“You don’t even know me!” My protest was a little too loud and could attract attention if anyone else had decided to come outside. I looked around automatically, but we were still alone.
“I should know you though, shouldn’t I? The infamous Val? I feel like I should know you.” He moved a little closer to me.
He was drunk. Drunker than me, and I was having a hard time focusing with both eyes open.
Jonathan stepped into a patch of shadow, closer still, his voice a low but amused mutter. “She talks about you all the time. Sometimes I wonder if I should be jealous that she loves you more than she loves me.”
“She doesn’t love you at all.” The words tripped out of my mouth. Too late to take them back. Too drunk-honest to wish I could.
“I know.”
I was not expecting him to kiss me, but he did. I melted into the embrace as easily as if we’d been flirting with each other for years. Our mouths opened. Tongues dipped and twisted. Sloppy, no skill in it, but when his hand slid beneath my hair to cup the back of my neck, tipping me harder against him, I gave that kiss everything I had. In that moment, all I could think was that it might be the last kiss I’d ever get.
“My father died,” I told him, without mentioning that it had happened only a few minutes ago.
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said.
I wasn’t. I hadn’t gotten a last word with my father, but I didn’t have anything to say to him, even if I’d had the chance.
“About that? Or about the kiss?”
“Both, I guess.”
“Don’t be. Shit happens.” I shrugged like none of it mattered, even though it did. Diana didn’t love him. That didn’t mean she wanted someone else to have him.
We were both silent. I thought about asking him for another cigarette but didn’t. I didn’t want to smoke away the taste of him.
“I don’t think it’s okay to cheat on your spouse,” Jonathan said finally.
I shrugged again. Said nothing. I wasn’t the married one, and I sure as hell was never going to tell her.
“I’d better get inside,” he said.
I followed him back to the house, where it was warm and bright and full of the off-key yodeling of party guests doing karaoke in the living room. I watched him find Diana with the focused intent of a predator looking for its next meal. I watched him kiss her, and I watched her let him.
Eight months later, I was in love with him, and she was supposed to be letting him go.
CHAPTER NINE
Diana
Pain. A knife, stabbing into my side, wrenching upward. Ripping me apart. I can’t breathe. Move. I’m dying, I am being murdered, someone is killing me.
I am not dead.
Run, run, running on wet earth, the ground beneath me soft with mud so that my feet slip out from underneath me. I dig in the ground. I make a hole. I fill the hole.
My hands are covered in blood.
I taste it in my mouth, a thickness, sour, choking me. Sick.
I know what I’ve done.
* * *
I never used to sleep late or go to bed early, but since the accident, I do both. In bed by nine PM, up by ten AM, and that’s only if I set my alarm to wake me up.
“It feels like I’m never going to get enough sleep,” I tell Dr. Levitt now. “I think the pills are making me too tired.”
“We can certainly take a look at them and adjust if you want, but keep in mind it truly does take time for your body to get used to medications, particularly in the aftermath of trauma like yours. Sleep is a great healer. Here.” She sets the delicate teacup filled with steaming, sweet tea on the small table next to my chair. “Let that sit for a few minutes, or you’ll burn your tongue.”
It’s such a motherly thing to say, and for a moment, a surprising and embarrassing moment, I’m speechless from the tears clogging my throat. I blink them away and sniff, but I can’t wipe my face. A single tear slips out of my right eye and down my cheek. Dr. Levitt hands me a tissue, tucking it into my hand inside the sling.
“Sorry. I’m feeling down today,” I tell her.
“If I had a dollar for every time someone said that to me, I’d be able to take a Caribbean cruise.”
We both laugh at that because that was exactly where she’d been two weeks ago.
“My doctor’s appointment last week was a disappointment,” I tell her and wince as I carefully ease my arm from the sling and blot the tears. “I thought I’d be out of these by now.”
“Soon,” she promises and settles into the chair across from me. “Collarbones are—”
“I know. Hard to predict. They keep telling me that.” I lean back in the chair and let my arm rest outside the sling, testing the vibrating pain for a few seconds before giving up and putting it back inside the cloth harness. By the time I’m done, the tears are gone. Pain’s good for shoving away sorrow, but I learned that a long time ago.
“And the dreams?”
I hesitate before answering. “I had one last night. It woke me up.”
I don’t mention that I’d screamed loud enough to hurt my throat, or that my terror hadn’t woken my husband because, once again, he hadn’t been there. It had been midnight this time. He was staying out later and later. I guess he’s counting on the pills keeping me knocked out.
“Everything the same?”
They’re always the same, with minor differing details. There’s blood on my hands. I’ve killed someone and buried them under a tree in my back yard.
“Yes. But this time I also had the feeling someone had been trying to hurt me, or they had hurt me. Not just that I’d done something to someone else, but very clearly, that I was in danger.”
“Interesting.” Dr. Levitt scribbles a note. “When you woke up, were you still scared?”
“Sometimes I wake up and my heart is pounding, I can’t breathe—maybe I’ve even screamed a little. Or it feels like I have. But lately the dreams have been feeling so real that when I wake up, I …”
She waits.
I haven’t touched my tea yet, not because I’m afraid it’ll be too hot, but because reaching for it is going to hurt. Drinking it would give me a reason to be silent for a few more seconds, though. I reach for the cup but then sit back in my chair. I know Dr. Levitt won’t say a word until she thinks it’s necessary, so she can give me as much time as I need to speak.
I have a confession. It might have something to do with these recurring dreams, or it might not. But it’s not mine solely to make, and even though Val has betrayed me, I can’t bring myself to do the same to her. Not with someone I’ve only known a few weeks.
I blow on the tea before sipping. “Pinkies … out.”
The phrase Val and I always said catches in my throat, and Dr. Levitt gives me a curious look. I haven’t told her about the affair. I haven’t told her about a lot of things. Withholding information from your shrink isn’t the best way to get through your shit, I know. But I’m so, so tired, and there’s so, so much of it, and only an hour a week is never enough time.
“My friend Val and I used to say that,” I explain.
Dr. Levitt writes something on the lovely lavender pad I’ve been coveting. I sip more tea, then put the cup down, careful not to spill, moving slowly to keep the pain at bay. It’s worse today than it has been, and I blame the dream. I woke up thrashing around.