Taming Cross (Love Inc 2)

“I hope we’re lucky,” I tell her.

Merri

THIS GUY IS a surprise.

When we met, I bought the whole bounty hunter thing hook-line-and-sinker. He seemed exactly as he presented himself. Chill. Secret agent or whatever.

But now— He’s had a stroke. He’s in his twenties, and he had a stroke. That's crazy. Crazy bad. And I feel drawn to the crazy. It makes me feel less like an oddity.

And then he said that thing about being lucky, and I have to admit, it kind of ripped my heart in half. He seemed so...bitter. Sad. But it wasn’t like he was bitter at someone. It was more like he was bitter with himself. I could feel some serious self-loathing coming from him.

I show him to one of the two guest rooms—the one done in a nautical theme—and when I close the door and go to the one across the hall, I find myself wanting to talk to him more. Not just to find out more of his story, but because my own story feels so heavy tonight.

The room I’ve picked for myself was done in several shades of brown and beige and cream, with lots of textures: suede, leather, cotton, linen. The rugs are soft. The curtains on the fake-out windows dance gently in the air coming from the air vents. I turn a full circle, taking stock of every inch of the room. Not one thing has changed. I step into the en suite bathroom, and there’s the old claw-footed tub. The bear-skin rug (the one that’s really a bear’s skin). The cabinet.

I take two slow steps forward, and open the cabinet with shaking fingers. And there it is. My old toothbrush, from the last time I was here. The one and only time I wasn’t in the basement. It’s pink and purple, with a tube of my favorite sensitive toothpaste on the shelf beside it.

I snatch the robe and gown out of the cabinet and dash back to the bed. I yank the covers down and climb beneath them and I think about my toothbrush in the bathroom and I start to cry. I cry because one time, I was almost happy here. In the basement, there’s a box of books Jesus ordered me. Second-hand books from a used bookstore online, and when Jesus and I came here so he could meet David, I would lie in bed and read all weekend. And my life sucked so much then, I was able to fool myself into feeling almost happy.

I think about my sweet kids at the clinic and I really sob, because that truly did feel almost perfect but it was never meant to last. And now I'm gone! I'm not in Jesus’s world and I’m not helping anyone and there’s nowhere for me in America and I’m no one! I’m never anyone for long enough to figure out who I am and nothing stays the same, no one can ever make it right—it’s just me. Like a fish living in a sand box or on a table. I don’t know what my version of water is, but I know I’m never in it. I can never get myself straight. I’m not even a real person, and it hurts worse now that I don’t have the children or the Sisters or even Jesus to buy me used books.

I’m pathetic.

I just want to go to sleep.

I cry and cry and cry and cry, until I feel like my insides have turned to liquid. I think of Sean and the tears slow down. I think of family back in Georgia and I can’t feel much of anything. Soon I’m just lying there on my back, staring at the canopy, and I find myself thinking about Evan again.

The way his face looked when he said he felt lucky.

I don’t feel lucky either. That’s my secret.

I want to feel lucky, and I want to be grateful, and I want to be thankful for the breaks I’ve had, but instead I just feel lost.

I’m hugging my pillow when I hear moaning.

19

Merri

I FOLLOW THE sound to Evan’s door and when I get there, I’m not sure what to do. Is he having some kind of nightmare? I knock lightly, but the moaning doesn’t stop. I try the door, and it’s locked.

“Evan?”

I’m answered with a moaned word I can’t understand.

I knock there times, hard and loud. “Evan, are you okay? It's Meredith.”

I pause, weirded out that I gave him my real name. For a long time, I went by Missy and then I was Merri at the convent.

“Evan?”

My whole body tenses as I wait for him to answer. Finally he does. “I’m okay. Just sleeping.” But I can hear him making some other kind of sound, the kind of sound weight-lifters make at the Olympics when they're trying to lift like two tons.