Lena
THREE
Opal is worse by morning.
I know it before I open my eyes. Shallow, labored breaths mean every swallow is a negotiation.
It gets through the wall between our rooms and through whatever thin sleep I managed to collect after midnight.
I’m sitting on the edge of her bed before I’ve done anything as coherent as a thought, my hand already on her forehead.
Hot. Too hot. Not the fever-breaking kind of hot, not the this-is-actually-working kind. The kind that means we’re still climbing.
“Mama,” she says, when she feels me. Her eyes don’t fully open.
“Hey, baby. I’m here.”
“It hurts.” She clasps at her throat.
“I know. The medicine’s going to help. It just needs a little more time.”
I say this with complete confidence, and I mostly believe it, and the part of me that doesn’t believe it is the part I don’t let into my voice.
I do the six AM routine. Ibuprofen, the smallest amount of apple juice I can get into her.
It’s not much—her eyes tear up from the acid in it, but she likes the taste.
I place a cool cloth on her forehead that she tolerates for about four minutes before pushing it off.
I drink coffee while standing at the window because sitting down feels like giving in to how tired I am.
The morning is gray and quiet in the way April mornings are before the city gets going, and I stand there with my mug and my phone and think about Dario’s number, which I have memorized by now even though I haven’t made myself memorize it.
Some information just sticks when your brain decides it’s survival-adjacent.
He said day or night.
Doctors say that. Kind doctors, doctors with good bedside manner, doctors who mean well, and have a lot of patients. It’s the kind of thing you say when you hand someone a card or a number. It was a gesture, not a promise. A polite door that looks open but has a lock.
I might be young, but I know when someone is just being nice. I stand there for twenty minutes. I drink my coffee. I check on Opal twice.
Being nice or not, I don’t have a choice.
I text him: “Hi, this is Lena Swan from the clinic last night. Opal’s fever is still 102.
8 this morning, and she’s really struggling to swallow.
I know you’re probably in the middle of your actual life, so no pressure, but I didn’t know who else to reach out to.
Sorry to bother you.” I press send and put the phone face down on the counter and tell myself to stop staring at it.
The thing I keep coming back to is that I don’t ask for things.
When you’ve been the only person you can reliably count on for long enough, reaching toward someone else starts to feel like a structural risk.
Like putting weight on a floor you haven’t tested.
I’ve been shot down enough times to just rely on myself.
My phone buzzes before the coffee goes cold. “I’ll be right over.”
Four words. I read them twice, then a third time in case I’m inventing a meaning that isn’t there. By the fourth read, tears flood my eyes. I can’t believe he’s actually going to help.
I text back my address, and then I look at the apartment. Clean laundry piled on the armchair, Opal’s coloring project spread across the kitchen table, three mismatched mugs in the dish rack, the stuffed rabbit she claims she’s too old for lying on the bathroom floor. He can’t see this.
I do the fastest, most targeted tidying of my life. Not because I care what he thinks. Because doing something with my hands keeps me from examining too closely what I’m feeling, which is something in the vicinity of relief, and I’m not ready to look at that yet.
Relief has always been a lie in my experience. So I shove it down and ignore that it’s there, staring at me.
Dario arrives forty minutes later. I open the door expecting a quick professional visit at most. But he’s got a proper black medical bag with a clasp, a paper grocery bag in his other arm, and a box of cherry ice pops tucked under his elbow.
He stopped for groceries?
He steps in and does that quick sweep of me in my sleep shirt, hair half out of its braid, and says nothing about any of it. He says, “How was she overnight?”
“Up twice. Crying. She says the water hurts going down.”
He nods and goes to her room like the apartment is already oriented to him, which it isn’t. He’s never been here before, and yet he moves through it that way. No hovering in doorways, no performance of being a guest.
The boldness of doctors, I guess.
I stand in the doorway and watch him with Opal. The doctors she sees are professional with her. Efficient. Kind, in a managed way. Pediatricians are like that.
But Dario is patient in a way that doesn’t seem like a technique.
He asks her if she’d rather he check her ears first or her throat, and actually waits while she considers.
