Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“The fish tank is a nice touch,” Cali mused. “We should take a pic for Set Dec for our doctor’s waiting room.”
“The burbling would infuriate Sound,” Jory muttered.
“Right, of course. Crap.”
Cali took in the posh clinic and couldn’t shake the feeling they were still at the studio. Her experiences with doctor’s offices were from the national health-care school of interior design: gray, utilitarian, and Brutalist. Doctor’s offices had occupied no small portion of Cali’s childhood. Whether it was renewing her mom’s prescriptions or finding a different doctor in order to double them, or taking Patsy to the pediatrician when their mom wasn’t around. She didn’t remember ever going for herself, but did remember what it felt like to wait in those purgatorial spaces while bracing for news.
This place didn’t feel like a doctor’s office at all. It had hardwood floors softened with bespoke rugs and Regency side tables snuggled between wingback chairs, all enveloped by calming classical music and the smell of lavender. “Why is this office so fancy?”
Jory glanced up from his intake form. “Is it?”
Cali took in his sheltered innocence and sighed. He was so from money. “I come from the land of socialized medicine. We don’t have exotic fish tanks in our doctor’s offices. And I’ve seen my fair share of doctor’s offices.”
Jory buried his face in his intake form. “Nice furniture doesn’t mean they can help you.”
“I think here, the fancier the office, the better the care.”
“When you’re dying, you’re dying.”
Cali went quiet and took a quick assessment of Jory’s state of mind. She was a master at judging a person’s mood when they were teetering at the edge of crisis, and Jory showed all the signs: a bleak quality in his voice, fingers gripping the pen until his knuckles turned white, his other hand about to snap the clipboard in two. He finished the form with an agitated scribble and shot out of his chair to dump it on the desk, then jammed his hands in his pockets and sat back down.
Jory clearly had bad memories of doctor’s offices too, but he wasn’t about to ’fess up about it. Cali’s quick triage told her she had better keep his mind off things, or he would bolt.
She stood up and walked calmly to the complimentary green tea service. She’d read in a book once that the simple act of holding a cup of tea gave people suffering from trauma a sense of calm they couldn’t get from medication. Something about keeping the hot liquid balanced on the delicate saucer. The book was set in early 1900s Halifax, when they had actual china, but this clinic’s chichi recycled paper cups with a bamboo print would have to do.
She prepared two cups and brought them over, offering him one.
“Oh, no thanks.”
“I’m not going back over there. It’s too far.”
“You have it.”
“I have my own. Take the tea.”
He rolled his eyes and took the cup as she sat back down. He wrapped two hands around it like it was a pole tethering him from being blown away in a tornado. But after a moment of staring into its golden-green depths, he began to calm.
She should be the one panicking. Here she was, in another doctor’s office, supporting someone—who wasn’t a family member—through possible disaster. For some reason however, this felt less loaded. Maybe it was because Jory was so put together the rest of the time that watching him be vulnerable was a relief. Plus, she couldn’t leave him. She knew what it meant to face uncertain news alone.
And when facing uncertain news, it was always best to distract. “Sometimes when you’re dying, you’re dying. But in my experience, dying can be a slippery thing—literally.”
Jory gave her the side-eye. “What does that even mean?”
Cali traced her finger around the cup’s rim. “One Christmas Eve I had to get my mom to the hospital pretty fast.”
“On Christmas Eve? Why?” Jory swiveled as much as the wingback chair would allow.
She squinted at the ceiling to recall the spark of that night’s circumstances. “Oh, she’d had a bad night with her boyfriend Rick and decided to teach him a lesson by swallowing a bunch of pills.”
Jory took a deep inhale. “You say that like it’s no big deal.”
“Well, there was a certain”—Cali tipped her head to the side—“I wouldn’t say regularity to it, but let’s just say I had plans in place.”
“Why are all your stories so flippantly dark?”
“It’s the northern sensibility, but never mind about that.” She dismissed him with a wave. “That’s not part of the story.” She put her tea down and turned in her own wingback chair, scooching it closer to his, the scraping sound eliciting a disapproving glower from the carefully groomed receptionist. Cali swung a leg over the arm and let it rest on Jory’s hard thigh. She was never prepared for the jolt that came when touching him, and she shivered as the charge washed over her skin. She knew she was being inappropriate, but the contact would ground him. She was rewarded by the relaxing of his shoulders as he shook his head over her low-class antics in this high-class doctor’s office. “This night, my usual backups weren’t around because, well, it was Christmas Eve, and it was snowing like crazy, so it would take forever for someone to come, so Patsy and I got her into the car and I drove.”
Jory interrupted with what he probably assumed was a logical question. “Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”
“Didn’t want to get into child services paperwork.” Cali felt the echoes of dread in remembering how afraid she was. That she would lose Patsy to foster care along with the delicate security Cali had built at home. She wiped the cloud from her memory.
“Child services? But you drove.”
“I was fourteen, and Patsy was ten. We wanted to avoid contact with authority as much as possible. Stop distracting me.”
