17.
Delta Brooks was not the sort of
girlfriend a guy went to work and forgot about, or who he put off for another
night or two while he went trolling for alternatives. She was monopolizing. She
was a full-time job. And Mike loved it.
He couldn’t afford her parents’
lifestyle, and he told her as much on Thanksgiving, around four in the morning,
in her bed, as her eyelids fluttered in the dark and sleep threatened to pull
her under. “I don’t care about that,”
she’d murmured in that sleepy you-did-me-good voice he enjoyed so much, and to
her credit, she hadn’t pressured him about money once.
He took her bowling, took her to
dinner at franchise restaurants with mediocre food, took her to the movies,
tried like hell to take her where she wanted to be between the sheets at night.
She tested him – every second she tested his intelligence, his kindness, his
patience – and he had a feeling it was all done out of some insecurity she’d
never admit to having; she didn’t want there to be a shred of doubt in her
pretty little mind that she’d made the right decision in keeping him around.
His final test – the biggie – came
three days before Christmas.
They’d both agreed that they weren’t
going to repeat the Thanksgiving debacle of family visiting. They were going to
have a dinner and movie night, he would give her the gift she’d told him not to
get her, and they wouldn’t see each other until all family activities were
safely over. Mike arrived at her door at seven, as agreed, the wrapped box in
his jacket pocket feeling heavy and giving him heartburn. He knocked three
times before she answered, and then the sight of her shocked him backward a
step.
Her skin was the color of paste,
slick and sallow. Whatever eye makeup she’d been wearing had been rubbed clean
and her brown irises looked almost black against the red-rimmed whites. She was
wearing the navy skirt she worked in, but was barefoot and without her usual
tights, shirtless and in just a white, lace-edged bra. She leaned heavily
against the door, breathing in shallow little huffs that left her abs looking
sunken and clenched. He didn’t think it was possible for her not to look
beautiful – she still somehow managed – but she looked terrible too.
“What’s wrong?” Mike put a hand
against her ribcage and eased her back away from the door, holding her up as he
stepped inside and shut it behind him. Her pulse was a fast, fluttering beat
against his palm. “Delta,” he laid his other hand against the side of her face;
her skin was clammy. “What’s the matter, sweetheart?”
She swallowed hard, an audible gulp.
Wet her lips. “I -,” her eyes widened and she snatched away from him. When she
went rushing back to her bedroom, he guessed the reason. It was confirmed as he
followed at a safe distance and heard her retching in the adjoining bathroom.
He waited until the toilet flushed before he propped a shoulder in the
doorjamb.
Delta was sitting on the floor, her back
against the edge of her tub, knees drawn up to her chest, feet apart at an
unladylike angle. She held her forehead in both hands and Mike couldn’t tell if
she was crying or just trying to catch her breath.
“Baby?” he prodded.
“I can’t stop throwing up,” she
croaked. “I had to leave work early. I -,” she lunged for the toilet again and
Mike didn’t know if he was supposed to go hold her hair back, or if he even
could. It didn’t matter, though, because a moment later she eased back against
the tub with a groan. The pathetic sight of her finally drew him into the room
and he sat down on the edge of the tub. She sagged against his leg almost
immediately.
“Did you catch something?” he asked,
stroking a hand across the top of her silken head. A disturbing thought pricked
at the back of his mind. “You’re not…you aren’t…pregnant, are you?”
“No,” she snapped, and pressed a
hand over her mouth like she was trying to suppress a gag.
“So I guess dinner’s a no-go then?”
“Asshole,” she said, but her hand
came up and curled around his knee, holding on for dear life.
He stroked her hair, not knowing if
it helped, because that’s what his mother had always done for him and his
siblings when they’d been sick. She’d stroked their hair and told them how
sorry she was and offered to bring them things. “Do you want some water?” he
asked. “Crushed ice? Wet washcloth?”
“No,” she murmured. Her temple was
pressed to his calf and he imagined he could feel the flutter of her lashes
through his jeans. “No, thank you.”
