Craving Perfect (24 page)

Carlos and I turned. We had forgotten he was in the room.

Chad waved one hand helplessly in front of him.

I couldn’t answer him. I could only shrug my shoulders. I had given so many pitiful excuses that I was running out of more.

Mercifully, Chad turned to leave. “Well, just come find me if you need anything else, Callie,” he called out halfheartedly, as if he wanted to be sure that we felt his existence.

Without asking, Carlos took the cord from my hands, his warm skin touching mine. Too soon, the feeling disappeared.

I watched the back of him, unblinking, as he searched the dark corners for an outlet. Breathing became difficult as my eyes traced the outline of his head.

“Found one,” he called out from behind a brown box.

I finally blinked.

“Great. Thanks.” I stepped back onto the treadmill. The more I looked at Carlos, the faster I wanted to get home. I pressed the START button and the control panel fired up its flashing red and orange lights. “It’s working!” I shouted over the motor as my legs began to move. “See, I told you this one always worked for me.” I looked back at Carlos.

“But the cord isn’t long enough.” He stood, watching me, his brow furrowed. He held the plug in his hand.

My chest tightened at the sight of the unplugged cord, but I wasn’t about to stop and explain. I couldn’t if I tried. Instead I offered a weak, “Guess the battery pack is stronger than you thought.”

He shook his head like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Finally he just dropped the cord and left me to my run. “Have a good workout.”

“Thanks.” I watched him till he walked out the door. “See you soon,” I said to the back of his head.

He stopped and turned to look at me one final time. And this time he really looked at me like I was crazy.

I smiled at him but he turned and left.

Finally.

Time was running out. I had no idea how long the battery would last.

With my temples already pounding as if I’d just run a five-minute mile, I pushed the UP arrow and began to jog. My arms and legs quickly adopted a comfortable rhythm so I increased the speed from five to six. The faster I got going, the faster I’d be out of this place.

The mere thought lightened my shoulders, even while the pounding across my forehead brought on a new wave of sharp light. Like camera flashes. To forget the pain in my head, I concentrated on my breathing, in through my nose out through my mouth.

In and out.

Then I began to count my footsteps against the rubber mat. The sound echoed in the damp room.

Thump, thump, thump
.

Anxious, I increased the speed to seven.

Then eight.

With my elbows tucked close to my sides, I began to run even faster, holding my breathing steady.

Suddenly, I felt as if I could fly.

I cranked the speed to ten. When I glanced down at my legs, they moved so fast that my knees looked fuzzy.

Thump, thump, thump
.

Then I remembered the letter I left with Kevin. He promised to give it to me when he saw me again. Here’s what I wrote:

In and out.

My breathing continued.

Each breath competed with the pounding at my temples and the throbbing across my forehead. Sweat began to trickle behind my ears, tickling my skin. I licked my lips, thirsty, but still focused on my breathing.

I reached down and pressed the UP arrow one final time, this time to twelve. The fastest my body had ever run. Despite the stinging forehead pain, I felt exhilarated. Like I could run forever. A runner’s high? Was this what the marathon runners always talked about?

One final time, I closed my eyes and pictured my perfect body—long legs, thin arms, flawless skin, perfect face. I smiled to myself, not for what I’d be losing but for everything that I hoped waited back home.

A flash of white and tan caught the corner of my eye from the doorway, a reminder to run faster.

Carlos…

I closed my eyes again, smiling to myself, as I ran into the dark, cool nothingness, just like before. It was like running blindfolded into a thick forest in the middle of a moonless night. You could stop and cower or you could run and face it straight on.

I chose to run, as fast as my legs would allow, till finally I couldn’t feel my legs or even the bottoms of my feet. My whole body turned numb. The only thing left was the pounding of my chest echoing inside my head and tapping out my final seconds at both temples.

Three…

Two…

One.

There it was again.

A delicate, cool touch to my forehead followed by a whiff of lavender. It teased my eyelids and cheeks like a silk scarf.

I inhaled the lavender until my ribs ached and I sank back into the darkness, keeping the scent deep inside.

Despite the blackness, I was finally warm again, even if my body couldn’t—or wouldn’t—move. My arms wouldn’t lift and I couldn’t wiggle my toes.

