"Now.” She grimaced. “And that's because I always have you or one of your family as backup."
"Well, that's what I'll be. Right there in the courtyard. But I can sit in here instead if you want."
She set her chin, gripping her books tighter. "No, I can do it."
"I know you can, but if you change your mind, just text me. Hey. Daralyn, look at me. I mean it.”
Her eyes came to him. He saw the struggle there, to stay calm, to make this work, to be more than she thought she could be, to try, when all she really wanted to do was run back to the safety of a much smaller world. It was really enough, it really was, and…
He tugged on her hand, reeling her in until she came down to him, and he could lay his hand alongside her face, thread his fingers into her hair. He put his mouth on hers. Held her like that, with heat and firmness, then let his fingertips move just enough to stroke her behind the ear, find the delicate flesh below, register the skip of her heartbeat through her pulse.
As he eased her back, the focus in her hazel eyes was now fully on him, just as he’d intended. “You’ve got this,” he repeated. Not as a persuasion or wishful thinking, but as an absolute certainty. “Keep your head up. Make eye contact. Don’t hide. You don’t have to hide. Not ever.”
She moistened her lips, her gaze on his mouth. He’d given her something else to think about, and it made his own heart thump harder to see it.
Slowly, she straightened, and looked toward the classroom. A few more people had moved past them, come in to take a seat, but there were still plenty of chairs available close to the door. He watched her lift her chin, tighten her hand on the backpack strap on her shoulder. She sent him one last quick look. “On your first day of school, were you nervous?”
“Everyone is.”
“Did your parents say anything to help?”
“Yeah. Dad said, ‘Behave yourself, boy. Or I’ll strap your ass when you get home.’ Kind of makes me hope you don’t behave.”
Giving her startled expression a wicked grin, he nodded. “Go on in and sit down.”
There was that minute hesitation, but hand to God, he felt like a proud parent himself when he saw her make the decision. She took one step forward, then another. She walked straight to the corner desk at the very front of the room. The one closest to the door. As she slid into it, her gaze went to the white board, and latched onto it. This was some kind of civics class, so a slide of the Bill of Rights was projected onto the board. She started reading it, slowly, her lips moving.
The teacher slid past Rory. He was a skinny thirty-something guy in khakis and a crisp shirt with thin blue stripes. The wire-rimmed glasses completed the educator look. Rory knew he was the teacher because he went to the desk up front and set his briefcase upon it.
Daralyn looked toward Rory once more, enough time for him to give her a nod, and then the teacher moved to close the door. Class was beginning.
He headed to the courtyard. The halls were emptying out, but the doors had a push bar on the inside, so he brought his chair close enough, pushed it open, and gripped the frame to bring his chair up against the door, lever it open with his caster, and maneuver through. It wasn’t the smoothest looking operation, but he was way better at it now than he’d been at the beginning, when he’d banged his elbows and knees. Not that he felt the knee impact, but an injury there was of greater concern than anything above the waist. He had to stay hyperaware of whatever came in contact with his legs, for cuts or injuries he couldn’t feel.
The pull side took only a little backward momentum, a good yank. He liked that side because it made it easier for him to open the door for a woman. That is, if he did a quick brake lock so the resistance from the door didn’t roll his chair forward and mash her against it.
Challenges like that had enabled his earliest physical therapist, Lucille, aka The She-Bitch-From-Hell, to successfully introduce him to his first adaptive sport, wheelchair basketball. After a particular grueling session, where he’d considered his greatest accomplishment to be not breaking down and bawling like a baby at how freaking weak he was, she’d taken him out in the back of the center. They had a track and several basketball courts, one of which was in use for an informal scrimmage. Every guy playing was on wheels.
“There’s more than basketball happening,” she’d pointed out. “See how smoothly they handle their chairs? One handed, two handed…they become one with them. You can hate and resist the equipment that gives you options, Rory, like your chair. Or it can become your best friend.”
“Stupid. That’s just stupid.” But his attention had reluctantly remained on the basketball players, the way they did wheelies in the chair, taking the casters off the ground as they spun, their center of balance flawless.
Or not so much. When one player toppled, something that, at that point, had terrified Rory, the guy swore, but it was a good-natured oath. No different from a guy going up toe-to-toe with another guy at the hoop and getting knocked on his ass. One guy nudged his chair back over to him, and the player pulled himself back in it on his own. In less than a minute, they were back to playing, no muss, no fuss.
A couple days later he was asking her what kinds of exercises would get him out on the court with them.
He knew why those early days were coming up in his head right now. A lot of the things going through Daralyn’s head he could see so clearly because he’d been there.
A comfort zone was bliss. It was also stagnation. The death of hope.
He stopped at a table where a kid who looked like he hadn’t been long out of high school was reading. He had a shock of red hair, a silver cuff earring and wore mostly black. “Hey, where’d you get the Funyuns?” Rory asked.
“Over there.” The kid waved to his left without looking up. “Vending machine next to the restroom. But stay away from the protein bars. They’ve been in there since the fall of the Roman Empire, and they taste like it.”
“Who are you kidding? That’s the way all protein bars taste.”
The kid grinned and looked up with bright blue eyes. He did a double take. “Oh. Yeah.”
Rory ignored the full stop and eyed him critically, the well-developed biceps and shoulders. “Where do you work out?”
“Wherever I can. Right now at a buddy’s garage.” The guy was now looking past the chair, studying Rory right back. “How about you?”
“Home gym, but I’ve got a personal trainer, Red, down at—”
“Martin’s Gym.” The kid whistled. “Yeah, I did a couple sessions with him. He’s tough.”
“Don’t I know it. I was walking before I started going to him.”
The young man blanched. At Rory’s grin, he chuckled and held out a fist for a bump. “Good one. I’m Brandt. Hey, I’ll split the Funyuns with you. Half the fat…”
After Brandt headed off for his class, Rory settled in with his paperwork, spreading it out on the table. But before he started on that, he texted Daralyn a dozen emojis that looked like red roses.
A few minutes later, she returned a smiley face, a heart, and a knight on horseback, with a lance. He had to admit that made him feel pretty damn good, and not just because it showed him the most important thing, that she was doing okay.