Fifty First Times

  I laugh again, not so wetly this time. But all of a sudden, tears are streaking my face.

  “Hey,” he says, “I’m a sensitive guy and all, but tears sort of freak me out.”

  I laugh harder through my tears. “More than my face?”

  “Way more than your face.”

  My nervous giggles slow and we just sit here, staring at each other. I don’t move to hide my face again, even though I can feel the press of his gaze, coursing over it.

  “It’s really not that bad,” he finally says.

  Now I turn my face away, looking toward the window. I brush the tears off my cheeks and feel the raised scar. “Gee, thanks. That makes me feel so much better.”

  “I mean it, V. So you have some scars? So what? It makes you unique.”

  More tears leak over my lashes. Funny how an eye that’s not even real can still cry. “Tell that to all the little kids who run screaming to their mommies when they see me.”

  “Has anyone actually done that? Seriously?” There’s a tease in his voice.

  I huff a humorless laugh out my nose. “No, but that’s only because I haven’t been out there.”

  “Out where?”

  “There,” I answer, flinging my hand in the direction of the window.

  There’s a pause, and I can almost hear Rick struggling with himself. “How much can you see?” he finally asks.

  Automatically, my hand goes to my face again, but he draws it away and I let him. “I can see most everything, but it’s blurry. Like, I can see your face, but I can’t see the disgust on it.”

  “Huh.” He shifts on the bed, so his knee presses against mine. “I can’t remember a hot chick ever calling my face disgusting before. Me, yes, but not my face.”

  I take a deep breath, remembering exactly how gorgeous that face is—big blue eyes with crazy long lashes, set in a narrow face with major cheekbones. God, I wish I could really see him.

  “Try to imagine walking around with this face,” I say, tossing a hand at mine, “knowing everyone’s gawking at you, and talking about you behind your back.”

  There’s a long pause. “V, I think you’re making a bigger thing of this than it is.”

  At his words, all the anger I usually reserve for my mom rips unbridled from my core. “Really? Because I almost died, Rick! Chris did die, and so did two other guys on my patrol. That’s a pretty big fucking thing!”

  “That’s not what I meant.” His tone is patient, as if I hadn’t just flipped my shit all over him. “I’m not going to say something stupid like I know what you’ve been through, or I know it must have been hard. I don’t know shit, and neither does anyone else who isn’t you. The only thing I do know is that a few scars don’t make you any less incredible.”

  More fucking tears. I’ve worked so hard to choke the emotion back, but Rick brings it all pouring out of me and I don’t know why. I drop my head. “I am so fucked up, you don’t even want to know.”

  He lifts my chin with a finger, and his touch on my skin knots my insides. But his hand doesn’t linger once I’m looking at him. He lowers it back to his lap. “Don’t push me away, V. I may not know as much as I want to about you, but the thing you need to know about me is I’m a persistent son of a bitch, and I will wear you down.”

  I blow out another wet half-laugh-half-sob and scoot back to lean against the headboard. “This isn’t how it went in my head when I fantasized about the first time I got you in my bed.”

  He settles in next to me and his shoulder presses into mine. When he speaks, his voice is a seductive purr. “We can fix that anytime you’re ready.”

  I bury my face in my hand.

  “I’m not going to push you into anything except letting me hang around. If that’s only here in your room, there could be benefits to that,” he says, pressing his shoulder into mine again, “but I wish you’d let me take you out.”

  “Where?” I ask, knowing it’s never actually going to happen. “And don’t say star gazing.”

  “No star gazing.” I hear the smile as he says it. “But there are definitely places we could go.”

  “Like?”

  “Well . . . I’m assuming you still eat, right? And the weather’s getting warmer, so there’s the beach, and . . . did I mention eating, ’cause I’m really good at that.”

  I pull my knees up, and when I realize I’m looking right at him and there’s no fear, butterfly wings whir in my chest. “So we’ve got food and sand.”

