“Hey,” I call out, slightly above a whisper. “Matt.” He doesn’t move. I shake his leg. “Matt? Are you okay?” He releases something resembling a moan but remains motionless. “How long have you been out here?”
His face is half-covered by his white cape, his mask all crumpled up in his disheveled dark hair, yet I still hear him say, “All my life, waiting for you.”
Sigh. He’s always doing this: downplaying his suffering with a joke or cheesy line. Maybe this was comforting when he first became a Warrior, but sometimes I wish he would drop the act and just be real with me.
He props himself up on an elbow, falling once before sticking the landing. Once his eyes focus, they widen, jaw dropping in tandem. “Wow,” he gasps. “You look…You look…Do you have a twin?”
“What?”
“I’m seeing double.” He makes a pinching motion with his spare hand. “Just a little.”
I close my eyes, worried. Please don’t have another head injury. “Did you get hit in the head? Who did this to you?”
Matt doesn’t respond, curling back into a ball.
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he mumbles, picking at a tear in his white spandex suit. “It’s fine now.”
“Actually it’s not fine. You are bleeding and possibly concussed.”
At this he chuckles, which transforms into a few violent coughs. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve, leaving another streak of red, and I swallow back the bile rising in my throat.
“Let’s get you in here and cleaned up. We don’t want the neighbors selling pictures of you like this. Again.” Matt hates being photographed in a weakened state, so this gets him moving. “C’mon. Nice and slow.” With effort, he makes his limbs cooperate, clambering through and hurling himself onto the couch, a pile of black-and-blue boyfriend.
I pull Becca’s blankets away before he can soil them, going into autopilot with my caretaker duties. I untie his ivory boots and unclip his cape so he doesn’t strangle himself. It’s nearly impossible to wrangle him out of his spandex when he’s injured. He turns into 160 pounds of man-baby, unable to participate in the clothes removal dance, so I let that be. I grab a first aid kit from the bathroom closet, popping off the lid and taking a seat on the hardwood floor next to the couch.
Matt’s hand hangs lifelessly off the side. I hold it gently, inspecting the battered knuckles. For a guy in his early twenties, his hands look like he’s been working the mines for fifty-plus years: they’re scarred, callused, hard. I remember the first time we held hands, after I’d bombed my initial try at the SATs. He told me it would be fine, that I could take the test again, and as his fingers linked with mine, my whole body tingled, instantly forgetting all the word associations and quadratic equations I’d just messed up. He saved me that day, though he wasn’t a hero yet, his hands pulling me out of my inner turmoil. But so much has happened in the past four years. His hands don’t feel the same anymore.
I unscrew the hydrogen peroxide bottle and begin cleaning the wounds around his knuckles. He flinches, gritting his teeth at the sting. His Vaporizer mask is dotted with red, so I slide it back off his forehead, inadvertently running my fingers through his damp mocha hair. He smiles, slowly shifting positions to wrap his battered arms around me. Before I can stop him, Matt’s pulled me close, pressing his face into my chest while my legs hang awkwardly off the couch.
“I love you,” he croaks, squeezing me with whatever strength he has left.
“I—” The words catch in my throat. I love him, of course I do, but this love has changed from something that used to lift me up into a burden that drags me down. It was a slow, subtle transformation, taking place over years of kidnappings and killings, hardships and hospital visits. Each of these incidents would have been manageable on their own, but piled up they’re enough to squeeze the oxygen out of anyone’s lungs. And I’ve made my final gasp for air.
“Matt.” I try to squirm out of his grasp, but he’s surprisingly strong post-battle. I never turn him away if he’s in need, but being in his arms like this feels wrong. “Please let go. I’m trying to help you.”
“You are helping me.”
“You know what I mean. You have bloodstains all over you.”
“Am I bleeding?”
“Stop trying to be cute.”
“Can’t stop that,” he says with a wink, which instantly sets me off. The wink. That stupid trademarked wink. Something for the cameras, the posters: not me. I push him off and spring across the room.
“Sorry,” he groans, running his hands over his face. “Force of habit.”
I hurl a package of Band-Aids at the floor. “If you have energy to be Vaporizer right now, then you can clean your own damn wounds!”
He sits up, confused. “Geez, where is this coming from? I had a long night after I left you, and—”
“You are not the only one who had a bad night, Matt,” I cry. “There are other people in this world who have things going on besides you.”
He pushes his head back farther into the cushion. “God, obviously. I wasn’t making some blanket statement that my night was somehow more important than yours. Saying that my night was long doesn’t somehow negate the length of your evening. Do we have to do this right now?”
“Yes, yes we do!” I yell, though I instantly catch myself, not wanting to wake my sister, who usually rolls in after two a.m. I lower my voice. “Last night was devastating for me. I was counting on Terese to give me that job—it was important. But that never seems to matter, because Vaporizer always trumps me with heroic acts of bravery. I mean, god, you are lying there hurt—and here I am yelling at you like some heartless monster!” I shake my head, embarrassed to be acting this way, but there’s never a good time for me to express myself. He’s always hurt; he’s always in need. But I can’t go on feeling like this. “My life is just not as important as yours.”
“What? And who decided that?” he asks incredulously. “Certainly not me.” Fat tears stream down my cheeks, and he pulls himself off the couch. “Listen,” he says, reaching for me and trying to restore calm. “You shouldn’t have to feel this way. We can work this out.”
“How?” I sob. “Are you going to quit Warrior Nation?”
He freezes.
“No. You’re not,” I answer for him, my voice trembling. “And you shouldn’t have to. But I shouldn’t have to give up my dreams either.”
“Bridge, what are you trying to say?” He runs his battered fingers through my short, choppy hair, pulling me close to him.
Am I really doing this? I lean back, staring up at his handsome face. Stubble lines his slightly crooked jaw, full lips pinched in worry. I have loved this face ever since high school. Yet I have to let him go. “I—”
But before I can get the words out, his Warrior Nation communicator goes off on his suit’s belt, a buzzing vibration accompanied by a flashing yellow light.
“Shit,” he groans, turning off the signal. Yellow means report to HQ immediately, a command he can’t exactly ignore. His hands touch my face, chocolate eyes full of regret. “God, I’m so sorry, Bridge, but—”