Cheating on Myself (27 page)

“Yeah, you’re right. I guess I could really use a grandma.”

“You can borrow mine,” Joe said, finally pulling into the lot at the little hotel we’d booked for the night. “She’s going to like you.”

It made me happy to think about meeting Joe’s grandma. I was oddly touched that he
wanted
me to meet his grandma. I suppose we were on a trip over a holiday together, but talking about meeting family made it all feel that much more real.

I watched as Joe covered all the gear in the back of the car with a few big blankets, and then we grabbed our bags and headed into the hotel. As we walked toward the door, he took my hand and looked over at me and I felt that heat boiling up again. Now that I knew we were this close, I was suddenly, inexplicably nervous. We had been
this
close just an hour earlier in the front seat of the car and I hadn’t had even an ounce of nerves… but now that I had time to plan for it and think about it and stress over how it might go, I was letting myself get jittery.

Joe squeezed my hand and leaned in to kiss me. When he did, I felt that now-familiar tension building in me and smelled his cinnamon scent and felt the rub of his flannel shirt against my neck and the fear all washed away. I didn’t know if I could stand waiting while we checked in and found our room. But I had to, and I did, and in the space of no time at all, we were in our room and our bags were left in the entryway and he had me pressed up against the wall with a passion so intense, I could hardly even breathe.

His hands were everywhere, touching and holding and pressing me in ways I’d never felt before. While we kissed, I held my breath and teased at the buttons on his shirt. Then I had it open, and finally I exhaled when my hands were free to touch the skin I’d felt for the first time the weekend before, when I’d warmed my hands on him on the running trail. I held him away from me for just a moment, so I could look at his chest, and run my hands down to that little patch of hair I’d felt at the bottom of his stomach. As I let my fingers trail across his body, he closed his eyes and breathed in, and I felt my bra snap open.

“You’re good at that,” I said. He laughed, then shut me up with another kiss.

The way he touched me was unfamiliar, but it was as if he knew how to turn me on in a way I’d never imagined possible. He guided me in the direction of the bed and slipped my shirt up and over my head. I felt his eyes on me, looking at me in a way that made me feel like my body was special and prized and maybe a little off-limits. My bra dropped to the floor, and I stood half-naked in front of a new man. His eyes took me in and a slow smile crept onto his face, before he moved his mouth to my neck and then down to each of my breasts. Time moved so slowly, and everything went still as we savored every step. I stretched out on the milky-white duvet and let him touch me, resolved to make this last as long as possible. I wanted to revel in his touch, feel the way his hands explored my contours and made my skin hot.

Joe obviously had the same idea, since he was taking his time moving his mouth from my breasts to my stomach, and then back up to my mouth. When our lips touched, our bare chests pressed together and I could feel his hot skin searing into me, and I wanted more. Moments later, we were both in just underwear, him in boxer briefs that hugged his delicious ass in the most perfect way and me in one of the two pairs of sexy underwear I owned.

It was at the moment when I decided I couldn’t possibly wait one more second to feel him inside me that my phone rang.

Fuck.

I ignored it, but both Joe and I tensed a little every time it jangled in the background. He was on top of me, and I could feel him pressing against me, and I arched up to meet him just as my phone started to ring again. I growled a little, pissed at whoever was bothering me. My friends all knew I was here, they knew I was with Joe, and someone was being irritatingly persistent. I rocked against him, and moved on top of him, pinning him against the bed with my hips. I pressed into him harder every time the phone trilled at the end of the bed, willing both of us to forget it and move on.

He bit his lower lip, and I leaned down to take his mouth in mine, biting his lip for him. He groaned, and I kissed him harder.

My breasts pressed against his body, and his hands were wrapped around my butt when my phone rang again. I sat up, pissed.

“Someone really wants to talk to you,” he said.

“My friends aren’t usually this persistent,” I murmured apologetically, still sitting astride his hips. “I’m getting seriously frustrated.”

“Maybe you should check and see who it is?” he said, just as it started ringing again. I kissed him one more time before moving to the end of the bed to grab my phone out of my pants pocket.

Erik.

