“We’re both here to do a job, Jesse. I’m here to help you get better. But I can’t do it on my own. You have to take your meds. You have to do your exercises. You aren’t invincible, despite what your adoring fans probably tell you. Now - lift!” she demanded, pulling my leg up and bending my knee. I was laying on my back, staring up at her as she kept moving and stretching my leg.
“Where’d you go?” I asked, changing the subject. Of course I would do my part. That much was a given. I had millions of dollars on the line here, and I wouldn’t jeopardize my career by not taking this recovery seriously. I’d take the fucking pain killers, sure, but probably only half the prescribed dose because I wasn’t a total pussy. Besides, I didn’t want to lie to Maisey, or piss her off by not taking the damn things.
Which was insane, because really, what did I care how she felt? But for some reason, I did. Shit, I should be the one that’s mad at her for standing me up all those years ago, but she was acting like I was the one that’d done something wrong. That was pissing me off…
And making me even more curious…
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“When you took off from Ault. Where’d you go?” I asked. I’d asked around back then a little, tried talking to her few friends, once I’d even seen Clyde at the corner store buying beer and I’d asked him where she’d gone, but nobody ever had any answers. She’d just disappeared. As if she’d never been there at all.
“I moved to Denver,” she replied, then clamped her mouth shut. “Let’s do your other leg.”
She walked around me and her hips swayed with each step. She’d turned into such a beauty. She was feminine yet strong. Her attitude towards me was hard, yet there was a lingering softness just underneath the surface. Or, maybe I was just projecting the past onto the present, I don’t know. Something about her made me want to get to know her better, made me want to get to the bottom of the What-Happened-to-Maisey-Jayne mystery.
Maybe it was the fact that she was the only woman who’d ever left me hanging.
Or, maybe it was because she represented something I’d lost a long time ago.
Those years in Ault were magical. An innocent time before my life changed so drastically. I’d been so close to my family. My parents were kind and supportive, letting me and my little sister, Nina, experience the kind of love that every child needs to become a happy adult. Nina and I were the best of friends, even though she was so much younger than me.
I’d graduated and gone off to college full of naive dreams that my life would always be perfect, that nothing bad could ever touch me.
But then, everything changed. Nina died suddenly one night during my sophomore year in college and our world turned upside down.
Maisey was there in the middle of the calm before the storm. She was someone who’s memory was bathed in that era of my life when everything was just as it should be right before everything fell apart.
And I desperately wanted to hold onto that memory…
Yeah, my life is amazing now, but I’d give anything to go back and have those days with Nina again. She was such a spunky kid, full of life, in love with everything under the sun. Nobody could make me laugh like she could.
And nobody was ready for her passing. A healthy girl isn’t supposed to just… Go…
It turned out Nina had a genetic heart condition so rare that nobody at the hospital had seen it in person. One tiny little gene out of place put a ticking time bomb in her chest. If we had known our family had a history of this sort of thing maybe the doctors could have done something to help, but my father was adopted… We couldn’t have seen this coming.
My parents were devastated. I was devastated.
Everything was ripped away from me. The innocence I’d believed in. That belief that everything would always turn out all right became a joke. I’d been jaded and broken hearted ever since.
I’d been yearning for those feelings of pure joy ever since… Those feelings of such immeasurable happiness I’d experienced when I didn’t know there was anything else to feel. I missed all that. I wanted it back. Part of me didn’t believe it was possible, though. So, I stumbled through life just looking for a few moments of superficial pleasure and left my heart out of it.
The past, though? Those good times? Maisey was a part of that. Even if it was briefly, she was still etched into my mind - her laughter, her sweetness, that connection we’d felt that one night together. To hell with the pain shooting up from my leg… Being here with Maisey made me feel better than I had in years.
To say I wanted answers was putting it lightly. If I had to drag them out then so be it. I had at least three months to get her talking. I shook my head and let the bad memories fade.
“Why? Why’d you move?” I asked. That was what I wanted to know the most.
She hesitated before answering. A good, long pause, that left me wondering if she even heard me. She kept stretching my leg up, her hands massaging my thigh.
“I turned eighteen. That was always my plan,” she finally answered.
“That’s all you’re going to give me?” I asked.
“What more do you want?” she snapped.
“An explanation, for starters. Why did you stand me up?” I asked. “And don’t say we didn’t have a date. You left your prom dress hanging in your closet.”
The look on her face was priceless.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“I went to your house that night looking for you. You were gone. You left your dress behind.”
“I see,” she said, her voice steely and tight. “Does it really matter, Jesse? After all these years? It’s been so long, it’s all water under the bridge.”
“Of course it doesn’t matter now,” I replied. “I’ve just always wondered, that’s all. It was important at the time, though.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I just needed to leave.”
“That night, huh?”
“Yeah, that night.”
?
?Okay, Maisey, whatever you say. If you don’t want to explain, you don’t have to.”
“Thank you,” she nodded. I wasn’t finished, though, not by a long shot. I’d let her off the hook right now because she looked like she was going to explode from tension all of a sudden and there was no need to rush things. I’d get my answers eventually.
“That really fucking hurts,” I said, as she dug into my thigh muscle painfully.
“You should have taken the pain meds,” she shrugged, digging in harder.
“Turn over,” she demanded. “Lie on your stomach.”
“I like it when you tell me what to do,” I winked, before turning over slowly and laying on my stomach like an obedient dog. Her hands began massaging the back of my thigh, and if it wasn’t so fucking painful, I’d have been completely turned on.
“That’s good,” she snapped. “Because I’ll be telling you what to do for several weeks. Get used to it.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I joked.
“I know what you meant. You know what I meant.”
“Oh, Maisey,” I sighed. “Why are you so tough now? You used to be soft and funny.”
“I’m still funny,” she replied, “just not at work.”
I laughed.
“Okay, then - fuck! What are you doing? That hurts so bad.”
“Of course it hurts, the bruise is incredibly deep in this spot.”
“Can’t you be more gentle?” I asked.
“Can’t you be more of a man?” she replied, her voice laced with sarcasm.
“Wow, okay,” I replied, ignoring the pang of hurt that shot through my heart. She didn’t have to attack my manhood, for fuck’s sake. If I wasn’t practically an invalid, I’d show her right now how much of a man I really was.
“Sorry,” she muttered under her breath. “That was unprofessional of me.”
“Whatever, it’s fine,” I said.