Текст книги "Hard Beat"
Автор книги: K. Bromberg
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 23 страниц)
“Fuck, Ry.” My breath comes out in a whoosh as I try to find the words to tell my sister, the one person I’ve always tried to be a good role model for, that I fell in love with a married woman. What is she going to think of me now? “They think she’ll be okay… It’s gonna take some time but not as bad as I feared… but… my head’s all messed up…” I let my words trail off, anguish as prevalent as the uncertainty in my voice.
“Well, of course it is,” she says, misunderstanding my comment. “You just took a blast —”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Talk to me.” Her simple statement means so much to me right now since I feel so very alone.
“How did I not know she’s married?”
“What?” I can envision from memory the look that’s probably on her face.
“I got here to the hospital, professed my love for her as she’s lying there, and then her husband’s fist met my face.”
“Oh shit,” she murmurs, those two words expressing what I feel perfectly. “You had no clue?” The shock in her voice fires so many emotions within me because of course I don’t want my sister to be pissed at me for something I had no control over.
“No, Ry. None. And a part of me thinks something is hinky here. Like she took this job to escape him.”
“Tanner…” She draws my name out in disbelief.
“I know, but I fell for her, Ry… and not just because she was there. We fought like cats and dogs at the beginning, but I really fell for her. She challenges me and makes me laugh and is a really good person and… damn…” I sigh because even as I’m telling my sister these things, I know she already hates Beaux for hurting me. “She was so closed off about her past, so adamant that it was bad and you know me, you know what a good instinct I have when it comes to people, so I’m just…” I force myself to stop rambling and try to hear myself through Rylee’s unjaded ears.
“Telling the truth is easy. It’s deceiving someone that’s hard work.” Silence fills the line as her words resonate with me. “Trust your gut, but just don’t be blinded by love when it’s founded on mistruths from the start.”
“When did you get so wise?” It’s my attempt to stop the advice I need but really don’t want to hear.
“The same time you got so handsome,” she says, a line we’ve exchanged a hundred times over the years that brings a small slice of normalcy to me right now when nothing seems normal.
“Ha. So that means forever.”
She laughs, but I can tell she’s trying to do me a favor in doing so, to lighten the mood some so that we hang up on a good note. “Tan?”
“Yeah?”
“I believe that you didn’t know,” she says softly, understanding how important that is to me. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Once we hang up, I wander the grounds, unable to sit any longer in a waiting room and unwilling to walk away without some answers. Although I’m not sure how I’m going to get any since I’ve been banned from the third floor. I’ll find a way. Somehow.
Next I buy some coffee from a cart on the grounds but don’t even taste it as I sip it, my mind lost in turbulent thoughts and my chest aching from so much more than the blast. Rylee’s words come back to me occasionally, drag me back to reality when I’d much rather be lost elsewhere. I ignore Rafe’s texts and his apologies that he can’t give me more, and his questions about why I’m so invested when I hated her from the get-go.
I can’t speak with him right now or he’ll see right through my transparent emotions.
At some point night falls and forces me to realize that my nomadic wandering has pushed me to the point of mental and physical exhaustion, my body still recovering and needing to rest. As I trudge toward the main building, I realize for the first time that my doubt is winning out over hope. The whoosh of the entrance doors greets me as I head on autopilot to the elevators to take back my chair in the second-floor waiting room.
A part of me wants to waltz onto the third floor like I don’t give a fuck who’s there and see her again. The idea finds purchase in my mind as more and more people pile on the elevator around me.
“Floor?” an elderly lady asks me since I’ve been pushed on the opposite side of the car from the controls.
“Three, please,” I respond without hesitation, because sometimes you just have to fight for the girl. I was blindsided before, didn’t tell John to go to hell, and right now I’m primed to do just that, because until I hear from Beaux’s lips that she doesn’t want me, I’m not going anywhere.
I exit the elevator car with several other people and walk with them right past the nurses’ station where the same nurse is still on duty. I keep my head down when I approach Beaux’s room, yet I notice a flurry of activity that makes my heart fall because I immediately fear that she has taken a turn for the worse. Not caring about anything but her, I rush to the doorway, only to be met with the sound of her voice.
