For All You Have Left (7 page)

I hear his voice trail behind me.

“I’m about to find out,” I call back up to him.
 

***
 

I pull back into a parking space after the interview. It went an hour longer than I had anticipated, but I guess you’ve got a lot of years—and a lot of stories—between parachuting out of your first plane in World War II and downloading your first Johnny Cash song onto your iPod. I grab my bag off the passenger’s seat and squeeze out of my door, being careful not to bang it against the car parked next to mine. These spaces are made for toys and Smart cars. I shimmy sideways and eventually make it out without a scratch—on me or the car—and head for the mailboxes in the breezeway.

“Hey,” I hear a voice say as soon as I make it under the stairwell.

I look up.

“Jorgen. Hey, again.”

He taps an envelope to his palm. “How’d the interview go?”

I think I seem unfazed on the outside, but on the inside, I’m secretly wondering if he somehow was able to stick a tracking device to me.

“It went well actually. Eighty-seven-year-old. Nice guy.”

I look down to make sure I don’t have any crumbs on my jeans from the granola bar I inhaled on the way back. When I look back up, Jorgen’s staring at me with a questioning smile.

It takes me a second, but I eventually catch on.

“Steam-powered tractors,” I say. “He has nine of them.”

He nods his head. “To each their own.”

I laugh in agreement and then find my tiny, metal box, stick my key into it and eventually pull out a newspaper from the next town over and a couple pieces of junk mail. But before I do that, I steal a glance at the name on the envelope in Jorgen’s hand and memorize it. Then, I shove my mail into my bag and start my walk up the stairs. Jorgen follows me.

“How was dinner?” I ask, angling back toward him.

“Good.” He’s nodding his head. “A little quiet, but good.”

I get to the top of the steps and stop in front of my door.

“Well, next time you get pizza, maybe you can bring it over,” I say, shrugging one shoulder. “We could watch...the Food Network or something. Then it won’t be so quiet.”

I turn and push my key into the lock. What the hell did I just say? I swear there’s something wrong with me. I open the door and slowly spin back around. He hasn’t said anything, but he’s got a boyish grin hanging off his lips and a questioning look plastered to his face.

“Really?” he asks, finally.

I think about it for a second. I could take it all back. I should take it all back. He’s a stranger. And he might think I’m hitting on him. Am I hitting on him? No, I’m definitely not.
Make up an excuse!

“Or I have some really girly movies,” I offer.

He laughs. “I love the Food Network.”

I could have taken it all back, but I didn’t. There is definitely something seriously wrong with me.

“But you’ll have to share,” I add.

He’s silent then—just long enough for me to realize that maybe I hate the quiet just as much as he does.

“That sounds nice,” he says.

I’m not sure what “sounds nice” exactly—sharing, the lack of quiet over pizza or watching the Food Network. Any way, it doesn’t matter. I’ll probably regret this whole thing if it ever pans out later anyway.

“Well, have a good night,” I say, stepping into my apartment.

“Good-night,” I hear him say before I close the door behind me.

I quickly turn the lock on the dead bolt, then set my bag onto a barstool, bolt into the next room and plop down in front of my laptop. I’m on a mission.

I Google
Jorgen Ryker
—the name on the envelope—and then search the arrest records. After that, I search his name with his hometown and his name with the hospital he said he worked for. I search everything that might be connected to his name. And after an hour, all I’ve found is that he had a reserve champion steer at the state fair when he was thirteen and that his high school football team won the state championship his senior year. He was a running back, evidentially, and also not too shabby of an athlete, which is not that surprising judging by his arms and abs. But other than that, nothing—no arrests, no crazy or embarrassing photos on Facebook, no Twitter account. Nothing.

I rest my elbows onto the surface of my desk and stare into the screen and at an old, black and white newspaper photo of a gangly thirteen-year-old proudly standing next to a really, really big cow.

I take in a deep breath and then slowly force it out.

“Hmm. You’re either really good at hiding your crazy, Jorgen Ryker, or maybe
you really are just...normal.”

Chapter Ten

Pizza

I
hear a knock at the door, and I make my way over to the peep hole.

After one glance through the tiny window, my heart is racing. It’s Jorgen, and he’s holding a box of pizza.

I kind of figured he’d take me up on my offer. I just didn’t expect it to be the next day. I run my fingers through my hair and look down at my outfit. I’m wearing sweatpants and a tee shirt. At least I have pants on this time. I push my lips to one side. There’s pepper spray in a drawer in the kitchen, but as long as my professional stalking skills are up to par, I shouldn’t be needing it. I count to three, and then I pull open the door.

“Hey,” I say.

My eyes travel to the box in his hands.

“Didn’t you just have pizza last night?” I ask,
leaning up against the door.

