Just Remember to Breathe

  “Alex, I need your help,” Kelly said the moment I walked into the room.

  “Hey there. What’s up?” I asked, setting my bag down next to the bed. I settled in on the bed, curling around one of my pillow.

  She looked at me, then said, “Okay, so … I think Joel may be coming around.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh come on, Kelly. He just wants to be out there, getting laid.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “What makes you think differently?”

  She leaned back, her back against the wall, her legs hanging off the side of her bed. It looked extremely uncomfortable.

  “Well,” she replied. “I told you he asked me out on Friday. I turned him down again. So he sends me a poem.”

  “Oh, no, he didn’t.”

  She nodded, grinning. “It was awful. But really sweet, too.”

  “I didn’t know he wrote poetry.”

  “Well… don’t tell him I said this, but he really shouldn’t.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “So… this morning I was in Doctor Abernathy’s office.” Kelly was also on work-study, and spent two mornings a week as a receptionist at Columbia University Medical Center. “And a courier comes in. With a bouquet of holyhock.”

  “A bouquet of what?”

  “Come on, Alex. It’s only my favorite flower. Point is, he remembered. He didn’t send me a dozen roses, which would be nice, but unoriginal. Instead, he sent me something he knew I would love.”

  “Okay, that’s really sweet, I’ll admit it.”

  “Okay, so he wants to go out Saturday. And I really want to. But … not alone. Not the first time. I need my best friend along.”

  “Won’t that be awkward?”

  “Not if you bring a date.”

  “Um… no.”

  “Alex! Come on!”

  “Seriously, no. There’s no one I’m even remotely interested in dating.”

  Now she rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, right. I see. Let me think. I’m trying to think of a guy you can ask.”

  “Good luck with that,” I replied.

  “Oh, I know,” she said, her voice sarcastic. “Let me think… I bet there’s someone you see every other day at work study. And spend hours with. And then on the other days you get up at a nightmare hour to go running with. Eww. Seriously.”

  “Kelly, stop. It’s not like that.”

  She sat up straight and threw a pillow at me. “Come on, Alex! You’re my friend. I need you on this. And it’s not like you don’t spend six days a week with him anyway!”

  “Yeah, but those aren’t dates!”

  I was telling the truth. Even though he hadn’t asked me to come again, I’d been showing up at six am every other day. We ran together, sometimes in silence. This morning, in fact, we’d gone almost three miles. To be honest, I was secretly pleased I’d been able to keep up. And at least once or twice a week we had breakfast. Or coffee, after leaving the rare manuscripts library. But we weren’t dating. And, by and large, we’d avoided the kind of talk which had gotten us into trouble a couple weeks ago. We were following the rules, and it was working, and I didn’t want to ruin it.

  I held my breath, thinking, hard. I really didn’t want to ruin it.

  I swallowed, then said, “All right. But it won’t be a date.”

  “Whatever, Alex.”

  I smiled at Kelly. She said, “Thanks.”

  “Don’t be surprised if he turns me down.”

  “I don’t understand either one of you.”

  I sighed. “I don’t either.”

  Flowers from Afghanistan (Dylan)

  Bad idea, I thought. Really bad idea. First of all, it was a Saturday night, and I was walking to Alex’s dorm room to meet her and pick her up for our non-date. Or our non-date date? Undate? Whatever. We were going to a bar, where people would be drinking, and loud, and obnoxious, and my only tenuous connection to reality would be the one person I could not reach out to.

  This was a really fucking bad idea.

  I checked my phone. Ten after ten already. I was late. I quickly sent her a text.

  BE THERE IN A MOMENT SORRY LATE

  She wrote back damn near instantly.

  Ok. Hugs. :)

  Oh, come on. Seriously? Hugs? That was the absolute last thing either one of us needed to be doing.