But at least the pounding had stopped. The world was finally quiet.

“Grace…can you hear me?” It was the same voice that visited my dreams each night, pulling me back just before I sank too far. It faded in and out like a weak cell phone connection.

My eyelids remained heavy, and I turned my face away from the voice.

But the voice grew more persistent. “Please wake up, Grace.”

This time the voice was even familiar.

“I will need to change her bandages,” said an unfamiliar deep voice. His voice was flat, emotionless. I heard something like a pin scratching over hard plastic.

An elliptical machine, maybe?

And then I realized I’d fallen again. At Goldie’s Gym. I swallowed, squeezing my eyes tighter against that probability.

Alexandra Summers and Max Kramer were probably staring down at me right at this very moment, their faces pinched with disgust, wondering why I bothered with a gym membership.

How humiliating
, I moaned inwardly, sinking deeper.

“Is she better today?” asked another voice, more comforting than the last.

Someone squeezed my hand, threading thick fingers through mine.

My eyes flickered against a light.

“Grace?”

I remembered that voice and tried to focus. My eyelids continued to flicker but an overhead line of light blinded me.

It had to be the gym again. It
felt
like the gym. But the smells were different…

My entire head throbbed, like someone was pulling at every hair in my head at exactly the same time.

“Grace?” the voice said again, louder. “It’s me, Kathryn. Please wake up.” Her voice was raspy. But then it cracked. “I’m here, Grace.”

Kathryn?

I turned my head and tried again to open my eyes. My lips moved but they opened as easily as dried rubber. Thankfully, a tall shadow stood over her, blocking the annoying light, allowing my eyes to open.

“Kathryn?” My throat burned.

“Oh, thank god.” Kathryn exhaled. “Finally!” She leaned closer and squeezed my arm.

I felt the squeeze and looked at her hand. Understanding returned in slow waves and prickles floating up my arms.

“Eddie, get the doctor,” Kathryn said over her shoulder. “She’s awake.”

Doctor? At the gym?

I squinted past my feet. Eddie stood at a doorway, looking back at me. A crease deepened in the middle of his forehead. His eyes were dark and sunken, like he hadn’t slept in a while. A long while.

He stood motionless.

“Don’t worry, Eddie. I’ll tell her,” Kathryn squeezed my arm again.

Eddie nodded reluctantly, smiled at me, and then turned for the hallway.

“Aren’t I…Aren’t we at the gym?” I squirmed myself into a sitting position but Kathryn pushed me, gently, back against a pillow.

I looked helplessly into Kathryn’s eyes. “Don’t tell me I fell again…”

Soft laughter rumbled around her. We weren’t alone.

“Hardly,” Kathryn said, a tired smile returning to her voice. “Jeez, Gracie, we’ve all been worried sick about you…” She wiped the corner of her eye with a well-used tissue. Her voice lowered. “Eddie feels awful about what happened. About everything he said.”

“Eddie?”

Kathryn nodded.

“What happened, exactly?” I licked my lips again. The blurriness had almost cleared from my eyes and my legs began to sting like red fire ants, all the way down to my toes. I was starting to remember small bits…

“Why aren’t we at the gym?”

Kathryn leaned closer. “You fell last night at the gym.” Her voice cracked around the edges.

That wasn’t what I remembered—not exactly. But I made it! I was back!

Kathryn’s bloodshot blue eyes searched mine. She looked as though she’d been crying nonstop. For a month. “Don’t you remember?”

My eyes squeezed shut, only for a moment, and I inhaled before pulling forward. It hurt to breathe too deeply. Something was wrapped around my chest. A tube? “Last night I fell asleep on the marble floor in my condo.” And how could I forget? I found Max in my bed with Alexandra.

“Marble floor?” Kathryn’s chin pulled into her neck. “Condo?”

I nodded.

“Trust me, Grace.” Her voice stayed gentle. “You were inside this hospital last night. I’ve been here the whole time. You haven’t moved an inch.”

“Hospital? What hospital?” My eyes widened and I studied Kathryn cautiously. In addition to her bloodshot eyes, dark circles smudged the bottom of her eyes.