He shrugs his shoulders. “The event tonight called for pizza.”

I lower my eyes and push out a soft laugh.

“Well, you’re just in time for a new episode of
Chopped
,” I say, stepping back from the door.

He smiles wide. “Perfect.”

I watch him step into my apartment and then hesitate a little before finally making his way to the couch.

“It looks nice in here,” he says, his gaze sweeping the room. “You want to come over and decorate for me?”

I laugh again as I close the door and walk back into the kitchen. My heart is still racing. I’m praying to God he doesn’t notice.
Just play it cool, Ada.

“My sister did most of it. But I’m sure if you ask her, she’d be more than happy to do yours.”

“Speaking of,” he says. “What was it that she called you? Lada?”

I freeze with my hand on the knob of the cabinet door.

“Uh, yeah,” I say.

I feel as if my words kind of clumsily stumble off my lips.

I pull two glasses out of the cabinet and catch him staring at the bookshelf and at a photo of Hannah and me.

“What’s behind it?” he asks.

I swallow hard. The thought still stabs tiny holes into my heart.

“The name?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, meeting my eyes.

I had hoped he wouldn’t ask.

“Um, after eighteen, I started going by my middle name,” I say and then pause.

He keeps his eyes on me.

“But my sister,” I grudgingly continue, “being the creature of habit she is, had such a hard time dropping my first name that she just gave up and combined them.”

He seems to think about something for a second.

“So, no one calls you by your first name anymore?”

“Uh, no,” I say, shaking my head.

“So, what is it—your first name?” he asks.

My heart almost jumps right out of my chest. I’m not sure why. I’ve said my name a million times before, when I had to—when the law required.

“It’s Logan,” I say. My voice is barely audible.

“
Logan,” he repeats. “That’s a pretty name.”

He continues to look at me as if he wants me to explain why I don’t use it.

Instead, I grab two plates, scoop up the glasses and head toward him.

“So, do you have any brothers or sisters?” I ask.

There’s a slight hesitation before he speaks.

“One sister. She lives in
Connecticut with her husband. I don’t really see her as much as I’d like.”

“Well, what took her to
Connecticut?”

“Her husband’s job,” he says. “He’s an engineer.”

“Oh,” I say, as I take a seat on the other side of the couch.

“You?” he asks.

I look at him with a rascally side-smile.

“My husband’s not an engineer,” I say.

He takes a second to study my face, then laughs.

“No, any brothers or sisters besides Hannah?” he asks.

“No,” I confirm. “Just me and Hannah.”

I hand him a plate, and he picks up a piece of pizza and sets it onto my plate.

I feel like he shouldn’t be that comfortable with me—comfortable enough to touch my food—but strangely, I don’t mind all that much.

“Thanks,” I say.

I feel my face turning bashful all of a sudden.

“The guy with the beard’s going to win.”

My eyes follow a line to the TV and then back to him. “How do you know?”

“I just know,” he says. “It’s all in the way they chop their vegetables. The best vegetable chopper wins—always.”

I laugh. “That’s not true.”

“Just watch,” he says. “You’ll see.”

I surrender and silently agree to play along.

“So what made you move to
Columbia?” I ask after a moment.

“The job,” he says. “It was an offer I couldn’t pass up, I guess you’d say.”

I nod my head.

“So, how long have you been a paramedic then?”

He finds my eyes.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were some kind of reporter for some big magazine or something.”

I lower my eyes and feel a shy smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.

“Sorry,” I say. “I can’t help it.”

He laughs. “It’s fine. I’ll answer anything you ask.”

My gaze eventually finds his again.

“I’ve been a paramedic for about four years now,” he says. “I started here in Columbia.”

I pause for a second to quickly add up the years. I guess he’s a couple years older than me—maybe twenty-four or twenty-five.

“Did you always want to be one?”

“A paramedic?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I confirm.

He lowers his head and chuckles.

“No. I wanted to be a chef. But I learned early on that I wasn’t very good at it. Plus, it’s not really a real career where I come from.”

Now, it’s my turn to study his face.

“You don’t sound too broken up about not starring on this show,” I say, at last, pointing at the TV.

He laughs again. “I’m not. I love what I do. I meet a lot of interesting people. Kind of like yourself, I guess.”

This time, a smile instinctively finds my face.

“Yeah, kind of like me,” I agree.

“What about you?” he asks. “When did you know you wanted to be a famous writer?”

I glance up at him, and I know I have that bashful look on my face again. It’s a side effect of being around him, I’m starting to believe. I try to play it off nonetheless.

“Famous?” I say. “Not sure I know what that’s like yet. But a writer—that would have been at twenty, I think. I decided somewhere in my second year of college. It just kind of came to me while I was staring at a Shakespeare quote one day. I had never really written much of anything before that.”