  After our way too open morning run and breakfast, I’d worked hard to reestablish a tone of normality. It was necessary. But we were still spending a huge amount of time together. The next Thursday morning, at six am, she’d shown up on the green without a word, in running shoes, and a significantly less revealing outfit than the first day. That was a relief. If she’d only known how my breath had caught when I first caught eyes of her that first day.

  Better she didn’t.

  So, not only did I follow her rules, but I made up my own.

  No flirting.

  No excessive eye contact.

  Above all, nothing that could be misconstrued as a date.

  I was protecting myself, but I was also protecting her. And then, Friday afternoon, after we left the library, she approached me about tonight. It’s for Kelly, she said. Kelly and her boyfriend, whatever his name is, are on the verge of getting back together. This is the first time they’re going out since they broke up, and Kelly needed a buffer, something to keep them from getting into a huge fight or something. But three is a crowd, and going as two couples wouldn’t be so painfully awkward, she said.

  Yeah, sure it wouldn’t.

  I found the building and hit the buzzer for her room.

  She buzzed me in.

  Damn. I’d hoped she’d just meet me down here. Seeing her room was going to be awkward in its own way. Somehow we’d managed to avoid that level of intimacy. And I desperately needed to keep my distance.

  Whatever.

  So I worked my way up the stairs to the fourth floor. This was my own personal challenge for the last week. Never take an elevator when there were stairs. In two weeks of running, more strength had returned to my right leg than I’d felt in a long time. I was a long way from whole, but I was even further away from where I’d been seven months ago, when they were debating whether or not to cut off my leg.

  On the fourth floor, I followed the room numbers to hers, then knocked. A cute chalk board was attached to the door, saying simply “Kelly and Alex.”

  “Be right there!” I heard her call. She opened the door, and I caught my breath.

  Oh, my God.

  Her hair was in some kind of complicated bun on the back of her head, with long tresses hanging down over her shoulders in a very loose curl. She wore a dark green sleeveless dress, cut just above the knee, that hugged her form perfectly. I took a shallow breath. She’d done something with her makeup. Her deep green eyes looked huge.

  Color flew to her cheeks when she looked at me. Both of us averted our eyes.

  “Come on in, I’ll be ready in just a second,” she said.

  Nervous as hell, I followed her into the room.

  It was obvious which side was Alex’s.

  Kelly’s side of the room was swathed in pink, movie and band posters, huge fluff pillows.

  Alex’s was subdued. A world map hung over her desk, and a stack of books was loosely arranged on one side of the desk.

  A picture frame contained pressed and dried flowers. A date was written on the backing of the frame, just below the flowers. “November 19th, 2011.”

  Those were the flowers I sent her when I was in Afghanistan, last year.

  On the bureau was a picture that nearly ripped my heart out. It was the two of us, curled up together. I remembered when it was taken. We were in Haifa, at a park near the Central Carmel. I’d been playing guitar most of the night, and when I stopped, we curled up together, laughing and talking. I had a copy of the same photo.

  I averted my eyes from the photo, trying to keep my breathing calm.

  “I’m ready,” she said, coming out of the restroom
. She looked at me, then her eyes darted to the picture, the flowers, and her cheeks colored. We avoided each other’s eyes as we left the room.

  She headed for the stairs, even in her heels, which looked impossible to walk in, and also impossibly sexy. That dress, complimented by a tiny wrap over her shoulders, hugged her body in a way that made my pulse rush in my temples. I shook my head. This was Alex trying to take care of me, because she knew I’d sworn off elevators. I couldn’t help but scan her entire body with my eyes as she walked ahead of me a few steps. Holy shit, but she was beautiful. This is going to sound crazy obnoxious, but I wanted nothing more at that moment to lay her down, take her legs in my hands and lick her calves.

  This was going to be a long, long night.

  “We can take the elevator,” I said.

  “They’re just heels, it’s fine.”

  I shrugged.

  When we got to the street, I said, “So, I got an email from my friend Sherman.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  I nodded. “He’s coming home next week, and said he wants to come to New York for a couple weeks. I think he’s thinking about college up here.”

