Swap Out (34 page)

ZOE

My heart is cold with misery and my limbs numb from sorrow, and I can't believe this: what happened to him, where I am, what I’m going to have to do in a few minutes. I still just can’t believe it. And there’s no comfort to be found by the fact that in some small way, I always knew this day would come; ever since we sat on his couch during our first date and he showed me the pictures of him rock climbing with Scott. I hate climbing the ladder into my
attic,
my Louboutins about as high from the ground as I ever wish to go. But Luca, he wasn’t afraid of anything. I can still see those pictures in my mind, how exhilarated he looked and how far from the ground he was, and it scared me to death.

My mind stutters, eyes blinking against a setting sun that mocks me with the cruel metaphor of it all. Was he wearing ropes in those pictures? Did he have a helmet on? I can't remember... I don't know if I even looked for them, I was so awestruck by the glow in his eyes; those blue, blue eyes that stop my breath from ever reaching my lips.

Oh God...

My hand comes up and covers my mouth, trying to contain the sob desperate to break free. His eyes. His lips. His hands. His
everything
...

Say this isn’t real, that this isn’t happening.

I suck in a shaky breath, knowing I have to hold it together. He deserves that from me. After everything he did, how good he was to me. All the times he just fixed every little problem, it’s the least I can do when it’s my fault he’s…

I hug my arms around myself. He deserved so much better than this, and as my mind races with the horror of this day, of all the words relayed to me that I can’t even begin to process, I can't seem to stop thinking about when I met him. It seems strangely appropriate, to think about the beginning at the end.

It was just supposed to be a normal day. I think it was a Tuesday. He blew through the front door of the office, sunglasses on and a white t-shirt formed to his tall, lean frame, his legs half-hidden by faded gray cargo shorts and his calves rippling with every step he took. And when I came out and he took off his sunglasses, hooking them into the collar of his shirt, I couldn't stop staring at his eyes: the contrast stark with the unforgiving blackness of his wind-tussled hair because he always drives with the windows down. But it was the dimple that killed me. Just one, on his left cheek that only shows when he smirks.

He asked for the boss and then swallowed when I told him he was looking at her, his pronounced Adam’s apple giving away the thickness of the simple movement. I remember thinking no man had ever made swallowing look so sexy, and it sent off every warning bell in my head. So I glared at him, snapped something about how I didn’t have time to give directions to wandering hobos and that restrooms were for employees and clients, and he smiled, then asked for an application.

I refused to give him one. I didn’t want to know his work history or phone number or address because I didn’t want to hire him. I didn’t need the temptation of blue eyes and black hair and a dimple that could sweep nuns off their feet and right out of their habits. I needed his smile far, far away from me, along with the smell of clean sweat and red wind and Old Spice. I’m a total sucker for Old Spice. And I almost had my way in getting him out the door, except he wouldn’t stop asking me why I had an advertisement for an available position and was now changing my story. Maybe because I was drowning in all his tall and confident glory and the defined muscles of his forearms and couldn’t think straight. So back and forth I argued my excuses and he poked holes in every single one, and then something crashed in the warehouse.

He didn’t even hesitate, just taking off towards the back with me yelling after him, trying to keep up in my high heels. Which was a total lost cause and by the time I got back there he already had the end of a couch lifted above his head, helping to get it into the box truck. Once they set it down, he took a small step back, then did this running leap up into the truck that still scares me to death whenever he does it because his feet barely touch the bumper, his fingertips only grazing the edge of the side and then he’s just
in
there
. If I did that I would fall and probably break every bone in my body, but he does it like sixty times a day, just laughing at me when I tell him safety precautions are not a joke and the next time he pulls that extreme acrobat crap, he’s fired.

He laughed at me then too, just shifting the couch and securing it while I gaped at him, furious and shocked and embarrassingly impressed, and even more angry about having that reaction at all. But my attention was pulled away when another of my employees informed me of a brand new scratch on a table, and that he miraculously had no idea how it got there. At my wits’ end with smelly men who don’t respect my livelihood, I was two seconds from firing them all when Luca jumped down, asked the informant where the table was and strolled over to look at it.

I stomped along behind him, squaring my shoulders at the ruined end table I had no idea how I was going to replace when I needed three for the stage scheduled to take place in the next half hour and my supplier wasn’t getting more delivered for another six days and my two spares were already in use. And then this total stranger who had argued with me and took it upon himself to Cirque du Soleil his way into my box truck asked for a black Sharpie.
A Sharpie
. And before I could screech in horror someone gave him one, and he
colored
on my cherry wood end table! But then he did this weird smear thing with his fingertip and stepped back, tilting his head at it, then grinned at me.

He pronounced that it was fixed and the rest of my brainless employees gasped and made their brilliant accolades of, “Holy shit, dude! How did you do that?” So I looked.

You couldn’t even tell it had ever been damaged.

I took a deep, irritated breath, and he winked and then tossed the Sharpie to me. Except I defiantly made no move to catch it, and it fell to the floor. One half-amused snort from him before he drawled, “All right…” then started to make his way out of the warehouse and towards the front door.

I gritted my teeth and I knew that I was making a mistake, but he was a mistake I desperately wanted to make. So I quickly made my way to where he was and cut across him. He stopped short but I never hesitated, striding towards my office and not looking back when I told him to be there at 7
a.m.
the next morning.