He cocks his head in my direction.

“So, I’d never dig up any childhood memoirs or deep philosophical poems you wrote when you were seven?” he asks.

I laugh and shake my head.

“Not a one,” I confirm.

A silent moment passes as our laughter fades.

“I never really thought about careers when I was younger,” I say.

I notice his eyes stumble onto mine again.

“Well, what did you think about?”

“I don’t know.
” I hesitate a little. “Being happy, I guess.”

I stop at that. I don’t say happy with whom. I don’t mention the house in the country. I don’t mention the three kids we would never have together or the fifty years we would never see.

“Sounds like a pretty good thing to think about,” he says.

A broken smile finds my lips.

“See,” he suddenly says.

His eyes are planted on the TV now. There’s one guy left standing on the show. It’s the guy with the beard.

I flash him a suspicious grin. “How did you know that?”

“It’s all in the chop,” he says, casually. “You want another piece?”

I think about it, then lower my eyes. “Sure.”

He slides another piece of pizza onto my plate.

“So, do you make it home much?” I ask.

“Uh, yeah.” I watch him grab another slice for himself. “About once a month or so. My buddy plays on a softball league, and I play the fill-in sometimes when I can.”

I nod my head as my eyes travel back to the television.

“The girl with the tattoos.”

“What?” I ask.

“She wins,” he says.

He takes another bite of pizza and then arches one eyebrow at me. “Watch her chop.”

And I do just that. I watch the girl covered in tattoos meticulously for a minute. She’s fast, and she seems efficient, but I still don’t believe him. And soon, I find my attention wandering away from the television and back onto the man beside me. He seems too good to be true.
And blame it on my odd curiosity, my past experiences or my job, for that matter, but I just can’t stop wondering what his weird thing is. It probably would have been better to find that out before I invited him to sit next to me on my couch in my apartment, but I guess it’s better late than never.

“What’s your strangest habit?” I
blurt out.

He stops and fixes his eyes on me—long enough for me to start to feel a little uncomfortable.

“I see dead people,” he whispers low and mysteriously.

His expression is as straight as it can be. Mine, on the other hand, goes completely blank, and it stays like that until I see his lips start to crack across his face.

“Jorgen,” I exclaim. “You can’t joke about things like that with me. I’ve met people who really do believe they see dead people.”

He starts to laugh.

“Really?” he manages to get out.

“Yes, and people who believe that people come back as cats and...”

“As cats?” he interjects.

The way he sounds so honestly surprised makes me laugh too. “Yes, cats.”

“Like in an afterlife?” he asks.

I nod my head in confirmation.

“Who believes that?”

He asks it as if he still doesn’t believe me.

“I had a neighbor in college. All four of her cats were on their second lives.”

He stops laughing, and it almost looks as if he’s going to be successful at regaining at least some composure, until he cracks, and the laughter just starts pouring from his lips again. His laugh is raspy, deep, kind of sexy and also kind of contagious.

“One was even a TV meteorologist,” I say, holding up a finger.

He rubs tears from his eyes. I, on the other hand, manage to gain control of myself and take another bite of pizza.

“It’s true,” I say.

He eventually calms down and takes a drink. Then, he slowly sets the glass back down onto the coffee table.

“M&M’s,” he says.

I look up. “What?”

“Every Sunday, I go to the same gas station down the street and buy a pack of M&M’s, and I eat all of them except for the green ones.”

I feel my eyebrows instinctively furrowing.

“Why?” I ask.

“It goes back to when I was a kid,” he says. “When my sister and I were little and my parents would stop at the gas station, they’d always let us get a bag of candy to share. And we’d always get M&M
’s. Then, once we got in the car, we’d divvy them up. She got the green ones. I got the rest.”

“That doesn’t sound very fair.”

“That’s all she wanted,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “They were the best, evidently.”

“Okay,” I say. “So what do you do with the green ones now? Do you just...throw them away?”

He stops and shakes his head.

“No, I mail them to my sister the next day.”

I start to laugh but then notice his face is completely sober.

“Wait.” I cover my mouth. “You’re serious?”

“As a heart attack,” he says.

“So, your sister gets a bag of green M&M
’s every week?”

“Yeah,” he says, chuckling. “Pretty much.”

“That’s kind of cute,” I say. “Strange, but cute.”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Your turn.”

I feel my chest rise as I take a breath and think about it for a second.

“I don’t know,” I say.

His eyes find mine, and one side of his mouth turns into a crooked grin. It’s kind of endearing. “You do everything backwards.”

I feel my eyes narrowing and my eyebrows slowly making their way toward each other again, but I don’t say anything.

“You eat your pizza crust-first,” he continues, eyeing my half-eaten piece of pizza.

