by Vi Keeland
“I am glad that you two finally figured it all out last night. I knew it would happen eventually.” She paused and looked down. “Nina, I have to tell you something. I…knew about Jake and Desiree.”
Silence.
“I am sorry I never said anything. It was before you, so I didn’t think it really mattered. I didn’t quite know how to bring it up. She spent the night one time, like a week before you moved here. The bitch had always thrown herself at him. I knew it was just a cheap fling, and I didn’t want you to think badly of him because I could always tell he really liked you. Plus, I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable downstairs at the restaurant since we’re always there. I was trying to protect you, but I still should have told you.”
I let out a deep breath. “It’s okay. I understand why you didn’t. I mean, how can I fault him for something that happened before he even met me?”
“I’m glad you’re not upset with me,” she said.
I was…a little.
I quickly changed the subject to rid my mind of Desiree. “Did you know Jake’s birthday was yesterday too?”
“What? You’re kidding!”
“Dead serious. And look what he got me for mine.” I stuck out my arm to show off the bracelet.
Tarah held my wrist, and her jaw dropped. “A charm bracelet. Sweet.”
“Yes, with all the things that remind him of me.”
“I knew he had it bad, but damn, girl.” She shook her head at me. “Look at you…you’re beaming.”
“I can’t help it. I’ve never felt this way. I’m in love with him, Tarah.”
She hugged me tightly then pulled back. “Make that two people who’ll fuck him up if he ever hurts you, then.”
***
Jake called me from work at 2:45 that afternoon, and I answered the phone in my best throaty voice. “Hi, handsome.”
“Nina?”
“Yes, of course it’s me, silly. I’ve been thinking abou—”
“Listen to me, okay? I have some bad news. Everything is okay, but I have to go to Boston tonight.”
“What?”
“There’s been an emergency, so I am actually flying instead of taking the train. I’m on my way to LaGuardia now.”
My heart fell to my stomach. “You’re scaring me. What kind of emergency?”
“It’s nothing to be scared about. There’s a situation that’s related to what I needed to discuss with you. We can’t have this conversation over the phone. We were supposed to talk tonight, but it’s going to have to be as soon as I get back. Please trust me. Everything is okay with us. Everything is going to be fine, and I promise to explain it to you in a couple of days. Nina…are you there?”
I was silent for a few seconds then said, “Yes.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I can later tonight.” He repeated, “I need you trust in me.”
“I do trust you…but you can’t blame me for wondering and worrying.”
“I know, baby. I know. It’s easier said than done, but please don’t worry, okay?”
“As soon as you get back, we need to have that talk. The not knowing is starting to kill me.”
“I promise,” he said amidst car horns and people shouting. “I just pulled up to the airport. I’ll call you later. I love you, Nina.”
“I love you, too.”
***
I spent the rest of the day Monday on pins and needles unable to eat or concentrate.
Ryan had asked me where Jake was that night, and I explained that there was an emergency in Boston. He spent most of the evening interrogating me about what I really knew about Jake, trying to convince me that something didn’t seem right and warning me to be careful. I tried not to let him see that he was scaring me.
Jake ended up calling me about midnight.
He sounded extremely tired. “Did I wake you?”
“No. I haven’t been able to sleep. I have been so worried.”
“I am so sorry that I couldn’t call you until now. Everything is okay. There is nothing for you to worry about. Believe me. My being here does not change anything between us. Do you hear me? Just give me a chance to explain this to you in person. It’s not something I can do over the phone. I’ll be here one more day then flying home late tomorrow night and coming straight to you.”
It was quiet wherever he was.
“Okay. Where are you?”
“I just got to my sister’s house. I’m spending the night here.”
“Call me tomorrow?”
“I promise. I love you, Nina.”
“I love you too, Jake.”
I hung up the phone and prayed for tomorrow to come quickly.
***
It was about 5:30 Tuesday night when Ryan came home from work. He walked in the door and hung up his coat.
He hung up his coat.
Normally, the act of hanging up a coat is a very insignificant thing. But for me, the moment when Ryan hung up his coat meant everything.
It was the last moment that I could remember when things were normal. It was the moment before everything changed. Because the second he turned to me and looked into my eyes, I began to suffocate.
“Nina, you need to sit down.”
“What’s going on?”
He gently patted my arm. “Sit down.”
I walked over to the couch and sat. My palms were sweaty, and my heart was beating a mile a minute.
“Nina, I don’t know how to tell you this…”
I gripped the seat cushions. “Just say it. What is it? Did someone die?”
“No…it’s not like that.”
“What?”
“After our talk last night, I did some digging. You know, at work at the D.A.’s office, I think I told you, we have quick access to public records and such.”
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
He continued, “I looked up Jake’s information, did a background check and found this document. Do you know what this is?”
