The Ninth Floor (16 page)

I walked out
of the hospital in shock. Bee had walked all around, up and down stairs, when
she could hardly make it ten feet without having to rest in the wheelchair when
we went on walks. And what was she doing in the stairwell? Her comment about
the light came back to me—and the sight of the open padlock flashed in my mind.
Had Bee been on the ninth floor? And more importantly, why had Jack lied to me?

“What
happened?” Blair asked as I walked up.

“Nothing.” I
didn’t want to upset him until I had more figured out. “I was just talking to
Bee’s nurse—and I found my purse.”

I let Blair
choose the restaurant. We ended up in a place called Bada Bings where the
waitresses all wore shirts a size too small and skirts that didn’t leave much
to the imagination, but he swore to me the pizza was the best in town. I
glanced around, wondering if Aiden would like it here and if he came in to eat
at all the same restaurants as me. We ordered a large pizza called the Darwin—turkey, peppers, artichokes, and tomatoes—and I tried to enjoy Blair’s company, but
the hospital was still bugging me. What happened last night simply wasn’t
possible. I could be fine with ghosts, but how could Bee do what she did? Was
it the ghost? Was it something else? And again, why did Jack lie to me?

“What are you
thinking about?”

“Hmmm?” I
looked up at him.

“You totally
zoned out—and you’re glaring at your water. What’s going on?”

I shook my
head. “What do you know about St. Michael’s?”

“Are you
talking about those ridiculous ghost stories?”

“You know
about them?”

“Sure,
everyone does.” He looked sheepish. “Well, maybe only people who went to school
here.”

“You don’t
believe?”

“No.”

“Do you know
anyone who has been on the ninth floor?”

“No, it’s
closed because of the fire.”

“What fire?”

“Some crazy
woman with postpartum set the floor on fire. The story goes she had a stillborn
baby and just went nuts. Killed a lot of people.” They called out our pizza
order at the front and Blair hopped up to get it while I stewed.

“Why didn’t
they just renovate?”

“People were
too freaked out about it, but someday when people forget and stop telling
stupid stories, I bet they’ll reopen it.”

“What if I
told you I heard someone or something whispering my name in Bee’s room?”

“I’d say
someone is messing with you, or you were sleeping.”

“You’re so
sure?”

“Ryan—ghosts,
really?”

“There was a
light on the ninth floor last night. I saw it from my balcony.”

Blair thought
about it and nodded. “Maybe they’re finally starting to work on it. It would
make sense to do it at night, secretly, little by little, since it still
terrifies the masses.”

“Did you know
Mom and Dad gave five million to build a new maternity wing?”

Blair shook
his head. “Hmph, no. See, maybe they aren’t so bad. You stayed away all this
time for no reason.”

I laughed. “Why
does Mom hate Jack?”

He rolled his
eyes. “Who knows? She’s impossible to please. Dad thinks she flipped out
because he was the first guy you brought home, and he wasn’t who she expected.”

“What about
Ash? What does he think?”

“Whatever Mom
tells him to.” Blair gave me a wry smile. “It’s amazing we turned out so
well-adjusted.”

“Well-adjusted?
You have a thing for cougars and my only boyfriend left me without so much as a
sticky note of explanation. I don’t know that we’re doing as well as you think.”

“First,
twenty-six is not a cougar. At most it’s a lynx. Second, did he seriously do
that? Third, we are doing better than we have any reasonable expectation for.
You got a real job and worked for a living. That’s more than Mom, Dad, or
Ashley ever tried to do. You inspired me to do the same. Mom wasn’t thrilled I
wanted to be a vet, but she’s coming around to it. She even started bragging to
her friends about how smart I am and how I’m making my own way. It’s what I
want to do. I don’t want to be CEO or work for the company. We have Ash for
that. I want to do what makes me happy.”

“I’m so proud
of you.” I smiled at Blair, and grabbed another piece of pizza. Blair had been
right. It was delicious.

“If you give
Mom a shot and don’t push her buttons the second you see her, the two of you
might be able to stand each other for more than five minutes. We both know Mom
has her faults, but I don’t know. She has good qualities too. Just something to
keep in mind.”

I shook my
head. “You and Jack.”

“I’m liking
him more and more.”

The rest of
dinner went by in a flash, and after I dropped Blair off at our parents’, I
walked the dogs, making sure to keep Aiden’s car in sight. Then later, when I
got home again, I pulled the scrapbook out of my bag and curled up on the
couch. I flipped past the last article I’d read and came to a personal letter.
I was struggling to decipher the overly curly handwriting when there was a
knock at my door. The dogs barked and carried on. I sighed. Couldn’t I just
have one night?

“Sid, Nancy. Sit.” Both dogs sat but eyed the door suspiciously.

I figured it
was Jack, and I was okay with that. He had a lot of explaining to do. I threw
open the door to see Briggs leaning against the frame. No cocky grin, no
inflated self-confidence, no masks of any kind. His face was serious and his
eyes were filled with emotion, which stilled anything bitter I might have said.

“I miss you,”
he said after we stared at each other for several minutes. “The other guy
answering your phone didn’t make me miss you any more than I did from the day I
left. It made me realize I didn’t want to give up on us without a fight.” He swallowed
hard. “I left because I didn’t think you would understand what I was going
through. I should have given you a chance to react. And now that it’s probably
too late, I can’t stop thinking about how I would do things differently if I
had another chance.” He pushed his hands into his pockets and let out a slow
breath. “I’ve always loved you, Ryan. You’re my beginning, middle, and end.”

