Seventeen #3
“Please,” Dane pleaded with her, and really, there wasn’t a woman alive who could say no to the man.
“He needs to go back and forth and weigh things out and absorb all the information at his disposal. That’s simply how his mind works.
It’s his process, and you have to do this for him if your intent is truly to help. ”
“It is.”
“Then,” he said, smiling gently at her, “please.”
She took a breath and turned from Dane to face me. “I’m ready.”
I grinned. “I’m not scary.”
“No, I know. Go ahead.”
I smiled at her, and her eyes widened just a little, like maybe she was seeing me for the first time.
“Can I still have sex?”
“Oh.” Not what she had expected. “Oh, um, we’re asking about …” She cleared her throat. “Okay, yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.” She was emphatic.
“I can still feel everything when I have sex?”
“Mr. Har— Jory, are you sure you’re comfortable with your brother being—”
“Can I?”
“Yes.” She nodded, understanding how it was going to work, the volley and my rhythm.
“Sam just has to hold me ’cause my legs won’t work.”
“Right, or you can be on your back, and your legs could drape over his shoulders.”
I smiled. She was cool, my doctor.
“Can I still get hard?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately.
“And I can have an orgasm too?”
“Absolutely. There’s nothing wrong with your body that would disrupt that.”
“Okay.” I took a breath.
“Okay.” Her smile got big, and I saw the surprise on the faces of the other two doctors with her—one resident, one attending. Maybe she was normally the scary one.
“I won’t have one of those bags, will I? I can still pee and take a dump, sitting down?”
“No, and yes.”
“I just have to move myself from the chair to the toilet and back?”
“Yes.”
“But I can get anywhere in the chair?”
“Yes.”
“And again, only my legs don’t work, but everything else is good to go?”
“Right.”
“Okay.” I sighed, taking a deep breath, and then said again, “Okay.”
“But, Mr. Harcourt, we don’t even know if—”
“I’ll be all right,” I stated, smiling at her. “I can make love to him.” I pointed at Sam. “I can pick up the kids I’m gonna have and roll them around my house, and I can still take care of myself and work and help provide for my family.”
She moved closer to me. “I don’t want you to give up before we’ve even done anything.”
“I’m not giving up. I’ll try everything, but it’s important for me to know that some things won’t change, and for certain, I can still service my man.”
“Yes, if you’re in love, the physical piece is very important.”
“Exactly.”
I did not miss the fact that she was relieved to be done. Sam was massaging the bridge of his nose, and Dane looked as Dane always looked—cool, unaffected, and poised. It would take more than questions about sex to fluster my brother.
Over the next two days, people came to see me.
Aaron was there and stayed all day. He talked to Sam a lot, which was strange, and Dane, and was introduced to my new friends—Ipo, Tetsuo and his wife, and all the surfers.
Kawika brought me the paper with my name in it and told me that he had not wanted to see my name in the news, but there it was. I told him that it wasn’t my fault.
“Jory, you the kine guy that stuffs happen to you, yeah?”
“No, not—”
“Yes,” Dane assured Kawika.
“I figured.”
To thank Tetsuo’s family for saving my life when I was in the middle of the ocean, Dane had two coolers of food shipped by courier to Chicago for Moses. It was the least, he said, he could do.
My brother, as always, was a big hit. The girls who had found me adorable and Sam stunning were all in agreement that Dane was the pick of the litter. I just rolled my eyes.
Hayes came to see me to wish me a speedy recovery and told me that he would certainly call me if he should need anything professionally. Under Dane’s watchful eyes, no more was said.
Aaron brought Jaden the second day, and we talked about cooking school and that I would call him when I got home if he gave me his number. He gave it to me quickly, asked me to please call, and told me that Aaron and he had already decided, mutually, to call an end to their relationship.
Sitting on the bed beside me, Jaden sighed deeply.
“What?”
He was looking at Sam. “I want what you have, Jory. I want my own man who only wants me. Once I’m done with school, I’ll have something to offer.”
“You have a lot to offer now,” I assured him. “But, yeah, being self-sufficient? There’s really nothing like it.”
He seemed to be looking forward to it.
“What’d you do?” Sam asked me later that night when we were alone again, Dane having gone back to his hotel to get some sleep. “Fix everybody while you were here?”
I explained about Jaden and Aaron, and Sam agreed that he could see me having both men in my life.
“I’m sorry?”
He shrugged those muscular shoulders of his. “I told Aaron it was fine by me if you guys wanted to hang out, and I might even have a meal with him myself once in a while. Maybe.”
This was news. “You hate Aaron Sutter.”
“I used to. Now I feel sort of bad for him. I mean, if the roles were reversed—never mind.”
“What?”
“If the roles were reversed and he had you, I couldn’t just be your friend, J. I’d grab you and leave for someplace without an extradition treaty.”
“That’s so romantic.”
“You wouldn’t think it was if you loved Aaron Sutter instead of me.”
“That could never happen.”
“No, it couldn’t.”
I smiled and took his face in my hands. “It’s really okay with you? Me and Aaron, I mean.”
“We’ll see how it goes. As long as he doesn’t fuck up and try an’ fuck you, we should be all right.”
“Aww, look at you with the growth and all.”
“Shut up,” he said as he leaned forward to kiss me.
“And stop—”
“Swearing,” he growled. “I know.”
I would have given him more crap, but he kissed me, so I couldn’t.
On Monday of the following week, I finally got to go home.