Physical Therapy (22 page)

“You"re lucky too.” Shawn took a last look around the freshly painted bedroom.

“Try not to overthink it.”

I need time
, I typed.

“Fair enough,” he said simply and then caught the phone neatly when I tossed it to him. He turned to walk through the door, and I slumped over to lie down on the fully made bed, too exhausted to even worry about it. Shawn came back in and removed my shoes, actually picking me up halfway so he could pull the quilt out to cover me. As he left the room at last, he shot back over his shoulder, “It wouldn"t kill you to learn some ASL, you know.”

I grinned even as I began to drift off.

* * * * *

What I didn"t tell my mother, what I wasn"t telling anybody, was that the dream where I walked to River Falls with the flashlight was something that visited a lot. Not nightly, not exactly, but it came often and left me shaken and drenched with sweat.

That night I woke at three a.m., terrified that I"d been loud and my mother would come rushing into my room. I looked at the clock by the bed. Thoughtful,
thoughtful
Ken, how like him to make sure I had a clock if I needed it. There were soft towels in the bathroom and crisp linens on the bed. I didn"t have to think about soap or shampoo or toothpaste or toilet paper. The kitchen was full of food that was easy to prepare but good, like cheese and avocados for sandwiches, cans of vegetarian soup, and several different kinds of yogurt.

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Z. A. Maxfield

There was no way I would find sleep again, so I got up and went to the kitchen, where I rummaged around absently for food. I was making myself a cup of herb tea when my mom came in.

“Hi.” It seemed so strange for us to be here together. It was completely uncharted territory. When I"d last been home, we had gotten together furtively so that I could practice massage techniques, yet here she was at the kitchen table with all the time in the world to chat, and now that we could talk freely we didn"t have that much to say.

“Want some? It"s called „Tension Tamer"; it"s a little…lemony,” I said, smelling it.

“Yeah, thanks,” she told me. She was wearing a pair of flannel pajama bottoms with a long-sleeved T-shirt. She sat at the table, and I noticed she was braless and wondered when the last time was that I"d seen her in her nightclothes. Maybe I was about fifteen. Even then, I couldn"t say that beyond my sorrow for her and the anger I felt that she let my dad abuse her, that I"d ever seen her as a
person
.

First, she"d been my mother, and then… Maybe I hadn"t wanted to see her as someone like me. Someone whose dreams had come to an unbearable end. Her acceptance of my father"s abuse made me angry. She had relaxed here in California; she came out of her room a lot more than I remember her doing when I was young. It was a sure sign she felt comfortable here.

I set a mug of tea down in front of her on the table, along with a spoon. There was a sugar bowl on the table, along with salt and pepper and a little rack with napkins in it.

Ken again
. My mother must have been thinking along the same lines.

“The young man who owns this house,” she began. “He seemed to care very much about you.”

I sat down with her and put sugar in my tea. “We hardly knew each other before I was hurt. He"s a very nice guy.”

She glanced around. “Yes, that would explain it. All nice guys go to this kind of trouble for perfect strangers.”

“I can hardly be called a „perfect" stranger.”

“Tell me what happened, Jordie,” she insisted.

I ran my hands through my hair, wincing as they ran over the scabs from where the staples had been removed. I picked up my tea. “Nothing happened. His mother warned me off. His brother hates me, hates him for being gay. He deserves someone better.”

“Does he think that?”

“Did anyone tell you how he got like that? He was hit by a drunk driver. His best friend was in the car with him and she didn"t make it. His mother thinks he"s trying to recover by „fucking the boogeyman."”

“Jordan!”

“Give it a rest, Mom. I"m almost thirty; I doubt I"ll stop saying fuck.” Physical Therapy

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“That"s not what I was going to say.” Her lower lip quivered, and again I realized that I"d probably never really looked closely at her. Her eyes shimmered. “I was going to say that sometimes when you think you have everything all figured out, it goes to hell anyway. I was going to say that you can marry the person that everyone tells you is the perfect catch and still get it all wrong. I was
going to say
that you and Ken need to decide who is having this relationship, because the people who are telling you what to do aren"t the ones who matter.”

