Can't Hold Back (17 page)

“Grab your balls.”

Alia used that phrase frequently because they all found it so entertaining, because she had learned with time that the dirty jokes and crotch-hoisting that followed her command were as therapeutic as the varied-size bright-colored rubber balls the men used for the next set of exercises.

There were ten vets, now, in Alia’s class, and even though almost every man arrived at his first class full of certainty that it was a waste of time, almost all of them returned. She’d even gotten an email from a “graduate” who reported taking Pilates classes in the “real” world.
It’s all women in the class, but I figure you can’t claim to be much of a soldier if you get intimidated by a roomful of chicks.

She should feel great about what she’d accomplished. She should feel only joy at how much she’d helped these guys.

But there was a bleakness to it all for her. A sense of trudging through routine. In some ways, not so terribly different from the way she’d felt in her old job, as if the buzz of
doing the right thing
was somehow out of reach.

Even though Jake had made it more than clear how much he valued her. Even though he’d promised her that in a few weeks he’d be able to begin paying her a small salary. He’d even set aside time each day when neither of them had appointments so they could share successes, get each other’s help with issues, and trade techniques and knowledge.

None of that filled the hole Nate had left behind.

With a heavy heart, she led them through the ball routine—small green balls with divots under their feet, medium-size orange balls under their shoulder blades and then under their hips, the big blue ball braced behind them for crunches. And then they draped themselves over the gigantic exercise balls and lay there, contemplating the opening of their vertebrae, and she had a moment to reflect.

The night Becca had arrived, the two of them glommed popcorn and therapeutic milkshakes and mourned, Becca openly and Alia in secret.
I’ll tell her tomorrow,
she’d thought.
Or—in a few days. When she’s feeling better. When I’m feeling better.

Because, right then, she worried that without the pleasures of feeding and comforting, without the distraction of bustling around making things okay for Becca, in much the way she always had, she would fly apart into a million pieces.

If she told her secret, if she told her story, she would be the one who needed to be taken care of, and that—

It would be like it had been that night, the night of the instant messages. Her gone all to pieces, Becca doing the taking-care-of.

She couldn’t imagine it. Not right now.

Two days after that, Nate had left.

He’d come to her office beforehand. To thank her, he said, which he did with a strange formality. “You helped me so much. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.” Shaking her hand, but not quite meeting her eyes. Even that contact felt good, as good as foreplay, her body declared, but she shushed it.

She hoped—she hoped he’d say something else.
I won’t forget you.
Or maybe—this was a wild dream, but, maybe—
I hope I’ll see you again sometime.
But if there were words left between them, he didn’t utter them. Neither did he linger or cast her a longing backward glance. He just said, “Bye, Alia,” and went next door, where she heard him say exactly the same things to Jake in a slightly warmer tone of voice. And then she heard their amiable laughter and chatter, and she was beyond grateful when Griff came into the office and threw himself down on the table with a grunt of pain.

When Griff had gone, she’d watched from the window as Nate loaded the truck, muscles bunching under his shirt across his broad back as he hoisted a bag in. He wrestled playfully with the guys who came down to see him off. He smiled and laughed and punched arms and accepted manly hugs, and if she hadn’t been so sad for herself, she would have been filled with joy for him, because he seemed so
whole.
So
him.

And then he was gone. She thought maybe he’d look once in her direction, betray some wistfulness, but he never did.

“Um, do you want us to go over the ball forward, too?” a deep voice asked.

She’d left them draped on their backs over the ball during that whole reverie. She hoped none of them would suffer irrevocable spinal damage. “Yes, definitely, sorry,” she said, and they all changed position obediently. That was the nice thing about soldiers. Once they’d decided you were indeed ahead of them in the chain of command, they were pretty good about following instructions.

Alia’s phone buzzed. Becca.

Are you coming back here after class?

Y.

She remembered what that single letter had signified to Nate, and her face got hot, her body loosening in habitual anticipation. And then sadness settled over her again, washing away desire.

