Bend Page 9

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she says then, her voice carrying more of an edge. “Is this just a one-time thing or what?”

  Heaving a sigh, it takes me a second to assemble my scrambled thoughts on the topic. “Is there any way it can be a one-time thing and we’ll be okay?”

  When she falls silent, I drag my eyes reluctantly back to her face, which looks solemn.

  “I wouldn’t be okay with it,” she says quietly. “That was fucking amazing, Jay. I’ll never forget about it, and I can’t pretend it never happened.”

  It was amazing. My pulse kicks into a gallop, and another surge of arousal shoots straight to my groin. Amazing. Yeah, that about sums up what it was like to fuck Mia. To kiss her. To run my hands all over her smooth, soft skin. To taste her pussy. To be inside her.

  I swallow the sudden excess of saliva in my mouth and say, “Then I guess you just answered your own question.”

  “No, that’s how I feel about it.” Her gaze is direct, questioning.

  I look away. The urge to tell her exactly how much I want her again builds in my gut and swells up into my throat, threatening to burst out of me.

  Drawing in a calming breath, I answer, “I still think it’s a bad idea.”

  After a moment’s silence, her voice sounds flat as she states, “So…it’s not going to happen again then.”

  “I didn’t say that.” I give her a glance, gesturing into the air. “You know how in courtroom dramas on TV, a lawyer will jump up and yell, ‘Objection, Your Honor!’ and the judge says, ‘Noted’? It’s like that. I’m letting you know my opinion. For the record.”

  She lets out a half-amused snort. “Okay, then. Noted.”

  We fall silent again and stay that way for a long time. My mind jumps from one unrelated topic to another: going down on Mia, work, fucking Mia, hitting the gym later, the sounds Mia makes when she comes, and do I need to go grocery shopping today?

  Her yawn disrupts my thoughts, and I look back at her just as she lays herself and her pillow back down on the bed.

  “Hand hurting less yet?” I ask.

  “Not really,” she replies, her eyes dropping. “Still waiting for the drugs to kick in.”

  “You won’t know until you’re ready to start using it again if there’s any nerve or muscle damage. I think you’ll be fine, though.”

  “That’s good,” she mumbles sleepily, eyes drifting shut.

  “Do you need me to do anything before I leave?” It’s kind of a roundabout way of telling her I’m taking off, but it’s not like she’s paying attention anyway.

  “Nuh,” is her garbled response. “I think I’ll take a nap.”

  No shit. I almost smile. Instead I realize I should point out one more thing. “I’m on night shift starting tonight, for the next two weeks.”

  “’Kay.” She turns over on her side, flinging her arm up to curl above her head. “See you later.”

  I could stay. Slide back into bed next to her, wrap my arms around her, and hold her while she sleeps. I could do that.

  Do fuck buddies snuggle?

  Twisting my lips in disgust, I jump up off the bed and go to the bathroom to grab the rest of my clothes. One steamy flashback after another hits me while I’m in there, and I get dressed in a big damn hurry. My scrub top is still on the chair in her bedroom, and I head back in there to fetch it.

  As I turn the doorknob to leave, I hear her stirring in bed. Glancing back, I see her with her head lifted off the pillow, but I can’t tell if her eyes are actually open.

  “Thank you, Jay,” comes her slurred voice. “You’re the best.”

  Her head falls back on the pillow, and I’m standing there in the doorway watching her and thinking that this, this is not the way you’re supposed to say good-bye to your best friend. Who you just had sex with. Who says the most devastating things, in the simplest ways possible.

  You’re the best.

  I try to be. She has no idea how hard I try.

  Even with stopping at my post-office box to get my mail, it only takes fifteen minutes to drive from Mia’s place to mine, a small studio apartment that occupies the rear corner of a one-story house in a quiet residential neighborhood. I park my truck by the curb, get out, and walk up the grass-and-rosebush-lined driveway to the wooden gate that leads me down the side of the house to my door.

