New Life (9 page)

I handed the other glass to Jason, then lay
beside him on the narrow bed, head propped on one hand. My palm
rested on his chest. His heartbeats were as steady as the rain
drumming against the windowpane.

“I’m glad we left the club. This is better,”
I said.

He set his glass on the nightstand and curved
a hand around my hip. “Yeah, a lot better than puking in a public
john.”

I traced my fingers along the ridges of
scars. “Do you have a lot of pain?”

“My leg is usually stiff by the end of a
shift, but I’m pretty good these days.” He moved restlessly,
signaling his discomfort with the subject of his injuries.

Instead of backing off, I forged ahead and
asked, “Will you tell me about your accident? What happened? I know
it’s none of my business, but it’s such a big event in your life,
we can’t avoid discussing it forever.”

“How about for the rest of tonight?” He gave
me a seductive look from under his brows.

I smiled. “Okay.”

I lay my head on Jason’s chest and tapped a
rhythm to match the raindrops on his stomach. “I love a rainy
night. When I was a kid, I was never afraid of storms. I’d throw my
window open and breathe in the damp breeze, then jump back into bed
and cuddle under the covers. My mom scolded me because the floor
got wet, but it was worth it.”

“My dog used to be terrified of thunder.”
Jason’s voice rumbled beneath my ear. “He’d hear it long before any
of us and stick right next to me, whimpering.”

“Crap! I wonder if Baby’s afraid. I didn’t
even think of that.”

“No thunder tonight, only a little rain. She
should be all right.”

I hoped so, because I sure didn’t feel like
rushing home. I was drowsy and comfortable, although it was kind of
hard to lie there and
not
allow my hand to drift down
Jason’s belly toward the fly of his jeans and the bulge
beneath.

“It was raining like this the night of my
accident,” Jason said abruptly. “Nothing heavy. Not enough to make
the roads slick. No good reason for taking out a guardrail and
rolling down an embankment.”

I held my breath, waiting for him to go
on.

Jason’s chest rose and fell beneath my head
as he exhaled. “I’d been to a kegger, but I don’t remember anything
about that night except rain hitting my skin and the wet grass
underneath me... And lights in my eyes.”

“How long before somebody found you?”

“There was a car behind me. The guy called
nine-one-one.” Jason took another breath. “It could’ve been so much
worse. I might have killed somebody.”

I could imagine the weight he carried and how
much heavier it would’ve been if another car had been involved. I
stroked the hair on his stomach. “But no one else
was
hurt.
No point in beating yourself up over what might have been. Seems to
me you’re already paying for your bad judgment every day. Don’t add
an extra helping of guilt on top of it.”

“I guess. Anyway, you wanted to know about
the accident. That’s it. After that, I was in a coma and then rehab
for a long time. Lots of hospital stays, lots of bills, which my
parents paid, since I was a college student with no money.
Insurance only covers so much.”

“That sucks,” was all I could think of to
say. His story was practically a PSA for not drinking and driving.
There wasn’t any response I could make that seemed more
appropriate. The pain in his voice roused an answering ache in my
chest.

“I want to pay them back, but there aren’t a
lot of high-paying jobs for a college dropout with memory issues.”
Jason stroked a finger over my wrist. The tickling touch sent
shivers through me. “Enough about that. Tell me more about yourself
and growing up in Michigan.”

“Okay.” I cast around for a funny story to
lighten the mood. “We used to have this cottage on a lake and spent
weeks there in July or August. I had summer friends who I only saw
at the lake. One summer, three convicts escaped Jackson prison.
Rumors were one of the men was from the area, and everyone talked
about whether he’d head for home. My friends and I embellished the
story all summer, inventing more lurid and numerous crimes than one
man could ever have committed.

“One night, we went camping. Nothing would
make our horror stories scarier than telling them by firelight in
the dark woods with an escaped killer possibly stalking us. Shelly
and Brea were up for camping, but we had to coerce Crystal. She had
a huge crush on Shelly’s brother and we threatened to tell him if
she didn’t come with us.”

Jason chuckled. “Mean girls, like my sister
told me about.”