He handed me a piece of paper and I glanced down at it. He immediately moved to the couch next to me and put his arms around my back. It felt like a drum was beating in my ears and my body started to shake uncontrollably.
I had suspected that maybe Jake was in some kind of trouble with the law or that he had a girlfriend in Boston. But I never expected this.
I looked down at the printout again and felt like my head was on fire.
Jake Alan Green
Ivy Marie Macomber
No. Jake didn’t have a girlfriend. He had a wife.
He was married.
PART 2:
JAKE
CHAPTER 21
“Mr. Green, your wife has been transported to McLean Hospital. We think she tried to take her life last night.”
It wasn’t the first time I had received a call like that, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Talk about going from heaven to hell in a matter of hours.
Before Nina, that was all my life amounted to…a living hell. Maybe escaping to New York for work during the week was my purgatory. But there was certainly no heaven, no respite, never any peace or true happiness…until she came along. Nina had become my only solace from the nightmare I had been living over the past five years.
The beverage cart stopped in front of my seat, and I asked for the strongest thing they had. It didn’t even matter what it was. I needed to take the edge off because I never knew what I was going be to walking into, especially this time. Thank God, at least from what they told me, Ivy was stable in the safety of a hospital.
The flight attendant nudged me. “Excuse me? Your drink, sir.”
I had been deep in thought staring out the window and hadn’t noticed her handing it to me. “Thanks,” I said, taking the hard liquor, whatever it was, and downing it.
I let out a long breath and closed my eyes. My focus should have been on Ivy, but I couldn’t bear to let my mind drift to the reality that was about to slap me in the face when this plane touched d
own. There would be no way to escape it then.
These minutes, miles up in the sky, were going to be my last moments of peace for a while. So, I chose to close my eyes and focus on the only thing that took the pain away.
I never should have let things get as far as they did with Nina. But what should have happened and what I wanted to happen with every fiber of my being were two very different things.
I became addicted to her from the moment I first shook her hand, and it trembled in mine. Women have always had strong reactions to me but never like that. I had never met someone so beautiful and sexy, yet humble and innocent at the same time. I wanted to lift her over my shoulder, carry her right then and there back to my room and make her mine, which was a crazy thought to have seconds into meeting someone. That was just the physical pull. Within a few minutes though, when I really looked into her eyes and she was talking about her phobias, there was this darkness there. She looked the same way I imagined I appeared to anyone that could see through my façade. Here was a girl I had just met, and I was sure our life stories couldn’t have been more different. Yet, somehow, I knew we had both been living the same kind of life, just going through the motions, trying to find something to make it worth living. For some unexplained reason, there was a connection with her that I hadn’t even known I was searching desperately for. But it was too late. My life was already laid out for me. So, I had to figure out a way to ignore what I was feeling.
What a mind fuck.
Any sane man in my situation would have just gotten the hell out of there that first day, taken a long walk and sorted out my head…maybe moved out of the apartment even.
Instead, you know how I handled it? I went straight to my room and made her a fucking paper bird. Because, after meeting her, the only thing I could think about was that I just wanted to make her smile, take some of the darkness out of those beautiful blue eyes.
What a pansy.
It only got worse from there. I’d keep looking for excuses to be around her. I knew she had these fears, and I really did want to help her through them. But I also really wanted to get my fix, be near her, smell her vanilla scent and touch her in subtle ways every chance I got, even if it was just her hand or her back.
She made me feel alive after years of being emotionally dead. I lived for every moment spent with her and dreaded the weekends when I had to leave. I thought I could handle being close friends with her, as long as I paced myself without letting it go too far.
Which is why I came up with the brilliant idea of tutoring her and of course, our bet. Everybody won. She’d get good grades, overcome her fears, and I got my angel fix. She got what she needed, and I needed…her.
Things started to get complicated because each day I fell harder, and I craved more. The fact that I sensed that she was attracted to me too didn’t help; it only turned me on, and there was no goddamn shut off switch. I tried my best to curtail the physical need. I really did. Let’s just say, I jerked off so much that I was able to prove once and for all that the myth my grandmother told me about was false, because I never did go blind.
Aside from wanting her physically, there was this constant need to make her happy. I got off on it. I noticed Nina changing the more time we spent together. Her eyes started to transform. Light replaced the darkness, and I wondered if I had put it there. She always looked at me like no one ever had and was so attentive; she ate up every word I said. I made her laugh, and she comforted me. I wanted to be around her all of the time like a fucking bee on honey.
The way I saw it, we were two fractured souls that fit together like the last two missing pieces in a “fucked up life” puzzle. When we were together, life finally made sense; it wasn’t all work, obligation, guilt and fear. It was just amazing to be alive. She needed me to help her, but she didn’t realize I needed her so much more.