That was probably the most she"d said to me about relationships during my whole life.

I whispered, “You can"t go back to him.”

A single tear slipped down her cheek. “I don"t want to go back, but so far I haven"t figured out how to stay.”

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Z. A. Maxfield

Chapter Nineteen

I enjoyed working out-of-doors on Ken"s yard, and as soon as I could, I spent the better part of my afternoons outside. In the week since I had moved into Ken"s house, the weather had been cool and crisp and the days overcast. I"d discovered some tools in a dilapidated garden shed and was setting up in the backyard when the sun unexpectedly emerged from the blanket of clouds that so often shrouds St. Nacho"s. I was particularly enjoying the way it felt on my back as I worked on weeding and edging the planters. At one point the garden must have been very nice; some of the flower beds were raised and the largely clay soil had been turned and amended with organic material. Still, a lot of it was packed and slabby, like someone had given part of the yard a go and worked it, but stopped before the whole thing was done. I could see myself here. Taking the time to perfect it one square foot at a time, making it beautiful again, for Ken.

I had a wheelbarrow and was adding garden soil and compost to the areas that had completely dried since the last rain, the parts that got the most sun, and cultivating the soil to get it ready for planting. I didn"t know what Ken had in mind, but getting the flower beds ready seemed like something I could do, whatever he planned to plant there. I was dumping a small load of fresh, loamy soil onto one of his raised beds when I heard him clear his throat behind me.

“Hi.” He looked at the ground where I was using this ingenious corkscrew-shaped claw to dig the new soil into the hard-packed clay. “You"re not supposed to be working that hard.”

I pushed the tool into the ground and turned, grimy from head to toe and covered with dirt, which stuck to the sweat on my forearms. I resisted the urge to wipe my brow and make everything worse. “I like this kind of work.” He smiled and took off the baseball hat he wore, balancing on his canes while he looked around. “You shouldn"t overdo, whether you like it or not.” Physical Therapy

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I shrugged. “It"s going to be a nice yard in the spring.”

“I feel a little guilty now; I bought the place for a song, and before escrow even closes it will be worth a lot more than I paid for it.”

“Didn"t you say the family that owned it doesn"t live around here?”

“Yes, they"re in Virginia. It was a headache for them, and it"s not like St. Nacho"s has San Francisco housing prices or demand.”

“Are you seriously going to live here?” I led him back toward the house with the idea that I"d get cleaned up and maybe see if he wanted lunch. “In St. Nacho"s? Your brother seems to think you"ve lost your ambition. There"s more to baseball than playing.

Have you thought of a different kind of career in the sport?”

“No.”

“Why not? You could coach, get a job at your old university; there"s umpire school in Florida—”

“I meant no, I haven"t thought about it. Not that I wouldn"t do it.” He brushed past me when I opened the slider to the kitchen and then waited until I came into the house to continue. “I haven"t thought that far ahead for any reason, except to buy this house. I wanted to share this house with you. That"s the first…probably the only thing I"ve really wanted since the accident.”

“That seems a little…precipitate.” I went to the sink to scrub my hands and arms. I probably should have taken a shower, but I was strangely reluctant to shatter the moment. He was in a talkative mood, and my mother was out. It was the first time we"d had an opportunity to be alone since my attack. I sat across the kitchen table from him.

“No more than anything else,” he remarked. “Tell me why you came to St.

Nacho"s.”

“I—”
Why had I come?
“It"s a long story. When I was in prison, I met this man who had a prison ministry.” I wondered if that"s where it started, or even if I understood my life myself enough to explain it. “He was nice, his name was Stan, and he helped me to find work and a place to live when I got out.”

“Was he from California?”

“No, I went back to my hometown and then I called Cooper and he came back home too. I had this idea that we could… Well. The thing is, while I was in prison Stan kept talking about the love of the Lord, you know? He kept telling me how when I was worthy of it, I would feel so good, and all my problems would disappear or grow insignificant.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, well. I was pretty eager to do whatever anyone said if it would make me feel better. I wanted to feel that love he kept talking about. I wanted to feel like I was working toward getting free of the guilt. He worked so hard at making me into the perfect little convert. I about killed myself to be everything he said I should be and I—”

“Did you love him?”

