Gorgeous Rotten Scoundrel Page 8

  We both laughed. "Now that would be the end of you!" It was surprisingly nice to have glimpse of the old jokester, even if for a few seconds. Once the laughter subsided, his face turned unusually serious.

  "Sadie...I'm not good at this...but...I'm sorry...for the outburst."

  I was taken aback by his apology. So far Heath had done a myriad of things to me, but apologizing was one I had yet to experience.

  I nodded in acceptance. "What was that all about? This morning?"

  "I don't handle shit like this well. I mean, can you blame me?"

  "No, but you can't act out like that. It's just not acceptable."

  "I know...I know...I guess. It's just that...never mind."

  "I hate when people do that. Spit it out. You can talk to me."

  "I don't have anyone. I mean really have anyone. I thought I did, but I knew I really didn't. And even when people don't have real friends, they have family, but I don't have that either."

  "Where's your family?"

  "I don't know. I was raised in foster care. I have a biological aunt somewhere, but I haven't seen here since I was 13. I have a foster brother, but he's in Wisconsin and he can't get out here often."

  I felt a bit like an asshole. See, as soon as I met Heath, I pegged him. I saw who he was in the present and I carelessly made unfair assumptions about him. I assumed he had always had it easy. In my defense, he had an easy, carefree way about him. His manner made you believe he never knew what it was like to worry.

  "Is that why you always have people around? You're afraid of being alone?"

  His eyes narrowed in on mine, as if I discovered a secret no one was ever supposed to know. "Well, not afraid."

  "Afraid," I confirmed.

  "What makes you think that?" he asked, mystified with a touch of disdain.

  "I just have a way. I can sense these things. I could tell that you focus on the number rather than the quality of people who surround you. And that makes sense, if your concern is having no one around." Post-Kenneth Sadie had become hyper-aware of common traits among attention whores and whores in general.

  "Except for now."

  "I'm heyah." The tail end of "here" flopped out of my mouth like drool. I had to be careful with my tenderness, I had to guard it. I tried to stop the word from coming out, but it had full momentum and so, I sounded fresh off the first stages of a stroke.

  "You okay there?" He asked. "Too much to drink?"

  "Oh shut it," I said, mildly embarrassed.

  "Truth is, the people I could call I don't want around. Sure, they're fun to party with, but honestly, I can't stand most of them: they're superficial, all they care about is money and status. I don't want those people to see me like this and I don't want to just sit around with them." His assessment of his so-called friends nearly mirrored my early assessment of him and I wondered if there was more to him or if he had a huge blind spot when it came to self-awareness.

  Heath slid his left arm out of his sling, wincing in pain. Again, my instincts kicked in. No matter our differences, I didn't want to see him in pain.

  "Let me get that."

  "No, it's okay."

  "You asked me to take care of you. Let me. This is what you pay me for. We need to let that shoulder rest."

  "Okay," he sighed.

  I slid my chair over to him and cut a piece of steak. Heath did not look thrilled by the prospect of being fed, so I used the same tactic that people use with babies to make them eat.

  "Choo!Choo! Here comes the food train!" Heath's facial expression went limp, but it was hiding a smile. "It's coming!" I said as the steak approached his lips. Then it just kind of smooshed into them as he held his deadpan expression. "Oh come on! Eat the damned steak!" Just as I said that, he chomped at it like a angry dog and I squealed.

  "Keep feeding me like a toddler and I might just poo my pants to teach you a lesson."

  And just like that, an invisible door had opened, a new level of comfort had been reached. Those moments happen all the time, when you realize a person is not just an acquaintance, but someone who you could spend hours with, someone with whom you could sit for long comfortable silences. One hardly remembers the exact moment that that happens, but I remember when it happened with him.

  He went back to our previous conversation: "I know you're here and thank you. We kind of got off to an interesting start, but thank you for being here when everyone else seems to have forgotten."