And the better he was at the job I never wanted to hire him for in the first place, the more I hated him. I loathed him for the way his every drop of sweat made me feel guilty, how when I was short tempered and demanding he’d tell me to knock it off, then have me laughing ten minutes later. I couldn’t stand the fact that when it was just the two of us, he talked about everything but nothing personal, and it was so easy to just slip into a conversation that was giggles and taunts, silently flirting with the idea of acting on the sexual tension rippling around us.

I didn’t want to like him, worry about him, rely on him. Mostly, I didn’t like the way he looked at me, as though he saw more than he said and I was his secret to keep. He just…he never had that cowering obedience all my other employees had. He’s never been afraid to tell me when I’m being unreasonable, and he jokingly calls me boss because he knows it grates on my nerves, but he’s always acted like we were partners instead of holding different ranks in the traditional business hierarchy. But that’s just Luca. He makes everything easy, and that is so, so difficult.

A large wing spanned bird crows from above, soaring the sky and when I look at it, I can’t help but to see Luca. He’s in the easy flap of its wings like the movement is nothing more than an afterthought, and I just can’t stop thinking about the little things, so many little things that made him who he was. That made him the man I couldn’t help but love. Like when I woke up at 3
a.m.
one night and was convinced there was a squirrel or a bat or something burrowing through the shingles of the roof, and I was dead-set on either relocating to his apartment or just finding a hotel room because I was
not
sleeping in an infested house. But when I woke him up so we could leave, he just smiled and said he would take care of it, and for me to go back to sleep.

But there was no way that was happening when there was a possibly rabid animal on my roof, so I followed behind him when he walked outside and then stood on the back porch, just looking. And I assumed he would go get a ladder from the garage because why wouldn’t I think that? But then he just
jumped
, his hands catching the ridge of the roof and then he pulled himself up, like it was no big deal.

I stood there, slack-jawed as he walked around on the roof at 3
a.m.,
barefoot and only wearing boxers and his dog tags, looking for the squirrel but not ever finding anything, and then he jumped down. He smiled and tickled me behind my ear, making some joke about the squirrel probably waiting for me in the bedroom to give me squirrel kisses, and I…

Shame makes my shoulders curl forward because I was so
mean
to him. I don’t even remember what I said, what bitchy response I used to deflect his easy way of making me feel safe and secure, but I remember the look on his face. God, do I remember the look.

It’s the same one he always wore when I hurt him. The slight tightening of his eyes, his steady smile falling just a bit. And there was something in his cheekbones, like they were disappointed in me. And he had every right to be. I’m so disappointed in me.

He never had to stay. He never had to be nice or patient, to worry or care. He should have walked out my front door and drove away the second I told him I was pregnant. He probably should have been running from me a lot sooner. But he didn’t. Instead he asked for a commitment because he had this inexplicable faith in me, and all I did was let him down. I didn’t want to. I wanted to be the kind of person he could be proud to be with, just like he said
he
wanted to be when he proposed.

Even that I still can’t wrap my mind around. I’ve done nothing to deserve that kind of gift from him, but the more I try to push him away, the closer he comes and it’s exhilarating and terrifying. Because the more of him I have, the more I need and the whole time my brain is screaming that it’s wrong, that I wasn’t made to love or trust and that I would ruin him, this perfect specimen of a man who is sweet and gorgeous and funny and just so
alive
. And that was the weakness in my armor against him: his spirit.

He doesn’t like planning. The pessimistic part of me always thought it was because he simply didn’t care enough to put the energy into doing it, that I or even
we
weren’t worth the trouble to him, but the truth is much more sobering. He once told me it bums him out, the idea that you live your life thinking tomorrow is the goal and today is just killing time until you get there. He truly believes today is the best day to do whatever you want, to take the risk and scare yourself until you can’t stop laughing from the insanity of it all. He lives every day like it’s his last, and I really think it’s because secretly, he never expected to see his thirtieth birthday. And now he’s…

I should have been ready for this. He tried to warn me.

I watch him walking away from me, towards my office door, and I can’t get a handle on what he just told me, that the lines on my hands have declared I will have a dream long since lost: not only a faithful marriage, but a child. And I can’t help but wonder…

“Luca,” I start and he turns and looks at me, his palm on the doorframe. “What do yours say?”

He smiles. “Depends on which hand you read. Left?” He shakes his head. “No good. Broke, practically living in a hospital bed, no marriage, no kids, die young.”

“That’s not funny!” I burst out, and he arches an eyebrow at me, seeming totally resigned about the prediction he just disclosed. Like it was perfectly acceptable.

“It’s the fate I was born with.”

I bite back my anguish and bury it down, determined to stay strong. I can’t break now, not yet. I have things I’m going to have to do, forms to fill out and numbers and dates to remember. I need to ask Scott if he knows whether Luca ever wrote a Last Will and Testament; I think the military makes you write one, but I don’t know how I would get access to it. I have to contact the landlord at his apartment, check his mail and figure out how I’m going to take care of his bills. I have to locate his car and get it moved to a place where I can safely store it, then find his phone so I can get the numbers I need to start letting people know. And there are so many people.

He’ll say he doesn’t have a family, but that’s not really true. He has one, it’s just comprised of fifteen or so equally-crazy-and-hard-to-pin-to-a-reliable-address group of guys. They call him on satellite phones from mountain tops and canyons, from the peaks of buildings and the banks of rivers. They ask his opinion on climbing gear brands and when he’s going to come rafting with them, placing bets on how many times Scott has been stitched up in the last two weeks and wondering when they can come crash with him so they can do some stunt in Moab. They email pictures of their latest triumphs, rooting each other on through taunts and insults they post on Facebook, but close in ranks whenever one hasn’t been heard from in too long, because at least half of them are still enlisted.