When my stomach turned and my throat went dry, I took a drink of wine, hoping it would fix both . . . but it didn’t fix a thing.
“Will’s orders were to retreat and meet back at the unit’s rendezvous point, but he didn’t follow them. He ran back into that enemy-ridden building alone, no backup, no nothing, and didn’t stop searching that building until he found Andrew.”
The first tear of what felt like many to come fell.
“Andrew was dead when Will found him, but he threw my brother’s body over his back and ran for the exit. From what Will’s told me, he got out without taking too much enemy fire. He said no one expected someone to be crazy enough to come back into that clusterfuck. But from what a few of the other guys in their squad have said, there wasn’t a moment Will was inside that building when they didn’t hear gunfire.”
I covered Jake’s hand with mine. It was instinctual, the only thing I could do or say to apologize for his loss.
“Will had almost made it to the exit when . . .” Jake closed his eyes and dropped his head—looking as lost as I felt. Once he’d cleared his throat, he continued, “And, well . . . you know the rest.”
My forehead lined. I didn’t have a clue what came next. “Actually, I don’t know the rest. I’ve never heard this story.” I leaned in and waited for him to add more.
“In short, my family had a body to bury. We get to leave flowers at a headstone for the rest of our lives thank to Will Goods, and in return, he got ‘honorably discharged’ from the Army. I suppose the Purple Heart they gave him is supposed to make up for taking away his career because he’d taken the whole leave-no-man-behind motto seriously.” Jake huffed, shaking his head. “Yeah, I suppose a Purple Heart and some measly disability check slipped into the mail every month ought to cover it. Thanks for your service to your country, Staff Sergeant Goods.” Jake was back to being pissed, but this time, it wasn’t directed at me.
“Jake?” I squeezed his hand and waited for him to look at me. “What happened?”
“The explosion,” Jake answered with a shrug.
My forehead lined. “What explosion?” I told myself to stay calm. I told myself to not let my heart hammer like it wanted to or let that gut-dropping sensation settle into the pit of my stomach.
“The one that went off as Will was carrying Andrew out of that place.” Jake gave me a curious look, like I’d either had too much wine or hadn’t had enough. “The explosion that left him permanently blind.”
You want to know what a proverbial wrecking ball to the chest feels like? Pretty much just like that. Even though it was only a proverbial one, I still jolted back and teetered on the edge of my stool from the impact of Jake’s words. Or, I suppose, the impact of his revelation.
I opened my mouth to ask a question—nothing came out. I tried again—same thing. The third time, I managed a few words. “Did you just say that . . . that . . .”—okay, so they weren’t well-constructed words—“ . . . that Will’s . . .” Dot, dot, dot into forever.
“That Will’s blind?” Jake looked at me like I’d lost it. “Yeah, that’s what I just said. Why are you looking like it’s the revelation of the century?”
You also want to know what a real-life panic attack feels like? Pretty much exactly how I was feeling. I was breathing in air, but it wasn’t going into my lungs. I went from breathing to gasping. Then I broke out into a cold sweat as my heart couldn’t decide if it should stop or speed up. “Oh, my god,” I panted between insufficient breaths. My head was going light. I was going to pass out. “Will . . . can’t be . . . he couldn’t be . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut and made myself say it. “. . . blind.”
When I went clammy all over and my vision blurred, Jake finally got the picture that I was going down. And fast.
“Whoa. No more messes in my club tonight, Noelle. Cracked-open skulls included.” Grabbing my head, he lowered it between my legs and rubbed my back in hard, quick circles. “Shit, please tell me you’re not pregnant. Please for the love of every god out there, tell me you didn’t get knocked up by your client. I’ve seen pregnant woman get all woozy and light-headed like this, and if anyone finds out one of my dancers got her bun baked by a client I put her in a V.I.P. room with, the scandal will not end. Ever.”
“I’m not pregnant,” I said between gulps of air. “I’m just in . . .” I stumbled over the word I was searching for when a different one leapt to mind. I was just in (insert four-letter word here) with Will Goods. But if I really felt that way about him, if I really felt like I knew him well enough to fall for him in the biggest way one person could fall for another, how had I not figured out he was blind? Why hadn’t he told me? God . . . how hadn’t I known? “I’m just in . . . shock.” That was also the truth and, presently, the most overwhelming of everything I was feeling.
“And am I to take that shock as a sign that you didn’t know Will was blind until I told you just now?”
Now that the initial shock had passed and I was mostly certain I was past the passing-out stage, I sat back up and met Jake’s confused stare. “No, I didn’t know.”
Jake shifted on his stool, looking at a loss. “How is that even possible?”
His words mimicked my thoughts. How was it possible that I’d spent the time I had with Will and never realized he was blind? How did I not pick up on the fact that he couldn’t see? Of course, now that I knew, some of the pieces fell into place. His clumsiness and proclivity for running into things. Why he’d given me the keys to the Chevelle instead of driving me to pick up Reese from the Gas n’ Grocery. The dark rooms we’d been together in, where the absence of light hadn’t seemed to bother him.
