Chapter 18
NASH
The key to getting ready in your wife’s hospital bathroom without her knowing is shaving in the shower. My tiny hairs get washed down the drain like I was never here.
Technically, in Sadie’s mind, I never was here. I’m just some stranger.
My heart drops into my chest, but I decide not to dwell on the hurt.
I mean, I have.
I’ve cried.
No, I take that back. I’ve sobbed plenty of times over the last few days.
Always on my own and always in dark places.
But you can only wallow in despair for so many hours a day. Sometimes you have to focus on basic needs like shaving. So I leave the my-wife-doesn’t-remember-me thoughts behind and run my razor over the last corner of my cheek. A small mirror hangs from the spout, showing enough of my clean-shaven face that I’m satisfied with my work.
Sadie will be back from physical therapy in less than ten minutes. I need to clean up the bathroom, get dressed, and be out of here before she arrives. She barely makes eye contact with me right now. I doubt she’d be comfortable knowing I use her bathroom to avoid the forty-minute commute back and forth between our house and the hospital.
Water droplets trickle into my eyes, so I wipe my hands down my face before opening the curtain to grab the towel. My gaze scans the small bathroom, looking for Sadie’s towel, but it’s not here. The options are a tiny washcloth draped over the sink or Sadie’s silky pink robe. Neither are ideal.
I dry my body with the washcloth then reach for her robe, fighting to get my arms through the sleeves. When I bought the silky item for her on Valentine’s Day, I pictured something more romantic than a grown man squeezing into it. I look like Cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation with the robe ending upper thigh. All I need is a trapper hat with earflaps to complete the look. But it’s fine. I just need to cover myself long enough to grab my clothes out of my bag. I would’ve brought them into the bathroom with me, but the room is so tiny, and the shower curtain only partially does its job. I didn’t want to chance everything getting wet. Nobody likes damp underwear; it’s a universal discomfort.
When I’m confident everything is quiet, I push the bathroom door open and dart my eyes around the room, making sure the coast is clear before I move. Thankfully, I had the forward thought to shut the hospital room door. I dash to my bag on the counter and quickly rummage through the few things I packed until I find some briefs.
I bend over, lifting one leg to put them on just as the door opens, spilling light and noise from the hallway into the room. My head jerks over my shoulder. Sadie stands frozen in wide-eyed shock. Forget about the pink silk draped over me. I have enough wits to know my hunched-over position isn’t my best angle. The lower half of my bare butt hangs out the back of my robe. One month ago, my position might have been considered a form of foreplay, but judging by Sadie’s repulsed expression, that’s not the case today.
“What are you doing?” she shrieks, covering her eyes with the palm of her hand—not the kind of reaction I’m used to with her. I wish she’d shut the door since every nurse at the nurse’s station is now craning to see what’s happening.
“This…isn’t…” I hop on one foot while trying to get the other through the leg of my briefs, but my big toe gets stuck on the waistband. The more I force it, the more tangled I become until I lose my balance. Panic surges as I reach for the hospital tray table, but instead of breaking my fall, it rolls back—I’ve never hated wheels more. Arms flail as I look for anything to grab ahold of, but my fate is sealed. I crash to the ground, landing on my stomach, taking down everything on the tray table with me.
Once all the clanging and banging stops, an audible gasp tells me Sadie is no longer shielding her eyes.
“You can see my butt, can’t you?” I grunt.
“Um…” She clears her throat, confirming what I already know. I feel a draft and the bunched-up robe on my lower back. Earlier wasn’t a bad angle. This is a bad angle. It’s a full moon tonight in more ways than one.
“It’s okay.” I recognize Nurse Peggy’s voice—so glad she could join us. “We’re all professionals here. You’ve seen one; you’ve seen them all. Let’s get you on your feet.” Peggy is suddenly by my side, reaching for my arm.
“No!” I wave her away. “I got it!” I’m thinking of the front of the robe and how, at this point, it’s not covering my man parts. “Maybe you guys could wait outside while I get dressed.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Peggy asks, retreating.
“Yep. Only my pride is hurt.”
