Sick Day (9 page)

She was right, though. We had promised those things to each other, those domestic things that made life regular and painful; but with Hope, those chores would’ve made the world come alive.

She started again, slowly, “What started out as five minutes turned into ten, then half an hour, then two hours. I didn’t notice how drenched the rain had made me until you tackled me. But I had my answer, Cameron. Until you ran after me and kissed me, I had every answer I had come for, the answers to what it was that stole you from me and destroyed everything that made the past seven years without you so painful. Oddly, I was at peace.”

“But I ran after you,” I murmured, “instead of letting you go.”

“And you kissed me.” She shook her head, peeking up at me
from staring down at her hands. “Everything came rushing back with that kiss. It felt so right, so perfect. Just being there…with you…in your arms…and now here we are. At a pizza joint that takes all night to make a deep-dish pie.”

She wiped at the edge of her eyes, but I didn’t see tears. I saw the dryness and emptiness left by shattered dreams, a broken heart, and something I could never replace—even if I picked her up in my arms right that instant and rode off into the sunset with her.

}
i {

Present Day

9:28 AM

R
eaching into my pocket after we finish eating breakfast, I pull out a single piece of paper. I look up, but only briefly enough to see whether Hope’s eyes have noticed the paper in my hands. They haven’t; she seems distracted by the view out the window facing the train tracks, the city view. So I start reading what is written on that paper.

“I believe,” I say, just loudly enough to catch her attention. “I believe you live once and that better opportunities are lost on second chances. I believe true love is about as real as Santa Claus, but ‘tis the season, so let’s play this game...I believe that you fall in ‘love’ with the person who lets you love him or her the way you want, on your terms. I believe if someone says he ‘loves you more than air,’ he’s lying to you. I believe that love is not about forgiveness. It’s about acceptance, and acceptance keeps relationships alive. I believe in the stories that are never told. I believe that if you have to fight for love, you’re trying to force a square peg into a round hole. I believe that your flaws are what make you beautiful. Deal with it.”

“Cameron,” she sighs, but I see the glint of recognition in her eyes. “What are you doing?”

I ignore her and continue reading from the page. “I believe that two people are just that—two people. I believe that two married people are two individuals with one shared goal and one shared delusion. I believe delusions are a good thing until you start involving drugs, threesomes, and whips. Stay pure. I believe that in your heart, you have blood not love. And that blood is to the heart what ideas, not love, are to the mind. I believe that happy endings happen in real life when I fall asleep, thinking of the smiles on the faces of the children I want to have. I believe that all stories are written for me—that same story means something different for you, and that’s okay. I believe in freedom for everyone; everyone has the right to hunt or to hide or both. I believe that mothers are sacred, and anyone who tells a mother what to do has self-esteem issues. I believe that true character gets revealed in actions, not in what someone says about himself. I believe that ‘promise’ is one word, and any one word means nothing. I believe that if you never hurt, you never find happiness; the bigger you hurt, the bigger your happiness. I believe in friendships that last a lifetime and in friends that support you even when you are dead wrong. I believe that most of the decisions you make are the wrong ones. So celebrate your victories, celebrate hard because they’re rare. I believe that if you can make decisions objectively, you will never be wrong. Or hurt. Or happy. I believe that we cry for ourselves, not for others. I believe that tears are a lot like rage—you need to get that poison out of your system periodically, or it will kill you.”

“Cameron, of course I remember this.” She pulls at her collar and shakes her head at me, her face a little red at having heard the words she had written to me so long ago. “Are you happy now? Happy I remember? Now can we forget about it and get out of here?”

“Just let me finish,” I insist, dropping my attention back to the page. “I believe that when you die, you die alone, and…” I pause because this part always killed me. “And I believe that goodbyes are forever.” I fold the paper and tuck it back into my pocket. “You wanted to know if I remembered a promise from seven years ago?”

Hope stares outside again, and when she speaks after a moment that seems to stretch into an eternity, her words come out in a whisper. “Let it go.”

I poke myself in the chest, my throat tight. “I remember, Hope. I fucking
live
with your fucked up beliefs every day of my life.”

“Those are
my
words,” she says, her voice quiet but firm as she brings her attention back to me. “I wrote them, Cameron. I wrote them when you stopped.”

Her face twists with confusion. “Stopped? Stopped what? Stopped answering your crazy calls? Stopped responding to your angry emails?”

“You just
stopped
. All I knew and believed in was
us
, and then you stopped. To me, you stopped loving and knowing me. So no, I didn’t believe in promises, I didn’t believe in love. And yes, I wrote those words for you. So you would remember.”

“How could I
ever
forget, Hope? Do you still believe that stuff you wrote? That love doesn’t exist? That all we have in our hearts is blood? That you die alone and goodbyes are forever?” I force a slight chuckle. Those words crushed me and robbed me of precious sleep during midterms, and I hated Hope for that, for nailing that final nail into the coffin. We had a
promise
.

“Why did you stop?” she asked. “It wasn’t the poem.”

