Code Blues (41 page)

For once in my life, I'd taken a risk and
gambled on a sexy, shady guy, who made me crave things I'd kept
double-locked in the depths of my brain.

And who inadvertently helped kill his
mentor, then asked me to look into it.

Something was building inside my chest. I
took a deep breath and tasted it at the back of my throat.

Rage.

I hated Robin. That made sense. He'd tried
to kill me.

But part of me loathed Alex even more. A
user in every sense of the word.

I stepped into the sunshine. The heat was
like a caress on my skin. A trio of students with gym bags strode
past me. A woman chattered on a cell phone across the street. I
started walking south, passing an old man with a very small dog.
I'd never liked small dogs, but this Chihuahua, with its round,
peaked ears and tiny feet, cranking along at its top speed, was
comic relief. I ground out a laugh.

The man picked up his Chihuahua and hugged
it to his chest, glaring at me.

I laughed harder. My ribs hurt with the
force of my giggles. The Chihuahua stared at me with black circles
for its eyes.

Suddenly, it didn't seem so funny anymore. I
hurried down the street. I had to get away. Alex was probably
watching through his window, judging me.

I had to get home. I had to lick my wounds
in private, before I really did crumble. I tightened the straps on
my backpack. The contents jostled with every quick step.

I stopped short at the end of the block.
What I needed to do was take the bus home, not the metro. Tori had
mentioned the 129 bus stop near the Air Transat building. I scouted
for the high-rise with the tell-tale navy sign and aimed toward it.
Ten minutes later, I had zigzagged my way to its side, right on
Parc.

A blue and white STCUM bus
barreled north. Its pixilated yellow sign in the back said
129 Côte-Ste-Catherine
.

I scampered toward the bus's rear end,
waving. It didn't stop. In fact, it might have sped up. A passenger
in the back seat gaped at me through the window, making no apparent
effort to call to the driver.

The more things change...

My hands curled into fists at my side.
Goddamn this city. Goddamn everything.

According to the schedule posted on the
streetlamp, the next bus wasn't for another half hour. I was
tempted to walk home in that time, but I knew I was being
ridiculous.

One block south, there was
a little green-roofed mall with a sign for
Cinéma du Parc
. I rushed inside its
glass doors to call Tori. Unshed tears were a pendulous weight in
my chest.

The phone rang and rang.

"
Bonjour. Vous avez bien rejoint la boîte vocale de
Tori
."

One thing I never understood is why so many
anglophones started off in French on their machines. My parents
would be confused if I did that. A smile touched my lips. I was
able to say in a quasi-normal tone, "Uh, meltdown with Alex. Can
you call me? I have my pager, but I'm on my way home. Just waiting
for the 129—" My voice broke. I struggled to contain it. "Next to
Air Transat—"

I was going to cry. So I hung up.

I poked around in the boutique near the main
entrance. I admired a pair of chopsticks in a cloth case with a
wooden clasp carved in the shape of an elephant.

Even as I did this, rubbing the soft navy
cloth, running my finger along the sanded wooden chopsticks,
smiling at the elephant—it hit me again.

Rage, so strong it seemed to burn through my
sternum and boil up my throat. And not just at Robin and Alex, but
at myself.

I'd been so fucking stupid. I'd almost
died.

I'd poked my nose into their nasty,
incestuous business. I'd slept with a user. Yes, I'd saved
Mireille's life and been lucky, but I despised myself more than
anyone else.

All my life, I'd played it safe, worked
hard, made my parents proud. I'd built myself a charmed life.

I'd almost torched it in less than three
weeks.

And for what? For Alex? No guy was worth
that much.

For my pride? Probably closer to truth.

Plus some anemic sense of justice for a man
I hardly knew.

I forced myself to lay the elephant
chopsticks back down, but in my head, I saw myself taking a broken
piece of glass and carving bloody wounds into my face. Then
everyone could see what I was feeling.

