To Each Her Own Page 25

  She looked down at the coffee in her hands again. “There's something wrong with me, Zac.”

  He rested his elbows on his thighs and loosely clasped his hands. “Tell me something I don't know.”

  She quirked her mouth to one side, annoyed. “I'm serious.”

  “Oh. Well, let's hear it, then.”

  She hesitated a full minute before she finally spoke. “I . . . have this attraction to guys with disabilities, especially guys like Jay—guys with paraplegia.”

  Zac sat back in his chair, his features scrunched into a huh? look.

  Erin was too embarrassed to meet his eyes. Staring at the side of the dingy RV behind him instead, she said, “I know it's weird—perverse, even—but I can't help it.” She had the urge to somehow hide and drew her knees up, hugging them to her chest, the soles of her beloved biker boots on the seat of her chair. She still held her coffee in her hand. “It's not something I choose. It's a strange attraction I can't help, no matter how much I try to fight it.”

  Zac watched her, not saying anything.

  She soldiered on with her confession. “I've had this . . . fascination . . . ever since I can remember. Like I said, I'm especially partial to guys with paraplegia, but I'd also date someone with quadriplegia. In fact, I have dated someone with quadriplegia before.”

  The huh? look morphed into a what the fuck? look. “So, you'd date someone like, say, Stephen Hawking?”

  “Uh, no. For God's sake, he's in his seventies. Way too old for me.”

  Zac smacked himself on the forehead. “Of course. If only he were younger.” He was being sarcastic, but at least he no longer looked like he had a random piece of hair stuck to his tongue.

  “If you're asking if I'd date any guy as long as he had a disability,” she said, “the answer is no. There still has to be chemistry, and we have to have things in common. To me, the disability is just another trait, like eye or hair color.”

  She could see the gears turning in Zac's head. After what seemed like a year of silence, Erin couldn't stand it anymore. “What are you thinking?” She swallowed hard. “Are you disgusted?”

  Zac took a deep breath and rubbed his hands on his thighs before answering, “I have to admit, it's pretty fuckin' weird.”

  Erin's heart plummeted. Had she just repulsed the last person left in her family, the only person in the world she knew for sure loved her? Would he want her to go now, to stay away from him?

  To her surprise, he shrugged. “But, to each his own, right?”

  She stayed absolutely still, afraid she was imagining it. “So . . . you don't hate me?”

  “Hate you?” he asked, incredulous. He shook his head. “Of course not. You're my little sister, you dork. I could never hate you.”

  Warmth pooled behind her eyes, and Erin loved her brother more than ever in that moment. “I'm not your little sister.”

  He grinned. “One word, pygmy: size.” He pointed to her, then to himself. “You little. Me big,” he said, doing a bad imitation of a Native American from a John Wayne movie. He crossed his arms. “So what's the problem with Jay?”

  She sighed. “It's complicated.”

  “Sounds like a match made in heaven to me. He's handicapped. You have a thing for handicapped dudes.”

  “Don't say 'handicapped,'” she corrected. “He shouldn't be defined that way. The only thing that handicaps him is an insensitive, able-bodied world that either forgets to—or won't—make things accessible for him.”

  It was Zac's turn to roll his eyes. “Let me start over. Jay has a disability. You have a thing for dudes with disabilities.”

  “It's not that simple.”

  “What are you not telling me?”

  “I sort of misled him.”

  “Did he not know about your, uh, unconventional attraction?”

  Erin gave a small smile at Zac's effort to sound politically correct and said, “It's called 'devoteeism.' We're called 'devs' for short.”

  “'We?'” Zac's brows went up.

  “Yeah. There's a lot of us. There's this website where we meet other devs and wheelers.”

  “Wow. So you've had this whole secret life that I never knew anything about?”

  She grimaced. “It's not really something I wanted to broadcast.”

  “And Jay didn't know you were a—you know, a dev?”

