The Beauty Series (11 page)

She sighed in happiness. Maybe everything would be okay.

*     *     *

Blake leaned against
the doorframe and watched until her red taillights turned onto the main road. It was best that she leave. He had a lot to take care of, and it would be too tempting to lose himself in her body while she was near. She’d helped drag him out of the pit he’d dug for himself, and he was grateful. But he couldn’t continue to use her as a crutch. Already he felt the stirrings of hope within him, like a breath of spring wind. He’d catch himself thinking of someplace to take her, fitting in travel plans between his terms at the university. Terms, plural. As if he’d stay on, when he swore it was only temporary.

All of that was well and good, but before he could move forward, he needed to look back. To finally handle what he’d been too fucked up to deal with when he’d first returned home.

The drive to the hospital took thirty minutes, during which time he steeled himself. Still, as the wide automatic doors slid open, the chemical smell hit like a physical blow. He gritted his teeth and stepped inside. The muted conversation between the nurses, the fluorescent lighting, the mauve-beige-neutral walls—all too fucking familiar. He broke into a cold sweat, feeling the searing pain of his burns all over again. Months, he’d lain in that bed. He remembered shouting hoarsely for them not to touch him, to just give him more pain medicine and go the fuck away. They hadn’t listened, poking and prodding.

“Sir?”

He blinked. A nurse in pink scrubs was staring at him.

“Are you okay, sir?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. I’m looking for a friend of mine.”

She led him to the information desk where she looked up Private First Class Joseph Davis. Blake had visited when he’d first been discharged, but as he’d suspected, Joe had been moved to a different room. A different wing altogether, a more permanent one.

Pink and blue balloons in the gift shop window caught his eye. He stopped inside and picked out a small arrangement of colorful flowers. Joe wouldn’t care—or notice—but he suspected Sherry would be there.

The room was much nicer than the old one had been. It was large, with faux cherry-wood paneling, a wide window overlooking the city, and a sofa that probably doubled as a bed. He studiously avoided the bleached white hospital bed in the center of everything, crowded with plastic piping and holding the unconscious body of his friend.

Sherry stood and greeted him with a tired smile and no surprise to mark the months that had passed. “Blake, how are you? Come in, come in.”

He handed the flowers to Sherry and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You look great. How’s the kiddo?”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you deflecting. But thanks. Matt’s at school.”

“School? Jesus. Last time I saw him he was in diapers.”

She laughed, setting the flowers down by the window. “Preschool. They do colors and shapes and stuff, that’s all. Just twice a week. Gives me some time to breathe.”

“Of course you need a break. In fact, you should let me hire someone. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before.”

“Blake, you’ve already done too much for us.”

“I haven’t been here in months.”

She rolled her eyes. “And who paid off the mortgage on our condo?”

“I got your thank-you note. That was sweet.” She’d signed her name at the bottom…and his. Joseph and Sherry Davis. Blake had gotten drunk and surfaced a week later with a mother of a hangover.

“Well, come on. You can talk to him. I’ll run and grab some coffee. You want something?”

“I’m good. Take your time.”

She flashed him a smile as she grabbed her purse. The door closed behind her.

Finally Blake allowed his gaze to find the center of the room. An accordion base and plastic rails. Thin white sheets. A drip from a clear bag to his vein, keeping him alive. Joe hadn’t wanted that. Blake had suggested that to Sherry when he’d visited her then. He thought she would have slapped him then if he hadn’t been wrapped three times around with bandages. So here they were.

He strolled to the side of the bed and sat down. Sherry would give him enough time. She may not always agree with what they wanted, but she understood them. Soldiers. Survivors. She was both as well.

“Hey, man.” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “It’s me. Blake.”

His chest felt tight. This was harder than he thought. Which was saying something, because he’d thought it would be pretty fucking hard.

The machinery beeped in the background. Unobtrusive, he supposed. He wondered if Joe could really hear anything. He wondered if the beeping was driving him insane.