No! I must be more unhinged than I realized.
I shouldn't have come back to work so soon. I shouldn't have gone
to see Alex. I shouldn't—

The breath seemed to get vacuumed out of my
lungs. My hands fluttered helplessly in front of my chest. My heart
beat against my ribs like it wanted to kick its way free. My ears
roared in one solid ocean wave. A black veil settled over the
periphery of my vision.

It felt like Robin was strangling me here.
Now. Again.

People walked by with shopping bags looped
over their wrists. Their eyes slid past me. One woman was so close
that I could smell the coffee in her paper cup. She checked her
watch and strode on.

I

can't

breathe

!

I closed my eyes and grabbed the edge of the
display box. Its smooth, painted MDF surface was soothing. I ran my
thumb the length of the box and pushed on the outer corner so it
dented my thumb pad.

Pain. A blunt sort of pain.

Good. Anything was better than my own
thoughts.

Focus.
You have to get out of here
.

You survived Robin. And Alex. You will not
break down in front of the elephant chopsticks.

"Hope?"

A quiet voice. A familiar baritone.

Alex? My heart leapt, even as I whirled
around to see a wheat- blond flattop and sympathetic brown eyes
shaded by long lashes.

Tucker. I covered my face with both
hands.

"Hope." He laid his hand just above my elbow
with a light pressure. A "good doctor" pressure, empathetic but not
cloying. "Are you okay?"

I nodded. My chest was still heaving, but I
was getting some air in. I released the display box, to the relief
of the East Indian storekeeper who had come to stare at me. My
heart downgraded from jackhammering to hammering. I could feel a
sheen of sweat on my forehead.

So stupid. A panic attack. That was what
psych people got. I answered Tucker through chattering teeth,
"Need—fresh air."

Tucker steered me outside the glass doors,
through the paving stone patio, and up to a thigh-high concrete
wall bordering the sidewalk.

The sun felt good on my
arms, even though I could smell the cigarette smoke drifting from
the restaurant
térrasse
around the corner. People sauntered by, hardly
glancing at me, but this time, I found their indifference
comforting. Nothing to see, folks. Keep moving, keep moving. I took
a stab at normalcy. "So what are you doing he-here?" I choked back
a sob, but tears welled in my eyes. I rubbed them back. They still
spilled over my eyelashes.

No. Do not cry. I tried to
concentrate on something else—the pits in the concrete sidewalk,
the laughter of the people on the
térrasse
, Tucker's hand resting on
the wall beside my leg.

His hands were tanned a light gold. His
fingers were long, with endearingly knobby knuckles. No rings, just
light cover of blond hair that gleamed in the fading sunlight.

His hand clenched the wall before he forced
it to relax. He said, "It doesn't matter. You're okay."

It was such a humane thing to say, I
sobbed.

I did not want to cry. But I couldn't hold
it back any more.

I wanted to launch myself at his chest and
weep against his shoulder while his hands caressed my hair.

I wanted him to fly away so he wouldn't
witness my humiliation.

I didn't know what I wanted anymore.

I stood up. "I have to go. Thank you," I
said, even though tears were still spilling down my face like they
wanted to supply a water bottling plant. "I'm better now."

"No, you're not." Tucker's hands reached
forward, as if to hold me back, but stopped an inch short of my
shoulders. "Just stay here. You don't have to talk to me."

It was exactly the right
thing to say. No judgment, no questions. He was just there for me.
So there for me, in a way that Alex had never been and never would
be. Tucker was so great, but every compassionate move felt like a
vice around my chest. More evidence of my idiocy, that I didn't
even
like
Tucker.

I started to bawl. My shoulders shook. My
hands grew slick with mucous and tears as I covered my face.

I heard Tucker stir. So he wasn't so
enlightened after all. He was ditching me for being the weeping
wall. I felt something detach inside my chest. Fine. This was what
I learned, after all. I had no one to count on but myself.

His hand brushed the side of my shoulder.
"It's okay, Hope. Sit down. Please."

He waited until I sank back down on the
wall.

"Back in a minute. Okay, Hope?"

What else could I say? I nodded from behind
my hands. All told, it was a relief to cry. I'd always avoided
blubbering in public, even when I was younger. Now I was doing it
in full Technicolor and yet I would survive.