  “When you say it like that, it sounds pretty lame.” There’s a pause as he stretches his legs out on the bed. “Give me a chance and I’ll come up with something better.”

  I lean against him and tip my head onto his shoulder. He’s firmer than I expected, and he smells like warm bedsheets and Ivory soap. He loops his arm around me, and it feels so good. So normal.

  But, as easy as Rick is making it to lose myself in the fantasy, I’m not normal.

  “Have you ever thought about what it’d feel like to die?”

  “Not really.” I feel his warm breath in my hair as he says it.

  “I think about it all the time. I think about it, and I dream about it.” My insides tighten with the image of the wreckage. “There were a few weeks, right after, that I wished I had.”

  His arm squeezes my shoulders. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Chris did.” My voice catches on his name and a tear courses down my cheek.

  Rick pulls me tighter against him and holds me. I feel his chest hitch, and I realize he’s working to hold back his own tears.

  “Why are you here?”

  I feel him stiffen a little as he clears his throat. “I figured that was sort of obvious.”

  “You don’t have to stay . . . now that you know. You don’t have to pretend.”

  He holds up his free hand. “No pretending. I would never insult you like that.”

  “Sorry I lied to you. I should have told you. I just . . . I guess I needed one normal thing.”

  He chuckles. “We were never really normal, V. I mean, don’t relationships usually end when someone gets deployed? The ‘dear John’ thing?”

  I shrug. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “So, us and normal really don’t belong in the same sentence,” he says into my hair.

  His warm breath on my scalp makes me shudder. “There have to be tons of other girls dying to go out with you. I still don’t get us.”

  He shrugs against my shoulder. “Sometimes it just clicks.”

  “Clicks.” He’s right. We just clicked, right from the very beginning.

  “A concert,” he says, lifting his head.

  “What?”

  “That’s where I’m taking you.”

  Pressure builds in my chest at the thought of being swept away in a crush of bodies, but before I can open my mouth to protest, he adds, “My aunt plays in the symphony. She’s been on me about being a crappy nephew and not coming to see her. She’d totally get us tickets.”

  “When?”

  “She said something about next week . . . or maybe it was this week. Fuck, I hope we didn’t miss it.”

  “What does she play?”

  “Um . . .” Silence.

  “Wow. You really are a crappy nephew.”

  “Yeah . . . well. We’ll find out together.”

  My insides twist. “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Vacation,” he says, and I see his hand go to his face. “Damn. I forgot.”

  There’s a full second where I think about just going with the lie, but then I take a deep breath. “We’re not going anywhere. I just said that because I was scared to see you.”

  “So I blew off classes today for no reason?”

  I smile at the tease in his voice. “I guess so. Sorry.”

  He pulls me tighter to his side. “Totally worth it.”

  Three

  “TELL ME THE truth. How fake does this look?” I say, pointing at my eye after we settle into the rattan loveseat on my back deck.
Rick came straight to my house on his way home for break today. We Skyped for hours yesterday, and anytime I lifted my hand to cover my face, he called me on it. I’m getting used to him looking at me.

  He leans closer, inspecting my face, and I work really hard not to turn away. “A little.”

  I glare at him. “I said tell me the truth.”

  “Okay.” I see the blur of his hand as he tosses it up. “Pretty fake. But it’s not gross or anything.”

  My fingers cover my face. “I’m supposed to get an implant. They say it’s more natural-looking.”

  He gently pulls my hand away and weaves his fingers into mine. “That would be cool, if it would make you feel better about it.”

  I still don’t lift my head. “Wouldn’t you? I mean, you’re the one who has to look at me.”

  “I don’t have to look at you. I want to look at you. And I think you’re beautiful just the way you are.”

  My insides skitter. “With a fake-looking eye?” I say, my voice all skepticism.

  “With a fake-looking eye,” he confirms.

  “There’s something wrong with you.” I tip my face up to the sun and slouch deeper into the cushions.