Her question has haunted me all of these years. I still don’t know why I “stopped,” but I do know that I enjoyed the freedom. Not right away, but after that first semester I sure did. And having that five-year promise in my back pocket helped me feel secure, too. It was my insurance policy. I figured, if nothing better came along, Hope would be waiting for me at the end of that term, and until then, I was supposed to live the life all men fantasized about.

But then
I met Riley, and I sort of forgot about Hope, filed her in the back of my mind and allowed that insurance policy to expire. It became easier to think we could just go our separate ways, no hard feelings, no harm done. Because Riley would
never
have agreed to a two-day promise, let alone a five-year one that would leave my spirit crushed and my heart split in two.

Except I kept finding this poem Hope had written for me.

“Cameron, tell me why you stopped.”

The restaurant staff starts moving the other tables back into place, getting ready for their regular dining hours. I smirk at her. “I think it’s time for us to leave.”

“Just tell me!” Her tone has a joking edge to it, but I know she wants the answer to why I disappeared. “Tell me why you stopped!”

I push my chair out and stand up, shrugging. “Maybe another time, Hope. Let’s get out of here.”

“Fucking goob,” she curses, standing up and walking with me to the doors to the Art Institute of Chicago. “Don’t think for one minute I don’t know what you’re doing,” she adds, falling into stride next to me. “But you
will
tell me why you stopped.”

} i {

9:58 AM

I
’m staring at my face in the mirror, running a finger along the smile lines and wondering how I got so old, so fast. I’m not even thirty yet, but these lines shouldn’t exist. I shouldn’t look at my face and feel like life has sucked the good years out of me. Not yet.

But life has sucked those good years out of me. This mess with Hope is largely to blame because sometimes, when you love someone this much, that kind of love strips you of something.

I know this. Even Riley knows this. I’m just not so sure that Hope knows this.

When another man enters the bathroom and slides into one of the stalls so quietly that it’s obvious he doesn’t want anyone to notice him, it’s time to leave. I wash and dry my hands then climb the grand stairwell all the way to the top floor. I pause when I find Hope standing in front of a Monet painting. It’s the
Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare
, and it’s perfect. Each stroke of Monet’s brush makes me feel something in my chest. I don’t get to think too much about what that sensation means, though.

Hope turns away from the Monet and studies me. “Everything okay?” she asks, stepping up to me. Her heels clack and smother me with memories of all those times we had spent together when we should have been doing something else.

I nod past her at the painting, reveling in the coconut that wafts off her hair and across my nostrils like a summer breeze. “The first person you see in the painting, what do you think about?”

She considers my face for a beat before spinning around and moving back to the Monet. I edge a little closer, too, wanting to smell her perfume, taste it, memorize it because I know what today could mean for a thirty-year-old man who feels like life is almost over.

I watch her left hand rise, and she points to the largest figure in the impressionist painting. “That’s the first person I see.”

“He’s the closest,” I admit. “But what do you think when you see him?”

She takes a second or two before answering. “He’s alone.”

“And the next person you see?”

She motions to the second closest figure, a little to the left of the first one, the one I originally had in mind. “Alone.”

I reach down for her right hand and point to the right side of the painting. “Yet these people closer to the train, we see tons of them.” I bring my lips within inches of her ear. “Nobody wants to arrive at their destination only to be greeted by loneliness, do they?”

She says nothing. I trace my hand from her fingers, all the way up her arm, to her slender shoulder, then flip my hand around so the back of my fingers slide up her neck and circle around her ear.

“Cameron,” she breathes, tilting her neck so subtly that anyone else probably would not have even noticed. I see the vein that betrays all of her emotions and want to lick it, but I keep my mouth (and tongue) to myself. Not part of the plan.

“Look at me,” I tell her instead, swallowing a deep gulp to regain my composure. “My fucking eyes, Hope. Tell me what you see in my eyes.”

She refuses to turn around, even with the little nudge of encouragement from my hand that has fallen back down to her shoulder. Instead, Hope shakes her head.

“I believe…” I say, referring to her poem.

“Stop it, Cameron,” she whispers.

So I stop. I move my attention back to the painting, my eyes catching on the smoke rising from the train’s funnel. Each stroke points me to the next puff of smoke from another steam engine, the one pulling into the station. And this makes me think about something I have never considered before.

I take a step backward, reaching down to Hope’s hand to lure her away from the Monet. This was the only reason I wanted to bring her here—to see
this
painting. There is a reason for that, and she knows it.

“Who’s waiting for those people, the ones on that other train, Hope?” I ask. There is nobody waiting on that platform.

Abruptly, she spins around and walks past me, deeper into the museum. “I’m done here, Cameron.”

} i {

Three Years Ago…

I
woke Saturday morning to the softness of lips kissing my eyelids. And she whispered, “Wake up, sunflower.” More kisses, and then, “It’s Saturday.” And then reality slowly set in.