  Erin didn't want to get into everything that had happened or how she'd met Jay at Luis's, so she just said, “No. He knew.”

  “Then I'm really not seeing the problem.”

  “It's embarrassing, Zac. He knew I was a dev, but he didn't quite know the extent of it. When he found out, it drove him away.” She would never forget the expression on Jay's face when she'd tried to explain the depth of her attraction. “He was disgusted.”

  “What do you mean, 'the extent of it'?” asked Zac.

  She rested her forehead on her knees for a second and then faced him. “He thought my attraction had to do more with his strength in dealing with his disability, his character. I guess I wasn't totally honest with him, but, in my defense, I didn't understand it all myself. But it's not just about his strength of character and the way he adapts to his disability with such class. It's physical, too.”

  “Physical?”

  “I think he's really hot, Zac, all of him, paralyzed legs and all.”

  “Okaaay.” Zac's tone said he was a little weirded out but wasn't judging. “And that grossed him out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that's why you left San Antonio?”

  Erin groaned. “No. It's a long story, but I found out he'd been lying to me. He posed as a wheeler on the dev website I lurk on and started private-messaging me.”

  “Why?”

  “He said it was the only way he could think of to get to know me better because I wouldn't talk to him in person. As you know, I didn't like him when he first moved in.”

  “Right. You thought he was a serial killer.”

  “Yeah,” she said on a small, rueful laugh. “More like just an asshole. But anyway,” she continued, “I was really angry with him for deceiving me on the website, for pretending to be someone else. I felt like such a fool, and I didn't think I could trust him ever again. That's why I left San Antonio. I thought it would never work with him, that we were never meant to be. I needed to get away from him to get over him, but he wouldn't leave me alone. He called and texted me every day, trying to get me to forgive him.”

  “And you eventually gave in and started talking to him again.”

  “Yeah. I thought things were going well between us.”

  “But?”

  Her coffee was completely cold now, but she took a sip and let its bitterness and sweetness mix on her tongue. “You know he's in Oakland, now, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I asked him to come to the show last night. He said he would.”

  “But he was a no-show?”

  “Yep.”

  Zac frowned. “Did he call you? Did he give you a reason?”

  She got up and threw her coffee cup in a smelly alley Dumpster that sat a few yards from the RV and then sat back down. “He sent me a lame text saying he was sorry, that things had gotten busy.”

  “And what? You think he was lying or something?”

  God, Erin thought, why were guys so clueless sometimes? “Yes, I think he was lying.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know. Intuition.”

  Zac sat back in his chair, his manner doubtful. “Or maybe the dude was just busy.”

  “Zac, he practically cyberstalked me for months until I talked to him again. He even told me a million times that he loves me.”

  “Oh. Whoa.”

  “Yeah. Kind of a big deal. But now, after all these months, we have a rare opportunity to see each other, and he doesn't show?” She propped her chin on her hand, elbow resting on the arm of the plastic lawn chair. “It's weird. And he's had all morning to call me or text me, and he hasn't.”


  “Have you called or texted him?”

  She gave him a dubious look. “No. I do have some pride, you know.”

  “Right. Pride,” Zac said, in his I'll-never-understand-women voice.

  She ignored that. “Know what I think? I think he changed his mind. I think he's not as over the dev thing as he insisted he was. Maybe the prospect of seeing me in person brought it all home again, and he balked.”

  “Or maybe he's just busy.”

  She shook her head. “I'm getting a different vibe.”

  Zac rolled his eyes again. “Look. Girls read shit into the things guys do and say, and most of the time they're wrong. Guys are pretty literal. If he couldn't come because he was too busy, he was probably too busy.”

  “Even if that's all it is, Zac, it still means Jay doesn't care about me as much as I care about him. I mean, if the situation were reversed, I would put everything aside”—she swept her arm in a dramatic arc—“no matter what it was, to go see him, especially if I knew he wouldn't be in town for long.”

  “Good point. Maybe he's just a scrote, then. You're better off without him.”