Joe’s face was slimmer and clean shaven. It bore none of the bruises and marks that Blake remembered. No scars. Unlike Blake, his wounds were all inside. Irony had painted their lives with broad, cruel strokes.

Blake wasn’t much older, but he’d already gone through a couple tours. He was the corporal, team leader, and occasional mentor to the new kid. Joe had looked up to him like he was Indiana Jones, and without fully realizing it, Blake had eaten that shit up.

Then they’d gotten blown apart. Well, Blake’s face had gotten blown up mostly. He’d woken in a dank, dark prison, finding both himself and Joe tied down like animals.

Only then, the craziest fucking thing happened. Blake was the commanding officer. He knew way more valuable shit. He should have taken the brunt of the interrogation.
He
should have been the one tortured. Except he was out of his mind with pain from the burns, delirious and incoherent. So they’d focused all their attention on Joe. Young, guileless Joe.

They were rescued in two weeks. Just a blip on the radar. Two weeks, fourteen days, 336 hours of torture. On the official forms, it said there were two survivors. But only Blake had woken up, his face so ruined that his fiancée had walked out at the first sight of him. Meanwhile, Sherry had stayed by Joe’s side all this time. She’d never give up, and Joe would never wake up, so yeah. Irony was a bitch.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

He swallowed. “I met someone. Her name’s Erin. It’s pretty serious. She makes me…well, she makes me want to be better. That probably sounds strange, because I know I told you all about Melinda back then.”

Deep breath. It got easier, he was finding, if he kept going. Maybe there was a lesson in that. Just keep moving forward.

“It didn’t work out. She left me, really. But she was right about one thing. We couldn’t have gone back to the way things were.” He hadn’t fully understood that at first. Not even when she hadn’t come to pick him up from the hospital after he was released. Instead she’d been waiting at the door to his house. He’d been so overwhelmed and lonely after months in the damn hospital bed. He’d pulled her into his arms. She hadn’t hugged him back.

Then he’d noticed the luggage.

“I know I’m an ass for even talking to you about this. I get to walk around and live my life. A different one. I wish I could give that to you, man. I wished for so long that I could trade places with you.” But he couldn’t, and so for a while he’d stopped living his own life.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Sherry looks great, by the way. Really…” Steadfast. Loyal. Kind. And it was fucking weird feeling any amount of envy for a man in a coma. “Really lovely. Just like you said.”

Through the window, he could see gray clouds weighing down over the city. It would rain later.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to come back. I was being a dumbass, but you’ve probably figured that out by now. I’m going to try and be better. Check in on Sherry and the kiddo more often. Everything’s okay out here, so you…you don’t have to worry. Just focus on getting better.”

He reached out and squeezed Joe’s hand before he left. Sherry stood outside the room, chatting with the nurses. He hugged her goodbye and promised to visit in a week.

It had been a type of lie, what he’d said to Joe.
Just focus on getting better.
The odds were he would never get better. The doctors had said as much. Sherry had refused to believe that. And maybe Blake didn’t quite believe it either. As he walked into the overcast day, he felt a little bit lighter.

E
rin had always
known she’d go to graduate school, even in high school, even though no one in her family had gone to college at all. She wanted to work in the political sphere, behind the scenes. And though she was prepared to do grunt work at the bottom, she aimed higher. Her master’s degree would be a statement of intent, telling the world—and herself—that she was damn serious.

She returned to her apartment in the prime hours of morning. The tiny kitchen was silent and cheery, sun streaming through the windows. It was starting to look foreign to her. She’d spent the past few nights at Blake’s house.

A hot shower washed away any trace of Blake’s lovemaking from her body. She moved quietly so as not to wake her roommate, granting Courtney a few extra minutes of sleep. Soon enough she could wait no longer.

She rapped on the door lightly, just in case Courtney had already gotten up. When she heard nothing, she went inside.

Her friend was tangled up in the sheets, snoring softly.

“Wake up, sleepyhead. Time to get our books.” A few more tries were required before a pillow was launched at her. She caught it and tossed it back to the foot of the bed. “Come on. Up and at ’em.”

Courtney squinted at her. “You’re evil.”

