“Why do you feel guilty?”
“I was so high on life, I just walked us outside and forgot about the room. If I wouldn’t have done that, you would never have seen the ice and gotten the idea for the ice slide. And I should have just stopped you in general.”
“I get pretty strong-willed when drunk.”
“You don’t say.” He strokes my thigh. “How do you feel?”
“I think these painkillers must be working because I feel fine. Just stupid. This is going to be a hassle for school. How am I even going to go to class?”
“I’ll bring you everything for Spanish Class. We’ll get your laptop here, and since you can’t type one-handed you can dictate your emails and papers to me.”
“You’d do that…for me?”
“Of course I would.”
An unexpected rush of emotion swallows me up at Luke’s lack of hesitation. “Why are you being so damn nice to me?”
He grins. “Cielo, are you serious? You’re my best fucking friend. You’re horribly injured. I’m your bitch until you get better.”
I crack up. “Say that again.”
“I’m your friend.”
“No, the other part.”
“I’m your bitch.”
“I’m going to get that quote framed.”
He leans closer to me. “How about I just seal it with a kiss, Frankenstein?”
Before I can protest, he kisses me. “Damn. I kind of like your lips puffy.”
“You’re gross.”
“Yes, I am. And you love it.”
The next weeks, the last of winter term, Luke is my bitch.
In the most benevolent of ways.
He comes to see me every day for a couple of hours, at different times a day.
I’m lucky to have other visitors, too. Janice. Roger. One weekend my mom even comes up from Alton where she lives and spends one night with me.
But I have to be honest—it’s Luke’s visits I look forward to the most.
The man makes no sense to me. All of the stories, the warnings from Sasha and Jennifer to stay away from him fall to the background, though at times I find myself wondering why—why would he be so damn nice to me, the girl with the Frankenstein face and the destroyed body.
Who he can’t even have sex with.
Yes, that thought crossed my mind.
So one day, I decide to just up and ask him.
“Why are you doing all this, Luke?” I ask as he feeds me applesauce.
My right arm is fine and I could spoon it myself if I wanted. He just likes doing it.
“I’m enjoying it,” he says and gives me another spoonful.
“You’re enjoying…taking time out of your busy schedule to come here every day and type out my papers?”
“What’s so hard to believe about that?”
“I don’t know…you’re a partier. As long as I’ve known you, you like to go out four, five nights a week.”
“I’ve been there done that. It’s fun for a while. But you know what’s more fun?”
“Don’t say feeding me applesauce.”
“Here comes the airplane!” he says jokingly, and I stick my tongue out. I grip his hand with my own and try to stop him, but he’s too strong and force-feeds me.
“This is a serious question. You’re an over-the-top kind of guy and I want to know why you’re doing this. What are you getting out of it?” I ask with a mouthful of food.
He looks out the window, his gaze becoming distant. “Life is about phases. And this phase is about being a good friend to you. When I look back at senior year am I going to say, oh I got really drunk at the end of winter term, so cool, or will I say, ‘I really got to know Sky during that time and helped her.’ You know what’s funny to me, that I was thinking about?”
“What?”
“We made—or make?—such a big to-do out of having sex together. But for a long-term relationship, how much time do you spend having a conversation versus sex?”
“Much more conversation. In an ideal world.”
I shudder thinking about my own mother. “What do you mean, in ‘an ideal world?’” he asks, I think he notices my discomfort.
I sigh. “This is private stuff my mom has told me. So you can’t tell her I said this.”
“When am I going to see your mom?”
“Graduation? Our fake wedding? I don’t know. Anyway, she was young, my dad was hot—she always said how hot he was despite his inability to settle down—and she went for him. Then came my stepdad Steve, who was so boring and neutral about everything—he was a pushover. As I get older…I see what she liked about Steve, though. She never had to fight to get her way.”
“So what am I?”
“You’re…definitely not Steve. But Steve wouldn’t be this enthusiastic when taking care of my mom.”
“So you think I have suspect motives, or something?”
“I didn’t say that. I just want to know what drives you, Luke Rutledge. After all the time we’ve been together you’re still a mystery to me. Why are you spending your Sunday afternoon spoon-feeding me?”
He gives me the last spoonful of applesauce. “If you really want to know,” he says, then grins. “I’ll tell you. You might want to be sitting down for this one.”
I bite my lower lip and look around. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”
He laughs. “Way to lighten the mood.”
I move my hand slightly and run it over his forearm. “You look troubled,” I say. “Tell me all about it.”
He sighs and leans back. “It happened when I was twelve years old. Me, my little sister, my mom, and dad got our first iPhone family plan. It was right when everything was crossing over from ‘wow that camera has a phone’ to ‘everyone needs a camera with a phone!’
“Unfortunately, this had some unintended consequences for my family. One night, my mom logged into the family iPad and for some reason the messages synced with my dad’s phone.
“I remember the moment like it was yesterday. I had just gotten back from losing our team’s shot at making it to the little league world series, which was everything at the time. My mom, iPad in hand, started bawling her eyes out.
“It’s okay, mom,” I said, assuming she was thinking about the game. “There will be another game.”
“She didn’t speak, though—she couldn’t. She just flipped the iPad onto the couch, got up, and went out the door. I picked up the iPad to see what she had been looking at to give her such a visceral reaction. A stream of texts had poured through when my father’s phone synced up with the iPad. Or should I say, ‘sexts.’
“And not from my mother. A curious twelve-year-old, I couldn’t stop reading until I had gone through every last dirty message. Things so filthy they made me blush. My life was never the same after that moment. My mom and dad got divorced, and for the rest of middle and high school my sister and I switched houses every other day.
“My mother never addressed what was in the actual texts. I couldn’t get over how creative the things he was saying were. I’ve often wondered what would have come of their marriage if he would have put that high level of sexual creativity into his marriage instead of into some side bitch. The affair had different effects on my sister and on me.