“I convinced myself it was in Crystal’s best
interest to stop being such a wuss. So we trekked out about a
quarter mile from Brea’s house—not too far, in case we needed to go
back for something. Let me tell you, it was scary in the woods once
the sun went down. We sat around our campfire and told all the
urban legends and horror-movie plots we could think of, and ate
more sugar than any human being should ingest in a day.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“It was…until we heard something moving in
the woods. We all screamed, but Crystal bolted up and started to
run. Unfortunately, she plowed straight into a tree branch that
knocked her back on her ass. The thing in the woods came crashing
toward us, and we were all screaming and trying to get Crystal up.
Then Shelly’s brother, Mike, and one of his friends burst into the
clearing, laughing. Or they were until they saw the gash on
Crystal’s forehead. Blood was running down her face like Carrie at
the prom.

“Of course, we were furious at them, but in
the end it all worked out. Crystal was thrilled Mike had to carry
her back to the house, and Shelly was happy to have something to
blackmail her brother with. She promised not to tell their parents
about the prank if he’d give us rides to the mall for a month.
Win-win. Being a budding lawyer even then, I negotiated the
deal.”

“So that’s the sort of thing lawyers do. I
always wondered,” Jason teased. “You feeling better now about being
a lawyer? You didn’t seem too sure when we first met.”

“That was so two weeks ago,” I joked back.
“I’m fine now.”

I traced around his navel with one finger,
making his belly twitch, and considered unfastening his jeans and
giving him a hand job. But that sort of negated the
no-hands-below-the-waist policy. Maybe next time.

Next time. Did I want there to be one? Was I
up to the challenge of the baggage Jason came with? Or maybe I was
exaggerating his issues. And anyway he might not be interested in
seeing
me
again. The heat of his kisses suggested
yes
, but it would be arrogant of me to assume.

“Summers on a lake. Sounds like a great way
to grow up.”

“It was pretty great.” I realized how true
that was. My parents may have been demanding, but my life had been
pretty great overall. “What about you? Do you have any childhood
stories to share?”

“Watching my sister on the field the other
day brought back a memory of playing soccer; the smell of the air,
my feet pounding over the ground, a stitch in my side. It almost
hurt, how sharp the memory was.”

I rested my chin on my folded arms on Jason’s
chest and looked at him. “I think we all get those flashes. You
hear a song you haven’t heard in years, or smell a scent and some
memory comes crashing into your day like a wrecking ball. There was
this guy I dated for—well, for longer than was good for either of
us. Since we broke up, sometimes I’ll pass some man wearing Tim’s
cologne and get choked up. I don’t know why. I certainly didn’t
want to be with him anymore, but the scent reminds me of our early
days together. It smells like hope.”

I pressed my face into my arm, embarrassed by
the cheesy analogy. Blurting things out without considering how
they’d sound wasn’t cool for someone whose career included public
speaking.

But Jason nodded. “Yeah. That’s exactly what
soccer smelled like—hope. Dirt and fresh-cut grass and sweaty kids
who think they can run forever and their legs will never give
out.”

The rawness in his voice painted a picture of
the loss he’d suffered, the potential wasted, the upheaval of an
entire life because of one bad night. I felt Jason’s pain just
then, not with the sympathy of an outsider but as if his pain were
my own.

“I guess we all have regrets,” I said.

Chapter Nine

I wasn’t an addict in a twelve-step program,
but I figured it wouldn’t hurt me to do the “making amends” part of
one. After my amazing weekend with Anna, I was flying high and
feeling great, and I wanted to drop in on my therapy group and
patch things up.

Rob glared when I walked in the door. “Look
who’s back.”

“Hey, Rob,” I greeted him as I sat on one of
the folding metal chairs. Before he could work up a good head of
anger and Maxie would have to smooth things over, I added, “Sorry
about last time.”

I looked around at the people who were seated
and the latecomers drifting in. “Sorry to everybody for making shit
up last time I was here. It was rude and wrong. I know you all
share really important things—deep things. I’ve been holding back
and floating on the surface, but I think I’m ready to face up to
some stuff now.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” Good old Rob,
confrontational as always.

“Rob, let’s wait for everyone to get
settled,” Maxie said. “Then, Jason, you can speak first if you’d
like.”

