TWENTY-ONE The Cupcake
DOMINIC: JANUARY
This sleeping in the same bed with not just a woman but with two other full-grown men should probably feel weirder than it does. And maybe the occasional contact that I have with Jerome and Zach should bother me. But it doesn’t. Three nights back, I turned over in the dark to find Sadie clinging to one shoulder and Jerome using the other like a pillow.
I blinked at the ceiling for a few beats, decided to say fuck it, and conked out positioned like I already was.
Whatever.
It’s funny as hell to me that Zach is the only one who’s more than a bit iffy about this. Anytime he winds up next to either me or Jerome, he’ll put himself as far to the outside of the mattress as he can. He’s like some first-grade boy nervous about the other kids having cooties.
It’s led to some pranks.
Recently, Jerome caught my eye and nudged our dancer pal just enough for him to lose his balance there on the edge. Zach yanked his eyes open when it happened in real-time, yelping as he landed with a thud on the floor. And Jerome, that fucker, did an excellent job at pretending it was an accident.
“Oh, sorry there, man. Didn’t mean to overcrowd you.”
I snort at the memory of that livid look on Zach’s face.
I’ve come to understand that as much as Jerome has this big, nothing-gets-to-me attitude, he has a dry yet diabolical sense of humor. I’m ninety-seven percent sure that he’s the one who keeps moving my aluminum water bottle to various locations while I work out in the gym.
Prick.
Good thing we get along so well.
I’ve kept up with my Zoom calls better lately, and I’m preparing for one tonight which is New Year’s Eve. Paisley never handles disturbances to her routine well, so having her sound asleep way before any of the evening staff make a commotion is important.
She might not be able to hear anything, but that doesn’t mean the extra hyper vibe won’t mess with her if she’s not already out.
“You’re sticking to her usual schedule, right?” I ask George once I’m on.
“Yeah, one hundred percent. She’s been more restless over the past week, so I might give her a low-dose sedative to make everything easier, anyway.”
I’m instantly worried. “What do you mean restless?”
“Just tossing and turning mostly. She’s been having a tough time settling back down.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before now?” I’m so pissed off, but it’s mostly at myself. My sister needs me, and I’m MIA.
“This isn’t especially new. It’s been on and off for a while now. It’s not impacting her significantly, but I thought I should mention it since it’s still going on. But you shouldn’t let it alarm you. Being here in person is unlikely to make a difference. It may just be a phase.”
A phase, my ass. She wasn’t doing this shit when I was there to visit her all the time.
I want to sprint to Sadie right this second and tell her I have to go back to Boston. That’s my knee-jerk reaction. Yet for the first time ever, I’m torn. My priority is Paisley. It always will be. But I feel obligated to do right by Sadie, too. She needs me here to help her just like she needs Jerome and Zach.
Well, if you can call providing hours of climaxes helping her.
I do need to get Sadie past this bump in the road. Abandoning her would feel wrong. She’s no longer just another client to me. I care about her. But I can’t neglect my sister, either.
I don’t know what to do.
“Did you hear me?” George is saying, and I tune back into him.
“Say again?”
“Paisley is fine. This is a minor issue. I only mentioned it because I needed to put the sedative notion by you.”
“How is she fine but needs a sedative? How can it be both, George?”
He sighs. “It’s not that serious, Dom. But I couldn’t in good conscience not tell you.” I’m losing my mind right now. “Why don’t you let me get your sister for you? Then, you can speak to her and judge for yourself how she’s doing.”
“Yeah. Definitely.”
When Paisley appears in front of the screen with her usual slightly absent grin, I nearly bawl like a baby. Mother of fuck. I can barely keep my bottom lip from trembling.
“Dommy...” Her dark brown eyes light up, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from humiliating myself.
“Hey, Princessa.” I sigh and speak. Even still, there’s a frog in my throat. Good thing she can’t hear it. “What did you do today?”
“Colored in my coloring book.”
“Yeah? What did you color?”
“A pony. I made her blue.”
“Blue?” I chuckle at her. She colors everything blue. Navy blue. Sky blue. Royal blue. Light blue. “Are there really blue ponies?”
“Hush, Dommy. I like it. That makes her magical.”
“I bet.”
This is one of our regular schticks. And Paisley seems normal. There are no purplish-gray splotches under her eyes, and she’s as animated as always. She’s not coming across as wrecked at all. Regardless, I keep her on for a full half-hour, double the time I typically take, because I’m having a hard time letting go of the sight of her.
At the end, rather than having her disconnect, I ask her to bring George back. His posture is cautious as he returns, and that’s my fault.
“She’s okay,” I concede.
“Yes.”
“You just let me know about the sleep thing as a precaution.”
“Yes.” His features relax by a couple degrees.
“Sorry I blew up at you.”
“I’ve seen blowing up, and that’s not what you did. But thanks for the apology. You know I have Paisley’s best interests at heart.”
I do know. “Yeah. Thank you.”
Realizing that my sister is holding her own over a month into this exile of mine should console me, and to a certain extent it does. But the guilt and fretting aren’t going away. I doubt they will until I’m back there with her.
––––––––
SADIE HASN’T BEEN EXPERIENCINGany more episodes of sleepwalking since we’ve all been staying with her, though she does mumble rando nonsense sometimes. Last night, sometime around three in the morning, she gasped and shot up from the bed.
“What was that?” This woke me even though she’d been whispering.
“What was what?” I whispered back, placing a hand on her blanket-coated knee.
She screwed her eyes closed and shook her head as if to block out something. As if she’d witnessed a horrible or graphically violent scene. Just when I assume she’s not going to say anything, she does, though she keeps her eyes pointing straight ahead into the shadows.
