Marriage For One

He shook his head and sighed. “Then I’m coming with you.”

“You don’t have to drop me off. I’ll take a cab—an Uber. It’ll be fine.”

Ignoring me, he walked over to his desk, closed the lid of his laptop, and picked up his phone. As I watched him, he made his way back to me and, to my surprise and delight, reached for my hand. I had to tighten my fingers around his to keep up with his strides before we stopped in front of Cynthia’s desk.

“I’m heading out. I’ll still take calls, but I won’t be here for the four PM client. Let’s try to reschedule that, or if he can, have him meet me at Around the Corner. You know the address. I’ll be going with Rose to the ENT specialist at eleven tomorrow morning, so try to get in touch with Fred and have him take care of whatever we have going on. Better yet, I’ll call you when I’m at the shop and we’ll reschedule things.”

Cynthia’s eyes moved from me to Jack and back again and then to our joined hands.

“Everything okay?”

He glanced down at me. “Yes. Everything is good now.”

Everything did feel good. Apart from my nose.

While we were standing at the very back of the elevator, heading down to the lobby with five other people, he called Ray to tell him to bring the car to the front of the building. When he pocketed his phone, I couldn’t hold it back anymore.

Leaning against him, I tried to be as quiet as I possibly could and asked, “Jack?”

His hand gave mine a squeeze, which was his version of I’m listening, I supposed. My heart rate picking up, I whispered, “That just happened, right? You want to…you want us to date? As in be boyfriend and girlfriend?”

He gave me a long look. “More like husband and wife, don’t you think?”

Chapter Seventeen

Jack

The remnants of whatever guilt I was still holding on to that seemed to keep me back or make me hesitate when it came to Rose had disappeared overnight. I didn’t care about anything I’d done to be with her. I knew the truth, and that was enough.

She was sitting next to me on the spacious couch, leaning over a small cup she was holding in her hand. She didn’t want me to see her like this, but I wasn’t budging from her side no matter what she said. So, as a result of that, I was watching drops of a clear liquid—which was quite possibly brain or spinal cord fluid—very, very slowly drop into the cup. It’d already been twenty minutes since the nurse had brought us in there, and we still had at least another two inches to fill before it reached the point where it’d be enough for them to test the sample.

“If I tap the other side of my nose it comes out faster.”

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my thighs, watching her nose intently as her eyes flitted to me and then back to her slowly filling cup. I was so consumed with my thoughts that I didn’t understand what she had meant, so I didn’t think to stop her until I saw what she was doing. When I realized she could be harming herself, I caught her left hand before she could start tapping on her nose again.

“Stop doing that.”

She heaved a long sigh and leaned back, her right hand, which was holding the cup, slightly trembling, her left one tightly held in mine. She didn’t pull away, and I didn’t plan on letting her go.

“What’s wrong? Does it hurt?” I asked, trying to understand what was going on.

Her eyes glanced to me and then back to the ceiling. “My head is spinning too much, Jack. I think I need a break. How long has it been?”

“You chose this instead of the MRI. It was either this or that.” Our shoulders brushed as I let go of her hand and reached over to take the cup from her.

“I know, Jack. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. She had no idea how angry I was, how helpless and useless I felt because there wasn’t anything I could do to help her in this situation other than sit my ass right next to hers and make her understand that I would be there no matter what happened, which didn’t seem to do anything.

“You’re sure you don’t need to be at your office?” she asked to the ceiling.

“I’m not leaving, so you can stop trying to send me away. Come on. We only have a little more then we can get out of here.” I glanced at her, waiting with the cup in my hand. I wanted to get out of there just as much as she did, if not more.