Peggy laughs. “We’ll give you some privacy.” But as she closes the door, I hear her tell Sadie, “You’re a lucky woman. That’s one cute butt your husband has.”
“I thought you said, ‘You’ve seen one; you’ve seen them all.’”
“I was lying.” Then the door snaps shut.
I press my forehead against the cold linoleum, shutting my eyes as two thoughts run through my mind.
I should’ve done more squats to prepare for this moment.
This is not how I wanted to be reintroduced to my wife.
SADIE
My shoulder blades press into the wall as I wait outside my hospital room.
Plot twist: I married a crossdresser.
It should be shocking, but at this point, nothing surprises me. It’s a new version of Hell each day.
The door swings open, and a fully dressed Nash stares back at me with a humorous tint to his smile. “You’re free to come in. No more indecent exposures. I promise.”
“Too bad I can’t erase the first one from my mind.” I walk past him into my room. For one second, I’m immersed in the sweet smell of his aftershave, causing my senses to perk like they just got a shot of vitamin C.
“I would apologize, but it’s not like you haven’t seen it before.”
I regret glancing back at him—his smile is far too suggestive.
“Oh, so it’s typical of you to prance around in my clothes?” I crawl into my bed, situating my legs under the covers. “No wonder I blocked out our relationship.” There are hints of joking in my voice alongside the clipped bitterness.
“In all fairness, I wasn’t prancing.” He pushes the door closed. My eyes follow until it clicks shut.
Ugh. He’s staying.
“There weren’t any towels in the bathroom, and I didn’t want to be completely naked in case you came in unexpectedly.”
“Which I did.” I watch as he walks to his bag of clothes and begins packing things up.
“Unfortunate timing. Or was it?” He throws me another impish smile.
I suck in a sharp breath, feeling my annoyance build. “What are you doing in my room anyway?”
“I just needed a quick shower, and I didn’t want to drive home when there’s one right here.”
I guess I can share my shower. After all, I’m married to the man.
He finishes with his bag and walks toward me. With each step, my heart tenses until I realize he’s just picking up the stuff that fell onto the ground during his face plant.
“How did your physical therapy go?”
I guess we’re making small talk.
“Great.” I fake a smile to offset my sarcasm. “I got a gold star for passing off my fine motor skills. You’ll be happy to hear I can feed myself.”
“Oh, good.” He blows out an exaggerated breath. “Your ability to hold a spoon is my top concern right now.”
I don’t like the glimmer in his eyes, so I turn my head, looking longingly at the door for someone to come save me, but my family has already left for their hotel, and my nurse won’t come in again until the shift change.
So it’s just me and Nash.
Nash and me.
“You want me to leave, don’t you?”
I whip my head to him, feigning innocence. “No, I’m just tired. That’s all.”
“You’re lying.” He laughs good-naturedly, which is a better response than him being offended. “But it’s okay. I’ll go.” He grabs the remote attached to the bed and dims the lights before putting it in my reach, then he pulls the blankets, spreading them over my body. I watch each kind gesture in silence, feeling my guilt grow. “I’ll go get you more ice.” He shakes my water bottle as he heads for the door.
I’m pushing him away. I know it’s unfair, but it’s how I protect myself. My mind drifts to Annie and all the answers she couldn’t give me. I’m not sure I want the answers to my questions, but when Nash walks back into the room, I decide to try.
“I can’t figure out why I married you.” I didn’t mean for my words to be so tactless. I quickly try to soften them. “I mean?—”
“It’s fine.” Nash gives me another one of his easy laughs. “I’ve wondered that same thing for years. You’re way out of my league.”
Hardly. He’s attractive, and by the look of his clothes, shoes, and day bag, he’s wealthy, or successful, or both.
He sets the water bottle on my tray table. “Do you want the real answer of why you married me, or were you just thinking out loud?”
“It’s hard to figure out how I went from being with Stetson to being married to you.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Disappointing, huh?”
I roll my lips together. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
Nash slowly drops to the edge of my mattress, leaning his back against the footrail of the bed. He kicks one leg up, mirroring my position from the opposite end. I might’ve been uncomfortable with his nearness, but he’s so calm and casual that I don’t feel too anxious about it.
