by Vi Keeland
The same word replayed in my head until I eventually fell asleep: stunning.
CHAPTER 11
I had received two more A’s on the subsequent exams in November and now held a B average in math overall. Jake was happy for me but somewhat bummed each time, because apparently he was really looking forward to his next planned fear-facing exercise that kept getting put off by my stellar grades. Who knew this would become a problem?
With each A, I baked Jake something special to thank him for helping me. He didn’t seem to enjoy the banana bread as much as the Bananas Foster but still ate the entire loaf in one sitting with his eyes closed. The second time, I made him a chocolate banana cream pie and his response to that was nothing short of orgasmic. Seriously, he was mumbling things I couldn’t even understand. It was truly entertaining to watch.
During Thanksgiving break, I had bragged to my parents about my nerdy roommate who was helping me get through math, and they said they couldn’t wait to meet him and thank him. I would deal with picking my mother’s jaw up off of the ground when the time came.
***
There was only one exam left before the end of the semester. A couple of weeks prior, Jake and I were busy studying in his room early one Thursday night, and as usual, he was keeping things strictly business.
But that was the night that everything changed between us.
At one point, in preparation for a math problem, he went into his drawer and grabbed something, throwing it front of me. It was a pair of dice.
He looked at me intently then pointed to them. “You’re going to tell me how many different outcomes are possible. Then we’re going to have you figure out how many ways you can get a sum of five.”
Looking down at the dice, something came over me as an old memory of playing Yahtzee with my brother Jimmy came to mind. The object of that game had been to score the most points by rolling five dice to make certain combinations. Even though it was based on pure luck, Jimmy would always beat me. I could hear my brother’s voice, clear as day, “Yahtzee!” And that’s what did it. Yahtzee. That was the word that made me burst into tears for literally the first time in years. Looking down at the dice, I cried while Jake watched, horrified.
“What…what the hell is going on, Nina?”
I covered my face to hide the tears that wouldn’t stop falling.
Jake had been at the desk but moved over to where I was sitting on the bed and turned to me. “Nina?”
I wiped my eyes and looked over at him. “It’s my brother. Those dice…for some reason, they triggered a memory for me. My brother and I used to play the game Yahtzee to pass the time, while he—”
“What?” He blinked in confusion.
“It was one of the few things we were able to do together…before he died.”
Jake looked at me silently, his eyes blinking rapidly in an attempt to absorb the bombshell I had just dropped.
“Nina…God…I am so sorry. This is the brother in that picture in Ryan’s room?”
I nodded and sniffled. “Yeah. Jimmy was my only brother, my only sibling.”
“What happened?”
“He had leukemia.”
He looked down at the floor and sighed. “I had no idea. You never said anything. I just assumed—”
“I know. Ryan and I don’t really talk about him anymore. It’s just too painful sometimes for both of us. It surprised me that Ryan even had that picture displayed, because I know he gets really broken up over it.”
He closed his eyes briefly looking off to side then back at me again. I had stopped crying but was still shaken by the memories of my brother’s last days. Those were images I tried hard to fight on a daily basis, and two little dice managed to completely unravel everything I worked so hard to bury.
Jake startled me when he put his hand on my knee. “Why don’t you want to think about him?”
It was hard to admit the true reason that it was so difficult to think about Jimmy, and I never talked about it. Never. But I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell Jake because I trusted him, and he had always made me feel like he wouldn’t judge me for my faults.
He kept his hand on my knee, and I used the dragon tattoo on his forearm as a focal point to gather my thoughts. “Toward the very end of my brother’s life, I couldn’t bear to watch him waste away. It was just too painful. He was only a year and a half older than me. We were so close. He was nineteen when he died. I was a senior in high school.”
When I started to tear up again, he squeezed my leg harder and said, “It’s okay. Take your time.”
I moved my gaze from the dragon back up to Jake’s eyes and could see my own reflection in them.
“We tried everything. They took my bone marrow because I was a match.”
Jake shut his eyes as if it pained him to hear me say that.
“He had a stem cell transplant, but it wasn’t successful. At first, we had so much hope. Then, it was destroyed and there was just nothing left. He was sick for about two full years before we lost him.”
Silently willing me to continue, he squeezed my knee again.
“When he was in the hospital, we would play that game, Yahtzee. That was during the period about six months before he died. The last month or so, he had gotten so sick, so emaciated; I couldn’t bear to watch it…couldn’t handle seeing him like that.” I paused to catch my breath. “I stopped seeing him, Jake. I just stopped visiting my brother. I wasn’t even there when he died.” The tears started to pour out again as I recalled the most painful time of my life, no longer able to speak coherently.
He wrapped his arm around me, pulling me into him. I closed my eyes and sunk my head into the heat of his chest as I cried.
He spoke softly into my ear. “He knows you loved him, Nina. You loved him so much that you couldn’t bear to see him in pain. He knows. If he didn’t know then, wherever he is—wherever it is that we go—he knows now.”
