Chapter 14
14
Dexter
“I never thought I would live to see the day my big sister does drugs.”
Janet shoves me, the bony points of her knuckles poking my shoulder when she punches me with her small fist. “I’m not doing drugs , asshole.”
She pops a second medicinal cannabis gummy into her mouth, her mouth twisting to one side as she shoulders through the “interesting taste” she keeps commenting on. She extends the small jar in my direction, offering me one.
I shake my head. “I’m not the one going through chemo.”
She rolls her eyes. “Marijuana can also be enjoyed by people who aren’t dying from cancer,” she points out.
I blanch at the mention of my sister dying, even if it came from her own mouth.
“Anyway, the dispensary dude said my insurance would cover it since it’s being used medicinally. ”
“Well, hopefully it’ll give you your appetite back,” I comment, scanning my eyes over her wasting body. She’ll be coming up on five weeks since she’s had her surgery, but even with all of the cancer out, her doctor still recommended chemo.
The chemo was expected, something the doctor prepared her for, but on the day of her first treatment, she left her apartment in a puddle of tears and anxiety. She couldn’t stop worrying about how she was going to react to the harsh meds in her body. And now with the treatment well in her system, the constant pain, and gradual changes in her appearance causing her to look like an actual cancer patient, those harsh hits on her mental wellbeing haven’t gotten any better.
“Maybe,” she muses, her lids falling heavy when a forceful wave of fatigue takes over her. She stretches through a yawn before grimacing through a sharp intake of breath.
“You okay?”
Her face tenses as she adjusts her position, shifting on the cushioned seats of her couch while wincing from the jerky movements. “Oh, you know. Just…chemo. And cancer. And blah blah blah.”
Her most recent chemo session was yesterday. The first cycle of treatment is already coming to an end, and we’re hoping for some good news for once. She came home throwing up into a plastic bag before she sucked on a popsicle to help with those pesky mouth sores and took a long nap. These chemo sessions are taxing on her. They’re painful and tiring and leech all of the energy from her. She needs days to recover, and even then, she regains barely enough strength to get her through a workday. Luckily, she’s been able to cut back on her work hours without losing her job completely, doing mainly admin work from home. She’d be devastated if she lost her job altogether on top of everything.
Still, she tries to keep a positive attitude through self-deprecating comments and wry jokes about her cancer. But I see her hiding behind that fickle mask of a smile as it occasionally slips, only for her to brush my concern off with indifference. I wish she would talk to me about what she’s afraid of, how she feels, instead of constantly telling me she’s fine.
As the much-needed medicinal cannabis makes its way through Janet’s body and she relaxes a little from her high, my phone buzzes in my pocket. When I pull it out, I see Lucy’s name flash on the screen.
“Hello?”
“Dexter,” she calls. Her voice sounds weary, like she’s a combination of scared and tired. “I’m so sorry to call you like this…”
Well, this can’t be good. I stand from my soft, cushy spot on Janet’s sofa and walk to her kitchen for privacy.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Umm…” she answers, a wavering in her voice that sounds like she’s going to start crying if I ask her if she’s okay again. “My apartment was robbed,” she explains softly. “My whole place is a mess, and they took my MacBook. And this necklace my grandma gave me when I graduated is missing. And—” She starts crying, and the end of her sentence is cut off with a desperate sob. Her cries continue to ring through the phone, and I can’t even explain the irrational rage coursing through me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t have anyone else to call.”
Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck . I’ve never heard her cry, and it’s absolutely gut-wrenching.
I sprint back to the living room and reach for my keys and wallet sitting on the coffee table littered with magazines and half-empty mugs of tea.
“I’ll be right there.”
When I reach the sidewalk at the bottom of Lucy’s apartment building, I immediately spot her. The edge of her thumb is nudged between her teeth, and I can tell she’s shivering even from the distance between us. She’s talking to a police officer, who’s taking notes on a small note pad, occasionally nodding while talking to Lucy in a calm, gentle voice.
“Well,” I hear the officer say as I quietly reach Lucy’s side, “it’s not likely we’ll find the suspect, but it’s good to have it reported. I would file an insurance claim as soon as possible, and we’ll keep our eyes and ears open for any leads.”
It’s then Lucy spots me, just as the officer turns to get into his car. Her eyes immediately start to water at the same time her chin trembles. I pull her into me, letting her fall against my chest, and her shivering skyrockets while my hands run up and down her back. I didn’t realize how panicked and worried I was until I hold her.
“You’re okay,” I whisper. I breathe out a deep sigh into her hair, letting the stress ease off of me, and I impulsively press my lips to her temple. Thank God she’s okay.
“I’m so sorry I had to call you,” she blubbers into my shoulder. “I didn’t know who else…”
I pull away from her, keeping my hands braced on her shoulders. When a lone tear trickles down her cheek, I wipe it with my thumb. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she says, the shivering now flowing through the shakiness of her voice. “The officer said my door was busted open. But now I don’t even know if I forgot to lock it. And I didn’t put away my things. I just left them out, and they—” Her voice is cut off by a sudden sob.
“Let’s go up and get your things. Or what’s left of them, anyway.”
She looks at me, wiping her cheeks. A scowl of confusion creates a small frown to form on her lips. “Get my things? ”
I’m about to do something impulsive, a little rash but circumspect considering what happened to her today. Because how am I supposed to let her stay here by herself tonight? What if the people who robbed her come back? Or that guy I ran into the last time I was here comes knocking at her door for sugar or some shit? That’s a completely logical and rational reason she shouldn’t stay here. It has nothing to do with a small inkling of jealousy. ( Way to convince yourself, Dex.)
It doesn’t matter. Jealous or not, she can’t stay here tonight. Period. Her apartment is a literal crime scene, for crying out loud.