  When I found out I’d landed the residency spot, I started looking for somewhere to live close to the hospital, not wanting to waste my precious spare time on a commute. This place was perfect—affordable despite the fact that it was already furnished, which was a huge plus for me since I had no interest in investing in furniture only to have to put it in storage when I leave the country in just a few years.

  The owners, Ron and Grace, are an elderly couple who decided to convert that part of their home because it was the only way they could afford their rising property tax. They seemed hesitant to rent out to a young single guy—probably fearing wild parties and other shenanigans—but when I told them I was about to graduate from med school and what my work schedule would look like as a resident and how I mostly just needed a place to sleep, they warmed up to me pretty quickly.

  And it’s turned out well. My landlords are not of a social bent, so I rarely see them, and they make very little noise, which is great for when I have to sleep during the day.

  I suppose I could be living somewhere nicer if I were willing to have a roommate. Which I’m not. My last experience with that kind burned me on the whole idea of sharing living quarters again. No, Fuckface didn’t do anything to me personally, but the fact that I was his roommate and friend for three years before I found out what a dipshit he was made one thing obvious: sooner or later, all the people in your life end up disappointing and disgusting you.

  First thing I do after unlocking the door and entering my apartment is open the blinds and let the sunlight spill in, illuminating the small and narrow but airy space with its no-fuss furnishings.

  Then I consider getting in the shower, because those minutes I spent in Mia’s tub this morning definitely didn’t count as cleaning up. A spark of lust ignites at the memory, and I realize I can still smell her—on my face and on my skin—and I don’t want to wash off her scent. Not yet.

  After wrenching off my scrub top, I toss it down on the queen-size bed, which sits on a raised part of the dark tile floor, and then I fetch a bottle of water out of the fridge in the small kitchen nook before settling down on the couch to look at my mail. Absently, I riffle through it, making a trash pile for the flyers and other advertisements, setting aside a bill to pay later.

  Then I get to the last envelope. Which has my name and address in a familiar, sharp-angled scrawl with a Texas return address and a stamp that says, “Mailed from a state correctional institution.”

  I sit there for a while, the envelope quivering in my unsteady hand. These letters arrive once a week, and I usually throw them away without a second thought. Lately it’s become more difficult to do that, though.

  I haven’t actually opened one of them in twelve years. Twelve times fifty-two is a lot of letters tossed straight into the garbage. They used to be the highlight of my week. From the age of thirteen, when my dad first went to prison, until that day two weeks after my fifteenth birthday when I sat down on a library computer—which is where I had to do my homework that required a computer, since my mom didn’t own one—and did a web search for my dad.

  And discovered the truth.

  Until that day, he was my hero, and I loved him fiercely and unconditionally. Didn’t matter that he was hardly ever around. Those rare occasions when he did come home for a visit were my happiest memories. He’d take me to the beach and teach me how to bodysurf. We’d go to the movies, where he always got me the biggest popcorn bucket and the biggest drink, and when I had too much of that drink and he had to take me to the restroom in the middle of the movie, he didn’t get mad like my mom did.

  More than once, he let me skip school so
he could take me to Disneyland for the day. And whenever he was in town during baseball season, we’d go see the Angels play. One time he bought us tickets for field-level seats, and he ended up catching a foul ball. I remember getting so excited I almost wet myself. He gave me the ball, and I treasured that baseball more than anything else I owned—more than the Nintendo 64 he sent me for my birthday and more than the Adidas Superstars he’d bought me just because.

  Only as an adult did I realize he probably paid for most of that stuff with drug money, since he often augmented his income by selling instead of just using. And only as an adult did it occur to me that it was probably easier for him to be the the fun parent, the favorite parent, when he only had to be a father two to three weeks a year.