I looked up at him. “You believe that?”
“Yes, I do. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t believe it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I can’t be 100-percent sure, but you have to have blind faith. You have to believe it in your gut. The fact is, it’s more likely than not that there is a purpose to this fucked up thing we call life. Your brother…he had a purpose. He just fulfilled it faster than you or me.”
“I want to believe that,” I said.
He let go of me suddenly and walked over to his closet, taking out the sketchpads I had looked through the night I snuck into his room. Flipping to one of the pictures of the man on the motorcycle, he sat back down on the bed next to me and stared at it for a bit before speaking.
“That’s my Dad,” he said with his eyes still focused on the drawing.
It blew me away that the haunting image that stuck out at me the most amongst his sketches was actually of his father. He had an impassioned look in his eyes as he continued to stare at the image without saying anything.
“That one was my favorite. The one of him looking back,” I said.
After another long pause, he finally spoke. “This was the last memory I have of him. He died that night in a motorcycle accident. I was only five, but I remember this moment in the drawing very clearly. He was going out to meet some friends. He told me to be a good boy for my mother and that he would take me out to my favorite diner for breakfast the next morning. For some reason, he looked back at me one last time before he took off, and it always stuck with me.”
This was breaking my heart.
“I don’t know which is worse: never getting to say goodbye to someone or watching them suffer first,” I said.
He put the sketch aside and turned to me. “Both scenarios suck. My point is, as painful as it was to lose my father that way, I never want to forget him. Ever. I do everything in my power to remember him, to remember the little things he taught me, even at that age.”
I took a deep breath in and nodded, thinking about what he said as it
related to Jimmy. I had been trying so hard to push away thoughts of my brother’s illness, that all of the good memories were getting pushed away too, so there was nothing left of him.
Some random funny memories came to mind suddenly because I allowed them in. “My brother was such a jokester. Kind of like you.”
He smiled. “Yeah?”
“Jimmy was shameless. Once, he brought a whoopee cushion to church and put it under this old lady in the pew in front of us. My parents grounded him for like three weeks after that.” I shook my head remembering that day. “Whenever we got into fights, and I tried to stay mad at him, he would hold me down and tickle my feet until I begged his forgiveness. He knew that drove me crazy. Sometimes, he would get Ryan to grab the other foot. They would gang up on me.”
Jake raised his brow. “Ticklish feet, huh? I’ll have to remember that the next time you zone out on me during a math lesson.”
“No, you don’t!”
“But see, it makes you smile to think about those things. You need to just remember the good times with him. Your brother’s last days don’t define who he was. You can choose to remember him however you want, like I choose to remember my Dad on his bike…just going out for a ride. It’s why I draw. It’s therapy for me and helps me etch the things I want to remember in stone.”
He folded up the sketchpad and returned it to the closet. I was kind of disappointed that he didn’t go through some of the other drawings. They all had to be meaningful to him in some way. I would take what I could get, though. This was the most information that Jake had ever offered me about his life. I wasn’t complaining, except for the fact that he returned to the chair by the desk, instead of sitting back down next to me.
As he logged off of his computer, he clapped his hands and said, “You know what you need tonight, Nina?”
Interesting question and you could guess where my mind was heading.
“What do I need, Jake?”
“You need to get shitfaced,” he said getting up and putting on his black jacket. “Come on, enough studying for tonight.”
I followed him out to the hallway before stopping in my room to freshen up and grab a coat.
“Where are we going?” I said as he stood in my doorway waiting.
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll like it. Trust me.” The questionable smirk on his face told me that maybe I shouldn’t.
***
After a seven-block walk to Brooklyn Avenue, we stopped at a building with a bright pink neon sign that flashed: Kung Pao Karaoke.
“We’re doing karaoke?” I shouted through the sudden onslaught of noise as he held the door for me.
“Well, mostly we’re having a scorpion bowl or two, but if you get drunk enough, yeah, maybe.”
The place was crowded and the smell of grease and booze filled the air. A clearly drunk woman with curly dark hair and a butterfly tattoo was belting out Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer while the patrons went wild. She couldn’t sing to save her life, but clearly, that didn’t matter here.
“So, whaddya think?” Jake asked as we were seated into a small booth in the corner, thankfully, furthest away from the stage.
“It’s cool. I have never been to a Chinese karaoke bar. You’ve been here before?”
“Once, with the guys from work. I was too drunk to remember much.”
“Ah. Do you usually eat or just drink here?”
“That depends on what you’re hungry for.”
Something about the way he looked at me and licked his lip ring when he said that seemed flirtatious.
“I am hungry.”
“Okay. We’ll get a Poo Poo platter of appetizers and a scorpion bowl. Sound good?”
“Great.”
After the waiter came by and took our order, Jake startled me when he nudged my leg with his under the table. “No more talking about sad stuff tonight, okay? I want you to have fun.”
“You’re not going to make me get up there are you?”