Good—need to talk.

She cheered a little at the sight of that. It had been such a boon, the ability to bury her own feelings in the experience of taking care of Becca.

“Actually, let’s say we’re done for today,” she told the men. She usually ran the class past its official stop time and up to mere seconds before her first appointment of the day, but she—she didn’t have it in her today. She wanted to slink off somewhere and lick her wounds. Or administer to Becca’s, anyway.

“Feel free to stay there as long as you need to.” She paused for effect. “Put your balls away when you’re done.”

Snickers from the peanut gallery, but even that couldn’t eke a smile out of her.

“Jake told me.”

They were the first words out of Becca’s mouth when she opened the door to admit Alia.

“Told you what?”

Alia wasn’t being cagey. She was startled, still in the teaching zone, and vague-brained with grief. For that moment, at least, she had absolutely
no
idea what her sister could possibly be talking about.

“That you were dating Nate. That he broke up with you. Alia—I don’t understand. I don’t—”

Her voice broke off, one hand in mid-flail.

Oh,
shit.

“Bex—”

“Jake didn’t mean to tell me, he figured I’d know, because, yeah,
duh,
sisters usually tell each other this stuff.” She crossed her arms. “When Jake said it—‘Is she okay? Because I’m pretty sure she’s more upset than she lets on, I think they were pretty serious’—I was like
Whaaa?
Then he refused to tell me anything, but I kind of figured it out. Or the gist. You didn’t—you didn’t think I’d freak out, did you?” Becca narrowed her eyes.

“No. No!”

“I would have thought, with the whole history, with me knowing what happened in the past, you would have been dying to tell me. It’s not like you can say, ‘Oh, it was so complicated, I didn’t want to get into it.’ So why? Why?” Becca’s face sagged, and Alia realized that all her anger up to that point had been bravado. Her sister was near tears. Hurt.

She’d hurt Becca.

And that was it. There was nothing left but the whole damn story, and it was time. It was long past time.

Alia took a deep breath. Squared her shoulders. Maybe she could do this. Just tell the story, one word after another:

“In the beginning, I kept trying to deny that it was happening at all—”

“Because he was a client.” Becca lifted her chin. Just a little, but it eased Alia’s heartache.

“Yeah. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be attracted to him. So at first I didn’t tell you because I hoped there was nothing to tell.”

“And the other day on the phone, I blabbed too much and didn’t even ask you how you were. I didn’t leave you any time to talk.”

“No!” That was Becca all over, eager to make this about her own failings, and Alia couldn’t let her. “It wasn’t that. I knew you would have listened if you knew I needed you to. I did. I just—I didn’t tell you because I knew if I did, I’d—”

To Alia’s horror, her voice cracked then, and the tears she’d been holding in threatened to spill. She swiped them away.

“I knew I’d start crying,” she finished. “And then you’d feel like you needed to comfort me.”

“What’s so terrible about that? I cry all the time to you. I was crying the other night. We could have cried together. We could have drowned our sorrows jointly in alcoholic peppermint milkshakes. Which, by the way, need a name.”

“But that’s not how it is with us,” Alia protested.

“I know.” Becca’s voice was suddenly quiet. Her face sad. “I know that’s not how it is. You don’t tell me things. You don’t cry with me.”

The accusation twisted in Alia’s chest, more painful because she knew it was true.

“That one time you did—then you wouldn’t ever talk about it again, and I never wanted to bring it up. If I even hinted around it, you’d get all…stiff—”

They both knew what
one time
Becca was talking about. And Alia didn’t even try to deny what her sister was saying, because it was painfully true. She’d felt stiff, rigid, and miserable, every time the conversation had wandered back there, to that epic meltdown.