  "It's my job and I'm sure people care, people are busy, ya know?" I was fibbing to make him feel better, which is something I promised I wouldn't do, but there was a tenderness about him that elicited my sympathy.

  "I know, but you quit before this happened. I know you stayed because you have a big heart." Don't say it, don't say I have a big heart. It's the weapon that has been used against me the most. Suckers have big hearts. I am not a sucker.

  "I stayed because it was the right thing to do."

  "I knew I liked you as soon as you walked in the door that morning of the interview," he smirked.

  "Oh?" I said, looking down at my plate.

  "I don't mean it in the way I said before. I know, I'm a jackass...I mean, you, there's something refreshing about you. And then I was sure of that once I hired you. You had standards, you told me what you really thought of me. It's weird, you think you don't want that, but when you are surrounded by people who only tell you what you want to hear, who give you what you want without hesitation or thought for your longterm well-being, you start to crave the opposite: Someone who doesn't fear being banished."

  I finally felt as though he was really speaking to me without all the pretense. He was just guy talking to a girl.

  I picked up my glass of wine.

  "Let me have a sip."

  "You're not supposed to, you're healing."

  "Sadie, come on. I'm healing just fine. Throw this poor puppy a bone."

  I shrugged and passed him the glass. He raised an eyebrow -- of course, he couldn't hold the thin glass up at an angle with his shoulder injury. I placed one hand underneath his chin and used the other to tilt the glass to his mouth.

  Up until this moment, if I looked at his face for too long, I would get caught in a mini-trance. He was just so exquisite: every contour, the curve of his cheekbones, the flush in his cheeks, the perfect pout of his lips, his plentiful eyelashes. I would get sucked in like one would looking at an intricate work of art at a museum. This time, he shifted his eyes over and caught me. Our eyes locked, and my heart fluttered for a bit. I put the glass down. He licked a drop of wine from his lip and then tugged his lip with his teeth. Yum. When our eyes met, I felt tense, the way he had made me feel when I first met him, all over again.

  "Heath. I want to tell you that I know what it's like. To an extent." I had to say it. Because it was true and because I needed to shift the mood.

  "What do you mean?"

  "To be alone. To not have people."

  "Your family?"

  "My mom and dad...I lost them when I was little." I took a deep breath. "They were murdered."

  He paused. I could see that he was both shocked and moved by this unexpected information. I observed him as he searched his thoughts for what to say. I was used to dealing with the awkward reactions from people when I told them, so I waited for him to find some words to say back. Finally, with more sincerity than I'd ever heard in his voice, he said, "I'm so sorry that happened to you and your family."

  "It's okay. It was a long time ago. I don't have siblings. My parents didn't either. All I have is my grandma, but she's getting very old. So at least I have her, but that's it. And friends, I have always had a hard time really connecting. They just know me on the surface, but I don't have girlfriends who I can talk to about everything. People just kind of float in and out of my life. That consistency doesn't exist for me."

  "What about Minds?"

  "She might be the closest friend I have, but we can go for months without talking to each other."

 
; "Well, at least you don't pay her to be your friend like I do."

  "Don't say that. She very protective over you. It's not about the money with her."

  His expression softened in a way I had only seen when he begged me to stay that night at the hospital. He looked into my eyes and I felt weak. "I'm heyah," he said. It broke the heaviness and we both smiled, which then escalated into chuckles. I found myself leaning into him and his smell...it was the faintest hint of musk and something lighter, like a citrus, mixed with the natural scent of his skin. It was like catnip to me.

  "Well, it looks like we have our own little orphan club."

  "It's very exclusive," I said in a high-brow tone.

  "Let's finish the bottle."

  "Heath..." I said, in a motherly tone.

  "I don't want to get hammered. I just want to have a nice dinner. I like talking to you when you're not being such an icy shrew."

  "I wonder what in the world would cause me to be less than hospitable to you."

  But I relented. It felt right that evening, for me to stop being so hard on him, and he finally started treating me like something other than just another sexual plaything. I assumed the change was only because he was stuck with me.