The first time I knew I was really in trouble was when she cut her finger that night trying to make me dessert. I physically felt the pain—a shooting pain—when I saw her blood. I had never experienced anyone else’s pain before. It felt like she was an extension of me. That was when I began to suspect that I might have been falling in love with her.
The moment I absolutely knew I loved her, though, was in Chicago. I was telling her things I hadn’t ever told anyone, like the story about my father and the moon. On the plane ride home, when we were holding hands and I watched her with her eyes closed, I had wished that the plane were taking us somewhere far away, where I could spend the rest of my life just being with her, making love to her and not worrying about anything else. I knew it was selfish, but I would have given anything for that.
I hadn’t even planned to take her to Chicago initially. My original idea had been a helicopter ride over Manhattan, but she kept getting A’s and putting it off. During that time, we became closer, and I wanted to share more of myself with her. Maybe it was to make up for not letting her in on the most important piece of information. Something she had every right to know, even as my friend.
Over Christmas, I had missed her so much that it was like going through withdrawal. I realized that staying in the friend zone just wasn’t working for me. I needed her. The only way I could be with her was to tell her the truth and hope that she would understand. She promised that nothing could make her leave me, but would that really still be the case once she found out about Ivy? Maybe I was kidding myself.
If she didn’t want to be with me after I told her the truth, I’d move out and walk away, because living under the same roof with her would be like strapping a bottle of vodka to an alcoholic.
I wished she had just let me get it off my chest last night, because the truth was, there was never really going to be a right time to explain my fucked up situation to her. But she convinced me to wait a day to have the talk.
When I realized she wanted me as much as I wanted her, I became like a caged animal unleashed for the first time; I wanted to ravage her so badly that I gave in and waited to say anything. If all else failed, last night will stay with me for as long as I live, and nothing could ever take it away.
Now, I needed to figure out how to explain my sudden disappearing act and everything else, the second I get back to New York.
How exactly was I supposed to tell the person I love that I’m married to another woman I may never be able to leave?
***
The halls were eerily quiet as a nurse led me to her room. Ivy was sitting up in bed staring at the clock on the wall. That was a habit she developed about a year ago. She just watches the hands go by. It seemed to calm her.
“Ivy?” I said as I slowly approached the bed. She wasn’t in the middle of a delusion, but she also didn’t seem to be affected by my being there one way or the other. She looked at me and then looked right back at the clock.
She winced when I grabbed her hand. She didn’t like to be touched, but she gave in and let me hold it. I was just relieved she wasn’t telling me to go away this time or accusing me of trying to kill her. That one was the worst.
I squeezed her hand lightly. “Are you okay?”
She nodded repeatedly in quick motions without making eye contact with me then said, “Did they call you?”
“Yes. They said you—”
“Well, I didn’t. They’re lying. They shouldn’t have called you.”
I didn’t want to argue with her. The truth was, only she really knew whether she meant to take her own life or whether it was a misunderstanding. She never admitted to intentionally trying to commit suicide the past few times something like this happened.
“What did you do, Ivy?”
“I was just trying to get some air.”
“They thought you tried to jump out a window?”
“I was on the roof.”
“Ivy—”
She cut me off and shouted. “I was just getting air!”
I decided not to grill her any further. It was pointless. Even this little amount of clarity from her was rare, and I didn’t want
to push her into an episode. She just needed to know I was there for her. Thank God, this time, my being here didn’t set her off.
She kept her hand in mine, and I watched her eyes return to the clock on the wall. Aside from the faint traffic sounds through the glass from the street below and the clock ticking, it was quiet. Then, came a light knock on the door.
“Mr. Green?”
I turned around to see a tall middle-aged woman with a white coat standing at the doorway.
“I’m Doctor Greally.”
“Hi,” I said, standing up as we shook hands.
“May I have a word with you?” She gestured for me to walk out into the hallway with her.
I looked back at Ivy who was still staring at the clock. “I’ll be right back.”
“What happened, doctor?” I whispered.
“She was apparently naked on the roof threatening to jump if someone didn’t leave her alone. There was no one actually bothering her and no one in the vicinity. The staff at the home had a tough time getting her down safely. They brought her in because they didn’t know what else to do.”
I rubbed my forehead vigorously with my fingers. “How long is she going to be hospitalized this time?”
“At least a few days. I wanted to talk to you about treatment options.”
“You obviously looked at her records? Nothing has ever worked for her,” I said.
“Yes, but I noticed they’ve never tried Clozapine.”
“What is that?”
“Well, it’s usually prescribed as a last resort in patients who have never responded to any of the other anti-psychotics.”
“Why is it a last resort?”
“There are some potential troubling side-effects, like dangerously lowering white blood cell count. People who take it have to have frequent blood tests to monitor the situation. However, aside from that risk, it can be a very effective treatment in some people.”