As I shifted through my many interactions with Will, there was one common theme running through most of them all. Not all, but most. We’d been in the dark, or the mostly dark, or in pitch black. We’d spent the majority of our time together in Will’s element, and perhaps that’s what had taken me out of mine. Looking back, there were so many signs.
“I guess . . .” A couple more tears crept down my cheeks. “I guess all the times we were together, all the moments we shared . . . I suppose Will wasn’t the only one blinded to what was right in front of us.” I should have figured this out. The writing had been on the walls the whole time, and I’d just ignored it or, as I’d just admitted, been blinded to it. My attraction to Will and the feelings that stemmed from that attraction had dulled all my common sense. That had been obvious to me before I’d been informed by my boss that the man I’d fallen for was permanently blind.
“I don’t know whether to have your head examined or call some national news station to sell the story about the woman who fell for a guy, then went on to marry him, have his babies, and be buried beside him without realizing he was blind the entire time. Could you imagine how much a story like that would sell for?” Jake nudged my arm and flashed me a smile.
I knew he was trying to lighten the mood and hoping humor would pull me out of my shocked state, but with the news I’d just received, I didn’t think I’d be leaving the land of shock for a good year or two. “If you try to sell that story to anyone, even the local paper, I’ll put a bounty out for your head to be brought to me on a silver platter. But if you know someone up to the task of checking this thing out”—I tapped my temple—“make me an appointment. STAT.”
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up over this. Too bad,” he added when I raised an eyebrow. “For being newly blind and all-out refusing to use a cane or walking stick, Will gets around pretty damn well. Hell, whenever I’ve showed up at his place this past year, he’s been working on some car like he used to back when we were all in high school. Although, since he’s been working on them since he could hold a wrench and I don’t doubt his dad might have blindfolded him before telling him to change a filter or the oil or an engine so he’d develop ninja mechanic skills, it’s not too much of a surprise being blind doesn’t slow him down any in that department.”
I shook my head. It didn’t seem li
ke Will’s blindness had slowed him down much in any department.
Jake nudged me. “It’s not like the explosion did any cosmetic damage to his eyes. And don’t take this the wrong way, because I’m as straight as they make ‘em, but a guy like Will Goods . . . well, there’s plenty more to check out on him than his eyes.”
That made me flip through my memory albums again. I’d certainly looked into Will’s eyes, but I couldn’t recall any instances when we’d shared a prolonged gaze, nor could I remember a time where his eyes had zeroed in on mine in that intense way that could make a girl’s insides turn into goo. We’d shared plenty of intimate moments outside of a longing stare, and more than plenty of times Will had done something to turn my insides into a glorified version of goo, but his eyes had never been on the giving end. Because even if he had been able to determine where my eyes were and line his up with mine so we could lock stares for more than a second, he wouldn’t have been able to see my eyes like I’d seen his.
Oh god . . . he didn’t know what my eyes looked like. He didn’t know the color or the shape or the size of them. He didn’t know what my face looked like or what color my hair was. He didn’t know what I looked like. How could it seem like Will knew me better than any person ever had, yet he’d never seen me . . . and he never would either.
He’d never get to see what his bride looked like on their wedding day. He’d never get to see the faces of his babies. He’d never get to watch another sunset or sunrise or the first star popping through the night sky or the headstone of the friend whose body he’d retrieved at the expense of his vision. He’d never see the look on my face, the sincerity bleeding through it, if I told him I loved him.
The first emotion that cut through my shock was anger—scalding and intense. What I needed was a punching bag, but as one wasn’t around and I figured Jake wouldn’t appreciate me turning him into a human piñata, I pounded my fist into the bar counter. “Is life always this goddamned unfair?” I cursed, hitting the counter once more because the first had felt so good.
“Yeah. It is,” Jake answered my rhetorical question with an emphatic nod. “That’s why you have to take what you want when you can have it, run, and don’t look back. That’s why you live each day like it’s your last because I can bet you my brother didn’t wake up the morning of May 5th, 2012 thinking it might be his last. If he were here now, I know he’d tell us he wished he’d swallowed his pride and asked that one girl for a date and that he wished he would have ordered bacon every time he got a cheeseburger. And he would tell us to jump more and curl into a ball less and to give love too easily rather than too sparingly and to skinny dip more often and to eat dessert first. He would tell us both to live this day like it’s our last because, one of these days, it’s going to be.” Jake was wagging his finger at me, but I knew he was just as much doing it at himself and all the other six billion residents of this planet.
His message didn’t go unreceived, but I was past the point of inspirational speeches and life lessons. I was past the point of most things. “Is that why you think Will didn’t tell me? Because he was trying to live each day like it was his last? Because as far as being honest and upfront, I thought Will was the one exception to men in general.”
“I can’t speak for Will or even assume my guess would be remotely close, but with those disclaimers made, if you’re still interested in my thoughts on the matter, they’re all yours.”
I nodded once and waited. Any insight was better than no insight . . . or insight scattered all over the place.
“I think Will didn’t tell you he was blind because, to Will, blindness doesn’t define him like it does to people like you and me.”
I stayed quiet, but I wasn’t sure I liked where Jake was going with his explanation.