  “Oh wow, that’s exciting!”

  “It’ll be strange. That part of my life and this part of my life… they don’t really connect. It’s hard to imagine having him here.”

  “We’ll show him the town,” she said. “It’ll be good for you to have a friend here.”

  I took a sharp shallow breath at her use of the word we. Every moment I spent with this girl was a show of restraint. Hard to imagine as it was, I’d had a lot of sleepless nights lately. She was busy making plans for “us” and I was trying my hardest to keep my distance. Maintaining that distance was killing me. I loved her, but let’s be honest. Part of me hated her too.

  I tensed up as we approached the 1020 Bar. A small crowd of people stood out front smoking. Inside it looked like a madhouse. Extremely loud music, people packed in like a japanese subway. Screaming and shouting. It sounded like a band was playing inside.

  Unconsciously I slowed to a stop as we approached the door.

  “You okay?” she asked. “You look a little pale.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t do well with crowded places any more.”

  “I’ll stay close,” she said.

  That ought to help me relax. Yeah, right.

  She took my arm, curling herself close in to me, and we walked into the bar. She was scanning the crowd, looking for Kelly and boyfriend, whose name I couldn’t recall.

  After a few minutes pushing our way through the crowd, we found them, sitting at a tall round table with four stools around it.

  I froze when I saw the boyfriend.

  “Dylan, this is Kelly and Joel. Kelly and Joel, this is Dylan.”

  Kelly smiled, a huge grin, and said, “Wow. Dylan, it is so cool to finally get to meet you.”

  Joel held out his hand to shake, and said, “Hey man, yeah, it’s good to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much.”

  I stared into the face of the man I’d seen in the skype video. The shirtless guy who had been in Alex’s room the night I broke it off from her for good. I couldn’t breath, and my eyes darted to Alex, who was starting to look concerned, then I looked back to him, and muttered, “Motherfucker.” I shook my arm free from Alex, turned and pushed my way through the crowd back to the exit.

  Um, yeah. I better see a doctor (Alex)

  “What the hell?” Kelly asked when Dylan pushed away from us and almost ran for the door.

  “I don’t know!” I said, my voice rising into a near wail. What was wrong? What had I done?

  “Go after him, Alex. Don’t let him go without an explanation. Not again!”

  I was shaking, and breathing fast, shallow breaths. Freaking out. A vision of all those weeks I’d spent in February and March, mostly curled up in my bed crying.

  That son of a bitch was not doing that to me again.

  I turned and ran for the door, not caring if they followed.

  He was halfway down the block. I ran after him, shouting, “Dylan! Wait!”

  I saw his shoulders tense up when he heard me. He stopped walking, his back straight, still turned away from me.

  “Dylan! What the hell?” I screamed. “Why did you do that? Why did you walk out like that?”

  He turned toward me, and it felt like I’d been punched. His eyes were red and watering, eyebrows scrunched together, making a line down the center of his forehead.

  He pointed his finger back at the bar, and shouted, “You know how I feel about you. How the fuck can you bring me here, knowing he was going to be here?”

  I flinched at the shout. Never in all the time we’d known at each other had he done that. And the question. What? It didn’t make any sense at all. He didn’t even know Joel.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Dylan!”

  He shook his head, his face etched in grief. “I thought you were … something else, Alex. I … oh, fucking Christ, I never even imagined this.”

  “Imagined what? I don’t understand you at all!”

  “Him! He was in your room that night. Don’t bother to deny it, I saw him! You’re on fucking skype, breaking up with me on what was already the worst day of my life, and then that fucker comes over, his fat ass shirtless, and puts his hand on you as he walks by. Did you guys laugh it up when you planned the breakup? Were you fucking before you called me?”

  It felt like he’d punched me. I backed away two or three steps, then said, “Dylan… that’s Joel. He’s Kelly’s boyfriend.”

  “Then why the hell was he there?”