“Have you ever experienced an event that occurred in this specific sequence but when you dream about it or even try to remember more of it, it’s out of order?”
“Sure,” I answer. “Sometimes.”
“Like what, for instance?”
I don’t talk about Paisley with others not affiliated with her care. Sadie only knows about her situation because I almost didn’t come here because of it. And no one knows about the suck-fest our mother caused. Yet, somehow, the subject of Paisley is what pops out of my mouth.
“When I dream about my little sister, a lot of times it’s this bastardized mixture of who she was and who she is now. She’d been this smart little cookie growing up. Honors everything. Gifted and talented awards. Then, she got sick, and it’s like it wiped out who she was and replaced her with someone else. A young kid that she’d never been.”
“That must’ve been tough,” Sadie commiserates.
“When I look at Paisley now, I see both versions. The brilliant teenager who was about to go places and the small child that mentally, she’ll always be.” I shrug, even though I doubt I’m visible. There are no lamps on in here, and the curtained windows are hiding a pitch-black atmosphere outside.
“Then our mom bailed on us.” I’m kind of stunned I admitted so much, and now, I can’t seem to quit. “Just up and left without a word. I had to take full custody, or my sister would’ve wound up in the system. No way in hell could I let that happen. But I got laid off from my carpentry work and had a tough time getting on with another contractor. Temp jobs turned out to be shit. That’s when I started hooking.”
Sadie’s breathing stutters. “When was this? How old were you? How old was Paisley?”
“She was sixteen. I was twenty-six. It grew me up faster, that’s for sure.”
“I can imagine.” She pauses for a few seconds, then traces her finger along the bridge of my nose. “How did this happen?”
“Pick-up basketball game when I was thirteen.” Nothing all that exciting, I’m afraid.
“You never had it reset?”
“Doctors cost money,” I say, lifting my shoulders and letting them drop. I also wouldn’t let anyone touch me, not my mom, not anybody. Sadie’s thoughtful before she changes the subject.
“I received all these scars from when my parents’ private jet caught on fire.” I go completely motionless. She’s never once mentioned this, even if Jerome showed us that video report already. “We crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. But my dreams go off on all these fucked-up tangents about it.
“Like, one minute everything’s fine until the jet cracks open like an egg. Splits right in two. Yet I know that’s not what actually took place. Then, I’ll see the interior of the cabin and everyone inside engulfed in flames.”
The notion of that is horrific. I can’t imagine being stuck like that with no safe exit.
Burning alive.
“The fire was on the outside at that point,” she goes on. “Mostly on the wing right by my window. Or my dad has just had the flight attendant bring me my cupcake, but when I peek up from it to him, he’s dead. They’re all dead. Him, my mom, the flight attendant and pilot. Just scorched corpses in the exact same positions.” She shudders, and so do I.
Grasping for something—anything—that’ll keep her from dropping into that scary place she went before, I lock on to the one part of what she said that wasn’t nightmarish.
“What was the thing about the cupcake?”
“It was my parents’ way of surprising me on my birthday. I thought they’d forgotten.”
Wait. “That plane crash happened on your birthday?”
“My eighteenth.”
Jesus. All that occurred on such an important day?
“Wow. I’m so sorry.” My sentiment is worthless, though. There’s nothing anyone can say when your life goes to shit like that. Nothing can help. Not really.
“My birthday is the twenty-second of December. This was the five-year anniversary.” That explains a lot. No wonder she went on that tirade then broke down. “I can’t celebrate it. Can’t celebrate Christmas. Both of those dates just serve to remind me of when everything in my life altered so irrevocably. Altered forever. For the worst.”
Her room is silent. There’s no more of Jerome’s deep breathing and no more of Zach’s quiet snuffling snores. I’ve been curious about so much of her past, and now seems the only time appropriate to ask.
“How did you survive all that, Sadie?”
“I don’t know.” I hear her swallow. “No one knows. The investigators stated I was discovered several yards from most of the fuselage while everyone else was...” She trails off, but I get the gist. “I was strapped in, so I don’t know how I was thrown so far away. The last thing I remember is the blaze getting closer and closer to me as we careened toward the earth. There were all these noises and so much screaming.”
I can’t make out much of her, but I gawk at Sadie’s profile anyway. I couldn’t look away if I wanted to.
“I shouldn’t have survived,” she goes on in this bland monotone. “There have been times when I wish I hadn’t.”
Horror renders me speechless. I know I should say something to correct her, but I can’t. She’s been speaking so softly that I’ve had to concentrate to hear her, but it turns out that I haven’t been the only one listening.
“You weren’t meant to die then, Sadie,” Jerome says, and it’s not a whisper. “It wasn’t your time.”
The linens rustle as she twists toward him. “How do you know?”
“Because you’re still here. You’re with us. You have a purpose to fulfill.”
“What purpose?” Her voice is suddenly demanding, insistent. Pleading.
“Whatever purpose you deem valuable,” Jerome replies, cool as a cucumber. The man sounds like a spiritual guru. “For reasons you might never understand, you were saved. Your heart is still beating. In my way of thinking, that’s a gift. One that shouldn’t be wasted.”
“Jerome’s right,” Zach chimes in. “Bad things happen sometimes. It sucks the big one. But I think it means we just have to pivot. To not be afraid to travel in new directions. Then, to keep going.”
Fuck, does every dude here have more wisdom than I do?
Everyone is quiet for a few seconds, and I wonder if Sadie regrets saying all this aloud. Also, how much did the other two hear? How long have they been eavesdropping? Did they hear what I said about Paisley?
And would it be bad if they did?