When she went a good ten minutes
without puking, he asked, “You want me to take you into the other room?” Her
skin was covered in gooseflesh and her spine against the hard tub made his own
ache in sympathetic pain. “You can’t be comfortable.”
He thought she’d refuse, but instead
nodded. Her hand slipped off his knee and she sat up straighter. “I’m cold,”
she admitted.
Mike got to his feet and reached for
her clammy hand. He could see her ribs through her skin and wondered how much
weight she’d lost just in one afternoon. “Alright, come on, princess,” he said
and pulled her to her feet.
She rolled her eyes – or, at least,
he thought she did. They kept rolling, until all he saw were the whites, and
her hand went limp inside of his. Mike caught her with both arms as her knees
went to jelly and all of her muscles let go at once. Her head lolled lifeless
onto his shoulder and a sharp, cold bolt of fear went streaking through him.
“Hey,” he pushed her hair back off
her face with a shaking hand, but her eyes didn’t open. “Shit.”
He’d never called 9-1-1 in his life,
not even when he’d broken his collar bone playing football with his brothers
and had driven himself to the hospital one-handed with his teeth grinding
together. But he dialed now.
**
The diagnosis was severe dehydration,
the cause not yet known, but Mike was just glad to see Delta awake, some of her
color coming back. She was hooked up to an IV in a bed out in the middle of
everything, her need for a room to be determined once they’d figured out why she
kept puking. Mike had nicked a chair and sat at her elbow, talking mostly to
himself. She stared at the ceiling, not responding, but she had her fingers
laced through his and kept squeezing. For a moment, earlier, he’d thought she’d
meant to thank him, but the words had died in her throat and she’d swallowed
hard, glancing away.
“By the way,” he said as his eyes
fell on the well-dressed couple moving toward them from the ER waiting room. “I
called your parents.”
“You what?” Delta went jackknifing upright in bed, only to clutch at her
stomach and ease back down to the pillow. “You did?” she asked, her eyes wild
and dark as they latched onto his face. He didn’t know how her fingers had the
strength to squeeze his so hard. “Are they coming?”
“They’re here,” he said with a
wince, and her shocked, dismayed face tipped up and her gaze moved beyond his
shoulder.
“Mom. Dad,” she said woodenly. “You
came.”
Mike wanted to come out of his chair
when he felt Dennis Brooks’ hand clap down on his shoulder.
“Of course we did,” Louise said,
going around to the far side of her daughter’s bed and taking up her other hand
between both of hers. “What’s wrong with you? Michael said you were…” she made
a face, lipstick-red lips curling up in distaste, “vomiting.”
Dennis’s hand left Mike’s shoulder
as he moved to stand at the foot of the bed, arms folded, tanned face tense. At
first Mike thought he was worried. But he wasn’t.
“Delta,” her father said, “you’re
pregnant, aren’t you?”
Mike felt a little like he’d been
slapped. Not because he was afraid that she really was pregnant, but because he
couldn’t quite believe any father was so cold as to glare down at his sick,
hooked-to-an-IV daughter and ask her that question like it was the worst
possibility in the world. Almost a month and a half he’d been seeing this girl
and a man – any man, even her father – looming over her while she was sick was
pushing all kinds of buttons inside of him. Protective, quick-tempered buttons
that had him leaning forward in his chair.
“No, Dad,” Delta said in a small,
tired voice. “It’s just food poisoning or something.”
Dennis put his hands on his hips.
“And why am I supposed to believe that? You’ve clearly,” he gestured to Mike,
“lost all sense when it comes to men. Why shouldn’t I think -,”
“Stop,” she pulled both her hands
away from the ones that held them, clenched them over her stomach. She blinked
hard. “Daddy, please, not here. Please don’t -,”
“It would be just like you,” Dennis
ignored her while her mother looked on silently, “to put me in this kind
of…embarrassing…situation again. You’re not sixteen anymore, Delta. You can’t
expect me to keep cleaning up your messes.”
Mike watched tears form in her eyes
that she batted away furiously. Her breathing was irregular again, like before,
her complexion too pale.