This was usually the point in the story where the other person said something like, “You were fourteen?” or “Weren’t you scared?” or “How did you do it?” Jory stayed silent, listening without judgment, patiently waiting for the tale to unfold. He was hard to hook, but when he was in, the story was the most important thing in the world to him. His focus was on her now, not the test, and she’d have to keep him here.
“I’d been watching my mom drive for a while, cataloguing how it all worked and in what sequence to prep for this type of eventuality. Plus, my mom had just bought a 1980 Camaro, which was totally stupid considering our money situation, but a super-cool car, and I was itching to drive it. Buuuuuut watching someone drive and actually driving are two different things.”
“You don’t say,” he said dryly.
“Right? Driving in a snowstorm is next level, and driving a Camaro in a snowstorm is approaching boss.” Jory’s brow furrowed, so she explained: “The rear-wheel drive makes it easy to fishtail, as well as to get stuck in snow. It was not a smart purchase.”
She took his curled free hand, opened it, and began tracing his fingers. She marveled over their contours, the rough spots, the softness of the skin in between, the strength that lay dormant as the tension seeped out of them. She lowered her voice to an intimate murmur, setting the scene. “It was actually a really beautiful night. Perfect white-Christmas snow, heavy and soft. The kind that mutes everything, making the world so, so quiet. But it’s also a little wet, which means it’s hard to drive through, and as it gets colder, it lays a bed of ice underneath you can’t necessarily see. But, you know, needs must and all that.”
Cali remembered Patsy in the rearview mirror, wide-eyed and scared, running her hands through their mom’s hair, telling her it was going to be okay. Cali had checked to make sure their mom was lying on her side so she wouldn’t choke on anything coming up, but Patsy had already maneuvered her into position, despite how small she herself was.
“So there I was, hands gripped on the steering wheel, back straight”—Cali sat forward in her chair to demonstrate, bringing her hands up to an imaginary wheel but keeping her leg on his to maintain their connection—“barely moving, windshield wipers on high, and driving about thirty an hour.”
“That fast?” Jory exclaimed.
“Oh, thirty kilometers , I mean. So, eighteen miles? Ish? The snow plows hadn’t gone through our neighborhood yet, and some woman was out cross-country skiing down the sidewalk. She was going faster than we were.”
Jory’s jaw dropped. “Someone was skiing down the sidewalk? Is that common?”
Cali shrugged. “People do it, but it’s not a usual mode of transportation, no. Anyway, Patsy was starting to freak out in the back, so I turned on the radio so she could sing. As you know, she loves to sing.”
“What was the song?”
Cali stopped at that, fondness creeping into her chest. No one had asked that before, and to Cali, it was an important detail. “ ‘Love Shack.’ ”
“Nice.” He nodded with appreciation. An image of Jory singing along to the classic when he was alone in his car filled her mind. She tried not to smile at how cute he was.
“Yeah, we were really belting it out. And then I could see the hospital and felt this rush of accomplishment that I’d done it and started singing even louder. But the hospital was up on this hill”—Cali demonstrated the steep angle with her hand—“and when we stopped at the light, we started sliding back. Patsy was shouting my name, and I could feel I was losing control of the car, and the radio was blaring, and I jammed on the gas and the wheels spun and spun, and we slid back farther and farther.”
Cali was fully on the edge of her chair now, arms waving in description, features mimicking her panic. Jory’s mouth gaped, his attention only on her. “And I was trying to remember what to do, when the wheels caught on something and shot us forward, through the red light.” Cali slapped her hands to show their forward thrust. “The car swerved with the momentum, and my sister was screaming, and I was screaming at her to shut up, and Mom was groaning, and the car started spinning, and I literally let go of the wheel and did this.” Cali slapped her hands over her eyes.
“Oh my God.”
“And we whirled and screamed and whirled and screamed, and then … we stopped.” Cali went quiet, keeping her hands over her face for dramatic effect. “And I looked out”—Cali peeked through her fingers—“and we’d landed right into a parking spot nearest the ER.”
Jory snorted out a laugh of disbelief. “Fools and drunks.”
“Sorry?”
“My dad always says, ‘God protects fools and drunks.’ ”
“Well, he was protecting both that night. It was the best parking job I’ve ever executed.”
Jory laughed louder and Cali smiled at the sight, thinking his joy was something she could watch for a long time. “So just remember, when I drive you home, you’re going with a woman who’s got mad skills.”
He grinned. “Oh, I know you’ve got mad skills.”
Cali pursed her lips and leaned back, feeling shy and proud at the same time.
He coughed out the last laugh and settled. “Was she okay?”
“Who?”
“Your mom.”
“Oh, right.” Cali tried to remember where she was in the story. “Well, all the spinning made her puke. On my sister, which Patsy obviously wasn’t happy about, but all the pills came up, so we ended up not having to go in. I drove us back home and threw them both in the bathtub.”
Jory went quiet. The silence stretched as she watched him turn the story over in his mind. Cali glanced away, self-conscious, thinking about that night. How she’d since turned the incident into a cocktail-party story to amuse people over her colorful upbringing. But at the time, she’d been petrified. “I don’t usually tell that part of the story.” Then, quickly switching gears, “Oh, they have candy,” she exclaimed.