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Z. A. Maxfield

“No, it wasn"t like that at all. He"s a good man, and I guess I let him tell me how I should act because I wanted this idealized world he offered me. He just wanted to see me settle in a righteous life. It wasn"t long before I stressed out trying to be perfect. I"m afraid that even while he was trying to make me into a saint, a part of me knew it was all a lie. I used to go to this BDSM club in the Twin Cities where I could scene with people. At the time I thought of it like a fast track to redemption. I let them punish me because I was sure I needed it, and it made me feel good. Sadly, better than religion.”

“Punish you?” Ken"s brows drew together. “Punish you how?”

“Bondage. Spanking. Whips. Canes. Doms brought me to a transcendent pain state, where I let go of all my questions and just… I melted away from everything. I can see now that it was just another drug, but at the time, I thought I needed it. I thought it was helping to make myself worthy.”

“Jeez.” Ken looked at his hands.

“It"s an oversimplification, but what I learned from all that was that if I wanted to feel that love that Stan was talking about, I had to be prepared to offer it to others.” Ken said nothing. I wondered what I expected. I sounded nuts, even to myself. “I chose to work in a field where I can help people, and I spend every day, pretty much, giving as much as I can. And it"s worked. I used to live beneath a crippling guilt and now…I just live.”

“So that"s good, right?”

“Yes…it is. And no. I don"t know. You came along and wanted to give me something, and I realized… I don"t think I know how to accept kindness anymore. I"m afraid to take, afraid it will lead to selfishness or forgetting what"s important.” I guess I got angry when Ken started to laugh. “What the hell is so funny?”

“You are,” he told me. “You"re funny. You"ve probably got the warmest heart of anyone I"ve ever met. I"m drawn to you because I was freezing from loneliness and anger and it"s like putting my hands near a fire.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.” Ken slid his chair around the table toward mine and put his hands in front of me, close but not touching. “How can you not know this?”

“Ken, I"m a very selfish person; I have to watch everything I do, every day so that I don"t backtrack.”

“You still think you need rules to follow or you"ll fuck up again?” Maybe he was right. “I—”

“It"s not rational, but I think you care for me, and being with you is like falling into the softest, most welcoming chair at the end of a long, hard day.”

“Your parents will never let you—”

His eyes grew troubled. “I don"t need my parents to
let
me do anything. If nothing else, I"m a grown man.”

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I was still looking down at the table when his voice cracked over me like a whip.

“
Jordan
.” I raised my eyes to his. “If you need someone to tell you what to do, then let it be me.”

“I—”

He leaned in. “You think too much. Trust me to know what I want. Trust yourself to give it to me if it"s what you want too.” He hooked his hand around my neck and squeezed, not hard, but just enough to let me know that he could control me through sheer physical power if he needed to, and fuck, I wanted to melt into his arms and let him. “Trust that I see you in a way that you can"t see yourself.” I whispered, “I"m afraid of losing focus.”

“Do you want me?”

I looked into his eyes and they were that warm violet-blue color they turned when I gave him pleasure. “
Yes
.”

His lips came down on mine, and I clung to his shoulders, stroking them with the palms of my hands, reveling in the thickness, the definition of the muscles under my fingertips. I went to him so abruptly that my chair fell over behind me. He stood with me and my head spun, so I let him lift me, teetering, and wrapped my arms and legs around him.

Ken tottered for a minute, then pushed me back against the nearest wall so he could balance and still support my weight.

“Sorry.” I laughed against his neck. “I always forget we"ll tip over if—”

“You have more faith in me than I do.” He pulled my arms from around his neck and held them over my head while pinning me neatly to the wall with his body. “You don"t just
like
this,” he ventured. “You need this, don"t you?” I felt my face flush and couldn"t meet his eyes. “What?”

“You didn"t leave that life—the scenes—behind, did you? You respond like nothing I could have imagined when I—”