CHAPTER 1
Harvey
“Dinner’s ready,” Gemma tells me in my room. Her voice sounds different this Thursday night—livelier.
I nod, continuing to play my game, thinking she’s going to leave the room like she usually does, but not tonight. This time, she asks me again if I’m coming, and I nod yet again, exhaling when she leaves.
I don’t feel like company tonight. I want to brood in my room, but clearly that isn’t going to happen, so I pause and save my game.
Once I’m in the kitchen, I use my upper-body strength to transfer from my wheelchair to the low-seated chair at the table. We eat our steak, potatoes, and salad accompanied by complete silence.
“This is good. Thank you,” I eventually say, trying to elevate the mood.
“You’re welcome.” She smiles, and the romantic setting is obvious from the dimmed lights and center candle.
I stare at her face and her auburn hair, her green eyes now settled on her plate of food.
Fuck, she’s hurting too.
I can see it, feel it.
Her pain looms around this home, like a ghost unable to move on from its past.
She’s a beautiful girl, yet I’m missing the smile that used to touch her lips. Now I get the forced one, the one she’s overperformed the past few years to pretend that she’s okay, that she’s doing fine, that we’re doing fine.
What a load of crap.
My heart bled out emotionally, yet my physical body keeps moving, barely, though, because I’m paralyzed in both legs. The damage to my spinal cord is incomplete, and I have some nerve feeling at different spots in my legs. Which is why my doctor predicted that I might be able to walk again one day, at least short distances.
But truly, you know what I wish would’ve been paralyzed that night? My fucking heart. Although that might’ve happened too, maybe that’s why I can’t make Gemma happy.
If I had a pocket of wishes, though, I’d give her most of them. She deserves it—her only mishap in life was falling for me.
I always wondered when she worked on campus if she envied other couples, or her twin sister, Gia, and her brother-in-law, James, both nondisabled people who would never deal with the bullshit we have to.
Physical therapy. Nurses. Popping pills like clockwork. Making sure I don’t wet myself. Getting sick easily. Infections. Medical bills. Paperwork.
She pushes her hair behind her ear, a telltale sign that she’s anxious. And I wonder why. I wish I could ask her, but I can’t. We haven’t had that close a relationship in a long while, and it doesn’t feel right anymore to quiz her about anything.
Especially since I hate when she questions me.
If I took my meds.
How my day went.
If I got some fresh air.
If I ate.
How PT was.
The questions are endless and never-ending.
I would do a fuck of a lot for them to end.
Might even pass on a wish from my pocket of wishes for her to stop questioning me like I’m a goddamn child who can’t fend for himself.
“I have an interview tomorrow,” Gemma randomly blurts out mid-dinner.
My eyes dart to the backyard. “Where?” I ask, sipping on water.
“Downtown. At a consulting firm—environmental.” There’ll be quite a bit of traffic from our hometown of Clarendon Hills to downtown Chicago.
I stare at her then, trying with all my might to show nothing but support, despite the fears brewing inside my head.
“Good luck. It’s in your field, so that’s good, right?” I say with a conviction I don’t feel.
“Yeah. It’s an assistant position, but it’s a start. You know I’ll still be here if you need me…” She lowers her gaze, shifting in her chair.
I palm her hand, hoping to lessen her guilt.
“Don’t worry about me. Besides, I have Claire,” I reassure her, letting go of her hand to finish my meal.
Once we’re done eating and Gemma cleans the kitchen, we make our way to the couch, though I stay in my wheelchair tonight rather than transferring to the couch.
“I’ll be back. You pick.” Gemma throws me the remote.
My thoughts sprint to her new job and how it will affect things, as she won’t be working remotely the way she sometimes did with her campus job.
My mind is still racing by the time she comes back into the living room and dims the lights, wearing nothing but a black bra and matching thong.
I can see her pierced nipple through the sheer black bra cup, which brings me back to the first college party we attended the day we met.
I don’t know what to do with my arms, so I settle them on the armrest, my heart beating out of my chest because I know how the night will end.
She walks toward me slowly, and when she reaches me, she kneels in front of me, reaching for my hands.
“Harvey…”
I shake my head and look away.