  Erin exhaled an exasperated breath. “You're not supposed to say that, Zac. You're supposed to say I should go see him for myself, try to get some closure and find out what's really going on.”

  “Now, see,” he said, shaking his head, “that's what a girl would say.”

  She hadn't even entertained the thought of going to see Jay, but now that she'd said it, it was starting to take root. Her mind started racing, trying to figure out how she could find him and then get there.

  She knew one thing: Time was running out. The band would probably be leaving in about an hour to head to Santa Barbara. If she was going to get up the nerve to go find Jay, she needed to act quickly.

  Yet again, however, her heart was at odds with her brain. Her heart said that something else had to be going on, that Jay wouldn't have stood her up if he could help it, but her brain said she should let it go—let him go—before she made an idiot of herself . . . again. How many times was it going to take for her to learn?

  Apparently, one more.

  Chapter 31

  Erin felt antsy as she waited for Luis to answer her call. Zac and the rest of the band would be leaving in fifteen minutes. She had to make the decision to stay and find Jay or go with them. Jay wasn't answering her calls or texts, which was another sign from the powers that be that she shouldn't try to see him.

  What if Luis didn't answer? It was the second time she'd tried to call him. He hadn't responded to the voice mail she'd left him. What if he never answered her? What if he decided to ignore her as payback for all those messages he'd left after her wreck that she'd never returned?

  But Luis answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  She moved farther down the alley from where the RV was parked so no one would overhear. “Luis? It's Erin. Erin Silver. You know, Jay's roommate?”

  “Yes, Erin. Of course I know who you are.” His tone was gentle, with that lyrical quality that came with his mild Hispanic accent. “Like I would forget you. You were my friend before you were Jay's. What can I do for you?”

  She cleared her throat. “Um, do you know the address where Jay is staying while he's in Oakland?”

  “Why do you want to know?” Luis didn't sound like he was being a jerk. He sounded genuinely curious.

  “I'm in San Francisco, and I want to see him. I thought I would surprise him, since I'm so close.” Erin thought it was better if Luis didn't know Jay had blown her off and wasn't returning her calls.

  “As his employer, I can't give out private information like that. I'm sorry.”

  Erin gripped her phone tighter. “It's not like I'm a salesperson or somebody who wants to hassle him, Luis. I just want to surprise him. And I have some good news to tell him.”

  “What good news?”

  “It's personal, and it's something I want Jay to know first, before I tell anyone else.”

  Luis let out a long sigh. “I would really like to help you, Erin, but Jay is a very good friend of mine. Aside from the fact that it really is against the law for me to give out his address, he asked me personally not to share his info. I have to respect that.”

  “Even with me?” Surely Luis knew about Jay's relationship with her.

  Luis hesitated a beat. Then, with a hint of apology in his voice, he said, “Even with you.”

  “But you know we're kind of together, right? I mean, well, we were, and then we kind of broke up, but then—”

  “I know, Erin. I know all of that. But I'm telling you, Jay doesn't want to be found right now.”

  “But it's me, Luis.”

  “I know. But I think he especially doesn't want to be found by you.”

  Erin's stomach slid down to her toes. Jay had actually told Luis not to tell her how to find him? What the hell was going on? More than ever, she wanted to see Jay in person. Now that she was over the initial hurt and disappointment of him being a no-show, she was convinced something was fishy, and that feeling was underscored by Luis's dogged refusal to give her information.

  “Luis, what is going on? Why wouldn't he want to be found?”

  “Again, I'm not at liberty to say.”

  She made a guttural noise of frustration in her throat. “Is this really about Jay, or is it you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you and I sort of had something going before that morning in your apartment. Is this some kind of revenge on your part? Are you trying to keep Jay and me apart out of spite?”

  “Of course not,” he said, sounding indignant.

  “Then, for God's sake, what is going on? And don't give me all this crap about respecting Jay's privacy. You sure as hell didn't respect mine when you gave him my username on the dev website. You're no saint, so spill it. You owe me, Luis.”