“Beaux?” Her name falls from my lips, relief mixed with anger, and I must say it loud enough because I catch a very fleeting glimpse of her before John and two other men are in my face with hands on my arms pushing me out of the doorway. “Beaux!” I struggle against them.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” one of the guys says harshly in my ear as they start to pull me away.
“Not until I hear her say it!” I shout, my muscles burning and head pounding, but my resolve is stronger than ever. We’re causing such a scene that staff are starting to come out of other rooms, and a nurse at the station picks up the phone to dial for more security, but I just can’t let this go. “Not until she tells me herself!” I shout, hoping she’ll hear me and call out to me.
“Fine!” John says, which makes the men cease their forceful advance, but their grip on me remains firm. He walks over to me with a fuck-you smile on his lips and fists a hand in my shirt. I try to jerk back from his grip, but the men have too strong a hold on my arms. “You want to hear it yourself? Go right ahead before you’re escorted from the hospital for good.” I match him glare for glare. “Hey, Beaux, do you want to see your lover?” he says toward her open door. All I can see from my position is her feet beneath the sheet, but his mocking tone and his knowing chuckle hit me like a knife in the back.
“No. I don’t care if I ever see him again.”
If John’s words were a knife in my back, Beaux’s soft but steady voice is equivalent to her twisting the knife over and over in the open wound. And that sliver of hope I was hanging on to – that when she woke up, she’d want me, choose me, and not John – dies a quick and horrid death.
I’m escorted from the hospital grounds by the base police after the military clearance I need to do my job effectively is threatened if I don’t go peacefully. I follow their orders without resisting, my head and heart trying to wrap themselves around the fact that the worst part about Beaux’s lying to me isn’t the lies themselves.
No, it’s the fact that after everything the two of us shared, she didn’t think I was worthy enough to warrant her telling the truth.
Chapter 24
“Rafe.” It’s the only greeting I have for him because frankly I don’t want to speak to anybody right now.
“It’s a miracle. You actually called me back.”
“There’s been shit reception since I got back.” I grunt the lie as I look around the chaos in the hotel room.
“Convenient, don’t you think?” I greet his sarcasm with silence. “So you got my messages, I take it?”
“No.” I sigh as I run a hand through my hair, not wanting to get into it with him about how many times he’s called. And luckily he’s filled my voice mail with unlistened-to messages, so at least I know there will be no more.
“No? What’s going on with you, Tanner? Pauly says —”
“We’ve got a problem here.” I cut him off as I look around the destruction of Beaux’s room. Dresser drawers tossed through, cords left plugged into outlets but unattached to the cameras and laptops they were charging, her things upended all over the place in the careless robbery.
“You’re right, we have a lot of problems… especially if you don’t get back in the saddle.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Rafe.” I wave a hand at the chaos in the empty room around me; tears of frustration that I don’t even understand are forming, burning the back of my eyes. “Someone broke into her room.”
“What in the hell are you talking about? Beaux’s room?”
“Yeah, Beaux’s room,” I answer, irritated that he has to even ask. “Who else did you think I was talking about?”
“Wait…” He exhales slowly in obvious frustration. “Why are you in her room?”
“Because —”
“No. Don’t answer that!” he says, cutting me off. “For someone who told me that nothing was going on between the two of you, you can’t seem to let anything about her go.”
“Someone broke into her room and stole all of her shit,” I say, completely ignoring his comment, not having the wherewithal to go there right now. It’s been almost seven days since I left her in the hospital in Germany. Seven days where I sat in my damn hotel room in an attempt to avoid every memory of her and move the fuck on because I’m a guy and that’s what guys do. That’s what I do.
But I can’t.
Shit, when I returned after Stella, sure there were ghosts I had to face, but this time was different. This time when I walked through the lobby and up the stairwell, I wasn’t only assaulted with the recent memories of my time here with Beaux, but I was also overwhelmed with questioning whether every memory was in fact real or fueled by deception.
Her panties that were tucked between the sheets and the bedspread, the game of Scrabble sitting half-completed on my table waiting for her to finish it with me, the bottle of her shampoo in my shower. It was like she was everywhere, and that simple notion made it so much worse.
So I threw every reminder of her out. All of them went into the trash can with an amazing flare of melodramatics that did absolutely nothing to make me feel better. My initial theory was that I needed to wipe her away, act like she’d never existed.