Kathryn nodded, slowly.

I sank back. “Maybe you better tell me what happened. ’Cause nothing is making sense.”

Kathryn swallowed, like she was considering how much to tell me.

“Tell me everything.”

Her nostrils flared. “Well, for starters, you went running out of the house in the middle of the night. Do you remember that?”

I blinked. “Vaguely.”
I remember running out of the Channel 2 television station.

“And then for some bizarre reason you decided to go for a jog at the gym. Without telling anybody.”

I stayed silent. That I remembered.

“And you ran on that damn treadmill.” Kathryn paused. “You ran too fast.”

That
, I remembered.

“What were you thinking?” she chastised me.

I really had no idea how to explain. Any of it.

“Fortunately for you there was an off-duty paramedic at the gym. Otherwise…” Her voice trailed off.

“Otherwise what?”

“Otherwise you might still be in a coma.”

“Coma?” I coughed out the word.

“Coma.”

The realization stuck like a stomach punch. I’d fallen and stumbled plenty of times but never hard enough to completely knock myself out.

Kathryn’s dry cracked lips pressed together as she waited for me to process, to catch up. I watched as a dozen questions scrolled across her eyes.

Finally, I said, “Kathryn, I’ve been having the strangest, weirdest dream. I’ve got to tell you about it. I tried to tell you last week too. I was somebody else. Callie Collins. It seemed so real…”

But Kathryn pushed me back against the pillow again. “Later,” she said. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk later. When you’re feeling better.”

I nodded as happy tears built behind my eyes. I was so tired and awake and relieved at the same time. It was like all my thoughts and memories exploded in front of me and I didn’t know what to tell her first.

Kathryn’s lavender-scented wrist brushed lightly across my forehead, lifting the hair away from my eyes. I closed my eyes, briefly, inhaling it again.

A bandage pulled beneath my hair. I winced when a couple of tiny hairs snagged.

“You hit the front of your head pretty hard this time. Got a pretty nice bump and some stitches too.” She threaded my hair behind my ear. “You’re gonna have to wear these bandages for a while.”

“I’ll just use some concealer to hide the bruise. It’ll cover it right up. Julie taught me all about it.”

Kathryn’s hand froze in midair. She looked at me as if I’d just spoken Russian or something. We’d never talked about make-up in our entire lives, not even when we were teenagers.

I lifted my hand to touch the head bandage but my arm stopped abruptly. “Ouch!” My arm dropped back to my side. That’s when I noticed a needle jammed into my wrist. It was attached to a clear tube. “What the—?”

“Intravenous,” Kathryn said quickly. “You’ve been hooked up to this since they brought you here.”

“Oh.” My head spun like I’d gotten up too fast.

“Who’s Julie?”

I swallowed and nodded my head, wishing I hadn’t said anything. “It’s from my dream. My weird dream.” I paused. “Later.” My head sank back into the pillow.

Kathryn nodded. “Okay, then. Later.” She smiled down at me. “But I’m so sorry for ignoring you last week, Grace. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“And I’m so sorry for running away. I was crazy angry and it was stupid—”

She touched my lips. “Shh. Not now.”

“No shushing.” I lifted higher. “I want you to marry Eddie and move to San Diego. Promise me. You’ll be happier there. And I can handle the café by myself. I’ll hire more help. It’ll be all right. I can do it. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have wanted you to be unhappy. And neither do I.”

“We’ll figure it all out, Gracie. Just not now.” Her voice cracked as a tear trickled down her cheek. “Just don’t leave me again. Not like that. Please?”

My throat thickened.

Kathryn’s eyes finally pulled away from mine, as if she was confident that I wouldn’t relapse into a coma again. Carefully, she turned her head toward another corner of the room.

That was when I got a better look at the hospital room, complete with fluorescent lights and stainless steel machines that I remembered from my dream. They hummed incessantly like the ice machines in refrigerators. It made more sense now, the pieces coming together.

Two clear tubes connected to liquids hung like laundry bags attached to other parts of my body. When I turned away from Kathryn, the lavender smell disappeared.

But it was better than lying at the bottom of a treadmill with strangers gawking at me. In theory.

