A Lover's Secret (2 page)

He had written an entire book about that. A book with
royalties so high, it was stupid. Jake snorted. Stupid. It was one of the
reasons that, every month, he tried to use some of that money to blow someone’s
mind. To give some unsuspecting bloke an experience so profound, so
life-changing, that he couldn’t help but remember, forever, a little bit of
what life was about. This month—tonight—it was Andrew Madigan’s turn. And, of course,
all his friends.
Lucky bastards.
Jake laughed again.

The flight attendant placed her hand on Jake’s shoulder
then, and when he lifted his face, he was met with a set of grass green eyes,
admiring and eager. “I hate to bother you, Mr. Lassiter, but could you please
sign this? For me?” She held Jake’s book with a shaking, well-manicured hand.
Jake winked because he couldn’t help himself. “My pleasure,” he said, because
it was.

This was what he would never get used to. This total lack of
anonymity. He couldn’t go anywhere anymore without someone wanting something.
Without women wanting to show him their admiration, and… well, many other
things besides. Not that he didn’t like it. He would have adored it, except for
that one thing. That truth, which was slowly strangling him, dropping its
frozen shadow over everything and choking out the light, no matter how much he
tried, now, to manufacture more of it in the world.

Jake took a deep breath and pressed hard against the back of
his seat. As long as no one discovered his secret, he told himself, he would be
alright. He could continue on, just like before. For a while, at least.

***

Jess

Jess’s eyes blinked open and she wondered whether it was a
sunny day. The windows in the basement of her parent’s home were shrouded by
window wells, eight feet deep, so, in order to see the color of the sky, she
had to push her face against the glass and peer upwards. Not wanting to be
bothered by that just yet, she sighed and rolled to her side, yanking the
covers toward her chin and marveling at how little this home had changed. The
only development that had taken place over the past eight years was that her
grandmother had moved in. But besides the extra bed in Jess’s basement room,
and the attendant humidifier, denture cream, and prescription bottles,
everything was the same.

This place would always smell faintly of urine, owing to the
old cut-pile carpet and all those many years of cats. The walls would always be
an orangey shade of taupe, which Dad said “soothed as it energized.” There
would always be faded motivational posters and peeling particle board and vases
filled with withering flowers—all those that didn’t sell in the family’s flower
shop and that were too wilted to donate somewhere.

Since returning home last week, Jess found these things to
be imminently comforting—these things that would never change. At the hospital,
everything could happen so fast. Even if you knew all you were supposed to.
Even if you had memorized the textbooks and you had all the correct answers on
all the tests and you knew the names of every muscle, bone, and tendon, and
even if you had practiced sticking a needle into a grapefruit eight thousand
times until you were the best in the class, when someone came in to the room
and began to scream at you and call you filthy names and spit at you and
breathed his whiskey fumes straight into your face and tried to grab at you and
flail his arms, and you couldn’t get the needle in right, and you accidentally
hurt him, and his eyes riveted you with betrayal, and then the screaming began
again, and your hands needed to stay steady, and you wondered how on earth you
were ever going to do this for a living. Why on earth you had chosen
this
to want to do. Why you hadn’t given it more thought, before you were in so deep
that there was no way out…

But home. It was nothing like that. She took a deep breath
and listened to the steady rhythmic tick of the clock. The rustle of her
grandmother’s breathing. The bubble of her humidifier.

Grandma shuffled over to her, then, dressed in her flannel
white nightgown and kicking her oversized crocheted slippers in front of her
with each step. Grandma was always working with her yarn. She seemed to feel as
though everyone and everything needed a crochet cap or a crochet belt or
crochet shoes. Jess, tiny dolls, teddy bears. Nothing escaped her kindness or
her craftiness.

“Come with me, Jessica,” Grandma said. “We need to start
putting together the centerpieces this morning.” Her voice was kind and
speckled, like raspberry jam, Jess thought as she kicked off her covers and
followed Grandma up the stairs, observing the slow sway of Grandma’s hips, the clawed
way she gripped the wooden handrail, leaving behind the scent of Ivory soap,
just as she always had.