“Stay at my place tonight,” I say softly, being careful not to come off as too pushy. “And we’ll figure something out for you once you’re calmer.”
She lets out a loud sniff and quickly wipes another runaway tear. Instead of answering me, she turns and leads the way to her apartment. When we reach her door on the second floor, my heart drops at the scene left behind. Everything’s been ransacked, and her clothes are strewn on the floor, loose tracks of dirt-covered shoe prints staining them. What little furniture furnished the smallest apartment I’ve ever seen is knocked over, looking like someone tossed it into the studio apartment rather than organized to maximize space. I see broken glass everywhere, a twin-sized mattress lying haphazardly off a bed frame, and a small toaster oven sitting on top of it.
“Lucy,” I whisper. She’s been living in this shit hole for over a month? Even with it being trashed, I can tell it’s been hell living here before the robbery. I peer over at her as she slowly unzips a suitcase that’s somehow magically come out of this ordeal unscathed. She looks almost embarrassed, refusing to meet my eyes while focusing on picking up her clothes off the floor instead. I continue my observation, scanning over what I assume is a “kitchen,” making note of a small hot plate and sink the size of a textbook. “Where’s your bathroom?” I ask, realizing that there’s no other door in this space besides the one we walked through .
She gives me that sheepish, almost embarrassed look again. Instead of answering me, she points to the door left slightly open. Toward the hallway.
My eyebrows shoot up. “Like an outhouse?”
She smirks and rolls her eyes, the first hint of a smile finally peeking through her hellish day. “It’s a communal bathroom,” she explains.
I cup the back of my neck. “How come you didn’t tell me you were living like this?”
“Like how?”
“Like a…” I hesitate, not wanting to come off as judgmental. “Like this .” I wave my hands around me.
“It’s fine, Dex.” Her lips twist to one side, and she chews on the inside of her lip. Her face drops like she might start crying all over again, and I feel like such a jackass.
“Sorry, Luce.” I take a step toward the wardrobe closet that’s surprisingly still in one piece but left open and empty. “You have pretty good storage. And I’m sure you got a steal on the rent. That’s hard to do in the city.”
She nods, looking away from me and focusing her attention on packing her things.
“Look, I didn’t mean that. I just know it can’t be easy living in such a cramped apartment without even a proper bathroom, even if it’s temporary.”
“It’s fine,” she repeats herself, sounding so far from fine I want to punch myself in the gut.
She steps away from her suitcase, now slowly filling with wrinkled clothes and toiletries that were left undamaged. Her foot catches on the edge of the mattress, and she trips toward me. I reach out to her, catching her fall, and she lets out a small squeak. “Sorry,” she whispers with her eyes downturned .
“Lucy,” I say, trying to get her attention with her arms gripped in my hands.
“I’m sure the super will fix the door as soon as I get a hold of him. I just need to?—”
“No,” I argue.
She gives me an incredulous glare. “No?”
“I’m sorry about what I said before. I really am, but you can’t stay here for another two months.”
“Where the hell am I supposed to go?”
Stay with me, I think. I have the spare bedroom I’m going to put her up in tonight, the same one I haven’t been able to fill since Hayden moved out. I want to blurt out the offer for her to stay with me while she’s here, but I feel like it might be too rash for her to take as a sound offer. It definitely doesn’t sound too rash on my end. In fact, it feels like the perfect solution.
I stay silent, holding back the stay with me whisper-chants in my head, and she doesn’t say anything else, almost like her question was completely rhetorical and she just proved a point. Instead, she brushes off my concern with a breezy smile, something Janet would probably do. In fact, I’m noticing how Lucy and Janet are so alike. They’re both so independent, they’d never let a man tell them what to do (believe me, Charles and I know ), and they’d never intentionally burden anyone with their own troubles. I see it in the way Janet is shouldering through her chemo and the way Lucy moved all the way out here without telling her family, knowing they’d most likely overwhelm her with worry and skepticism. I must have done something right in my life to surround myself with strong women full of tenacity and spunk. But right now, it’s definitely not working in my favor.
“Lucy,” I urge again, hoping she’ll see my point and hoping even harder that she herself will ask if she can stay with me instead of coming back to this hellhole .
“Dex, I appreciate you letting me stay at your place tonight, which is probably a smart thing to do considering this damn door doesn’t even lock right anymore, but I’ll be fine once it’s fixed. Plus, like you said, this is temporary. I’m going back to Seattle once this internship is over, and I can pretend like I didn’t spend my days sharing a toilet seat and shower stall with complete strangers.” She says all of this to the floor, to her suitcase, to her toaster oven as she picks it up and places it on the nearest countertop. To every inanimate object in her room except to me.
I try to flip through a mental catalog of things that have worked on Janet in the past. All the things I did as a teenager to get her to do what I wanted. I did threaten to hawk a loogie at her once when she refused to give up the TV remote. Or maybe a bribe? I huff a sigh of frustration. None of that’s going to work. I’m just going to have to stay quiet and let her work through this on her own.
The rest of the time spent in Lucy’s apartment is silent. I replace the mattress onto the bed frame and upright the rest of the small appliances that made their way onto the floor. Lucy fills a garbage bag of ruined items, clothes, blankets, and towels. All items that she can thankfully replace. Except for that necklace. When she’s packed away the last of her belongings into her suitcase and I’ve taken the broken glass in a dustpan down to the dumpster, we survey our work.
“Thanks for your help, Dexter.” She huffs a small sigh and slings a large tote bag over her shoulder at the same time I grip the retractable handle on her suitcase.
I give a close-lipped smile and solemn nod. “Let’s go,” I say before turning to leave the apartment.