“If you’re pregnant again….” Dennis
continued, and Mike’s brain took the word pregnant
in hand and stepped away from the moment. Locked onto what exactly pregnant again meant and all he heard
was, “mistake,” over Scotch and all
he saw were the tears slipping down Delta’s cheeks.
Mike came to his feet in a bowed-up,
angry rush that pulled everyone’s eyes and left Louise gasping. More often than
not, being six-four came in really friggin’ handy. “Shut up,” he said before he
could clamp a lid down on his anger. Dennis frowned at him, but he was frowning
up at him, and Mike didn’t care how
much Daddy Warbucks disapproved of him at the moment. “Just shut up and quit
making her cry. She’s sick and I didn’t call you so you could come down here
and get her upset.”
Dennis started to say something.
“And if she was pregnant,” Mike cut him off, “you wouldn’t have to worry about it.” He flicked a glance to Delta,
but her eyes were shut. “I may be some stupid hick, but I’m not an asshole who’d
stand here yelling at her about being pregnant.”
Louise was close to
hyperventilating, her manicured hands held on either side of her mouth. Two
nurses had stopped in their tracks and were staring at him. Dennis Brooks was
probably planning a phone call to a high-dollar hit man.
Oh,
shit, Mike thought, but he didn’t want
to take it back. Not after he’d felt Delta’s trembling hand against his leg,
not after he’d carried her into her living room and held her lifeless body
while he called the paramedics, not after he’d realized he was invested enough
to not be rattled by pregnancy.
“Are you brave, or stupid?” Dennis
asked after the longest stare-down in recorded history.
“Little bit of both. Sir.”
He nodded. “Come, Louise,” he said
with a snap of his fingers, and his wife came like a dog being called.
Mike watched them go, wanting to be
sure they didn’t turn back. He was glad to be rid of them, but hated that they
could be driven away from their daughter so easily. His own mom would have been
in a chair beside his bed, ready to throw down with anyone who tried to shoo
her away. Delta’s family, well….
He dropped back down into his chair
and traced a finger down the smooth white inside of her forearm. Her eyes were
still shut tight, the corners shiny wet with tears. Her delicate nostrils were
flared, her chest fluttering under the t-shirt he’d put her in before the
paramedics had arrived. “They’re gone,” he offered, because he didn’t know what
else to say.
She nodded and the muscles in her
throat worked as she swallowed.
“Do you need me to flag down a
nurse?”
“No,” she said, voice a breathy,
shaking ghost of what it usually was. “I’m fine.”
“Delta,” he passed his thumb over
the fine bones of her wrist. “I didn’t really mean to -,”
“You heard what he said,” she
interrupted, “right? You heard it?”
She meant the pregnant part. “Yeah.”
She swallowed again and wet her
lips, eyes opening and going to the ceiling. “I don’t have a child out there in
the world somewhere, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I’m not wondering anything.”
A deep breath hitched in her throat.
“I was sixteen,” she said to the acoustic tiles overhead, “and not careful
enough. I got pregnant. I got an abortion. My father likes to hold it over my
head.” She said it like she hoped to sound indifferent, like she didn’t want
him to pursue it further or think her weak. Almost like she wanted to shock
him. She was cold, she was unfeeling, she didn’t have any room in her life for
regret.
But she sounded terrified. Terrified
that he’d think less of her, that he’d think she was some kind of slut the way
her father did. Terrified that she would continue to make big, life-altering
mistakes.
Mike wanted to pick Dennis Brooks up
by his fancy lapels and chuck him headfirst through a window.
**
She did, in fact, have food
poisoning. Delta took the nausea meds she was given and made a mental note to
never eat at the deli down the street from the mall again. With strict orders
to drink all the Gatorade she could handle, she was turned loose just after one
in the morning. Mike drove her home, walked her up, twisted the top off a
Gatorade for her because she was still too weak to do much of anything. Shredded
by fatigue and a sore throat, she was powerless against the overwhelming tide
of hurt and embarrassment the night’s revelation had brought.
She’d never intended to tell Mike
about her abortion, least of all like this, with her parents and a whole
hospital staff present. She could feel his contempt, his shock and opposition.