Cali stood up and walked to the reception desk counter, ignoring the receptionist’s cool regard, and grabbed the bowl. She offered it to Jory, who shook his head. “Can’t eat or drink anything until after.”
“Oh right. Duh.” She grabbed one for herself before returning the bowl and sitting back down.
“How is your sister?” he asked softly.
“She’s alright. This particular relationship meltdown has hit her hard. She’s been quiet and sober, which is odd.”
They both stared at his hands, which were loosely linked. “What does your sister think you’re doing when you’re not there? You know, when we’re …”
“She knows we’re hooking up.”
Jory’s shoulders stiffened. “Does she wonder if you’ll break your rule to keep things casual?”
“No. She knows how stubborn I am. I’ve spent too many years cleaning up my mom and sister after their relationships fall apart. They go all in.” She turned to Jory in time to see him flinch. “And afterward, there’s nothing left.”
“Mr. Blair?” A nurse appeared in the doorway, and Jory looked up at her in surprise, as though just remembering where he was and why.
Cali felt a sense of accomplishment at having distracted him for so long. She’d distract him again with something more physical later. For now she gave him an easy smile of support. “Get in there, tiger. You’ll do great. And when you come back, I’ll have a candy waiting.”
Jory stayed in place for a moment and then leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Thank you.” He squeezed her hand and straightened to follow the nurse inside.
Cali felt strangely flustered. She’d never been thanked for the circus tricks she pulled to get someone through a hard time. Mostly they went unnoticed, but Jory somehow saw them and was grateful. The smile drifted from Cali’s face as she sat back to wait, the familiar sense of dread washing over her. How her life might change with the outcome of this visit, not only in regard to Jory’s health but also in what they were starting to mean to each other. She wondered if maybe she shouldn’t have come with Jory. Maybe she should have just dropped him off at the office and waited outside in the car to make sure he didn’t skip out. But the thought of leaving him alone was inconceivable.
And as she settled into the bougie chairs to wait, the thought of not leaving him alone, in general, wasn’t horrible . Maybe it wasn’t so much a feeling of dread this time over the outcome of the doctor’s visit, but the possibility of not seeing him once her job was done. She rolled it around in her mind, in her body, searching for the impulse to flee or destroy, and instead found the strangest hope that an actual relationship wasn’t impossible. It didn’t have to be fraught with heartache. She could want more.
She could be safe.
An hour later, an orderly wheeled a doped-up Jory out the front door of the clinic, where Cali collected the keys to the Jeep from the valet. Nope, this was definitely not socialized medicine. While Cali climbed in, the orderly helped a disgruntled Jory, who was ineffectually fighting him every step, into the car.
Once firmly buckled in, Cali put the car in gear—a stick no less, how manly—and drove them to their condos. She glanced over at Jory, whose head was listing to the side, his eyes trying to focus in between battles for consciousness.
“You okay there, sugar?” she asked. She couldn’t help but smile. It was quite a sight to see Jory incapacitated.
He turned his eyes to her and heaved out a heavy sigh. “You’re so pretty. You look so good driving this car. You could drive me in a snowstorm anytime.”
“I’ll put that on my r é sum é . Jory Blair says Cali Daniels can drive him in a snowstorm anytime .”
He huffed out a laugh, and Cali returned her focus to the road. “You’re always doing that,” he mumbled.
“Doing what?” She changed lanes to get away from a piece of tire in the road. “Why are there always shredded bits of tire on the shoulders of Atlanta highways? Do cars just spontaneously lose chunks of rubber as they drive along?”
“You’re always deflecting compliments. And you take care of everybody. Who takes care of you ?”
Cali shot a look at him. He looked deep in thought but was probably just drowsy from the sedative. “Maybe if you had more snowstorms in Southern California, you’d have to look after people too,” she joked.
“No snowstorms. Storms on the ocean, though. Colossal gales across a vast abyss.” His lids drifted closed. “Your eyes are like the ocean when it storms, churning green and brown.”
“Sounds gross.”
“No. No. It’s wild, majestic, terrifying, and beautiful. I’ve imagined your eyes changing color as you watch the shifting ocean.”
“From what I hear the ocean’s mostly blue.”
Jory’s eyes startled open. “What? You’ve never seen the ocean?”
“Nope.”
Jory lifted a hand to her hair, where he pet her clumsily. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I don’t know if it’s the saddest thing.”
“You’ll come to my beach house.” Cali glanced over, and he was staring at her intently, resolve in his eyes. “I want you to see. The storms, the colors.”
Cali turned back to the road.
“It’s my favorite place in the world,” he slurred. “I’ve thought about you so many times there, your hair whipping in the wind, you laughing at the force of it.”
Cali wondered what it would be like to go to Jory’s beach house and stare at the ocean. To take something for herself, to be with someone who didn’t want anything from her, who actually brought ease and a healthy kind of excitement to her life. Someone who brought her inspiration and awe.
“I’d take you there now if I didn’t … if I wasn’t …”
Cali waited for him to finish his sentence but when she looked back over at him, he was asleep.