His shoes padded away. I allowed myself some
full-frontal sobbing. A mother towed her two kids past me while
they craned their necks, hanging back to goggle at me. I swung
myself around so my back was to the sidewalk. Now the guy cleaning
out the garbage cans outside the mall cast me nervous looks. Maybe
they'd arrest me for disturbing the peace.

The thought made me smile a little. There is
some comfort in hitting rock bottom. You know it can't get any
worse.

The green glass doors punched outward.
Tucker's face cleared when he saw me still perched on the wall. He
flew toward me. When he skidded to a halt, his leather sneakers
kicked up a stray piece of gravel. He was slightly breathless as he
shoved some white paper Subway napkins under my nose. "Here."

Jesus. I grabbed one with a watery smile. I
blew my nose. It was so clogged, I had to blow twice. I searched
for a dry corner to wipe my face.

Tucker plucked the napkin out of my hand
without wincing at its condition and pressed some new ones on me.
He wadded the used one up in his fist and held slightly behind his
back, out of sight.

Wow. He didn't even run to the garbage with
it. He held on to it because he'd rather stay by me. And he didn't
say a word.

I tried to imagine Alex holding a snotrag
for me and I couldn't.

That meant I was well rid of him.

Okay.

I gambled on Alex. I lost. I lived.

I tried to save Mireille. We won. Robin
lost.

I took a deep breath. Blew my nose one more
time. Then I said, "Okay."

Tucker held out his hand, folding the rest
of the napkins under his arm as he helped me up. He still held the
soggy one behind his back. I smiled at that.

A few steps north on Parc, at the glass and
red metal bus shelter, we paused by the garbage bin. We both tossed
our used napkins. I gave a watery laugh.

Tucker looked pleased. He handed me the
remaining napkins.

I laughed. "I don't need that many! I'm
okay."

He shook them at me, the white ends
fluttering in the breeze. "Just in case. You never know. Someone
else might need them."

"Yeah. Lots of crying jags on the bus."

He nodded, drawing his eyebrows together in
mock seriousness. "Or you could use them as a pressure
dressing."

I laughed some more. "Okay." I slid off my
backpack and unzipped it. He tucked the napkins in the front
section.

When we straightened, we were standing quite
close together. Only my bag separated us. His brown eyes were very
fine, with a golden light in them, reflecting the sun. I could see
his chest rising and falling under his black T-shirt. I had the
urge to touch the bow of his upper lip.

But I didn't. I couldn't trust my judgment
anymore. Alex was still a third degree burn across my heart. We
stepped back at the same moment.

A faint flush rose in Tucker's neck, but all
he said was, "So you were taking the bus?"

"Yes." I sniffed hard. "The 129."

"This way."

We continued north. When there were too many
people on the sidewalk, he stepped behind to let me precede him.
Then he rejoined me. Our shoulders brushed occasionally. We didn't
speak.

Back in the shadow of the Air Transat
building, a lineup of people climbed on the number 80 bus. Mine
should get here soon. I sighed and slipped off my backpack to root
in the front compartment for my wallet. Tucker cleared his throat
and held a paper ticket under my nose.

I straightened and shook my head. "You've
been too nice."

He shook his head. "It's what, two bucks? I
can afford it."

I hesitated. He shook the ticket at me.

My fingers closed around it. "Thank
you."

"You're welcome."

Our eyes locked.

I heard a buzzing noise. Tucker's hand
clapped to his pants pocket and unfolded his vibrating cell phone.
"Hi. Yeah. She's right here. Okay. Sure. Meet us at the Mimosa
Manor." He smiled at me. "Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No problem. Thanks,
Tori."

Tucker hung up and pocketed his cell phone.
"You're on your way to Mama Tori," he said.

I nodded blankly. That sounded like an
Italian restaurant. I knew I should be glad they were taking such
good care of me, but it made me feel guilty.

Tucker lightly grasped my elbow and arm
waited with me by the bus stop. Three more number 80 buses rolled
by, but no 129's