But memories are a bitch sometimes. They haunt you in the middle of the night when nightmares jar you awake with her name on your lips because you didn’t get there fast enough. They sit in a trash can you refuse to empty because if you do, that means she wasn’t real and therefore your feelings weren’t either.
And just when I thought I was getting a handle on it all, on the deception and the heartache because yes, call me a sap, but there’s no other word for that burning pain in my chest that feels like it’s eating me apart, I got the call from the hotel staff about her room. The one place that I refused to venture because if I did go in there and snoop around, I just might find something that would mess me up further: a love note to her husband or a journal entry about how much she loves me.
Not worth the goddamn risk when I’m trying to get her the fuck out of my head. And of course the minute I walked into her room, where her perfume was still haunting the stale air and her bed was unmade from when I’d propped the pillows under her hips as we’d had sex, was like a cruel assault on my senses from every possible angle.
The funny thing was, I thought I didn’t want confirmation that she was madly in love with her husband, but now seeing all of her equipment gone – laptops, cameras, lenses – it’s almost as if I need to know. To the hotel staffer who supposedly stole the items, the equipment had a monetary value, something they could sell. To me it was the intangibility of her absence, when something – possible e-mails or photos from back home – could exist, something that could answer my questions.
“Tanner? Tanner?” Rafe’s words break through the disbelief that’s deafening me and draw me back to the present.
“Yeah?”
“We’ll deal with the stuff in her room in a minute, okay? For right now, though, I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen. Capisce?”
And here comes the lecture. Probably similar to the one Pauly gave me last night. I lie back on the bed and the damn mattress springs squeak in a bittersweet sound that makes me want to jump off the bed and at the same time shift my body so that I can hear it again. One more thing to solidify in my mind that what we had was real.
And since we didn’t tell anyone, it’s not like I can admit to Rafe his assumption is true. Everyone here thinks I’m moping around because I’m upset that I couldn’t protect her from the IED and that the déjà vu of not being able to get to Stella in time has fucked with my head even more than they thought.
Too bad my head is fine. It’s my heart that hurts like a son of a bitch.
“I can’t wait to hear your words of infinite wisdom,” I say, not really caring that I’m pushing the boundaries with my boss. “Lay it on me, Rafe.”
“We’re on a strict don’t ask, don’t tell policy right now. I’m not going to ask and you’re not going to confirm what I’m asking without asking because it’s none of my business and one hundred percent my business all at the same time. You guys built a bond as partners, she got hurt, so now the bond is stronger. So strong in fact that you caused a serious scene at Landstuhl, risking your security clearance. There’s only one reason in my mind why you’d react so strongly, call me up and ask me questions about Beaux’s marital status, and then get pissed when I don’t give you answers… but that’s all supposition from the outside looking in. That and the fact that I’ve never seen you act like this before, even after…” His words trail off, the implication of after Stella died left hanging on the line like a goddamn white elephant, and I bite back every smart-assed comment on my tongue because it’s just not worth it.
The only response I give him is a low “Mmm-hmm.”
“So you hoof it back to your assignment, and have been there for what, a week? And you’re still desk jockeying the shit out of recycled material instead of following up on the story. Can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture?”
The buzz is gone, I almost say but catch myself. I got back here and I had no desire to get back in the game. Zilch. Zero. I had no desire to contact Omid or to get on an embed mission with Sarge despite his calling me about exactly that to assuage his own unfounded guilt over the blast. Nothing. That live by the sword, die by the sword buzz I’ve used for over ten years to propel me to become the top foreign war correspondent is nowhere in sight.
“There’s most definitely not a picture, Rafe. None whatsoever, considering I don’t have a photographer to take one until she comes back,” I state evenly to try to hide from the fact that he’s absolutely fucking right.
“Is that what this is? Are you waiting for her to come back, Tanner?” He sounds so much like my father giving my teenage self a lecture that it’s comical. “Screw her stuff that was stolen. It’s insured, and I’ll have the hotel staff pack up what’s left. She isn’t coming back.”
The breath I didn’t even realize I was holding whooshes out in a deceptively even draw as the wind is knocked out of me. There goes that stupid little thread of hope that I had held on to for some reason that she’d come back, see me, and we’d be good again. It shatters me.
“She’s not?” I ask, making sure my voice is calm although my insides are screaming.
“No. Her condition is improving. She just needs some more monitoring and to take it easy, so she was moved stateside.”
