I smiled.
Luke had gotten me earplugs. Or rather, he had asked Rita to get earplugs for me, so I could sleep through the night without waking up to his muttering through the thin walls.
The hardness I’d felt toward him dissipated. The pain was not his fault.
On my way out, I noticed his head had collapsed. He must have fallen asleep.
“Luke?” I said.
No answer.
I approached him, reaching for his shoulder. The muscles near his neck were still hard, knotted now from controlling the wheels. I noticed his buzz cut was growing out into a dark amber color.
He should get a haircut. And maybe I could help him do some leg bends for a few minutes.
“Luke,” I whispered, nudging him. He didn’t move.
Fear cascaded suddenly, fragmented what-ifs jumping to the front of my brain. What if he took too much pain medication by accident? And what followed almost brought tears to my eyes: What if he did it on purpose?
“Luke,” I said louder, shaking his shoulder harder.
He snapped awake, craning to look at me. “What?” he said, his eyes hard.
“Oh, um.” I took a step back, relief flooding. I was worried about you, I wanted to say. “I just wanted to thank you for the earplugs.”
“Yeah,” he said, resting his forehead on his hand.
“Sorry I haven’t really been around.”
He turned his sleepy eyes on me. “You don’t have to say sorry.”
“I know, but.” I wanted him to know that I could tell that something was wrong. Maybe he needed to talk. Rita wasn’t exactly an ideal conversationalist. “So, um, how’s the physical therapy going?”
“Very good, Cassie, thank you,” he said.
What was with this weird, polite tone? I almost preferred him sullen. At least that was closer to his real self.
I resisted the urge to bend over and pull his chair so that he was facing me. “Has Rita been okay at helping you up, or would both of us be better?”
He bounced his tennis ball. “It’s fine.”
“So you did your therapy this morning?”
He was quiet. “Yeah.”
“Have you gotten hold of your brother?”
“A couple of times. But I didn’t want to invite him over to your house.”
“You can if you want to.”
Luke sighed, as if he were tired of talking. “Sure, thank you for offering.”
My sympathy was running out again. I was trying, I was giving him a lot to work with, I was making it easy, and he was pushing me away. “Is there something wrong?” I offered.
“Nothing’s wrong. Thank you.”
That politeness again. It was like a screen. I tried again. “Is it money?”
“Nope,” he said, almost too quickly.
It wasn’t like we were best friends or anything, but he was so different from the Luke whom I had Skyped with, who had stories to tell, or even the Luke who’d sat next to me at the hospital cafeteria, the eager listener, or the person who made me feel like my ideas were magic. “All right, so, then, what’s going on?” When he didn’t answer, I raised my voice. “What do you need?”
He groaned, turning jerkily to face me. “I need to have never gotten myself into this situation in the first place. How’s that?”
“Well, I can’t help you with that one.” I grabbed my purse from the couch, heading toward the door. I needed out of this den of sadness, what used to be my haven. Where I was now apparently a situation.
“I didn’t mean you.”
“Right.” Before I slammed the door, it slipped out. “Enjoy wasting away.”
As I stomped down the stairs, I didn’t know if the guilt in my gut was stirring because it was a mean thing to say, meaner than his silence, or because I knew that no matter what I said, no matter whether he would respond in anger or just ignore me, I would always have the upper hand. I would always be the one to move on with my day, to try to forget and move forward, to slam the door and stomp down the stairs and get in my car and go. Because I could.
Luke
Cassie was practicing that song again. She kept getting caught up on one part, where the notes jumped from low to high. It made it hard to concentrate on what Yarvis was saying as he sat across from me on the couch, his feet in a spot where, not eight hours ago, I’d pissed myself.
“You catch any of the game?” Yarvis asked.
Bum bum bum be dun, ba ding. Ba DING. Ba ding ding DING.
“Damn it,” we could hear her say.
I didn’t know which game he was talking about. No TV here. And faulty Internet. And even if I could watch sports, it pissed me off to watch clips of people running and jumping like it was nothing. “Um, no.”