I can’t go through this again. Nor put her through this.
“Harv, please. I miss you. Please , let me make you feel good.”
What does she want from me?
I give her all that I possibly can. Every ounce of energy that I have, which in all fairness isn’t much. There’s nothing more. I don’t know where I’m supposed to keep digging.
Energy feels like a treasure I’ll never find again.
I’m lifeless, and have been for years.
My routine is the only thing keeping me alive. And perhaps my younger brother, though we’re close in age, Henrik. I could never hurt him like that.
I glare at her with pain in my stare.
Her hands slip under my white shirt, her fingers roaming over my pale chest, replacing the tanned chest I use to have.
The desperation is there, written all over her face. Her silent pleas are begging me to touch her.
So I do. I trace her collarbone, one of my favorite parts of Gemma’s body. Then I trace the top of her breast, her lips parting in response. My forefinger reaches for her bra strap, and I pull it down, knowing that the end is near.
With each touch, every movement, my insecurities amplify.
Peeing myself again. The thought of not being able to get hard, or come, or do so on time.
The million different sensations and the complexities that come with my new lifestyle.
They’re turning me off from all of it.
“Gemma…”
She unclasps her bra, letting it fall to the carpet. “You don’t want to touch them?”
I do. Yet I don’t.
My hand settles on her waist as I hope to appease her. “Never said that.”
“Then don’t stop. We can go slow. Whatever you want.”
She’s not hearing me.
“Gemma…”
Her hands grasp my hair, and she runs her fingers through it before her hands move down to my jeans. She unbuttons them, dragging down the zipper.
I can see it in her expression, in her movements, and from the quiver in her hands. She knows that this won’t lead anywhere. She knows I still can’t do it. She just can’t withstand the rejection.
I never meant to hurt you like this.
I want to tell her that we’re not the same sexual, flirty couple that we used to be.
I can’t easily get my dick hard on my own command. What makes her think it’d be simpler with her there?
“I can’t…”
She takes my hand and puts it on her pierced nipple. I swallow when she asks me, “Don’t you want me, Harvey?”
I shake my head. “I can’t do this.”
Suddenly, she drops my hand, and I can only imagine the amount of pain I’ve inflicted upon her tonight.
“I’m sorry.” I look away. When I look back at her, she simply nods, burning a hole into the couch with her stare. Anything to avoid looking at me right now, not that I blame her.
She grabs her bra on the floor and puts it on again. When she’s done, I close my hand around her wrist, knowing she’s about to leave. “I’m sorry. I am.”
I wish I weren’t me.
She just shakes her head, yet I can see the anger brewing in those eyes of hers.
“Do you love me, Harv? Because I love you still.”
I’m taken aback by her question. “That’s the silliest question I’ve ever heard. You know I do.” I squeeze her wrist gently.
Then she leaves and heads to her own bedroom, since we don’t share a bed.
At first, I feel nothing but guilt, nothing but hate for my own self.
I hate the cards I’ve been dealt with in this life.
I hate the body I’ve been stuck with.
As the night progresses, my fears regarding her new job and our failed attempt at intimacy resurface, and slowly my irritation soars.
Because she doesn’t listen, she doesn’t get it.
I’m constantly being bombarded with the notion that I have to continuously push myself, my body, to another limit, another level, another plateau.
This is what she wants. What she demands of me daily.
And I do . I push myself harder than I ever thought possible.
For her, for my parents, for Hen.
I don’t have anything left. Nothing sexual here for her.
Not today, not this moment.
I hope this changes tomorrow, yet I have no way of knowing. All I know, from the bottom of my heart, is that I’m trying.
I wish Gemma could see that.
That I am enough and that my efforts could please her and satisfy her. So she would stop treating me like a patient and stop trying to better me.
This is what she gets. This is the new twenty-four-year-old me.
The old me fucking died during that motorcycle accident two-and-a-half years ago.
I can’t get him back. Believe me, I’ve tried .
I tried to hang on to him for so long, and nothing happened. I wasn’t there, and I was never getting that part of myself back. That piece left, and I knew that it would never return. It would be easier if everyone around me, including Gemma, made peace with that.
Because I’m simply empty.