Silence fills the line as a part of me breathes a sigh of relief. “When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Where?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t give you that information.”
“What do you mean, you can’t give me that information?” My voice escalates on the question.
“Not your business.”
“What the fuck, Rafe? What’s your problem? I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
“She’s okay. Hear me tell you that. And now hear this: You’re too close right now, so what’s going to happen next is you’re going to pack your shit up and come home. I have —”
“No.” I spit out the refusal, but there’s not a single ounce of conviction behind it. First Stella, now Beaux… I couldn’t save either of them, and the one that’s still here doesn’t want me. How’s that for a blow to the male ego? Even scarier, though, is the will to fight for her was left behind at the hospital. It’s no use fighting for someone who doesn’t need your fight.
“I have transport coming to get you in one hour,” he says evenly, ignoring my outburst. “You’re either on that flight home, Tanner, or you can look for another job.”
“This is bullshit!” For the first time I feel fire blazing within me, and maybe it’s because I don’t want to leave the only thing that’s connecting me to her now.
“No. We can talk about bullshit all day, Tanner, but it’d start with you. I’m worried about you. You took a big knock, physically, emotionally, and I know you hate me right now, but I’m just looking out for your own good. You’ll see that someday.”
I blow out a breath and start to pace the room. My foot hits something under the unmade bed we abandoned when Pauly interrupted us. The sight of the empty bottle of bubbles that bounces against the dresser when I kick it is like a knife wound to an already ailing heart, reinforcing the truth I just can’t face right now: This was all a lie. One more final fuck you from Beaux.
The bubble has burst.
“I’ll be on the flight.”
There’s nothing more I can say.
Chapter 25
Rafe’s words still ring in my ears as I sit at home in the dark. Even though my name’s on the title, the place feels so much more foreign than a hotel. The shades are drawn, I’ve got a beer in my hand, and my thoughts are still back on a woman I should let go but just can’t.
I’ve made a career living on gut instinct, and my instinct is telling me that something is off here. But isn’t that the same feeling I’ve had since day one when it comes to Beaux?
I ignore the knock on the front door. The only people who know I’ve touched down on U.S. soil besides those at work are Rylee and my parents. And I bit the bullet and saw my parents yesterday, faked my way through why I came home, blamed it on needing some recovery time – because let’s face it, you don’t really tell your parents who have been together since they were in their early teens that you fell in love with a married woman. It’s not exactly a crowning moment of their parenthood regardless of whether I knew she was married or not.
So the persistent knock on the door has to be Rylee. And of course if it is her, she will have driven the two hours south from Los Angeles to San Diego, so that means she won’t go away easily.
Besides, she has a key.
I sink back farther into the couch and close my eyes only to immediately open them because damn it to hell, Beaux’s there too. She’s fucking everywhere. And nowhere.
The rattle of a key in the lock tells me I was correct in my assumption about the visitor’s identity. “Tan?”
“In here,” I say, not eager for company.
“You becoming a vampire or something?” she asks at the same time as blinds start opening in my kitchen and the telltale sounds of the ocean crashing on the cliffs below filter in once she’s opened the windows.
“I hear it’s all the rage these days,” I snort as she snaps open the blinds in the family room where I sit, causing me to wince at the brightness even through my closed eyelids. I track her movements through sound, know she plops on the love seat catty-corner to me by the squeak of the leather, and then feel the weight of her stare as she waits me out. I don’t budge.
“You look like shit.”
“Thank you,” I say with a nod, finally opening my eyes and meeting hers, which are identical to mine in their amethyst color. And shit, she’s my sister and I’m in a crappy mood, but it doesn’t stop me from shaking my head at how beautiful she is. She always has been, but since she married Colton, she has this newfound confidence that makes her radiate. It’s cool to see on her and frustrating as fuck to me all at once, because it makes me remember what I’ve recently lost.
“Well that’s sugarcoating it, but I thought I wouldn’t kick you while you were down.” There’s humor in her voice as she rises from her seat and sits down next to me and cuddles into my side so that she can rest her head on my arm. It’s a simple gesture, but just feeling her here next to me makes the emotions well up in my throat. She reaches out and pats the top of my thigh. “So how are you doing? I mean you at least have pants on… That’s a good sign. Colton told me that if you were sulking in your underwear, I should just back out quietly and let you be.”