  He didn't respond for a full minute.

  “Luis, you still there?” If he'd been in front of her, she would have given him a good shake and yelled, “Come on!”

  Finally, he muttered something that sounded like, “This is bullshit.”

  “What?”

  His sigh was loud and long-suffering. “I'm going to tell you the truth, Erin, because, as you said, I owe you and also because you and Jay are two of the most stubborn, star-crossed people I've ever known. First you were mad at him and wouldn't talk to him, and now he's playing the martyr. If I don't intervene—”

  “What do you mean he's playing the martyr?” she said, coming alert.

  “—you two will never get together.”

  Erin was tense now, her pulse picking up speed. “What do you mean he's playing the martyr, Luis?”

  “He's in a bad way, Erin. He didn't go to Oakland to open an office. He went there to have surgery on his back two months ago, and there's been complications. He's been staying in Stockton with his dad to recuperate.”

  As she processed that, a myriad of emotions swept through her—first shock, then anger Jay had lied to her again, and finally fear. It tangled her insides into knots, and her knees felt rubbery. She leaned a hand against the brick wall of the alley to steady herself. “But he was so stubborn about it. He wouldn't even talk about seeing a doctor. Believe me, I tried my best to get him to.”

  “The pain was affecting his work. I kind of gave him an ultimatum.”

  She sniffed. “Right. Wouldn't want your bottom line to suffer.”

  “It wasn't really about that, Erin, but he wouldn't listen to me as a friend.”

  That, she could understand. “But why all the secrecy? It doesn't make sense.”

  “He's got his pride. He didn't want anyone to know. He didn't want to make a big deal of it, didn't want anyone worrying or fawning over him.” Then, apparently feeling the need to defend his friend further, Luis added, “And it wasn't totally a lie. If all had gone like it was supposed to with the surgery and, depending on what did or didn't happen with you, he very well might have stayed an
d opened an office for me in Oakland. It would be a promotion for him. He'd be the boss.”

  “You said 'complications.'” A huge lump in her throat made it difficult to speak. “What complications, Luis? What's wrong with him?”

  Another sigh. “The shit that often goes with SCI—bad urinary tract infection and a serious pressure sore on his ass. It's Stage III. He had skin-flap surgery on Wednesday to try to repair it.”

  Erin's hands were trembling, her heart racing. “Luis, you have to tell me what hospital he's in. I have to find him.”

  “I thought you'd never ask.”

  * * *

  He was asleep when she got to St. Joseph's Medical Center in Stockton later that afternoon. He was lying on his side, pillows all around him and between his knees to help keep him in place, covered by a white sheet and lightweight, beige blanket. The bed was some kind of special hospital bed that redistributed his weight by pushing air into different sections of the mattress every five minutes or so, presumably to prevent any more pressure sores developing from lying in one position too long.

  Erin had been watching the mattress subtly deflate and inflate for the last hour, the quiet hum of it hypnotically marking time. Judging by the other crisply made, empty bed in the room, Jay didn't have a roommate at the moment. She'd been alone with her thoughts, sitting in a standard-issue brown metal-and-vinyl chair by Jay's bed.

  As he slept on, oblivious to the motion and noise of his bed, she studied him. He looked pale, and she wondered when he'd last been able to work on his bike in the sun.

  Luis said Jay'd had the back surgery two months ago—a month after Erin had left San Antonio. He'd been living with his asshole dad in Stockton while he recuperated. Jay had been vague about exactly what had happened to cause the pressure sore and the UTI, but since, after his accident, he'd always been very diligent in trying to prevent both, Luis suspected Jay's dad had something to do with it. Erin suspected the same.

  Jay would have needed help with a lot of things—transfers to and from his chair, for instance—if his mobility had been limited by a back brace after his surgery. Relying on his dad, especially for help with the more personal issues, would have rankled.