He hadn’t called since I’d told him definitively that we needed to stop talking. He’d told me he respected my decision, and promised not to call. He had promised. And now he was being annoying at the very worst possible moment. Count on Erik to figure out how to insert himself into a part of my life that was most definitely not his.

I stared at the phone as it rang, unwilling to answer. But when it began to ring again, mere moments after Erik’s call was logged in the Missed Call directory, and Laurel’s number popped up on my caller ID, I decided I might as well just answer. Joe and I would have no trouble getting back to what we’d been this close to doing just moments before, and if I didn’t answer, they would obviously just keep calling. I seriously hoped this wasn’t about Brussels sprouts.

I pressed answer. “Hello?”

“Stella,” Laurel’s voice was so unwelcome at that moment I almost hung up. But I didn’t, and then she said, “Stella, it’s Cat and Travis.” Her voice choked. “And the girls. They’ve been in an accident. We need you.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I felt the walls in the hotel room close in around me as I listened while Laurel told me Cat and Travis and the girls had been on their way to Peter and Laurel’s for Thanksgiving dinner when their minivan had gone off the road. It rolled, and rolled again, and they were all in the hospital. Cat was banged up and had a broken rib and was in stable condition, but Travis was unconscious and they were saying it was critical. And the girls. My beautiful little girls were both in surgery. I could see Pippa’s tiny face, and Heidi’s little smile, and I wanted to hold them and comfort Cat and—I had to be there. I needed to be there now. They were my family.

“I need to go back,” I told Joe when I’d hung up with Laurel and had the details on which hospital they’d been taken to. I couldn’t shake the image of my beautiful little girls in the back of an ambulance, and I began to sob. “I have to go home.”

He didn’t ask any questions as we got dressed and grabbed our bags and loaded back into the car and got on the road. I sat in stony silence and cried in the seat next to him, hating the uncertainty and wondering what I’d find when I got there. No one knew what was going on, and no one knew what was going to happen to the girls… and Cat was there, helpless, and I knew exactly how she must be feeling.

Through tears, I told Joe what I knew and he didn’t ask any stupid questions or press for more information. After we’d driven for an hour in silence, I began to talk. I needed to distract myself, and I couldn’t figure out how to do that other than to talk about something. I told Joe more about my mom, and how I’d felt completely abandoned after she died.

“When I was pulled out of class, and told there’d been a car accident, I didn’t really think about anything until my dad came and told me she was gone. I didn’t realize how much I’d counted on my parents, and I’d never thought about how much would be lost if they ever just weren’t there.” I stopped talking, drawn back to those feelings of loneliness and abandonment and fear. There were no sisters or brothers for me to lean on, and it seemed like everyone else—aunts, uncles, cousins—were so busy comforting one another that they forgot I had no one. It was in the space of one morning that I was left alone. They all had each other, and my partner was my dad. But no one noticed my dad was essentially gone, and so it was just me. I knew I would never be able to watch anyone suffer alone like that, knowing what I’d gone through that year and the years that followed.

I stared out the window, thinking again about how afraid I was to go to the hospital, but I knew Cat and the girls and the rest of my family—they were still my family—needed me. My mind flashed to Erik, and I wondered how he was coping. He was alone. He didn’t have a partner, and I knew how scared he would be. Laurel would be useless, and Peter would be silent, and Erik would be absolutely lost. He’d been there for me when I had finally come to terms with losing my parents, and now I needed to be there for him. After our years together, I knew I owed him that. I wanted to give him that.

When we got to the hospital, Joe dropped me at the front door and asked if I wanted him to stay. I shook my head and told him I’d call, then pressed inside the hospital’s front doors. They directed me to trauma, where I found Laurel and Erik and Peter all huddled together in a cold, windowless waiting room. The TV was tuned to
SpongeBob
, which reminded me of the girls and weekend mornings, and I immediately asked, “How are they?” I sat next to Erik and took his hand when he offered.

“They’re both out of surgery, but Pippa’s in a medically-induced coma,” Peter said. Laurel just sat there shaking her head. “She has a lot of swelling, and they want to take extra precautions.” He didn’t want to say the word brain damage, but we’d all watched enough TV to know what that probably meant. “When the car rolled, they think she may have been hit with something that was on the floor of the van. Travis is still unconscious, and he’s in the critical care unit.”