“He’s got that about right. Good thing I got up a few hours ago and pulled some jeans on.” She laughs low and rich, a sound from my childhood that brings back so many memories of backyard forts and riding bikes until the streetlights came on.
“So talk to me. Tell me where your head’s at, what’s going on… I’m here to listen and shut my mouth.”
I snort. “That’s pretty comical. You? Quiet?”
“Shh, I can listen with the best of them – just don’t spill that secret to Colton. So, anything new?”
I shove up off the couch, toss my beer bottle in the trash, and get an unsatisfactory clink as it hits the others inside before I look out the kitchen window to the neighborhood beyond. “Anything new? Well, Wendy had her baby while I was gone, cute little boy named Timothy,” I say, referring to my next-door neighbor. “And what else? It seems that William down the street bought some black eyesore of an SUV that he won’t park in his damn driveway, so it sits on the curb over there blocking the view some. And then there’s Mike on the other side who —”
“Tanner,” she says in warning to let me know that she’s not amused by my sarcasm whatsoever.
“I don’t want to talk about Beaux,” I say with a firm look even though she’s all I want to talk about because I can’t get her out of my fucking head despite having been back home for almost two weeks.
“Your place looks nice. You look good.”
I grunt in response because I know she’s lying since I look like shit and she’s already said as much. “Not much else to do besides clean a place no one lives in and take long runs on the beach to fill time because… well because I can, seeing that I’m not in a war zone with land mines and such.” There’s a bite to my words that I didn’t intend but don’t apologize for. She gets it, I know she does, but that doesn’t mean that she deserves this treatment or that I even deserve the effort she’s putting forward to try to connect with me.
I walk toward the patio door to the backyard that Rylee opened, see the ocean, feel the sun in the sky, but I’m completely indifferent to it. My phone alerts a text from where it’s pressed into the cracks in the sofa cushions, and I choose to ignore it, knowing it’s yet another from Rafe or my parents. I don’t want to speak with anyone right now since my hand’s being forced as it is with Ry here.
“All I’ve done is think about her, about us. Run back through our conversations and the time we spent together over and over in my head to try to search for the clues I missed… but there’s nothing concrete I can pinpoint. I mean sure there’re things she kept private, certain things she didn’t address, but isn’t that how all relationships go?” With her behind me, it’s easier to talk for some reason.
“Yeah. It takes time to open the closet of skeletons… but married, Tanner? Tanner, that’s not a skeleton in a closet. That’s a ring on your finger. That’s the person you look forward to seeing every morning even when they annoy you or you’re fighting. It’s your other half. Marriage is made —”
“Marriage is made in Heaven,” I say, giving her one of my favorite Clint Eastwood quotes, “but so are thunder and lightning.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, and I can hear the annoyance in her newlywed voice.
I walk outside and take a seat in a lounge chair where I know she’ll follow me. “It means that we grew up with Mom and Dad’s marriage as an example. You have Colton. Not all marriages are like yours. What if there’s something wrong in hers? What if she’s trapped and can’t get out of it? What if he’s abusive and —”
“That’s a long stretch, Tanner. It sounds like you’re just trying to justify her actions.” She takes the chair across from me, her face toward the ocean, but her words are sharp. “Love makes you more of who you are, not less… and right now, her lies? Are definitely not making you more.”
I let her words sink in, tell myself I’m reaching for something to hold on to when I just need to let go and free-fall into the pain. Take the rough landing and broken heart in one fell swoop so that I can heal all at once instead of piece by piece where hope ties each one together with the thinnest of strings.
“You know, Ry,” I finally say, “I can handle being dumped for someone else. I’m a big boy who can handle rejection just fine… It’s this schizophrenic feeling that’s driving me crazy.” I run a hand through my hair and sigh. “How come I am so fucked up over this? How can I feel so strongly for someone after just a few months together? I mean one minute I miss her like crazy and feel like such a loser because I can’t let this go… and then the next minute I hate her guts and never want to see her again even if I had the chance to.”
She leans her head back against the chair and laughs before turning to meet my eyes, a knowing smile on her lips. “Because it’s love.”
“Do you care to elaborate since you think this is so funny?” I snip, not amused at all.