“But what I
don’t
understand is
why.
”

Because when you were the one who always took care of someone, it was hard to let them take care of you. Because she had been watching out for Becca for so long that she didn’t remember how
not
to, which meant she didn’t remember how to ask her for help. Because the one time she’d needed help she’d felt like she was breaking into a thousand tiny pieces, like if she let that happen she would never put herself back together again.

“I guess it’s—bad habit.”

Alia sat down heavily on the bed. Becca pulled the desk chair out and sat down across from her. Waiting, listening, so intently it made Alia uncomfortable. She had to look away. “I’ve always—I’ve always taken care of
you.
”

“Because you think of me as the baby.”

“No!”

“Because of my disability.”

“Becca,
no.
”

“Then I don’t understand. Because it’s fine for me to need you, right, but you can’t need me. God forbid
you
ever need taking care of. God forbid you ever let anyone help you with anything. It’s so damn frustrating. You’re my
sister.
I love you. And I want us to be friends. I don’t want you to mother me or take care of me, I just want you to be my friend.”

“Of course I’m your friend!”

“But I’m not yours. I’m not
your
friend, because if I was your friend, you would have told me what was going on in your life.”

The truth hung in the air between them.

And then Becca bowed her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is the last thing you need, me yelling at you. This isn’t how I wanted this to go. I just—Li, you can’t give and give and give until you have nothing left to give. At some point you have to take what you need for yourself. Otherwise, you end up with nothing to give. Otherwise, you end up with nothing.”

Alia thought of the last night she and Nate had been together. How he’d made her ask for what she needed. How hard it had been at first, a skill she’d never possessed, and how it had grown easier, until the words had poured from her, all that
want
finally unleashed. And how there had been one more thing she had wanted that she hadn’t been able to tell him.

Maybe if she had been able to—maybe things would have gone differently.

“I’m not very good at—”

He’d said it himself, hadn’t he?
You’re not very good at saying what you want, are you?

“I’m not very good at needing things.” The words came easily, as if the confession had been waiting to emerge all this time, and then more easily, faster now: “I’m not good at needing
people.
I’m not very good at letting people love me. And I’m sorry, Bex,” she said, starting to cry. “I’m so, so sorry I didn’t let you be my friend.”

She cried for a long time, while Becca held her.

When Alia’s sobs had turned to hiccups and her hiccups to ragged breaths, Becca said, “I’m so lucky.”

“What—”

“I always had you,” Becca said very softly. “You saved me. You took care of me. You made everything okay. You didn’t have that.”

Alia shook her head. “No. I didn’t.”

“Dad was gone. Mom wasn’t—
there.
”

They were both quiet for a moment, remembering
those
years—the drawn shades, chores undone, but, worst of all, the silences.

“It must have been hard for you. Taking care of me. Rescuing me from myself.”

“No. It was never hard. Loving you was never hard. But this—”

God, the words just didn’t want to come out. The admission of vulnerability. How much of a shell had she built so she would never have to need this? “This thing. With Nate. And now.”

“Letting people take care of you.”

Alia nodded. Because she had never, ever, ever wanted to screw up and make Becca bail her out, the way their parents had made her bail them out; she had
never
wanted to do that to anyone.

“I’m grown up now.” Becca didn’t sound angry or defensive. It was just a simple statement of fact.

“I know you are.”

“No, I mean—you can let me take care of you. A little. When you need it.”

Tears rushed into her eyes, and Becca’s surprisingly warm, strong arms were around her again, and it was a little easier than it had been last time to accept the sensation of falling apart.

They talked first about the past. Times when both her mother and father had sat on her bed to say good night. Times, even when her father had been ill, when he had had the time and energy to listen to her talk about school. To help her solve her problems, to sit with her while she plugged away at her math homework, to help her work out a passage on the piano. And later, those rare—but real—times when her mother’s mood had been stable enough that she’d been a mother, someone who helped Alia pick out clothes, someone who did the grocery shopping and cooked dinner. Someone who was present and comforting, not a blank space in the house.

They had felt so few and far between, so unutterably precious, and so unrecoverable.