“What about Cat? Where is she?”

“She’s in a room resting.”

“Does she know about Travis and the girls?”

“Not yet,” Erik said. They all looked at each other nervously and Laurel hid her face behind a perfectly-manicured hand. “We couldn’t. None of us could. They gave her something to help with the pain. It knocked her out, and she’s been asleep since.”

I stood and made my way to the room Cat was in. They all watched me go, and I saw Erik’s eyes flick toward SpongeBob for some distraction. There was an empty bed near the door, and Cat was hidden behind a curtain by the window. She looked so peaceful, so beautiful, and so small. It was always a shock when I realized just how tiny she was without heels and make-up and her big voice and naughty words. Machines beeped, and things whirred, but all I could hear was her breath, soft and tiny and fragile, pressing out and pulling in as her body lay resting. I’d always given her grief for being a terrible driver, and now I felt guilty that I’d never actually pushed harder. What if something terrible were to come of all of this? What if Pippa never woke up? Or Travis?

My fingers trailed along the top of a nubby, fabric-covered chair by her bedside, and eventually I sat on the edge of it, watching as she breathed and machines whirred and stirred around her. Who would tell her? Was it my job?

No.

Surely someone other than me had to be more equipped to tell a mother her daughter may be dying or brain damaged and her husband was very possibly lost? But when her eyes fluttered and she stirred, I felt her hand reach for mine, and I knew it was up to me. Erik couldn’t handle this, and Laurel was surely thinking of her own worst nightmares—they needed me to do this. She’d want to hear it from me. She had to hear it from someone.

“The girls…” she said, trying to sit up. Cat cringed, and I gently pressed her shoulder back against the bed.

“You broke ribs,” I said, keeping my voice as calm as possible. “You need to lie still.”

“But the girls,” she said, and I saw panic flash across her face. “Travis.”

“The girls are both out of surgery,” I said soothingly. “They’re taking good care of them.” I looked at her dazed expression, and knew I couldn’t tell her about Pippa yet. We didn’t know enough for me to tell her anything. It would just freak her out, and there was nothing she could do. She might not even hear what I was saying, and for all I knew, the doctors might take her out of the coma that very day—I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to alarm her.

“Travis?”

“He’s in critical condition. We don’t know much yet. But I’m here, and I’ll stay with you. Your parents are waiting outside the trauma unit with Erik—they’re waiting for the girls and Travis. But I’ll stay with you. I’m not going to leave you.”

Her eyes fluttered, and I saw she was sinking again, fighting to keep her eyes open while the pull of the pain medication dragged her under. Her eyes were huge with fear, but the lids dropped and slipped and pulled her back into unconsciousness, where I hoped she could forget for just a little while, before it would be impossible not to remember.

* * *

We all waited. We waited minutes and hours and eventually days, and we just sat, thinking and wondering and holding each other. Cat was recovering, and Heidi was in a room with her, where they were both being nurtured and cared for and fed. Travis had woken up, but he couldn’t remember anything, and there was a lot that was broken. He’d been in the passenger seat, and it had taken the brunt of the force when the van rolled. He’d been squashed, they told us, but in more medical terms. He’d been battered. He was definitely broken, but we didn’t know yet just how bad it would be.

Pippa was still asleep. The doctors were concerned, and they didn’t want to wake her prematurely for fear of permanent damage. So she just lay there, still and sleeping, where she looked bruised and cut up, like a little doll that had been thrown around in the backyard too many times. I wanted to pick her up and hold her and wrap her in her blankie, but they wouldn’t let us do that and so we had to settle for just sitting and watching and waiting and telling her stories.

Most of the time, Erik and I sat together, each of us on either side of the bed, making up adventures that took her far away from where she was—first I would begin, telling her tales of princesses who liked macaroni and cheese, and then when I would get stuck at some point where Pippa would usually prompt me about what should come next, Erik would take over and introduce a dragon or a family of nice bats that liked to eat salami. Through the hours that passed at the hospital, Erik and I found comfort in each other, and I knew Laurel was relying on me as the one person who could keep things under control.