I look down at my plate. Sure enough, there’s a little triangle left—with no crust.

“You read your newspaper backwards,” he goes on.

I cock my head to the side.

“When I first met you, you turned to the back page first. Even your name is backwards,” he points out.

I bite the side of my bottom lip. “Those aren’t so strange, are they?” I ask, timidly.

He laughs.

“Nah. Now, when you start walking backwards, I’m taking you straight to live with that cat lady.”

I laugh, and at the same time, try to keep myself from blushing as I force my eyes back to the television screen. We both watch the show on it for a little while longer then until his voice breaks my concentration.

“Look,” he says, pointing at the TV. “What did I tell you?”

On the screen, there’s one woman left standing in front of the judges, and her arms are covered in tattoos.

My smile starts small and eventually stretches across my face. I’m starting to believe he might be on to something.
 

***
 

“Thanks for letting me come over.”

He’s standing on the other side of my door now, three steps from his own.

“Pizza’s a lot better when it’s not so quiet,” he adds.

I push out a laugh. “I agree.”

And just then, he brings his face so close to mine that his lips are nearly touching my ear. My heart starts racing, and for the first time around h
im, my stomach seems to do a somersault. It feels like butterflies, and it’s terrifying and a little sad, I think. But I can smell the soft, sweet scent of his cologne, and it seems to calm me somehow. I know I should be weirded out right now—I have no idea what he’s doing—but this feels good, and I can’t stop smiling this nervous, happy, strange smile.

“They were re
runs,” he whispers, his breaths trailing over my skin.

I freeze as my mouth falls open and surprise quickly devours my face.
“I didn’t believe you for one second,” I say, shaking my head.

He shoots me a suspicious look
. “Not one second?” he asks, backing slowly away from me.

I try my hardest to scold him with my eyes, even though every other feature is betraying me.

“Good-night, Miss Cross,” he says, sliding a key into his lock and pushing open his door.

I lower my eyes and softly laugh to myself.
“Good-night,” I say.

Chapter Eleven

The Photo

“C
oming,” I call out from across my apartment.

I don’t even bother looking at the peep hole this time. I figure its either Hannah or possibly Jorgen. For all I know I left my keys in the door again. But when I pull open the door and look up, I freeze.

“Amsel,” I manage to get out.

I don’t know when I started calling him by his last name to his face. Somewhere along the line, it just kind of happened. I step back to let him inside.

“I can’t stay long,” he immediately says, taking a step forward. “I really have to run. I just, um, found something I thought you might want.”

He holds out a photograph.

“You know I love you, Logan—Ada,” he quickly corrects.

My heart stings in my chest. There are two hands in the photo, each wearing a ring.

“I know,” I say, taking the photo and lowering my eyes to it.

We stand there for a while. I don’t even know how much time passes. We’re both so still. My eyes are on the photo. His eyes are most likely on me, watching for my reaction. I try not to react—for his sake and mine.

After a moment, he breaks the silence.

“Well, I’ve got to go.”

He reaches out and touches my hand.

“Take care,
Ada.”

I look into his eyes. I love those eyes. I miss those eyes.

“You sure you don’t want something to drink or anything?” I ask, as he takes a step back toward the door.

“No, I’m sorry, I really am running late. I just found that yesterday and wanted you to have it.”

I look down at the photo again and sigh. This is the first time I’ve ever seen it.

“Okay,” I say, nodding my head. “Thank you,” I add.

I follow him to the door, and when he opens it, Jorgen is just opening his door across the hall.

I watch as Jorgen eyes Amsel up and down once, then steps outside and closes his door behind him. He waits there, facing us. He looks as if he’s not trying to make it obvious that he’s watching the two of us, but somehow, I know he is. Amsel too takes a good look at Jorgen. Then, he turns and glances at me.

I try to conjure up a faint smile to let him know it’s okay.

He glances back at Jorgen. There’s a look on Amsel’s face. I can’t tell if it’s simply a greeting or more like a warning. Either way, Amsel nods his head once and makes his way to the stairs.

I follow Amsel’s figure down the stairwell until he’s out of sight. And when I look back up at Jorgen, I realize he was doing the same thing—following Amsel. His eyes are still planted on the stairs. I take the opportunity to steal another glance at the photo, and then I quickly slide it into the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt.

“Who was that?” Jorgen asks, curiously.

It takes me a second to answer him. I have to retrieve my mind from a different time first.

“A friend,” I say, as I toss my gaze to the ground.

I look back up a second later, and Jorgen’s eyes are still on me. He looks at me like he wants to believe me. I think I look at him like I want him to believe me too.

It wasn’t completely a lie. Amsel is my friend, but he’s also a whole lot more than that.