“Where’s Eddie and the doctor?” Kathryn called over her shoulder. She wouldn’t release my hand.

I coughed again and then said, “I’m fine, Kathryn. Really. I’m feeling better by the second. When can I be released?” She didn’t look at me like I was fine, but I forced a smile at her anyway. “You should really go home, you know. You look exhausted—”

“I’m not leaving.” Then she paused to take a breath. “And I don’t think a stick of dynamite would move Carlos out of this room either.”

“Carlos?” My eyes widened and I leaned forward, pulling against the needle jammed in my arm. “Carlos is here? Where?” My eyes scanned the room but then they returned to Kathryn.

Kathryn nodded behind me.

I heard a chair creak. I tilted my head but the bandages blocked my vision.

Carlos stood alongside my bed, staring down at me, his hands jammed in his front jean pockets. “Hey, Grace,” he said but it was more like a relieved exhale.

My stomach fluttered the moment I saw him. I swallowed, hard. “How long have you been there?”

He didn’t answer.

Kathryn answered for him. “All day. And night.” Her eyes met his, unmistakably grateful.

“I saw you. Lots of times. In my dream. I tried to talk to you. To get you to see me…”

He smiled down at me, despite looking as exhausted as Kathryn.

“I’ll go see what’s taking Eddie,” Kathryn said. “Leave you two alone—at least till the doctor comes.”

Carlos waited for Kathryn to leave before he pulled his chair right up to my hospital bed. He was close enough for my cheeks to flush.

Speaking became difficult again, and not just because my throat was as dry as the desert. “Carlos, what are you doing here?” Never mind that I had a welt on my forehead the size of a cantaloupe, stitches in at least three places around my hairline that I knew about, and I was wearing a hospital gown that could double as a pillow case. Not exactly how I wanted him to see me.

“Watching you. Waiting for you to wake up.” His soft accented English tugged deep inside my chest. He leaned closer and my world stopped. “Missing you.”

I moaned, softly. Everything around him disappeared.

He reached across the bed for my hand, examined it for a second, and then threaded his fingers carefully through mine. His knuckles were still red and purple but my eyes returned to his, waiting for that flicker. The one that said his world stopped too.

Briefly, I closed my eyes. Then I raised mine to his. And I got it. I got what I’d been waiting for all along.

His other hand moved to my forehead, lightly brushing my skin with his warm fingertips, before stroking my hair. “I’m sorry I made you worry.” My voice cracked. “I shouldn’t have left. I was angry at Kathryn, not you. But I knew I had to get back…”

Carlos leaned over me, the golden flecks from his brown eyes growing wider. “No one blames you, Grace. Accidents happen.”

I choked back tears. “In case you hadn’t noticed, they happen to me a little more often than most.”

Carlos chuckled but said nothing.

“It was stupid, I know.” I tried to sit up again but Carlos pressed back on my shoulder. “I shouldn’t have been running so fast. So far.”

His hand remained on my shoulder. Then it cupped my cheek. “Just promise me one thing.”

I thought he was going to kiss me. I wanted him to. Badly. More than anything. “What?” I held my breath.

Carlos edged closer, brushing his nose against my cheekbone, and my eyes closed as I visualized more than just his nose against my skin. “Grace,” he breathed against my cheek.

“I missed you,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “I missed the way you look at me.”

He buried his lips near my neck then reluctantly pulled back. “You’ve been in a coma, Grace.”

My head tilted toward him on the pillow. “Yes. And no.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I’ve had the world’s strangest dream.”

“So have I.”

My chin pulled back. “You, too?”

He chuckled softly, embarrassed. “I’ve been dreaming about you for weeks, now. Waiting for you to notice.”

I felt heat rush up my neck.

His eyes traveled over my face, as if he was trying to memorize it, bandages or not. “When I’m awake and when I’m asleep, I see you.”

“Me? Seriously?”

“You.”

“Oh,” I exhaled. “I’ve been thinking about you too. A lot.”

His face brightened with more relief.

I said it quickly, before anything else or anyone got in the way. “I love you, Carlos.”

Silent, he lifted my hand, his fingers still threaded through mine. Then he lowered his lips to the top of my hand and kissed my knuckles.