“It’s real love,” she says with a shrug that makes me uncomfortable instantly even though I could have assumed she’d say as much. But saying it aloud and feeling it in my own miserable silence are two different things. Once it’s out in the universe, you can’t take that shit back. “Real love messes you up no matter how long you’ve been with someone. Believe me. I’ve been there with Colton. We butted heads from day one, but there was something there I couldn’t deny no matter how hard I tried. Sometimes no matter how hard you fight it, it’s just there.” And of course my back immediately goes up that my brother-in-law made my little sister feel this way at some point. But at least I have comfort in knowing they obviously worked things out. “I can see you longing to work the Prince Charming angle, Tanner, but you can’t. Bad marriage or not, it’s her situation to deal with. You can’t go charging in on a white horse to save the day.”
“Why not?” I ask with more conviction than anything else I’ve said today.
“Do you love her?” I look at her like she’s crazy, because I definitely wouldn’t be this fucked up over a woman I didn’t love. “How do you know you love her, though?”
“Really, Ry? Are you going to treat me like an idiot now?” I’m getting more irritated by the minute.
“No,” she says, backpedaling. “You’ve loved lots of girlfriends, so why is she the one that you’re in love with? How do you know it’s real?”
“She knocked me on my ass, Ry.” The comment comes out before I can stop it, and I know I sound pathetic but don’t care because if I can be dead honest with anyone, it’s with my sister. “Because my heart races out of control at just the thought of getting to see her again. Because she’s all I – never mind.” I stop, knowing how ridiculous I sound.
“I get it. Believe me, I get it. You may love her, but unless she gives you something to go off now, unless she contacts you, then you have no right to be in her business. It sucks and it’s brutal and I know that feeling when your chest aches so damn bad you can’t breathe… but that’s love. It makes you crazy insane and doesn’t always work out.”
The flip side of being so comfortable talking to my sister is that she’s just as honest with feedback even when I don’t want to hear it. Like right now.
“You’re making no sense,” I mutter, not having expected her to solve my problems but at least wanting something a little more clear to go on.
“How so?”
“Well in one breath you say that it’s real love and imply how rare it is, which makes me think it’s worth fighting for, and in the next you tell me I can’t fight for it unless she gives me a reason to. Talk about fucking confusing.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s all you’re going to give me?” I groan through the smile that graces my lips for the first time in what feels like forever. “You suck at this because you’re deliriously happy.”
“Yep on all accounts,” she says as she scoots to the edge of her chair. “This is so hard for me because I’m trying to be objective, to tell you that if you really feel how you feel and if she gives you a single opening, you need to fight like hell for her, and at the same time I hate her because she did this to you. She doesn’t deserve you, Tanner. You know what Mom says, ‘Cheating on a good person is like throwing away a diamond and picking up a rock.’”
“The question is, am I the diamond or am I the rock?” I murmur as she steps forward and presses a kiss to the top of my head.
I watch the ocean for a long time after she leaves, lost in my thoughts and not sure if I want to hold on or to purge the memories that are still so vivid I can taste them. I wander into the house, grab a beer, and settle down on the couch, Rylee’s comment about me not being Prince Charming on constant repeat for some reason.
Maybe it’s by the third beer in that I realize she’s right. Completely right. I’m the farthest thing from Prince Charming. I’m a reporter who rides an adrenaline rush instead of a horse. I have nothing to offer someone long term except for constant worry for my safety, missed birthdays, lonely anniversaries, and middle-of-the-night phone calls due to time zone differences. Dating casually is one thing, but there is no room for happily-ever-afters in my world. Look at Pauly and the number of wives he’s lost count of because they couldn’t handle the loneliness.
And even if I did rush in to try and save the day, who exactly am I saving her from? A husband who flew thousands of miles in a heartbeat because his wife was injured? Yeah, because that screams, “I’m a husband who doesn’t care.” Not.
Suck it up, Thomas. You were played. Now man up and get over it.
“Fuck,” I sigh out into the empty room, feeling so out of place in my own home. Setting my empty beer bottle down, I shift on the couch so that my head is on one armrest and my feet are on the other. The problem is when I look up toward my ceiling, the cracks I’m so used to tracing as I work through my thoughts aren’t there. Restless, I move onto my side so that I can look elsewhere, when something jabs my rib cage. Shifting again, I reach down to find my cell phone there, but when I pick it up to toss it on the table and glance at the screen, my heart stops for a beat.
