Chapter 17 #2
Abby doesn’t say a word, but she rubs my arm, which is saturated from the rain. “Can I do anything?” she asks quietly.
“The door…” I gesture to the open lighthouse door, water pouring in seemingly sideways from outside.
She shuts it, so the only light comes from a window farther up the stairs.
Abby turns on the flashlight on her phone and holds it pointed up to light the space better.
I rub my knee, trying to soothe the pain, but as expected, it does nothing for me.
Abby hovers, a pained expression on her face.
“I’m okay,” I assure her.
She chews on her bottom lip, obviously not believing me. “Do you want to stay down here until the storm passes? Do you think you can climb some steps?”
“How many?”
“One hundred and fifty-four,” she says with confidence, and when I raise my eyebrows at her again, she says, “I read some reviews.”
“I don’t think—”
“We don’t have to go all the way up. There should be a room somewhere where the lighthouse keeper would have stayed or had his meals or something.”
It sounds like too many stairs, but the floor down here is half soaked, and given the intensity and longevity of the rain so far, this doesn’t seem like a quick summer storm.
The stairs don’t have an inviting look to them for lounging—rusted, grated metal—but standing in a puddle of water is definitely out of the question. Up it is then.
I give a quick, terse nod.
“Should you go first, in case you need me to—”
“No,” I say, but it comes out too harsh, too sharp. “I’m sure you’re very strong, but I…would squash you like a bug if I fell on you.”
“I am very strong, thank you for noticing. And I don’t want to be a bug, so I’ll go first.”
She takes my joke the way I intended it, glazing over my harsh tone in stride. She hangs her raincoat on the end of the railing. I remove mine and lay it out on the bottom few stairs.
I follow behind her on the steps. She takes them slowly, I assume for my benefit.
I start the climb using both legs, but it becomes evident quickly that my knee is getting to the point where it’s almost unable to bend, much less put pressure on it, so I climb with my good leg, leaning too heavily on the thin, rusting metal railing.
The stairs creak and groan with each step, which doesn’t fill me with a lot of confidence that they won’t just collapse under our weight.
“Miles?”
“Yeah?”
“Give me one of the backpacks.”
I stop and look up at her. She’s only a step or two ahead of me, holding her hand out. My pride can’t take the hit.
“I’m fine, Abby.”
She doesn’t argue, just sighs heavily and continues to climb. I know she’s being thoughtful, but it makes me feel so goddamn weak for her to watch me struggle like this.
Just fucking push through. This isn’t even that bad.
That voice in my head is louder than my logic, and on my next step, I try to use my bad leg to lead, but it’s too weak to support me. I go down, knocking it into the hard, unforgiving stairs.
I cry out before I can stop myself.
“Miles?” The concern in Abby’s voice cracks my heart in two. She clambers back down the stairs, as my side in seconds.
I’m still in the position that I fell into, one hand on the rail, the other on a step. But I can’t bring myself to look at her. I stare at the black metal beneath me, wishing the stairs really would collapse under me so I didn’t have to face her.
This is what I get for trying to push through, for letting my pride get the best of me.
“How can I help you?” she asks with the kind of gentleness that really might break me.
“I’m going to try to sit, and as I pivot, can you take the front backpack off me?”
“Yes,” she says and reaches for the shoulder straps to ready herself.
With a deep, bracing breath, I pivot, Abby peeling the backpack off my front. I end up sitting on a step, my good leg stretched out in front of me, my bad leg bent in the same position I fell in. I’m not quite ready to straighten it yet. Abby sets the backpack on a step below her.
“The picnic backpack. Can we—”
I gesture that I’d like it removed, and she gets the hint, sliding the straps off my shoulder and setting it on a step behind me. She scoots down to sit beside me, setting a gentle hand on my good leg.
To her credit, she says nothing. She could. She could say “I told you so” in about four different ways right now, but she doesn’t. She just sits with me.
I look at her in the dim light of this old lighthouse stairwell, the sound of the rain outside nearly imperceptible through the thick, concrete walls.
She is as beautiful as ever, hair as wet as if she just came out of a shower, but her eyes are bright from the hike and the stair climb, and the ghost of a smile playing around her lips makes me think that she’s as glad to be here with me, even in my injured state, as I am that she’s here.
“Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?” I ask her.