  Now I screamed back. “Because he’s her boyfriend, you asshole. He was over all the time, those two are attached at the hip! Are you telling me you broke it off with me because of that? You broke my heart because of a stupid misunderstanding? Because you thought you saw a guy in my room?”

  He shook his head. “He was with Kelly?” he said in a ragged whisper. His face was twisting in grief and anger. Anger with himself? I didn’t understand.

  Suddenly he screamed, “Fuck!” and slammed his fist into the metal grating of the store we stood next too. He let out a howl, a real literal howl, and slammed his fist into the metal grate again. Then he did it again, and again, shouting, “Fuck!” every time he slammed his fist into the wall.

  The rage just left me, because the last time he hit the wall, blood splattered against the wall. I started crying, crying really hard, because he was hurting himself, he was really hurting himself.

  “Dylan,” I whispered. “Stop.”

  He didn’t even hear me. So I did the only thing I could think of. I put my arms around him, right around his chest, and buried my face against his back, and I cried out, as loud as I could, “Dylan, please stop! Please don’t hurt yourself! I love you!”

  He stopped, and stiffened in my arms. I sobbed against his back. Abruptly he turned in my arms, and wrapped me in his arms, the muscles holding me so tight I almost couldn’t breath. Both of us were crying, and I started to say, “I’m sorry,” and he said, “I didn’t know. Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, Alex.”

  He started to sob, real howls of pain, and he somehow punched out the words, “That was the day Kowalski threw himself on the grenade, Alex. I was crazy out of my mind when I called you.” His voice dropped to a whisper, and he said, “You were drunk, and I needed you so bad.”

  I cried even harder, and tried to curl against him even tighter, and said, “I’m so sorry, Dylan. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

  “I never stopped loving you,” he whispered. “Not even for a second. Even when I hated you.”

  I whispered, “I love you, too, Dylan.”

  It had been more than two years since the last time we held each other like this, the morning he left San Francisco to go back home. Both of us had changed, but for the first time in two years, I felt whole with his arms wrapped around me.

  The moment would have been perfe
ct, but I heard Kelly’s voice behind us. “Um… I hate to interrupt this incredibly touching scene, but um… he needs to go the hospital. Like, right now.”

  Dylan and I both jerked. We pulled slightly apart, and I took his arm in my hand.

  Oh, shit.

  His hand was… mangled. Knuckles split, blood dropping on the ground in great big splatters. I felt my breath speed up suddenly, and realized that I could see the bone of one of his fingers.

  “Jesus Christ, Dylan, look what you did to your hand!”

  He looked down at his hand, a lost expression on his face. He shook his head, and said, “Um, yeah. I better see a doctor.” He closed his eyes and swayed a little.

  “We’re coming with you,” Joel said.

  Kelly nodded.

  So I took my wrap off, and wound it around his injured hand, and we waved down a cab.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Worth fighting for (Dylan)

  So, next thing I knew the four of us were crammed into the backseat of a taxi, on our way to the VA hospital all the way down on the Lower East Side. I was all the way over the left side of the seat, with Alex somehow just wrapped around me, my right hand resting palm up in her lap, wrapped in her silk wrap, which wasn’t going to be much good for wearing after tonight. She leaned against me, and as much pain as my hand was in — which was a lot — my bigger focus was on her.

  Neither of us spoke, I think because this moment was just too big to get words around it.

  Kelly and Joel pretty much took care of that for us. Kelly was sitting in the middle of the back seat, and she muttered to Joel, “You never mangled your hand for me. What kind of boyfriend were you, anyway?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Joel answered.

  “I’m just saying. I don’t think you’re really serious. If you were, you’d find a way to show it. Like completely fucking up your hand or something.”

  Alex shook with laughter against me. I turned my head, looked down at her, resting her head on my shoulder.

  “It’s not that I don’t take you seriously, Kelly. Or that I’m not serious. I’m just not fucking crazy like this guy obviously is.” He looked across the car at me. “No personal offense meant, Dylan.”