“Hey, if you want to drive to campus by yourself…”

“No, I’m up.”

“Okay, because you’re still not moving.”

“Any second now, I swear.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I wouldn’t do this to you, but you know they’ll run out if we don’t get there early.”

That wasn’t strictly true. The university bookstore never ran out of the required textbooks—just the used copies, which were all Erin could afford.

One semester Erin hadn’t had enough to cover the five hundred dollar total. Courtney had offered to charge one of the books to her card, saying her parents would never notice. But even if she paid the money back, it felt too much like charity. So Erin had visited the library every few days to use the in-house copy for her assignments.

Courtney dragged herself out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Erin returned to the kitchen and looked over the notes for her research paper while she waited. In ten minutes, her friend emerged with damp hair, sweatpants, and a tank top that said
DON’T HATE
in glittery letters.

Dark sunglasses shielded her eyes, though she was still indoors. She looked like a rock star going out to fight the paparazzi.

Erin stifled a laugh. “That bad, huh?”

Courtney stuck out her tongue. She shuddered as they entered the sun and made their way to Erin’s car. “I didn’t get home until three. And this is why Jägermeister is a bad idea, boys and girls.”

“I think I’ve heard this PSA before,” Erin said, pulling out of the parking lot.

“Yes, well, I can’t seem to learn my lesson. Plus Derek was there, so things got a little crazy.”

Derek was Courtney’s ex…and of course he was there. Some said it wasn’t a party until he arrived, so Erin wondered why she kept going to them. Except she knew exactly why. They were on-again-off-again, and Courtney would prefer them to be on. Again.

“You know you should leave him alone.”

She gave Erin a glare that said her hangover was still going strong. “You’re one to talk. Dating the professor.”

“He’s not
my
professor.”

“Ohh,” Courtney said in mock-relief. “In that case, everything is hunky-dory. So I guess you told your mom about him.”

Erin slanted her a look, and Courtney laughed. No, she hadn’t told her mom. It would only make her worry.

“I’ll tell her soon. She can meet him when she comes for graduation.” Her mother might be annoyed when she figured out how long they’d been dating, but she’d come around, especially once she met Blake.

“Hey, I’m just giving you a hard time. I think it’s a good thing. Everyone needs to do something a little wild while they’re in college. Or in my case, many things.”

“But you always tell me what a bad idea it was.”

“Sure,
after
the fact. It’s usually fun while it’s happening. Do as I do, not as I say.”

“Hmm.” Though she wouldn’t have imagined it just a year ago, she was indeed following in Courtney’s fun-loving, impulse-indulging footsteps. Surpassing them really, because even Courtney hadn’t banged a professor.

It didn’t bother her on its own. She’d never been a stickler for propriety, and the way she felt about Blake far outweighed any lingering concerns over bylaws. But keeping it a secret crossed some line she hadn’t realized she’d drawn. The old Erin had put her mother and college career first. This new Erin…she didn’t know her too well. The one who got fucked against a wall at dawn. Who was she? It was fun and exciting, but everything had to balance out in the universe. A childhood of secondhand clothes and sewn-up backpacks taught her that nothing came for free. So what was she trading in for this newfound bliss?

The parking lot was already packed full of expensive, shiny cars and yawning students making their way to the university bookstore’s entrance. Inside, she and Courtney split up amid the metal bookshelves and large crates of textbooks.

They’d clearly arrived with time to spare. The place looked well stocked, and besides, Erin only had the one book to find. Her other credits were for her research. No textbook required for that, just many, many regular books at the library which she’d practically memorized by now.

She felt guilty for rushing Courtney out the door. It had been habit and an early-onset case of nostalgia that had her rushing over here. Four years of undergrad and two in graduate school. She would miss this place.

She trailed her finger along the cool metal shelving, feeling the harsh edge where one stopped and the next began. The school was beautifully appointed, with gorgeous oak desks and hardwood flooring. But the basement of the bookstore, where the textbooks were kept, was little more than a warehouse. Strangely, she felt most comfortable down here, strolling through towers of books.