Suddenly, Grandma fell off balance. Her frail left hand
slipped off the rail and her torso lurched backward in a great arc, like a
white flag whipping toward Jess, who instinctively reached her hands forward,
though this would have only caused them both to tumble backward. But Grandma
recovered, said not a word, and continued her pace, squeezing both handrails
tighter now.

If Grandma had been one of her patients, Jess would have
immediately inquired into her balance issues and counseled the family to move
her bedroom to the main floor, but she knew better than to bring it up with
Grandma, who was too dignified and independent most of the time even to let
Jess bring her a cup of peppermint tea. But Jess would talk to her mother about
it after the wedding.

Jess’s mother and father hadn’t been speaking to her much
since she had left school, and now, she assumed, they were at work, where they
spent a good deal of their time. As the owners of the biggest flower shop in
the city, her mom and dad knew everything monumental or romantic before it even
happened. It was just one of the many things they loved about their business.
Another thing they loved was the roses, and, here, on the dining room table,
they had piled crimson blooms three feet high.

When Jess saw them—the sheer abundance, the sensory
extravagance—she suddenly imagined herself stripping the petals from the buds,
piling them high on the table, then stripping naked and lying atop them,
feeling the rich, velvety sumptuousness beneath her bare skin.

She shook her head.
Where on earth had that thought come
from?

Grandma moved closer. “We’re supposed to cut the roses at
the base and float them in the water, three blooms to a bowl. Then tie the
ribbon around the fluted edge of the glass.” She paused and cleared her throat.
“Now, Jessica, this seems a little complicated. With the ribbons and all.”

Jess had created these same centerpieces dozens of times as
a young girl, for weddings, parties, bar mitzvahs, you name it. “No problem,
Grandma.” Jess’s voice was soft. “Why don’t you sit and crochet while I do
them?”

“Well, now, that sounds just right.” Grandma shuffled to the
sideboard to retrieve her basket of yarn, and then she settled into her
recliner, in the adjoining room. The rooms where connected with a wide archway,
and her chair was positioned fewer than ten feet away, but Grandma shouted now,
as though they were separated by a much greater distance. “What time did you
get in last night, Jessica, from Kelly’s party?”

“Oh, not late.”

“Well that’s good. That’s good.” Grandma paused, inspected
her yarn, and fished her crochet hook out of the basket. “Everything is going
to be just fine, you know.”

“Sure it is, Grandma, I know.” Since she had been home,
Grandma had been given to offering numerous reassurances.

“So when
are
you going to be a doctor, Jessica?
Officially.”

Jess swallowed and told herself to breathe. “I’m taking a
little time off right now, Grandma. Remember?”

“Sure you are. Sure you are, dear. Everything is going to
work out for the best. You’ll see.”

Just then, the front door creaked open and Monica’s voice
cooed, “Yoo-hoo? Anybody home?”

“We’re here, Mon.”

Monica teetered on her heels, still in the same outfit from
last night. A satiny green bra peeked out from her blouse, which was buttoned
wrong, and her skirt was on backward.

Grandma’s eyes went wide and she returned her focus to her
crocheting.

“The most amazing thing happened,” Monica sputtered, pulling
a chair from the kitchen table and flouncing in it, her legs outstretched. Her
hemline crept up and Jess turned away.

“I figured
something
happened. You kind of
disappeared on me last night,” Jess said.

“Sorry about that.”

“It was no problem.” Jess smiled. Monica had disappeared
from the party shortly after their arrival, allowing a relieved Jess to sneak
out the back door even before the strippers arrived. “Tell me all about it
while you help me work on these centerpieces.”

Monica picked up a rose and spun it between her fingers. “How
did you get stuck doing this, Jess?”

“I asked to do it, and I wanted to sit with Grandma for
awhile.” The truth was, Jess knew that Grandma would have tried to create all
of these centerpieces herself if she hadn’t jumped in.

Monica whispered now, a hoarse and throaty purr. “Why are
you staying here, Jess? You could move in with me. We would have so much fun.”