She wasn’t just cold – she was as cold as they came. He couldn’t want that.
Couldn’t care about that. He already wasn’t the sort of posh and polished man
she should have been with, but now he knew her darkest truth. A cold man would
have seen the wisdom of her decision. Her father’s
decision. Mike was thinking she was a monster – he had to be.
Near tears again and afraid she
couldn’t stop them, Delta shuffled into her bedroom and shed her clothes, not
caring if he watched. She pulled a loose, soft cotton nightshirt out of her
dresser drawer and slipped it on over her head, her back to the open door. Mike
was still there, lingering, and she didn’t want to face him. She went to her
bed and turned down the covers, set her drink on the nightstand. The sheets
were cool and soft on her skin and if nothing else, sleep would bring a relief
to the hellish evening of puke and professions.
Mike was standing in the doorway
when she finally lifted her head. He’d pulled out his shirttail at the hospital
and looked rumpled and tired, his strong, angular face lined with fatigue
and…something else. She could just make out the green of his eyes from this
distance.
“I don’t think I’ll pass out and
need catching again,” she said with a pitiful attempt at a smile. “Thank you
for…helping me.”
“Delta -,”
“I’m sorry I ruined our plans for
the night. Maybe after Christmas, if you still want to -,”
“Delta,” he said more firmly.
“Or if you’d like to take some time
-,”
“Delta, am I gonna have to tell you
to shut up too?” he asked, and she finally closed her mouth, shame pressing down
on her hard. His expression softened further. “Sweetheart,” he started moving
into the room a step at a time, “what you told me tonight doesn’t change
anything for me.”
Her eyes started to fill and she
didn’t want to look at him anymore.
“I mean, I kinda want to knock the
shit outta your dad…” he made an attempt at a smile, but became serious again
when she didn’t return it, “but all I am right now is worried about you. I’m…crazy…about you, and I don’t care what
happened when you were sixteen.”
He didn’t feel contempt. Wasn’t
repulsed. Didn’t hate her for the coldness. He looked at her and it was like he
was tunneling all the way back to her past and witnessing the tears she’d shed
back then, the nightmares – his look told her all of that and more.
She tried to fight them, but the
tears came; salty and hopped-up on IV fluids, they came pouring out,
accompanied with a ripping sensation deep in her chest and stomach. Through
them, she watched Mike ditch his shoes and clothes, and he came around to the other
side of the bed in his boxers. He climbed in beside her and nothing had ever
felt as good as his arm around her, the solid warmth of his skin as he pulled
her into his side.
She didn’t know if she cried for
what she’d lost as a teenager, or for the confused tangle of emotions inside
her now. Either way, Mike telling her that he was sorry against the top of her
head was the only answer that made any sense.
**
She didn’t expect to sleep through
the night, but suddenly her eyes were snapping open and morning light was
streaming in through the drapes neither of them had thought to close the night
before. She was on her side, curled up in the fetal position, and as awareness
solidified, so did the gnawing, empty ache in her stomach. The inside of her
mouth felt like sandpaper, she’d pulled a muscle somewhere in her core, but the
nausea was just a dull echo of what it had been the night before.
She rolled over, slowly, and
realized she was alone in bed. He’s gone,
she thought with a deep, resonating sadness. She pushed up on an elbow and
realized that the covers had been tucked in around her, that there was a fresh
bottle of Gatorade on her nightstand and that Mike’s shoes were tucked under
her tufted chair, his shirt thrown over the arm. He’s not gone, gave her just enough energy to climb out of bed.
Delta gagged once while she brushed
her teeth, but didn’t hurl. Which was progress. Her reflection was horrific:
her hair a tangled, limp mess, her skin still sallow, dark bags beneath her
eyes. She’d never washed her face, her makeup instead had been sweated and
rubbed off. But the prospect of cleaning herself up was too daunting. She tied
her hair back in a messy knot and went to find Mike, hoping he wasn’t too
disgusted by her.
