what Beatrice calls the baby. Thank goodness the baby is okay.
The baby is okay, right?
They told me it was, I think.
“Yes,” I slur to the kidney bean—and myself. “They did, she’s fine. She’s fine, and the baby is fine.”
Talking to myself calms me down.
Not to brag, but I’m a cool head in a crisis.
Take the whole surprise baby thing, for example. A few weeks before Bea lit out for Scotland, I walked in on her staring at a plastic stick in the kitchen like it was a live grenade and held her while she hyperventilated about being pregnant. Afterward, she made me swear on my vintage Fender Bassman amp that I wouldn’t breathe a word about the baby to anyone.
So, I didn’t.
Of course, I didn’t.
Even when Nix stopped by to grab some things from the storage area and started nosing around to see if I knew more about why Beatrice had skipped town than I was letting on. Even when I ran into Blue at our favorite jazz place, lurking at the dark side of the bar, looking like someone had taken his soul apart and forgotten how to put it back together again.
There is no instruction manual for the soul.
Which feels like an oversight.
I mean, religion tries, I guess, but the church’s manual always felt off to me. Too patriarchal. If God had wanted me to be submissive to my husband, she wouldn’t have made me so mouthy and stubborn.