He cocks one brow. “After everything you’ve seen of me tonight, isn’t it obvious why you fell for me?”
Is he implying I was shallow enough to fall for his body—more specifically, his tight butt and thighs? I blink back at him, unsure how to respond, because, at this point, falling for his good looks seems more plausible than falling for his personality.
“I’m obviously talking about my charm and wit.” Judging by the gleam in his eyes, he was not talking about those things.
Was he this flirtatious when he was my boss? I’m one step away from calling Human Resources and slapping him with a sexual harassment complaint—if his place of employment even has an HR department.
“I’m just not convinced that we’re actually married.”
“Really?” He crosses his arms, leaning back even more, as if enjoying himself. “So the wedding, marriage certificate, and the joint apartment…none of that is real?”
“All of that can be real, but the marriage is fake.”
“And why would we need a fake marriage?”
“Maybe you’re blackmailing me. You found out something about me that I didn’t want people to know, and now you’re forcing me into this marriage.”
I’m grasping at straws. We both know it.
Nash does his best to hold back his smile, but he’s not fooling anyone. “So what is this big thing I’m holding over you?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
He nods a few times as if he’s thinking through everything I just said. “Or is it more likely that you moved to Chicago because you were bored with your bland life and bland relationship? Once you got here, your boss—that’s me, by the way”—he says it like a sidenote—“charmed the socks off of you until you couldn’t resist falling head over heels for him.”
“No, that doesn’t seem likely. I loved Stetson. Why would I leave him for you?”
The first sign of hurt dots his eyes, and I feel terrible for putting it there.
“I…uh…” My gaze drops as I scratch the back of my head. “Sorry, that came out worse than I intended.”
“Listen, I know it’s easier to focus on what you remember than what you don’t. I get why you’re hung up on pushing me away, but there’s so much more to our relationship and life than those first details of how we got together. I hoped you’d want to know about the other stuff—the things that made us great together, the life we’ve built.”
That’s the stuff I’m not ready to hear.
“I can’t handle everything right now. I just need a little crumb of information about how we came to be.”
“A crumb of information? Okay, I can give you that.” He stares back at me, and I try to find myself in his green eyes, but nothing’s there. “So, back to the beginning. You applied for my internship in Chicago, and I thought you were pretty amazing, so I hired you. My gut has never been wrong.”
I remember Professor Takimori mentioning an internship in Chicago that I should apply for, but that’s where my memory ends.
“So I got the internship, moved to Chicago, immediately fell in love with you, and broke up with Stetson?”
His lips press into a small smile. “It was a little more involved than that.”
“I would hope so.”
“Falling for you were some of the best times of my life. I’ll tell you every little detail if you want.” He holds my gaze, and I panic, knowing his mind replays scenes from our love story I don’t remember. It’s like an inside joke I’m not privy to.
I break his stare and force a yawn, hoping he catches the drift.
“No, it’s okay. That’s probably a big enough crumb for tonight.”
“You better get some rest.” He stands, thankfully taking my hint.
I nod, feeling tired now that he said something about it.
Nash slings his bag over his shoulder and walks to the door. He stops, reaching into the front zipper pocket. “I have your phone. I can keep it safe for you if it’s too overwhelming right now, or maybe it will help you see that there’s nothing fake about our marriage.”
He extends the device out, waiting for me to answer.
“I guess a little proof might help things.”
“It actually doesn’t have all three years on it.” He takes a step forward to place it on my tray table. “You dropped your old phone in a pool and hadn’t backed things up for a while, but I think there’s six or seven months of stuff on there to look through.”
“That should be enough for me to decide if we’re really in love,” I joke.
“I promise you.” His lips lift. “We’re really in love.”
Then why don’t I feel it?
He turns, and I watch as he opens the door.
“Where do you sleep?” I blurt, not sure why I care.
“If you need me, I’ll be right outside. Just like always.” His smile is the last thing I see before he shuts the door.
I can’t understand the comfort I feel from having Nash close by. It’s confusing and unjustified. But I don’t want to be alone.
Tears threaten to fall. I glance at my phone as a way to thwart them.
Not tonight.
My head is already spinning.
I can’t take any more crumbs—big or small.