  He leans close and his breath tickles my ear as he says, “You are wrong with me. You’ve so totally gotten under my skin.”

  I shake my head, but I can’t stop the smile. “Like a flesh-eating disease.”

  “Exactly!”

  I crack up. I can’t help it.

  He stands from the loveseat and holds out his hand. “C’mon.”

  I take it and he pulls me up. “Where?”

  “I’m taking you out.”

  “Or not,” I say, twisting my hand out of his grasp.

  He breathes out a slow sigh. “So you’re never leaving the confines of this house? Like, for the rest of your life?”

  I shrug. “Maybe after I get my new eye and they fix my face.”

  There’s a long silence. In it, I try to make out his expression, but can’t. “You’re selling the world short, V.”

  I just stand here as my heart squeezes into a tight ball, because what do you say when someone says something like that?

  “Listen,” he finally says. “I know there’s nothing about this that doesn’t suck, but I don’t think you should let it stop you from living, you know? I mean, you survived. All by itself, that’s reason to celebrate, don’t you think?”

  At the word “survived,” the bomb goes off in my head again. When Rick grabs my arm, I realize it’s because my legs have given out. He lowers me into the loveseat and I press my forehead into my knees and fold my arms over my head, trying to hold myself together.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . fuck!” I hear his feet on the wood of the deck as he paces away, then comes back. “I want to help you, but I have no fucking clue how to do that, so I just keep hurting you instead.”

  “You’re not hurting me,” I tell my knees.

  He lowers himself onto the loveseat. “Can you . . . would it help to talk about it?”

  Forcing air into my lungs, I lift my head off my knees and lean back into the cushions. Every shrink I’ve had since this started has wanted me to talk about it. They say it will help my survivor’s guilt. I don’t because the words to describe what happened are too small. I couldn’t string them together into anything big enough to do Chris and the others justice. But with that thought, it suddenly feels like an insult to them to stop living. I shake the image from my head and pull myself together. “So, where are we going?”

  There’s a long pause, and in it, I hear the rustle of hair. I can picture Rick, a crease between his brows, raking a hand through his blond mop, deciding if he should push me for more. He must decide against it. “You like pizza?”

  I nod.

  “You been to Giovanni’s?”

  “No. Is it good?”

  “Great pizza, dim lighting . . . everything you could ask for. I’ll call on our way and they’ll have it ready when we get there.” He pauses and slips his hand into mine. “Okay?”

  Adrenaline surges through my veins until I shake with it. Can I do it? With Rick’s help? “Yeah . . . okay.”

  I CAN’T DO IT.

  The closer we get, the more I shake, and by the time we roll into the crowded parking lot, I’m a wreck.

  “V? We don’t have to. I just thought . . .” He trails off, then hisses, “Damn. I’m sorry. I keep screwing this up.”

  I force air in and out through my tight throat, then pull my face out of my hands. “It’s not your fault, but I just . . . I can’t.”

  It’s dusk outside and the car is all shadows until he flings his door open. I hide my face again.

  “Stay here,” he says, then heads into the restaurant.

  I sit in the dark of the car with my hand over my face. “Invisible,” I whisper. “I am invisible.”

  I jump and scream with a loud noise from the other side of the glass before my brain registers “dog.”

  I look up at a big, brown dog, poking its head out of the window of the car a few feet away. It gives me another bark, then pulls its head in.

  I’m still shaking when the door opens and Rick climbs in. He’s got a large pizza box with two drink cups balanced on top. He presses the cups into the holders in the console between us and hands me the box.

  “I thought we could . . . Hey? You okay?”

  I drag my arm across my upper lip to wipe away the sweat. “I just . . . can we go?”

  We pull out of the parking lot, and when we stop again, it’s at a park. It’s dark, but in the flickering streetlight I see what looks like an empty playground.

  “Okay?” he asks as we roll to a stop.

  I can’t even believe he’s not dumping me on the curb in front of my house and bolting. I breathe deeply and huff out an “Okay.”