He produces the box of cherry ice pops and tells her she can have one now, not after, because the cold will feel good on her throat while he finishes up.
Her eyes go wide, before she looks at me to check in.
I smile and nod. “Yeah, baby, go ahead.”
She gobbles one down, and there’s that relief again. The liar. But she looks so happy to have it, and I’m grateful she’s eating anything at all.
He finishes the examination. He updates the antibiotic protocol and explains it to me without the usual condescension I’ve become accustomed to.
He leaves the script on the counter and a clear note about warning signs beside it.
Then he unpacks the grocery bag: chicken stock, pudding cups, ramen, children’s ibuprofen, and a box of throat-soothing tea.
I don’t even know what to say, except, “You didn’t have to bring all this.”
“I know.”
Opal is asleep before the next cartoon starts.
I pull her blanket up, leave her door cracked, and come back to find him still in my kitchen, which surprises me.
I’d expected him to be moving toward the door, but he’s leaning against the counter with his muscular arms crossed. Not impatiently. Just waiting.
It’s not only his arms that are muscled. His boulder shoulders are barely contained in his black pullover sweater. I don’t know what I expected a house-call doctor to wear, but it isn’t a sweater that accentuates his narrow waist. Or the black pants that fit all too well.
Again, I don’t know what to say. “Coffee?”
“I like coffee.”
So I get another pot started. “What can I expect with the new script?”
He hits the medical logistics—the timeline, what to watch for, when she should turn the corner. “I would be surprised if she doesn’t turn a corner within the next day or so.”
“I know I keep saying it, but thank you. For everything.” I set out the cream and sugar, and he dresses his cup.
A silent nod, and then, “What is it that you do?”
“I work for a call center. I’m a supervisor in all but name. And paycheck.”
When I tell people that, I get pity or unsolicited advice on how to change things. Occasionally, there’s gentle shade thrown at me for not reaching my full potential. Mostly, that comes from Mom.
But Dario doesn’t offer any of it. “How does the call volume work?”
I blink at him for a moment. No one ever asks a follow-up question. “Eh, we usually have around sixty calls waiting at a time. Not too bad. I know some places where it’s in the hundreds.”
“Is there a pattern to the difficult calls?”
Again, I’m at a loss, because I’ve never gotten a real question, much less a follow-up. I answer it more honestly than I planned to. He asks another. I keep going. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a real conversation about my job before, and it’s refreshing.
I’m describing the wall I build, the way you have to go slightly absent from yourself to let the calls slide off, the way you come home and have to remember who you were before the headset, and I notice him watching me with the same quality of attention he gave Opal, and it does something that I’m not prepared for. Makes the words come out less managed.
He’s listening to me. When was the last time that happened? My thought is interrupted when he says, “You do this thing.”
“What thing?”
“Where you’re about to say something real, and you catch it and say something easier instead.”
I look at him. I’ve known people for years who haven’t noticed that. “Most people don’t catch that.”
Those deep, dark eyes narrow. “So, why do you soften everything you say?”
The thought is there—deflect. Soften it. Make the truth pretty. Don’t tell him the real reason, because you need him to like you, or he might go away, and Opal needs him.
But he asked a real question, and that deserves the real answer. “Because I’m a single mom.”
That earns his frown. “I don’t follow.”
“When women don’t varnish the truth, people don’t like them as much. When people don’t like you as much, they don’t help out.” I shrug. “Being a single mom—”
“You can’t afford the truth.”
I’m fighting a wince. “I hope that doesn’t make me sound like a terrible person to you, after you helped us—”
He laughs, and I get the feeling he’s not used to it, because he makes a confused face afterward.
It’s only a second, but I clocked it. Dario shakes his head.
“You don’t sound terrible to me at all for that.
You’re doing what you need to in order to protect Opal and yourself.
That’s primal, Lena. Necessary, even. I’ve never minded being manipulated by a beautiful woman, but you haven’t manipulated me into being here. ”
Did he just call me beautiful? I can’t tell.