  Not that I’m trying to justify my mom’s behavior. Sure, with not even a high school diploma to her name, an absentee and drug-addicted husband, and a kid to take care of all by herself, she definitely had the cards stacked against her. But that doesn’t excuse the partying, the leaving me to fend for myself for as far back as my memory stretches, and the never saying a single word to me except to tell me what a worthless piece of crap I was and how I’d ruined her life.

  Never, not even once, did I hear her say anything negative about her husband. He went where there were construction jobs, she’d tell me, and he was working hard to support his family. Never mind that she probably didn’t see much of that money, because she was always broke, and she must have known that most of what my dad made was snorted, smoked, or shot up his arm.

  Putting my legs up on the coffee table and crossing them at the ankles, I stare at the envelope until the writing blurs. A bone-deep exhaustion drapes itself over my shoulders and sinks like it’s weighed down by rocks, down into my gut and lower, all the way down to my toes.

  She still says he’s innocent. To this day, she won’t admit that the crime she told me he’d been accused of wasn’t the whole story. They’d broken into that family’s house when no one was home, she said to me. No one got hurt. The story changed a lot. Sometimes my dad was set up or tricked by his meth-head buddy. Other times she’d claim he wasn’t even there, that he was identified by mistake.

  I’m still not sure if she’s a delusional lunatic or just a lying fucking cunt.

  The only reason my dad has my address is because she gave it to him, and that’s why I have a PO box, because I don’t want either of them to know where I live. Maybe someday I’ll find the motivation to change my phone number, too, cutting the cord once and for all. She only calls a couple of times a year—usually because she wants to “borrow” money—but why do I allow her to have any part of my life, no matter how small? I don’t owe her shit.

  And finally opening one of his letters, after all this time. Why am I even considering it? Like my life isn’t complicated enough already?

  Maybe it’s just morbid fascination. I’m curious where his mind’s at right now. It’s like emotional rubbernecking.

  It’s definitely not worth it, though. Jumping to my feet, I pick up the trash pile and return to the kitchen to throw it all away, my dad’s unopened letter along with it. And that’s exactly what I did to that foul ball, too, that day I learned the truth. I tossed it in the garbage—and never spent a single moment regretting it.

  Mia doesn’t know about any of this. Not about my parents or how finding out what my dad did messed with my head and had me making some seriously bad decisions…which had equally bad consequences.

  And yeah, now that I’ve had sex with her? I’m feeling more than ever that my lie of omission about this is wrong. But telling her about this shit now, after all these years? I can’t do it. Just the thought of it makes me want to vomit.

  I go to the closet next to my bed to find some workout clothes. If I don’t get to the gym today, this tension will get the better of me. And the next two weeks of night shifts will beat my ass down.

  Getting laid will help, too. When will I see Mia again? I want to text her and ask if I can come over tonight before work, and that’s not good. That’s not good at all.

  Picking up my phone anyway, I see that I have a message from Josh, a friend from med school. Want to shoot some hoops tonight? 6 o’clock at OC Fitness, his text says.

  I immediately reply with an affirmative.

  Basketball with the guys seems like a smarter choice than running back to see Mia like some horny and lovesick fucking puppy.

  “Wanna go to lunch?” comes Angela’s chirpy voice from beside me, and with a start I look up and find her leaning against my desk, hands shoved into the front pockets of her baby-pink scrub top. She arches her impeccably shaped eyebrows at me, jaws and glossy lips working as she chews her gum.

  “Sure. Give me a minute,” I tell her, and after she gives me a thumbs-up and walks away, I finish typing up the notes for my last patient on my laptop. Angela and I usually go out to lunch a couple of times a week—and always on Wednesdays, in observance of hump day.

  I haven’t seen or heard from Jay since Friday. That’s four days with no word, and I have no idea how much longer it’ll be before he gets in touch. Because I decided I need to wait for him to make the next move. Somehow it seemed the best way to go. Like it’s going to tell me something about how he really feels about what happened between us.

  So far the efficacy of this plan has been inconclusive.