Hmm. What did Monica mean by
fun
? She winced. “I like
it here.”

“But you’re not a child anymore, and you would have some
freedom for once in your life.”

Jess was quiet, and Monica continued. “For example, last
night, this guy—one of Kelly’s cousins, I think—dropped by her party real quick
to drop off something for the wedding, and let’s just say I distracted him from
his mission, and then we went back to his hotel.”

“Oh. Wow. Really?”

“He had this body, Jess. Hard as a rock. Chiseled. And he
had this move, like, with his tongue. Kind of a flicky thing and then a whirl.
He was slam dang amazing. He kept… ”

Jess shook her head and gestured toward Grandma, who was
keeping her eyes on the tight, even rows of her crochet.

“Oh, don’t be such a prude, Jess. Grandma can’t hear a
thing. Andrew and I talk about shit in front of her all the time.” Monica
smoothed at her hair. “The point is, your life is never going to move forward
if you don’t move out of here.”

“I just got home, Mon. I’m still figuring things out.”

“I have an extra room available, like, today.”

“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“That’s what you say, Jess, but you forget that I know how
stuck you are in your ways.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Like, I worry
about you.”

“You worry about
me
? Why?”

“Well, to start, you are totally sexually repressed. Like,
seriously.”

“Geez…” Jess looked up to Grandma again. “I think she can
hear better than you think she can.”

“How would you know? You haven’t been home. You don’t know
Grandma like I know Grandma. There’s a lot you’ve missed.” Monica stared at
her. “And a lot to catch up on. I have about fifteen guys I could set you up
with, starting today. Starting tonight. These are guys who would—”

Jess held up her palm. “Let’s just get through the wedding.
I’ll sort through some things and we’ll see about that.”

“Really. You think about it, okay? And I want you to think
about moving in with me. Because I’ve got another lady wanting to rent the
room. Wanting like hell to rent it. But I’m keeping it open until you tell me
you want it, okay.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to go home and change.”

“Okay.”

Monica stood and Grandma looked up at her finally, crossing
her eyes slightly.

“Goodbye, Grandma,” Monica shouted, enunciating each
syllable and patting clumsily at her shoulder.

“Oh yes. Bye, bye then dear.”

When the front door had clicked shut, Grandma began, “We
want you to stay right here with us, Jessica—right here with us until you
decide to go back to medical school, and there’s nothing wrong with you not
going home with every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

“Grandma!” Jess’s face burned hot. “You can hear every word
we say. Why do you pretend you can’t?”

“Getting this old has to have its privileges.” Grandma
winked. “Otherwise, it’s boring as hell.”

***

While Jess worked, her mind raced.
Why was she such a
failure? How had she screwed up so monumentally?
She tried not to calculate
the number of years it would take her to pay off her student loans while
earning eight bucks an hour working at the flower shop and living at home, but,
once started, her mind wouldn’t stop. Sixteen years. Her breath came faster and
her skin flushed. Sixteen years to get back to where she started. She would be
forty-two before she could leave home.

What the hell was she going to do? And how could she have
aced her first three and half years of medical school, and now she couldn’t
float a rose in a flippin’ bowl of water without tipping it into her lap—without
getting stabbed by eighteen thorns? Each time she grabbed for a new stem, she
felt a tiny stab of new pain alongside the other cuts on her hands.

She was still at the kitchen table when her brother, Andrew,
rattled open the back door. As soon as she saw him, Jess’s hand flew to her
chest. Purple welts blistered from his forehead and cheek. His nose had a
swollen, sideways appearance, and blood covered his shirt, all the way down the
buttons to the waistband of his jeans, where it had pooled and soaked into the
denim. He smelled of tequila and cigar smoke, but his eyes were blazing.

“What happened to you?” Jess whispered.

Andrew chuckled and shook his head back and forth a few
times. Jess’s eyes widened.

“And you stink, too. What did you do, Andrew?”

“My bachelor party was crazy. Beyond crazy. Bat-shit crazy.
I’m-lucky-I’m-still-alive crazy.”