I love her strange jokes and soft understanding. How she sits so quietly, not meeting your eyes, but you know she’s listening. I love how she doesn’t hear me when she’s engrossed in a good book. I love the way she eyes me sideways when she’s going to give me shit and calls me an asshole when she disagrees with me.
How can I tell her all this after everything that’s happened with Jane? She wouldn’t trust it, wouldn’t trust me. It’s almost darkly funny how right Jane was about our relationship, and I was so wrong. I just never really thought much about how suited we were to each other. It wasn’t a bad relationship, and it was often good. But it was nothing like this. This agony and ecstasy. This vibrating need and heart-crushing terror.
Well, maybe I’ve just got to keep proving it to Sadie day in, day out, and then tell her when she’s ready to hear the words, when I think she’ll believe me. Slow and steady, the James Royce superpower. I can do that.
I take her hand. It’s so small in my palm, fragile looking, though I know better. Her eyes flicker open and lock on mine, and for a beat it’s like we’re the only two people in the world.
“Hello, sweetheart. They’ve just told me you’re going to be in here for a couple of days, so I thought we should start making a list of things you’d like to read.”
And her eyes flick back and forth across my face as her lips curl up.
I camp out at Sadie’s bedside, working on my laptop while she sleeps and wakes up every few hours to complain that she could be doing something useful. The hospital is bizarrely quiet, and I’m incredibly productive in here, so I keep joking to Sadie that she needs to stay in here as long as possible so I can get more work done. But two days into this routine, Sadie no longer seems weak and wobbly, and her breathing has improved dramatically. Not surprisingly, she’s raging about Jake, and the police have been in several times, first to take her statement and then to clarify things. Her mom’s face was a picture when she heard Sadie recount everything Jake said and did.
On Saturday, we get Sadie home and settle her back into the apartment. On the first day back, she complains so much about having to rest and not doing any work that I have to set her up with a table that moves over her lap and a screen and computer so she can “contribute.” She’s a surprisingly grumpy patient. But she does get tired, so I cook for her each night and encourage her to read more and work less. Mr. Karen likes to get his paws on her warm keyboard, and she spends a lot of her time pushing him off it. Her mom watches us with big eyes and berates Sadie on and off for not being grateful for how much care I’m taking of her. But I don’t want her gratitude; I just want her to know, through every small action, how deeply she matters and how much she’s loved.
Everything I feel about Sadie, everything we’ve done, coalesced when I pulled her cardigan open and saw the blood on her top. It was like someone set my body on fire. Like there was nothing more important I’d ever do in my life than stopping that bleeding. All my aversion to looking at and dealing with medical issues flew right out of the window. This was my person, and I had to save her life. It made the things I did with Jane seem trivial, like we’d been playing at house, acting out the roles of boyfriend and girlfriend. And anger is still bubbling in my gut about Jane. I blame her for this whole thing. Not the Jake part, obviously, but the Sadie runningaway and me getting robbed bit. I don’t know what she thought she was doing, turning up at the office and confronting Sadie like that. She’s messaged me a few times, but I haven’t responded. If we’re actually going to stay in touch—though I have my doubts—she needs to understand who Sadie is to me now and how damaging what she did was. It’s more than boundaries; it’s about respect and reasonable behavior. So, with that in mind, I agree to see her two days later.
Chapter 38
James
Jane is beaming at me from a table in the corner when I arrive at the coffee shop, and I’m somewhat surprised to see her cast and sling. Though I don’t know why. In all the drama of the last week, I’d forgotten all about her accident.
“I’ve got some exciting news!” she says, as soon as I draw near, smoothing a hand over her ponytail, and my heart sinks.
“I’ve got some things I want to say, too. Let me go get a coffee,” I say, and she nods, still smiling. I can feel her eyes on my back when I head to the counter. I blink up at the board.
“Double espresso,” I say.
“Yeah, man, it’s that kind of day,” the barista says, twiddling a spoon in the air.
“Unfortunately, it’s always that kind of day,” I say.
“I can do you a nice macchiato? Take the edge off the bitterness?” he says with a grin.
I shake my head. “Hit me with the strong stuff.”
“Right on, man.”
When I get back to my seat, Jane is on her phone. “Sorry, work!” she mouths. She talks for about a minute, then hangs up and places her phone face down on the table. “Busy, busy!”
We were always engrossed in our respective careers and our shared goal of buying an apartment here, but we had no dreams about where we’d like to live, how our house or life would look, or even what we’d fill it with. It was work hard, save money. Where was our day-to-day connection? The in-jokes, the in-depth chats? The Mr. Karen banter and the sci-fi books? The learning to ride? We used to cycle, but we raced; we didn’t chat about wizards or how people die in stories. When I look at Jane now, and in all that’s happened since, how well do I even know her? She’s felt more and more like a stranger every time I’ve seen her, and that’s wild, given how long we were together.
She reaches over the table and squeezes my hand. “I’ve been so looking forward to talking to you.”
“Oh yeah?” I say, my gaze roaming over her tight ponytail. “I want to talk to you, too.”
“Great!” she says. “Should I start?”
I wave my hand at her to carry on. Jane’s agenda always took precedence, but that was my fault as much as hers. I was happy to listen. I was the Sadie in this relationship. And my heart clenches in my chest; have I been guilty of not listening to Sadie? Of never asking enough questions?
“I’m staying in New York!” she says, with another big beam.
Ah. I was rather hoping that, once she went back to Philly, I’d get some distance from the calls and turning up at random times.
“Oh, yeah? Is Kevin moving here?”
She frowns at me. “No. I had a review with my manager last week, partly because of this.” She waves her hand over her plaster cast and sling. “I talked to her about how I’d probably be leaving within a year, and she went into a complete panic. She said they can’t afford to lose me, and they’ve given me a promotion and a big bump in pay, and now I’ve got a team of my own!”