Oh joy. But I’d come here determined to make
things right with these people, and the only way I could do that
was by sharing something about my survivor’s guilt.

Pretty soon, things quieted down, and Maxie
started the meeting by talking about the groups’ purpose for any
newbies. “Whatever you say here is in confidence. We’ve all gone
through some type of extreme situation, but although our
experiences vary widely, no one needs to fear sharing with the
group. There’s no judgment here.” She shot Rob a look before
addressing me. “So, Jason, it sounds as if you’d like to talk
today.”

“Uh, sure.” With all eyes on me, I was
suddenly a lot less buoyant than I’d felt walking into the room.
Then I remembered everything I’d confided in Anna—on a first date
with a girl I wanted to impress, not drive away. If I could tell
her
about the accident, I could certainly tell these
guys.

“Most of you know I was in a car accident
that left me with some permanent injuries. There’s not a lot to
tell. I got drunk and drove, hit a guardrail and flipped the car.
Got thrown from the car because I wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and
ended up with some head injuries and other stuff,” I blurted fast
like ripping a bandage off a wound, then exhaled in relief.

But Maxie wasn’t finished with me yet. “Those
are the details of what happened to you physically, but what are
the aftereffects? What do you
feel
about the accident? Isn’t
there more you’d like to say?”

Not really
hovered on the tip of my
tongue. I shook my head. “Not today, if that’s all right.”

“When you’re ready.” Maxie smiled. She really
was a sweet lady. “Anyone else have something they’d like to
share?”

The spotlight moved on, and I felt as
exhausted as if I’d run five miles. I’d hardly said anything, but
it was a start. From Rob’s little sneer, he didn’t agree. The guy
really despised me.

As I listened to the others pour out their
grief or talk about their road to recovery, I started to really
want to tell about my date with Anna. It was too big to keep to
myself and made me realize I had no close friends I could call just
to shoot the shit with.

When I’d first been in the hospital, I’d had
visitors, or so my mom said. I was in a coma, so I didn’t know it.
By the time I was working through rehab, the visits, calls, and
texts had dried up. Friendships I’d made in college were too new to
weather that kind of crisis. Old friends from high school were
scattered far and wide and focused on college life. Katie used to
read me notes people left on my Facebook wall, but most of the
names meant nothing to me, and by the time I was able to read
again, those messages had stopped. It’s pretty easy to fall off
people’s radar. The closest thing I had to “friends” now were the
homeless gang that hung out in the park and this group of survivors
struggling to reclaim their lives.

I glanced at Rob and tried to imagine hanging
out with the guy. Shit, why not? Maybe I’d uncover the reason for
his deep-seated loathing of me. When the group broke up after an
hour of talk, talk, talking, I approached him.

“Hey. Wanna grab a beer or something?”

He stared at me as if I were the stupidest
person alive. “I’m an
alcoholic
, which you’d know if you
ever listened to what people say in here.”

“Oh right. I forgot. How about coffee,
then?”

His eyes narrowed. “What’s up with you
today?”

“Nothing. Maybe I’m hitting on you because
you’re so hot.” I grinned. Should’ve known better. Rob doesn’t have
a sense of humor. He kept staring at me with pale gray eyes that
could’ve shot a freeze ray.

“Kidding,” I said. “I just thought it was
time to start being friendly with some people. I haven’t been
exactly social since the accident.”

He shrugged. “Okay. When?”

“If you don’t have anywhere to be, how about
now? I don’t work until later this afternoon.”

“I guess.” Rob put on his jacket and picked
up the messenger bag he always carried with him.

It was all I could do not to make some
smart-ass comment about the mysterious, ever-present bag. Yanking
Rob’s chain was too easy. The guy was tightly wound. But I minded
my manners and made small talk about the weather as we walked out
of the building and down the block to a café.

Rob sat at a table, clutching his bag in his
arm as if it held state secrets he expected to have stolen at any
moment. He was a funny-looking guy, the kind who seemed to be put
together from spare parts that didn’t quite match: limbs gangly,
ears too big for his small head, and of course that slicked-back
hairstyle did him no favors.