  We shared the glass: a sip for him, a sip for me. The wine opened us up in ways I had never anticipated. It made me giggly and less stern, and it dissolved his douchiness.

  "How's Brock doing?"

  "We texted. He had surgery, and the docs are evaluating the options. Knowing him he won't say if it's bad and he's probably getting 30 different opinions. He's ever the optimist. I just sent him a care package. Homemade cookies and energy bars."

  "Well, just show him a pic of this and that'll lift his spirits because at least he's not me." I rolled my eyes. I would not play into the pity pit in which he was wallowing. "That sucks. They were hoping for a championship season, but it's starting to look unlikely with him being in and out like that." Then it looked like a lightbulb went off in his head. "Did the two of you...?"

  "What? No...not all bosses hit on their workers!"

  "Just curious. I don't know how any virile young man wouldn't try."

  "Well, good thing you're now covered in casts, keeps you from being so goddamned handsy. Besides, Brock is the perfect gentleman. He would never stoop to your caveman version of chivalry." Except for that one night he came home hammered when I was supposed to be housesitting. He kissed me, but he was sloppy drunk and I put him to bed. I had always assumed he didn't remember.

  "You are a cruel woman."

  "You wanted direct."

  "I am starting to rethink that whole schpiel."

  "I was just thinking. The nurse, we'll have to get you a new one."

  "No, I just want you."

  "But I'm not a nurse."

  "She barely did anything. I don't like it. I don't like her cleaning me up, or feeding me. It makes me feel like I am not in control, to have a strange woman bathing me."

  "I don't know."

  "I'll pay you more."

  "It's not that Heath. You don't have to pay me more." It was because I was afraid to become closer to him than I already had. "Plus, I am so not wiping your ass."

  "Excuse me, no one wipes my ass but me. You are just nasty. That's my point, I just need your help on some small things. The nurse is annoying. Plus, she smells like moth balls."

  I spit up my wine.

  "I can take my own meds. But sometimes I just need help getting in and out of my chair and there's a machine that does most of the work. I want you to do it, Sadie. I just want it to be you. I feel comfortable with you, and you smell like flowers. You're the only person I trust right now to see me like this."

  How could I say no to that? To the crass young man-whore who had melted in front of my very eyes? "Okay," I said, in soft defeat.

  "Thank you." He rubbed the nub of his cast on my hand.

  "Well, I better clean this up and get you into bed." I stood up quickly and my head spun a bit. Only then did I realize how much I drank. Bad nurse.

  I cleaned up the mess from that morning and returned upstairs to help Heath into bed. Luckily, he had this machine with a sling that wrapped under his arms and raised and lowered him from a seated position. Once he was seated in the bed, though, I had to help adjust him and get him comfortably under the covers.

  "You're a big boy," I said, lifting his legs up.

  "You're an angel," he murmured, woozy from the booze.

  I used all of my might to push him in further, and slipped on the rug, falling on his chest. Our faces were within inches of each other, and yes, there was that pause, that moment of: should we or shouldn't we? But unlike before, he didn't jump at me. He respected me now, and it only made me enjoy him more.

  "Alright, goodnight."

  "Goodnight," he smiled warmly.

  I meandered back to my bedroom, still heady from the wine. This quiet evening was the most pleasant one I had in a long time and I felt a surprising sting of sadness going back to my room alone.

  I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. I missed him. Like Heath, I too didn't want to be alone. I couldn't remember the last time I felt that way. It wasn't just physical, it's that feeling you had as a kid when you met a friend you liked so much that even though you spent all day with them at school, as soon as you got home you would call them up. Or the way you might stay awake as long as you could at a sleepover because no matter how tired you were, sleep was not nearly as enjoyable as the conversation with your friends. I wasn't ready for our time together that night to end.

  The wine in my veins made me shameless enough to follow through.

  I tip-toed to his room and slowly opened the door. In my gut, I hoped he might be asleep and I would change my mind.