Her ghost smile takes a corporeal form, and she averts her eyes, her cheeks turning pink. “Not today, you haven’t.”
“I’ve mostly just been an ass today, huh?”
“Mostly.” She nudges me with an elbow and leans her head against my shoulder. I press a kiss to the top of her head. “You want to stay here?” Abby asks.
“I don’t know, my butt is starting to hurt more than my knee is. These stairs are not comfortable.”
“Aesthetic, but not comfortable.”
With care, I work to straighten my stiff, swollen knee and then bend it again.
Grimacing, I floss it like this at an excruciatingly slow pace.
Abby stays with me through the process, rubbing circles on my back.
And though every movement hurts, eventually the roaring pain mutes itself, and eventually I can straighten my knee all the way.
Abby moves with me, her hand light on my back as I grip the rail and lift myself to standing, pressing on me when I waver.
I shift my weight, easing onto my bad leg. It’s not great, but it’s not the worst I’ve ever felt. I definitely need to ice it when I get back and could use more pain meds soon.
“Can you make it?” she asks.
I nod and brace myself with a few deep breaths. Abby grabs the backpacks and lets me lead the way, and as much as I hate it, I’m not really in a position to argue about it.
We don’t have to go much farther before a small room opens up to our left.
There’s a large window on one wall, years of weather caked onto it.
Even if it was a nice day, I’m not sure how much we’d really be able to see, but as it stands, there’s not much to look at but sheets of water pouring from a gray sky.
Below us, the ocean lashes against the coastline, angry and unrelenting.
Even through the thick stone, if I listen carefully, I can hear it.
All of it is a little unnerving—the dizzying height, the distinct lack of land—and the only thing separating us from plunging into the roiling waters below is a crumbling, concrete tube.
It’s probably actually very sturdy, but something in my brain doesn’t like being in this building. Maybe it’s how small it is. Maybe it’s imagining a life where I live here by myself in this cramped space. Whatever it is, I’m glad Abby is here. I feel more grounded with her presence.
The room itself is empty, save for the spiders and their webs. If there was ever furniture in this room, it’s long gone now. The ceiling is low, so the room feels small, even with the window. Extending from the wall, there’s a small concrete ledge—a place for someone to sit.
“I think this was the dining area,” Abby says, pointing out where a table would have gone.
I’m trying to pay attention, but my knee is throbbing and my heart rate still hasn’t come down.
Climbing those stairs with an injury took a lot out of me.
It doesn’t help that I’ve skipped the gym the last two mornings, so I’m feeling jittery and on edge.
“I think I need to sit,” I say.
“Do you want to sit on the bench or on the floor? I can lay down the blanket.” Abby starts to unzip the picnic backpack, which is soaked through on the outside. I’m expecting the blanket to be kind of soggy, but when she pulls it out, it looks surprisingly dry.
“The blanket on the floor works. I think stretching out would be good.”
Abby drops the packs and lays out the blanket.
She sets her phone on the bench, face down, her flashlight providing a little more light.
She tries not to hover as I use the edge of the bench to ease myself to the ground and sit with my back against it, but her concern is palpable and the room is small enough that she has nowhere to go, really.
The floor is hard, but it’s a welcome relief from the stair climbing.
Abby pries off her shoes and socks to let them dry out a bit and helps me do the same.
She sits facing me, her arms wrapped around her knees.
“Question for a question?” she prompts. “While we wait out the storm?”
“You first.” I’m having trouble thinking about anything but the dull ache in my knee and the random twinges of pain.
“Will you tell me about your injury?” she asks, propping her chin on her knee. It’s technically a question, but more than that, it’s a request for my vulnerability. In my weakened state, I can’t get much more vulnerable, except for talking about this.
But Abby has been vulnerable with me a lot this week, and while a college version of myself would have bristled at the request, I know better now.
“It happened during a game. Got checked bad and fell wrong, then a couple guys fell on top of me. I tore my ACL and my LCL.”
Her eyebrows knit together in pain, as if the injury were happening to me in real time and not a decade ago.
“Your turn,” she says.
“You can keep asking questions if you want.”
I’m not just offering because I’m still recovering. I want to tell her more. I want to tell her everything, but the rest of the story is stuck somewhere between my chest and my throat.
“How long was the recovery?”