“When you or me, or hell, ninety-nine percent of the population, look at a person wearing dark glasses and carrying a white stick, we see a blind person. The blindness defines them. I can guarantee you if Will were to still be able to look at that same person, he wouldn’t see anything. Nothing would be defined for him unless he got to know them.” Jake shrugged and finished the last of the wine in his glass.
Me, I’d given up on the wine one mind-blowing announcement ago. No amount of alcohol, crazy-expensive wine included, was up to the task of diluting my emotions.
“That’s just how Will is. He always has been too,” Jake said. “He’s not like the rest of us who don’t feel like our world’s just right until we can’t properly label and box each person we cross paths with. Will doesn’t label another person; he lets them label themselves. That, in my humble opinion, is why he didn’t come right out and say, ‘Hey, Noelle. I’m blind as a bat without the sonar to guide me. You want to go on a date?’”
“Are you telling me Will didn’t mention he was blind because he wanted me to figure it out on my own? To get to know him before ‘labeling’ him?”
“No, I’m saying he didn’t tell you because blindness doesn’t define Will. If you were to ask him to name fifty things about himself, his blindness wouldn’t come up. I think he didn’t tell you because, during whatever you two have talked about for however long this ‘relationship’ has been going on”—Jake gave me a sideways look—“mentioning that he was blind wasn’t as important as whatever other things you two have discussed.”
“That is a surprisingly profound and put-together explanation,” I admitted, feeling a headache coming on. “But I think you’re blowing a bunch of smoke.”
“And why do you think that?” Jake’s head tilted.
“Because I think Will didn’t tell me he was blind because he wanted to keep me as in the dark as he was and enjoy the perks of this thing we had going on for as long as possible.” The next thing I felt in my emotional obstacle course after anger? Hurt masked by the bitterness I was expressing.
“You think Will was just looking for as many fucks as he could get out of you before you discovered he was disabled and took your fucking somewhere else?” Jake’s words sliced through me. Based on the look on his face, he’d intended them to.
“No, I think he was just enjoying living a . . . dream. A fantasy. I think what he felt for me and what I felt for him was real, but only within the parameters of a fantasy.”
Saying those words stung for two reasons: One, because I didn’t really believe them, and two, because I was scared of what it meant if those words were true. What if everything Will had said and everything he’d done had been nothing more than the actions of a man living a dream? What if I’d been nothing more than a girl to help him forget his reality and his blindness and exchange a few hours of reality with fantasy? What if I’d been that dream and, now that we’d both been woken from it, I was as distant as any dream became after one woke up and went about their life? My stomach churned at the thought of it all.
“You know, we can speculate all night long about why he didn’t tell you or why you didn’t figure it out yourself, but you know the only way you’re going to get the real story, right?”
I bit my lip. I’d have to face Will, but I couldn’t recall ever being so terrified to face another person. “You trust Will?” I didn’t know why I needed the reassurance, because it was evident in everything Jake did and said about Will that he did, but I supposed I needed all the reassurance the universe would give me right now.
“I’d trust him with my life, and if Andrew miraculously rose from the grave and stood beside me right here . . .” Jake swallowed. He couldn’t seem to mention his brother’s name without getting choked up. “I’d trust Will Goods with my little brother’s life again too.”
I nodded. Jake trusted Will implicitly, and a couple of hours ago, so had I . . . but I wasn’t sure if that unwavering trust hadn’t been . . . wavered. If it had, how much? Was it past the point of saving or just in need of a few repairs? Jake was right—there was only one way to find out.
“If you need anything, let me know,” Jake said as I stood. “Or if Will needs anything too. I’
m a phone call away. There isn’t a thing I wouldn’t do for Will Goods.”
I dropped my hands onto the back of the stool and gave him a look. “Like invite him to your strip club to spend every Friday night comped in the V.I.P. room?” It was another bitchy comment, but I didn’t believe that was all Jake would do for Will. I believed him when he said there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do or give for Will.
“Like remind him every single day that his sacrifice is not forgotten. Like remind him every time him that there is nothing I could ever be as grateful for as him carrying my brother’s body out so my ma and family had a body to bury.” Jake rose to stand beside me, staring at me without blinking. “Like remind him that, while he might have lost his eyesight, he gained an eternity of respect and love from me and my family. And if you know the same Will as I do, he deserves that same love and respect from you, Liv.” Jake was done with our chat apparently, because he started across the club toward his office.
My eyes narrowed as I watched him leave. “Did you just call me Liv?” He hadn’t called me Liv once since I’d officially come to work for him.
“At least your ears don’t need to be checked like your head does,” he replied over his shoulder.
“And you’re referring to me by my real name why?”
“You’re no longer my employee,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“You’re firing me,” I said with a sigh, remembering why Jake had wanted to chat with me. The bomb about Will’s blindness had been an unexpected detour.
“No, you’re resigning.” Jake stopped and turned to face me. He didn’t look angry or even upset. He looked like he was just having any other conversation with any other person.
“So you’re firing me.” I knew he had to. I’d broken the golden rule and gotten mixed up in a relationship with one of my clients. I understood the rules and the consequences that came with them.