  "Is everything okay?" he asked almost as soon as I stepped foot in the room.

  "Yes, I couldn't sleep." What the hell are you doing? Tell him you're here to check in on him as his new nurse--yeah, that's the ticket!

  "Oh, me neither. It hard with all this crap on me," he said in an amused whisper. He did bizarrely resemble a living, modern-day mummy. And from my limited knowledge in Egyptology, I believe only dead people were mummies. Which would make him a zombie mummy. A really friggin’ hot one. But I digress.

  "I don't want to be alone tonight."

  "Okay."

  His cast-encased arm was splayed out to his side, and his legs were propped up on several pillows. When I imagined getting into bed with a male model, this was certainly not the image I had pictured. I gently closed the door behind me and slid under the covers with him, resting my cheek on his chest. I felt his chin rest gently atop my head. Then as if his presence triggered something in me, maybe a feeling of security, I quickly dozed off.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Shitshitshit. Those were my first thoughts when I woke up that morning with my head still resting on Heath's bare chest. Yet another terrible idea of mine. Listen, I wasn't hammered or anything the night before, but there was enough alcohol flowing through me to give me misguided ballsiness. And that wine-induced bravado mixed with the laughs, and the good conversation, the intimacy of feeding someone a meal as they tell you their innermost fears, I hadn't had that type of connection in a long time. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I had it again.

  I gently lifted my head and hand off of him. Maybe I could slip away and pray the Percocets had left him in a non-life-threatening coma. But you know me by now--that would never be the case, as that would mean things work out for me, and it seems they hardly ever do.

  "Good morning, nurse," he said playfully, the rasp of sleep still in his voice.

  "Morning." I tried to sound easy, but the words plopped out of my mouth like anchors. "I will make you breakfast now." That sounded ridiculous.

  "Strange, I always thought English was your first language. I will make you breakfast now," he recited in a Russian accent.

  I shook my head, clearly frazzled, nervously searching
the room for a cardigan to cover my bare shoulders and cleavage, which were freezing in my light camisole. But, of course, this wasn't my room, so why would my clothes be lying around in it?

  "Jesus Sadie, relax. It's not like we bumped uglies or something." How eloquent.

  He's right, but it almost feels like what we did was worse.

  "I'm fine. I'm fine," I said, more to myself than him, like I was trying to talk myself off of a mental ledge of sorts. "Okay, I'll be back. I think we should get you downstairs? Don't you? You've been cooped up in this room too long. We should get you moving." You're rambling.

  I scanned him over. His legs and arm jutted out from his torso, covered in hard protective man-made shells. Movement was hardly an option for him.

  "Whatever you say, nurse."

  Nurse. What the fuck did I agree to last night? Stupidstupidstupid.

  ***

  Somehow, we ended up on the couch. Well, literally what happened was that he had one of those chair lifts installed the week before that took him up and down the steps at negative five mph.

  By the time we were wrapping up breakfast, my embarrassment had subsided significantly. Cooking has always been a calming force for me. I realized bumbling around like a middle schooler after her first kiss wasn't helping either one of us. So I bucked up and tried to go back to business as usual.

  "So what do you want to do today, Señor Hillabrand?"

  "I really don't feel like going out like this, not yet."

  "Okay. Okay. Makes sense. No pressure."

  "Why don't we just binge-watch something? I mean, I can do that. You don't have to stay here with me all day."

  "No, that's fine. I don't have any other plans. It's not like I'm a lady of the town."

  "A lady of the town?"

  "Yeah, I don't know what that was."

  We settled on Breaking Bad, as it appears we were both the last people on earth who hadn't yet seen the show and felt it must be destiny for us to do so together. So we spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch, Heath laying his encased body on it, and me sitting at his feet. Several times during points of excitement during the show, I hi-fived his arm cast nub. We were becoming buddies. Maybe this nurse thing wouldn't be so bad after all. It was like being paid to be his friend.