He was in the kitchen, in his khakis
and white under shirt, eating something over her kitchen sink and watching the
street below through the window. He turned at the sound of her bare feet across
the hardwood. “You’re up,” he greeted. “How’re you feeling?”
She sat down at her little
dinner-for-two café table. “Don’t you have work?”
“I’ve got a ton of vacation days.”
It was toast he was eating, she could see, and he popped the last bite in his
mouth. “And I called the store and told them you wouldn’t be in.”
“Oh.” She propped her chin in her
hand because her head felt too heavy to hold up. “Well I was going to go in.”
“No you weren’t.”
She didn’t argue.
“You want something?” he propped a
hand on the counter and turned to face her. “Mom always made us dry toast when
we puked as kids. It doesn’t taste great, but the bright side, it doesn’t taste
any worse coming back up.”
She had to smile. It had been her
intention to refuse any further offers of help and send him off to work, but
all she could think about was the night before: crazy about you, a shoulder to cry on, a hand to hold, and all the
sweetness her parents didn’t possess. And here he was now, barefoot in her
kitchen, wanting to make her toast.
He was precious.
“I might be able to choke some down,”
she said, and watched him pull more of her organic, spelt flour bread out of
the freezer and pop it into her toaster oven. He watched it brown with comical
earnest, burned his thumb getting it out and cussed about it. He brought her
two slices on a paper towel and yet another Gatorade.
“You should keep drinking,” he
reminded as he sat down across from her. “Doc said.”
Another tired smile tugged at her
lips as she broke off a corner of toast and contemplated it. “Thank you,” she
said, lifting her eyes to meet his. “Thank you so much.”
He shrugged. “It’s just toast.”
Her smile widened. “No, I mean…” she
needed to take a deep breath for some reason, “thank you for last night. For
being the kind of guy who can handle vomit and ER visits and my dad and…” my secret, she thought, but didn’t say.
He watched her a long moment while
she fiddled with her toast corner, his hair flat and spiky from sleep. He
needed to shave and he’d probably borrowed her toothbrush again; the image of
his big, bare arms in his wifebeater furthered the contrast between him and her
father. Delta felt something deep in her aching, raw stomach that was warm and
tingling and had nothing to do with food poisoning. His expression told her he
was probably feeling it too.
“Sit tight,” he said, and slid out
of his chair, left the kitchen and headed toward the front door. Delta forced
down a bite of toast in his absence and prayed it stayed down. When he returned
a moment later, he had a square little box in his hand wrapped in red and gold
striped paper. “Here,” he set it on the table with a smile he tried to hide and
sat down across from her again.
Delta rubbed the crumbs off her
fingertips and stared at the box, pulse coming to attention.
“It’s not that,” he said.
With a sheepish half-smile, she
picked it up and peeled off the tape on the bottom, unfolded the paper. The box
was white and plain. There was a necklace inside: a dainty silver chain with a
tiny silver charm that was a crown. With a glittering clear stone set in the
middle. She pulled it out and held it up to the light, watched it catch the
morning sun that came in through the window.
“It’s white gold,” Mike said in an
uncertain voice, “and that’s a real diamond, not a fake, I swear.”
Her gaze swept up from the necklace
and to his face and she saw a blush rising along his cheekbones.
“My brother got his wife one of
those heart necklace thingies from Kay, but I knew you’d hate it. And I thought…I
dunno…I thought you’d like something original better.”
Delta wasn’t sure she’d ever wanted
to hug someone the way she wanted to hug him now. “You thought right,” she
said, and felt a lump forming in her throat. “Very right.”
His smile was wide and white and
pleased; she just wanted more of it.
“My parents are going to Barbados
for Christmas,” she blurted before she could stop herself. “They leave tonight
and I’m not going because I have work and…” she took another deep breath, “I
know we said we’d keep Christmas separate but I…I don’t want to.”
Surprised and happy, he tried to
hide it, showed her just a trace of a smile. “You know that means seeing my
family again, right?”
She curled her hand tight around the
little white gold and diamond crown in her hand. Princess, he called her, and he’d given her a crown. She nodded. “I
don’t care.”
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