The voice didn’t belong to Hope, though; it belonged to Riley. Only Hope called me sunflower. But she wasn’t the first to kiss my eyelids as a way to wake me up, and she knew that.

Snapping awake, I scooted away from her kind and gentle lips, startling her. She stepped out of bed, wearing nothing but her white slip and flowing blonde hair.

“Cam, what’s wrong?” She wasn’t exactly glaring at me, but the look on her face suggested
she was not impressed. At all.

Fuck.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and rolled onto my side. I patted the empty space in bed, inviting her back.

“How late were you out last night?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered, but I knew. Of course I knew. “Come lay with me.”

Riley considered it, but not for long. She shook her head. “I’m going to have a shower. I have to go back into the city. I forgot those Bulls tickets at the office.” She stripped out of her slip, her smallish, perky breasts flopping out. I loved her nipples, so I watched her. She knew it, too, because she stopped at the foot of the bed, full frontal, and asked, “Want to come?”

I smiled but shook my head. “Rain check, I’m sorry. I have a bit of work to finish up this morning.”

“Cam, I thought that was why you were working so late all week?” she complained. “So we could have our weekend to ourselves.”

Shit.
“I know. It’s not much, though. Just a few reports I need to pretty up.”

“And I didn’t mean come with me into the city. I meant why don’t you come with me in the shower?” She winked, biting on her lower lip.

I very deliberately admired her entire body, my eyes crawling up and down, first getting lost in that galaxy of freckles on her upper chest, then rolling over the small bump of her belly that you couldn’t see underneath any clothing, but was absolutely perfect. Still, I could think of nothing else but Hope, which wasn’t cool at all. When my stare reached the small patch of soft pubic hair, I abruptly moved my attention back to her face, feeling guilty. Like I was cheating on Hope with my soon-to-be bride.

I sat up in bed. “I’m going to get started on my work bullshit, so we can have the rest of the day together.”

The deflated look on her face told me she knew. Maybe not about last night’s laughing and flirting and how Hope and I had latched onto each other for a breath longer than we should have when we said goodbye. But she recognized that I was distracted.

“Okay.” She started walking away, then stopped at the bedroom door to glance back at me. “Everything okay, Cam? You’ve been acting all strange these past couple of weeks.”

I could’ve corrected her. Technically, it had only been since last Friday, eight days ago. Instead, I gave her a shrug. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Bullshit.” She shook her head.

“Work’s busy, and if anything,” I said, taking a deep breath, “it’s probably just pre-wedding jitters.”

Riley didn’t like that response. She strolled back into the bedroom, her hands on her hips, her scowl beating down on me like the desert sun. It was blinding all right. “Jitters, huh?”

I chuckled, pulling the blankets over my lap like they could protect me. “I think it’s all pretty standard, Riley.” I swallowed hard, nodding past her at the door. “Go have your shower…we’re wasting time with this.”

She kept her eyes on me a little longer than she should have, then finally turned and walked away. I watched her ass as she left, wondering what had gone so wrong, so quickly.

Fuck, Hope.

I massaged my face and waited to hear the shower spray before finally jumping out of bed and hurrying to the other bedroom to set up my work laptop at the desk. While the computer booted up, I stared out the window at the townhouse across from us, remembering
that night.

Fuck, Hope.

I returned my attention to the computer and found an email. Well, I found half a dozen, but there was one in particular that stopped my heart.

Fuck, Hope.

I saw that there was an attachment to that email, so I opened the message and stared at the paperclip icon. I was hoping for a picture, preferably a nude or semi-nude one, but when I looked a little closer, I read the file extension and saw that it was just a fucking document. I cursed, the words silent on my mouth when—

“Cam, I’m heading out.”

I swung around in my chair like she had just caught me watching porn and masturbating. I wiped my clammy palms along my legs because in so many ways, this thing with Hope was a million times worse than online adult movies. “Okay. Yeah. Sure.”

From her position in the doorway, Riley tilted her head, scrutinizing me. “You’ve been weird all morning. Maybe you should get some more sleep, huh?”

I nodded, ready to agree with almost anything just to get her out of the house so I could open that non-visual attachment and see what it was all about.

“Okay, why don’t we meet at the Starbucks in my building at noon?” She strolled into the room, but I didn’t want her to see the message so I met her halfway, letting her fall into my arms to keep her from seeing what was on the computer screen.

“Sounds great. Noon.” I kissed the top of her head, my hand on her shoulder like she might be a cousin, and Riley didn’t seem to like that.

Twirling out of my grip, she reminded me about meeting her at noon, then she was gone. I walked to the window and watched her hurry out of the townhouse and rush down the laneway. Once I couldn’t see her anymore, I returned to the computer and opened the attachment.

It was a fucking novel. Literally, a novel of some one hundred and eighteen pages, consisting of nothing but words. I scrolled forward through the pages to see if there were pictures to help lighten the load, but there weren’t.

“This is a joke. It has to be.” I brushed my hand through my hair, wondering what the whole point of this was. I clicked back to the main message screen and found her original note.