Chapter 26
Navy ‘Nay’ Prescott
Weeks Later
Iheard Tasha crying before I heard what she was saying.
At first, her voice blended into the other sounds.
I had gotten used to since being moved to the rehabilitation floor by now but the volume of my television inside my room had been turned down so far that I could only hear the soft rise and fall of people talking without making out the words.
I kept my eyes closed and Tasha thought I was asleep.
To be fair, I had spent most of the last few days either sleeping or pretending to.
The medicine made it easy to disappear whenever I didn’t feel like dealing with anybody.
Every few hours, a nurse came in asking me to rate my pain, as if there was a number large enough to cover everything that hurt not only my body, but my pride and the empty space beneath the blanket where part of me used to be.
Most days, I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to reassure my family that I was going to be okay when I wasn’t sure I believed it.
I didn’t want to hear how blessed I was to be alive, though I understood what they meant.
I knew people had died from less than what happened to me.
I knew the surgeons had saved my life. However, that knowledge didn’t stop me from waking up some mornings and reaching for a leg that wasn’t there.
Tasha shifted in the chair beside my bed. The vinyl gave a soft groan beneath her weight, followed by the sound of her sniffing and pulling a tissue from the box on the table. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” she whispered.
I didn’t move. Her voice had been trembling since she arrived, but I assumed it was because of me.
Everybody got that look when they first walked into my room.
Their eyes traveled down my body before they caught themselves and hurried back toward my face, smiling too wide because they didn’t know what else to do.
Tasha had been different though. She came every day, sat beside me, talked about whatever foolishness was happening in the world, and never stared at the blanket.
Still, something had been off with her all morning.
She had barely touched the coffee she brought, and she kept twisting the tissue around her fingers until it tore and I heard it all.
“I know you can’t hear me,” she continued with her voice breaking around the words. “Maybe that’s why I can finally say it.”
Well, that was promising. I thought to myself. I kept my breathing slow and even.
“I love you, Navy. You know that, right?”
Inside my head, I answered her. Apparently, I didn’t know anything anymore, so you might wanna be more specific.
Tasha sniffed again. “You’re my sister, not my friend, but my sister. I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you.”
There were certain sentences that never led anywhere good. Nobody started with I would never intentionally hurt you unless they were about to explain exactly how they had hurt you. My eyes stayed closed, but every part of me was awake now.
“My mom’s treatment got expensive,” Tasha said.
“More expensive than I told anybody. The insurance wasn’t covering everything, and she needed help with medication, transportation, all kinds of stuff.
I was borrowing money from everybody. Taking out loans.
Putting shit on credit cards I knew I couldn’t pay back. ”
Her chair creaked again. I pictured her leaning forward, elbows resting against her knees, her face buried in one hand. “I went to Rome.”
My fingers almost moved beneath the blanket. Of course she went to Rome. Rome had always enjoyed being needed. It made him feel important. Powerful. He could turn a favor into a chain around somebody’s neck before they realized they had agreed to wear one.
“I didn’t go to him trying to do anything with him,” she said quickly, as if my fake-sleeping self had accused her. “I went to ask for help. I thought because he was your husband, and because he knew my family, he might lend me the money. I was going to pay him back.”
A bitter laugh stayed trapped behind my closed lips. Rome didn’t lend anything without collecting more than he gave, girl you know that.
“He said he would help,” she continued. “But he wanted something in return.” Tasha stopped talking long enough for the silence to become heavy. I could hear her breathing through her mouth, trying not to cry loudly enough to wake me. “He said if I wanted the money, I had to sleep with him.”
The words hit me differently than I expected.
There wasn’t one sharp pain, no explosion of anger either.
It was more like another piece of something rotten settling into place.
My husband had slept with my best friend.
My best friend had slept with my husband.
Neither fact should’ve surprised me, considering the two people involved, but betrayal didn’t care whether it arrived late to the party. It still found somewhere to sit.
“The first time, I told him no,” Tasha whispered. “I left and I called everybody I could think of. I tried to figure something else out, but my mom needed that treatment. They were calling me about balances, and I didn’t know what to do. So, I went back.”
A tear slid from the corner of my eye and disappeared into my hair. I hoped she didn’t notice.
“I kept telling myself it was just sex. That I wasn’t taking him from you because I didn’t want him. I hated him for making me do it, and I hated myself for agreeing, but every time I needed more money, he reminded me what the arrangement was.”
Making her do it. That part irritated me.
Rome had used her desperation. He had seen a woman terrified of losing her mother and turned her fear into an opportunity.
That was exactly the kind of man he was.
But Tasha had still opened her legs to my husband and came around me afterward as though nothing had happened; both things could be true.
Rome could be a predator, and Tasha could still have betrayed me.
“I should’ve told you,” she said. “I wanted to so many times. Every time you talked about him cheating, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to say something, but I was scared you’d hate me. Then I got pregnant.”
My heart slowed and I thought about the abortion and the father she refused to name or the strange look on her face when I asked who she had been seeing all along it was Rome. I nearly opened my eyes then, but I stopped myself and let her finish.
“It was his,” she admitted, crying openly now.
“That baby was Rome’s.” The tissue tore again between her fingers.
“I couldn’t have it. I couldn’t look at you knowing I was carrying your husband’s baby, and I couldn’t bring a child into that mess.
I knew what kind of man he was. I knew he wouldn’t care about that baby any more than he cared about what he was doing to us. ”
Us? Interesting choice of word.
“I’m so sorry, Navy. I swear to God, I’m sorry. You almost died, and I’ve been sitting here every day feeling like the worst person alive because you still think I’m somebody you can trust.”
That part hurt more than the rest. Not the sex and not even the pregnancy.
The fact that she knew exactly what she had taken from me and let me keep handing her more.
I had trusted Tasha with parts of myself I didn’t trust anybody else with.
She had seen me bruised, scared, confused and she knew what Rome had done inside our marriage, and all the while, she carried another piece of him behind my back.
I wanted to sit up and ask her how many times.
But what would the answers change? Rome had already taken enough from me.
I wasn’t giving him the last real friendship I had too.
That didn’t mean everything between Tasha and me would go back to normal because normal was gone.
I had learned that the hard way. Some things could be forgiven without ever being trusted again.
Tasha loved me and I believed that. She had also slept with my husband for money and hidden his pregnancy inside her body until she decided to end it, I believed that too.
Both truths would have to live in the same place.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” she whispered. “I don’t even deserve it. I just couldn’t let something happen to you without saying it, even if you never heard me.”
Well, congratulations. I heard every damn word.
Her hand covered mine. For a moment, I thought she might feel how tense my fingers had become, but she only held them gently between hers. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I love you.”
I stayed still and after a few minutes, she stood and gathered her purse. Her hand touched the top of my head before she leaned down and kissed my forehead. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
The door opened and closed behind her. I waited until her footsteps disappeared down the hallway before opening my eyes.
The ceiling had become the most familiar thing in my life with white tiles, fluorescent lights, a small brown stain near one vent that I had counted at least fifty times when I couldn’t sleep.
I stared at it while Tasha’s confession replayed inside my head.
I wasn’t going to confront her and maybe that made me weak.
At that point, I didn’t care which one it was.
I had come close enough to death to understand that some battles didn’t deserve the pieces they took from you.
Tasha would go to her grave believing I never heard her.
I would go to mine knowing exactly what she had done.
I could still love her. I just wouldn’t ever trust her with all of me again.