His mouth turned slowly upwards. There were the dimples that had been hiding out up until now. “You know that I don’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Good, because I would need a lot of alcohol in me to get up and do that.”
A woman came by and set the humungous scorpion bowl down on the table. It looked more like a portable sink with two straws.
“Speaking of the devil,” he said.
“I think you’re the devil tonight, Jake. What are you trying to kill me? Look at the size of this thing.”
“I have…heard that before,” he said winking.
Lordy. I set myself up for that one.
I responded to the mental images that conjured up by taking a huge sip out of the bowl. This concoction was way stronger than it looked, and I coughed from the impact of it down my throat.
Oh, goodness. There were those images again.
Jake pulled the bowl toward him. “Whoa…slow down there, lush.”
I coughed again. “That is some strong stuff. It’s deceiving! It looks like fruit punch and tastes like rubbing alcohol.”
“After a while, you won’t notice.”
“It’s a good thing we’re walking home,” I said.
He lifted his brow. “You mean, I’m carrying you home.”
“Possibly.”
“In all seriousness, Nina, I can tell you’re a lightweight, so you should pace yourself. I don’t want you to get sick.” He paused. “Oh, speaking of lightweight, what was your date’s name again the other night? How did that go?”
“Haha, very funny. His name was Alistair. It was okay. I won’t be going out with him again, though.”
“Any particular reason why?”
You.
“He just turned out to be kind of a loser.”
“Well, I could have told you that. He was wearing fucking boat shoes. What is he, seventy?” He laughed.
“Yeah, I don’t really have the best luck with men. My last boyfriend, Spencer, was king of the losers, actually.”
Jake sat back in his seat and crossed his arms. “Spencer…he just sounds like a pretentious prick.”
“He was…a prick…and a cheater.”
Jake nodded silently and looked around the room then his eyes met mine. “Well, I don’t even know the guy, but if he cheated on you…he’s a fucking idiot.”
I didn’t even know how to respond to that, but every nerve in my body immediately did. Thankfully, our Poo Poo platter came and I didn’t have to say anything at all. We started digging into the chicken wings, eggrolls, spareribs and teriyaki beef sticks. It was one of those comfortable silences where neither of us felt like we had to talk. We just pigged out on the appetizers, taking turns sipping out of the bowl, enjoying each other’s company.
When we finished eating, all that remained were the flames in the center of the platter. He moved it to the side, throwing a packet of hand wipes at me and caught me off guard when he continued where our previous conversation left off.
“So…Spencer…was he your last boyfriend?”
“Yeah. We broke up a little over a year ago. In retrospect, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Besides the fact that I found out he cheated on me, he did nothing but criticize me.”
He scrunched his eyebrows into an angry look. “What do you mean criticize? What kinds of things did he say to you?”
Was this conversation really going there?
I shrugged. “Let’s see…what didn’t he say? For one, he had no tolerance at all for my anxiety issues. He would just make fun of me instead of trying to understand the condition. And he criticized my body any chance he got.”
“He criticized your body,” Jake said, more like a statement than a question.
“Yeah…all the time.”
“Really…”
“Yes. He told me I wasn’t athletic-looking enough, that I could stand to lose ten pounds and that my ass was too big.”
Why did I just tell him all of this? I must be drunk.
“Nina…I hope you don’t mind me being blunt.”
“I don’t mind.”
“This…Spencer…needs his eyes checked and his ass kicked. There is nothing wrong with your body…not one thing. I hope you didn’t listen to him.”
Gulp.
“That’s the sad part. For a while, I did believe it. I realize in retrospect that he just got off on bringing me down. At the time, though, I really did think I was fat and I was even thinner than I am now.”
“Nina—” He started to say something then stopped. “Never mind. Just know…that he was wrong, okay?”
“Say what you were gonna say,” I said, downing more of the drink.
He slid his tongue ring between his teeth and looked away from me toward the stage when he said, “I am not sure that I should.”
“Since when have you become tactful?”
He took a sip and replied while playing with his straw. “Since this conversation moved to tits and ass.”
I laughed a little louder than normal and suspected the alcohol was starting to take its toll…on both of us. “Seriously, whatever you were going to say, I won’t be offended.”
He took another long sip from the bowl, licked his lips and said, “Okay…in that case, Nina, not just as your friend, but as a man, I am telling you straight up that you have an amazing body. It’s perfect. And your nimrod ex-boyfriend was right about one thing: you do kind of have a big ass.”
I spit out my drink. “Excuse me?”
He reached across and tapped my arm. “Let me finish. You kind of have a big ass…but it’s the most spectacular ass I’ve ever seen. You have an hourglass shape and any man with a pulse knows that’s the hottest kind there is. You’re beautiful, and what makes you even more attractive, is that you have absolutely no fucking idea just how beautiful you really are.”
I gripped the seat of the booth, floored by those unexpected words that came out of his mouth.
He thinks I’m beautiful.
He thinks I have a big ass!