Chapter 2
James
The sunlight is blinding when my eyes blink open, and I’m lying on something hard.
But God, this is amazing! I’ve died and gone to heaven.
Hitting the ground? I don’t even remember it!
Not even painful. Who knew this would be so easy?
I stare up at a beautiful sky. Wow. Fluffy white clouds.
I’ve never seen a sky so blue. A gorgeous azure cleanliness that you never see in New York City …
I heave in a huge gulp of air, relief streaming through me.
Something dark and square looms in my peripheral vision, and I frown.
That looks remarkably like the entrance to the stairwell on our roof.
I turn my head.
Fuck.
My fingers wrap around something in my hand, and when I raise it to take a look, whatever it is slips suddenly, and pain blooms hot and hard across my cheek.
Someone lets out a bloodcurdling yell. Christ. I curl into a ball on my side, holding my face as my stomach revolts.
Vomit bubbles up my throat and out all over the concrete.
A thin, pale liquid running over the surface in little rivulets and soaking in.
Wet seeps into my hair, my scalp. A throb pulses in my cheekbone, on and on and on, and I touch my face, but Oh Jesus!
… Another loud yelp shoots out of me. When I bring my hand away, all I can see is blood and, fuck, glass, in the red.
Jesus.
Jesus.
Burning prickles under my skin. The ache in my cheek coils and tightens. I groan. Injuries. Hospitals. I fucking hate them. Isn’t Jo’s friend a doctor? Kate, that’s her, with her tattooed boyfriend who Des had a crush on.
Why am I on the roof of my apartment building? What the hell happened last night? Out of the corner of my eye, a plane is leaving a contrail in the blue. La Guardia? JFK?
Oh, Christ.
The new boyfriend turned up.
So we could be “introduced.”
Like that’s something you expect from the girl you were going to marry.
Kevin. He’s staying in our apartment. With her.
In our bedroom, or her bedroom now, because I moved into the spare room a couple of months ago.
It’s like a horror movie. I can’t stay there one more night listening to Kevin and watching Jane make eyes at him.
Goddammit, Jane can’t find me in this state either.
I try to move, but the excruciating pain in my face makes more vomit rise in my throat. A sharp spasm shoots up my leg, and I gag as more runny liquid spills from my mouth.
What the fuck do I do now? Who could I even call?
Jane and I have been a couple for so long that I don’t have any friends who aren’t hers, too.
I close my eyes. Just rest here for a bit, take some time to pull yourself together.
You’ve had a nasty shock. You can lie here for a minute or two while your stomach calms down.
An unsteady sigh escapes me as sunlight dances on the insides of my eyelids, but I don’t see the sun climbing slowly up in the sky.
The next thing I know, a soft hand is moving my chin, and my eyes blink open to a concerned face and blond curls.
“Des, what the hell are you doing here?” My voice is like sandpaper.
“Is he okay?” someone says from behind Des. Is that Pat, our janitor? Why the fuck is he up here? The NO ACCESS sign skitters across my mind. I groan. Somehow, I’m on my back again. I start to roll onto my side, but the stabbing pain in my body takes my breath away as Des’s hand lands on my chest.
“Stay still,” he says, then, “You’ve got a nasty gash on your face, and you’ve done something to your leg. Pat, if you can help me move him downstairs, I can take him to the hospital.”
I’ve done something to my leg? I guess the agony you’re in would be a reliable indicator of that, Sherlock. But I’m not going to any hospital.
“I only checked up here because the alarm on the roof door was triggered last night,” Pat starts. “I’d forgotten all about it. It does that in high winds sometimes, so I don’t usually bother. When you called me this morning, I thought I should take a look.”
“It’s fine. Thank you for checking,” Des says.
I grab his hand. “Don’t take me to the apartment,” I hiss.
“What?”
“Don’t take me anywhere near the apartment! I can’t go to the apartment.”
“What? Why?”
“Jane can’t see me like this.”
“She’ll have gone to work, won’t she?”
I close my eyes. “What day is it?”
“Tuesday, 11 a.m. You’re lucky it’s not raining out here, Jimmy-boy. You’re a mess.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay,” I say. He starts to straighten, and my hand shoots out and grabs his forearm, pulling him back down. “You have to move me out.”
“Move you out? Of where?”
“The apartment. Today.”
“Calm down. Calm down, okay? You’re going to be all right. We’ll get your face and leg looked at and …”
I tighten my grip on his arm. “You’ve got to get me out. Promise me. Today.”