  “You got the pizza?” he asks, and I hear ice rattle in the cups as he grabs them.

  I nod, lifting the box.

  He comes around to my side of the car and leads me to the bottom of a wide slide, where he sits and tugs me down next to him. He hands me my drink and opens the box. “Ladies first.”

  “Sorry I wrecked our first date,” I say, hanging my head. My anxiety’s not this bad when I go out for doctor appointments, but this feels different, and I realize it’s because I didn’t want Rick to be embarrassed to be seen with me—I didn’t want to hear it in his voice.

  So I embarrassed myself even more by making a scene.

  “Hey,” he says, pressing his shoulder into mine. “I really just wanted to get you alone, so this is way better.” His voice is soft and low, and when I look at him, he’s very close.

  I turn away and reach for a wedge of pizza, but they stick together.

  He pulls a slice out for me. “Open wide.”

  I scowl at him. “If you make buzzy airplane sounds, I swear I’m going to puke on you.”

  He laughs and hands it to me.

  We eat, and I let the warmth from his shoulder pressing against mine bleed into me and melt away some of my tension.

  “C’mon,” he says when we’re done. He tosses the pizza box in the trash and guides me over to the swings, holding the chains of a swing seat open for me. “Hop up.”

  I slide onto the swing and catch myself giggling as he pushes me so high I swear he’s going to wrap me right over the top. It’s exhilarating. Between Rick and the rush of flying through the air, for the first time since I almost died, I feel totally alive.

  Four

  IT’S TAKEN ME two days to get up the nerve to leave the house again. I even let Rick coax me into the Cold Stone because he said there was no one else inside. But I send him up to order my ice cream, and I choose the seat in the corner facing the wall. He pulls the chair across from me to my side of the table and sits, sliding my bowl in front of me. I smell watermelon. And warm bedsheets. God, he smells good.

  “So . . . tell me if this is too much too soon . . .” His hand moves toward my bowl and
he comes away with a pink glob of my watermelon sorbet on the end of his spoon. I watch it disappear into his mouth. “But I got tickets for the symphony for Thursday.”

  My spoon stalls halfway to my mouth.

  “We don’t have to go, but . . .”

  “But . . . ?”

  “But I really want to do this with you.”

  “The symphony,” I say, acid churning in my stomach.

  “The other night . . . when you were on the swings, it’s like your whole face changed. I want to see you start living again, V.”

  I dig my spoon back into my ice cream and shove it away. “So I’m a charity case. You think you’re going to save me? Is that it?”

  “Hell, no. I don’t do charity.” He waves his spoon at me. “This is all selfish. I like you. I like hanging out with you. I just don’t want to do it with your mother hovering over us every second. And I figure, if you’re happy, I’m more likely to get some.”

  Some of my fight runs out at his words and I feel my cheeks burn. “You think you’re going to get some? Sexual favors for ice cream?” I say, tugging my bowl toward me.

  He shrugs. “I figured it might take more than ice cream. Hence, the symphony.”

  I take a bite as I sort through everything. “Did you have to pay for the tickets?”

  He shakes his head. “My aunt got them comped.”

  “So if I back out at the last minute, you’re not going to be pissed?”

  “I’ll still have a hot girl in my car for the two-hour round trip, so it’s pretty much a win either way. Okay?”

  My insides flutter. “Okay.”

  WHEN WE WALK into the theater, I keep my head down and let Rick navigate us to our seats. I’m shaking so hard that I stagger a few times, and Rick wraps an arm around my waist to keep me over my feet.

  We’re in the first row of the mezzanine, which means no one is going to turn around and see me. I angle myself toward Rick, and it feels almost private.

  “Okay?” he asks, taking my hand.

  “Okay.”

  As his fingertip traces the lines of my palm, my anxiety starts to melt away and my heart begins to pound for a whole different reason.

  “Did you ever figure out what your aunt plays?” I ask to distract myself.