  It’s been really hard, resisting the temptation to text or call him. I catch myself several times a day reaching for my phone to message him whenever I have a WTS to share or something funny or frustrating or bizarre happens, and then I stop and remember I’m not sure where we stand now. Sending him chatty text messages feels awkward. There’s this gap of uncertainty where there used to be our easy, comfortable friendship.

  What if I never hear from him again? Logically, I know that’s unlikely and kind of melodramatic, but the fear is there nevertheless, needling and nagging at the back of my mind.

  When I’m ready, I grab my light, royal-blue cardigan off the back of my office chair and tug it on, then go to find Angela. She’s by the front desk, chatting with Diane. The waiting room beyond the desk is empty; the whole office closes between noon and one for lunch.

  We go through the corridors with their moss-green walls and baby-and-pregnancy themed decor, past exam rooms and physician’s offices and the break room to the staff entrance. In the parking lot, Angela heads straight for her white Honda CR-V, so I follow her. We take turns driving when we go out to lunch, and I can’t remember who drove last time, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.

  “Okay, where to?” she says once we’re in her car, strapped into our seat belts.

  “Blanca’s?” I suggest. It’s been a while since I’ve had Mexican food.

  “Ooh, yeah,” Angela croons while turning the ignition. “A burrito sounds really good right now.”

  She swivels the steering wheel with her manicured hands as she backs out of her parking spot, her beautiful features fixed in concentration. Just like she does every day, Angela looks like she belongs on a magazine cover. Even her hair—which she dyes a deep, vibrant auburn—is perfect, twisted and held up with a jaw clip.

  I’ve always kind of envied women like her, women who wear a lot of makeup but somehow make it look natural. Whenever I go full makeup like that, I end up looking like a cheap Barbie doll knock-off. So I usually just slap on some mascara in the morning and go on my merry way. The advantage is that during the time I’d be in front of a mirror, I get to spend sleeping instead.

  It takes a couple of minutes to drive to the restaurant, and we chat about work on the way there. Specifically about Dr. Crane, who is at a conference in Chicago, something she didn’t mention until last week, leaving the rest of us scrambling to figure out what to do with her patients.

  “I’m just saying,” Angela grumbles while making a left turn, her signal tick-tick-ticking rapidly. “She could’ve given more of a warning. You sign up for those things months ahead of time. She must think you s
it around with your thumb up your ass all day and have plenty of time to cover her patients for her.”

  It’s true. I work in a large and busy ob-gyn office. There are five physicians and three nurse practitioners, and, despite that, there’s surprisingly little tension. Dr. Crane is the only one who consistently aggravates everyone else with her overinflated ego and sense of entitlement.

  “I’m okay,” I say with a shrug. “At least my hand is almost fully functional again.” Working with my injury has been a challenge this past week, and I’m lucky to have colleagues who only offered sympathy and helped me without complaint.

  Angela pulls into the strip mall where Blanca’s is located, and she has to circle around a couple of times to find a spot. We get out and hurry across the parking lot toward the small restaurant with its plain white-with-black-text sign above the door.

  The smells invade and overwhelm my senses the second we step inside, a mouthwatering mixture of seasoned meats, tortillas, and spices—garlic, cumin, cilantro. My stomach growls, and my mouth waters. I could never live any place where they don’t have good Mexican food.

  The line to order is five people deep, and we take our place at the end. Thankfully it moves quickly. After ordering, we fill our fountain cups with ice and water from the drink machine, then look around for a place to sit. And find that every single table inside is occupied. There are still some empty ones out front, though.

  “Gimme your receipt,” Angela says, handing me her cup. “You go out and grab a table. I’ll wait for the food.”

  I make my way outside and sit down at one of the aluminum chairs, placing the cups and napkins on the table. It’s a nice temperature for April, but without my cardigan, it’d definitely be too chilly out here. Cars keep driving by, slowing down for the speed bump in front of the dry cleaner’s next door, and then gunning it and taking off down the road like it’s a race or something.