His eyes narrow on me. “What’s all the urgency? What’s going on?”
“Jane’s new boyfriend came to meet me. Me! He’s staying in our apartment, sleeping in our old bedroom. In our bed. With Jane! Who does that, Des? Who. Does. That?”
Des’s eyes are like saucers. “Seriously?” He glances around the roof. I squeeze his arm again.
“I can’t go back there. Promise me, Des. Promise me you’ll move all my stuff out.”
“Why are you up here? Why didn’t you call me?”
I groan.
“Okay, okay. I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”
I grab his fingers now. “Don’t tell anybody about this. Not Jane. Not Jo. No one. I don’t want to let anyone down.”
“You aren’t letting anyone down, you maniac.”
I tighten my grip on him. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
“All right, all right. But you’re going to need stitches, buddy. You’ll have to tell people something.”
Oh God.
“What the fuck were you doing up here drinking, anyway?”
How does he know I was drinking? Of course it’s fucking obvious, James.
The glass. I can smell the booze. I stink.
But Jesus, I can’t tell him why I was up here.
You were standing on the ledge. How did I end up flat on my back?
Jo’s putting me in charge of the team when Des goes off to Korea in a few weeks.
How bad would this look? Would Des feel he needed to stay?
I could fuck this whole thing up for the business, for him and his boyfriend, Alex … for Jo, too.
“I had to get out of the apartment. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“You could have come to me! You can always come to me. Fucking promise me, okay? Don’t injure yourself again. Don’t drink on your own,” he says.
When we get to the ER, Kate’s blonde hair and smiling face lean over the gurney into my line of sight.
She grips my hand and squeezes my fingers.
I’ve met her once or twice before, and seeing her kind face and feeling her firm grip on me makes tears well up and leak down my cheeks.
The sting of the salt water takes my breath away.
“You’re going to be fine, James. Jo will kill me if you aren’t.” She winks at me.
A gentle hand shifts my chin, her face coming in close to mine as she peers at my skin, frowning, and then she moves down, her blonde head bent over my leg.
“I’m going to have to cut your pants off, James,” she says.
“That’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time,” I quip, and she lifts her head, grinning.
“Can you feel this?” she says, and she does something and the pain below my knee makes me levitate off the bed. “Okay, okay,” she says.
I can’t look at my leg. It wouldn’t take my weight when Des and Pat half carried me off the roof, so I just leaned on them both in the elevator—so much pain.
I vomited when I got out of the Uber Des ordered to bring us here.
I could no longer stand, and they had to bring me in on a stretcher.
God knows how Kate deals with any of this.
“I’ll charge the pants back to our insurance company,” I say, and she grins.
“Good luck with that.”
I close my eyes when she steps out of the room. What a fucking mess I’ve created. Voices reach me from the corridor.
“They’re arguing about calling the plastic surgeon,” Des says quietly, and I start. I didn’t realize he was here.
“Tell Kate not to do that for me. I don’t care how I look.”
“You’d care if you looked like Frankenstein.”
“No, I wouldn’t. What the fuck does it matter now?”
More conversation drifts in from outside, then the door swings open and Kate looms over me again.
“The plastic surgeon is going to come and stitch your face because you’ll get a much better result if he does it.
I told them that you’re the kind of person who would sue the hospital if we don’t do it right, so keep up the facade of being a difficult customer, okay?
In the meantime, I’m going to need to clean the glass out of the wound, so I’m giving you a local anesthetic for that.
He’s going to do your leg at the same time.
It’s a nasty gash. You’re lucky you missed an artery. ”
Lucky, huh? Well, I guess so. My head swims as images of cut skin and blood fill my mind.
She turns to Des. “Do you want to stay?”
“Yeah, he’s staying,” I mumble and wave my hand at him. “Hold my hand, buddy. I won’t survive her cleaning my face otherwise.”
I don’t fucking care about pretending to be big and brave after all the humiliations of the last twenty-four hours. Actually, of the last month or two, now that I think about it.
“The things I do for you,” he huffs, but he pulls his chair close to the other side of the bed across from Kate.
“How did you injure your leg?” she says.
“I have no idea.”
“Hmm,” she says, and I hear the door open and the rattle of a gurney. “I’m going to do your face first,” she adds, and before I can say anything, her hands are on my cheek and a sharp prick pierces my face, followed by another one.
“What are you doing?” My voice rises.
“Numbing your face,” Kate says, humming.
“Let’s chat about this Samsung upgrade to take your mind off this,” Des butts in, blinking away from whatever Kate is doing to my face.