I swallow my coffee down. “Honestly, I’m not even sure when I’m softening things to make people like me anymore. It’s just—”
“Instinct.” He says the word knowingly. “Sometimes it’s hard to know the difference between instinct and habit, but the truth is that the distinction rarely matters. It’s all just forms of survival.”
A nervous laugh comes out of me. “You mean I don’t need to feel guilty all the time for deceiving people? Because I don’t know what I’ll do with all that free time if I don’t spend it on guilt.”
He almost smiles. “No need for guilt. At least, not with me.”
The shift comes in moments. When we both reach for the cream, our hands meet.
We linger. A flash of heat in my face, my neck.
Lower. He’s older than me, but that only seems to perk my interest as I stare at the gray stubble on his jaw.
His eyes drop briefly to my mouth and back up. I don’t look away.
He edges closer, showing it without saying it.
Patience. They say it’s a virtue. But I don’t have any.
I grab his collar and pull him to my mouth. His lips are firm on mine, decisive. He wants this too. I didn’t misread him. His hands slide up my arms before traveling down my sides. They rest at my hips now, a slight squeeze.
When was the last time anyone touched me like this? Months? Years?
A moan slides out of me, and he crowds me with his body, pressing me so my lower back is against the edge of the counter.
Heat floods me, and I’m wet already. I wrap my arms around his neck, and he looses a growl into my mouth before breaking the kiss.
His pupils might be blown—can’t tell, they’re so dark.
But he mutters, “Lena, we should probably stop, right?”
But I don’t want to stop. “Not if we don’t want to.”
“I don’t.”
“Me either.”
He reaches beneath me, lifting me onto the countertop. But clothes and logistics won’t let that work. We have low counters.
“The couch.” I take his hand and lead him to the living room. It’s far enough from Opal’s room that I don’t have to be completely silent. Just quiet.
I motion for him to sit, then straddle him and rest my elbows on the back of the couch.
To my surprise, he takes his time. His hands skim up and down my bare thighs as we make out, and I’m so caught up in everything that I hardly notice the change until I feel his fingers on my clit through my panties.
I yip into his mouth, and that changes the game.
Dario turns me so my back is on the couch, and he’s on top of me, grinding while I spread my legs for him. He rips my panties off, and his fingers—those magic fingers—glide over me and make me squirm for him.
I pant, “I want you inside of me.”
Without another word, he swaps his fingers for his cock, stretching me open. I know this is irresponsible and crazy. I don’t even know him. But I’ve been responsible for years, and I deserve a break.
He fills me up and hits a part of me that’s been neglected. My eyes roll back, and I work myself against him just as hard as he pounds me. The man arches his back to deepen his strokes and plays with my clit when he has the space.
Just as I crest to it, he leans over me, covering my mouth with his hand. Two black pits stare down at me, and I can’t look away. “You’re going to come for me, Lena. Right on this cock. And you’re going to do it quietly, aren’t you?”
I nod, shaking and weak and on the verge.
“That’s it—I feel you pulsing on me. You’re right there.” The edge of his hand brushes up against my nose, covering it slightly. Can’t breathe. Panic—
Oh, fuck.
Pleasure detonates in my core, and it’s all I can do not to scream. I writhe beneath him, on him, as a shuddering sound flies against his palm. He keeps at me until I tap his hand, a silent beg for mercy. Then he pulls out and comes in his hand.
The man is silent as he orgasms. Not naturally—his neck muscles strain in his skin to stay quiet. I wonder what he sounds like when he doesn’t have to hold back.
He straightens up without making a thing of it. Finds his jacket. “I’ll check in tonight,” he says at the door. No hand-wringing, no analysis, no attempt to decide what this was or wasn’t.
“Okay.”
He leaves with no goodbye kiss. Was this transactional for him?
Do I even care?
The truth is, I’m glad he left so easily. With him gone, I don’t have to explain things to Opal.
I stand in the middle of the kitchen with the morning quiet, the coffee lukewarm, Opal asleep. My apartment is back to what it was before Dario came in. Except for the groceries and the script, the only evidence that he was here.
That, and the taste of his mouth on my lips.