I cursed my
eyes as they brimmed with tears, but I stepped back and let him in. He knelt
down in front of Sid and Nancy and greeted them with kisses and scratches. I
tried not to let their doggie smiles soften my heart. I walked back to the
couch and closed the scrapbook. Briggs sat on the other end of the couch but
stood back up and paced. I’d never seen him so nervous. I braced myself for
what I knew was coming. He cheated on me, and instead of telling me, he left
and made me think it was my fault. Anger and pain begged for release, and I
wanted nothing more than to kick him out before he could confirm it, but I
wouldn’t let him off that easy. I was going to make him tell me every gory
detail, no matter how much it hurt. Maybe after that, Jack and I would have a
real chance.

“Do you
remember when we met?” he asked, catching me off guard. “Do you remember what
you told me?”

Briggs and I
had met at a party. We spent the whole evening together on the back porch of
his fraternity house talking until dawn. I told him a lot of things that night,
but I had no idea which detail he was talking about, so I shook my head.

“You said people
who lived off their great-grandparents’ success, rather than finding their own
way to put their mark on the world, disgusted you.”

I nodded. It
sounded like something I’d say.

“Until that
night, I never intended to do anything different than that. But hearing you
talk about it, I believed you, I agreed with you even. I got stars in my eyes,
and I wanted to do the same thing as you and make my own way.” He pushed his
hand through his hair and took a deep breath. “But I didn’t like it. The idea
was intoxicating while I was in college and law school, but the reality wasn’t
what I expected. I was miserable. I didn’t want to work 18 hours a day for
nothing. I had more money than I would ever make as a lawyer at my fingertips,
but I couldn’t touch it. It made me resent you. I know it isn’t your fault. You
never forced any of this on me. I did it to myself, but the more I hated my
job, the more I blamed you for encouraging me to do it.”

He sat down on
the coffee table in front of me so our knees were almost touching. I was still
waiting for the part about the affair. “The day I left the note on the door, I
was finally so fed up with work I’d just quit—and I realized you’d never
understand. You’d look at me and see a failure and maybe pity me for a little
while, but eventually you’d leave me, so I left you first. I couldn’t do it in
person because I’d have confessed everything, and I couldn’t stand to see the
disappointment on your face or hear it in your voice. I loved you so much I
would rather have you hate me than be disgusted by me.”

He took my
hands. “The longer you were gone, the harder it was to keep blaming you when it
was in no way your fault. That’s why I wanted you to come back to get the dogs.
I wanted to talk to you in person and explain what I was too much of a coward
to tell you before.”

I stared at
him, trying to absorb his story. He hadn’t cheated on me. My mind was blank and
I was numb. I didn’t know what to say, think, or feel. All of this was because
of something I told him when we were nineteen.

“Say
something,” he demanded and I looked into his glassy eyes.

“You’re an
idiot.”

His mouth
opened then closed again. He shook his head and his eyes threatened to spill
over. “You don’t care?”

“Briggs, I
didn’t care if you were a lawyer, a bartender, or poet …If you’re happy doing
it, I would’ve been happy for you.”

“What about
the trust?”

“Are you using
it to live extravagantly? Are you buying private jets and making a general
spectacle of yourself, flaunting your wealth?”

“Of course
not.”

“Then how
exactly is that like the people I despise?”

His eyes
narrowed. “You wouldn’t use your trust like that, yet you still refuse to use
it for anything.”

“That’s
because I have something to prove to myself. You don’t. I’ve considered buying
a newspaper here since I got back. It certainly wouldn’t be with my savings.”

“That’s where
you are wrong. I did have something to prove. I had something to prove to you.”
A tear finally slipped over the edge of his brimming eyes.

“Briggs, you
never had to prove anything to me.” I wiped the tears from his cheek and the
next moment I was enclosed in his too familiar arms. My own tears spilled over
as I squeezed him back. His scent and the feel of his body screamed safety,
security, and happiness that had been just out of my grasp, but an inner
nagging voice wouldn’t let me fall back into his arms. I pulled back and stood
up. It was my turn to pace. I couldn’t forgive and forget, not this time. Not
something like this. “You gave up on us without so much as word to me. You just
walked away and left me to pick up the pieces.”

“I’m so sorry.”
He came toward me, but I held up my hand.

“It’s not
enough. You didn’t just hurt my feelings or ego. You crushed me. I thought we
were going to be together forever. I thought you were the one—the only one I
would ever love.”

“We can still
have that. I can make it up to you. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to.”

“Don’t you
see? You’re doing it again. You’re making assumptions about what I think and
feel. You’re setting yourself up to fail and to blame it on me. Stop trying to
prove you’re things you aren’t. Just be you. I don’t want you to ‘make it up’
to me for the rest of our lives. I want us to be what I thought we were.
Friends, lovers, partners …But apparently I was the only one who thought that.”

Briggs stepped
back and slumped down into the chair. He looked up at me. “I did consider you
to be those things. I just—I wanted to be someone you could admire. I wanted to
feel worthy of your love. Don’t you understand that?”

“Not really.
You make me sound like a monster. Am I really so hard to please?”

“No. Maybe. I
don’t know. I’ve spent so long trying to be what I thought you wanted that I
don’t know what you really want.”

I settled back
on the couch. It might not be entirely his fault. I thought Briggs was perfect
before all of this. The things he thought I wanted couldn’t have been too far
from the mark. He managed to be everything I wanted until he snapped. I couldn’t
say if I liked the real Briggs or not. Apparently we’d never met. I pressed my
palms against my temples, shaking my head, trying to understand where we went
so wrong. “Briggs,” I said, and my voice broke with emotion. “Did I
ever
know you?”

He looked at
me with the same dumbstruck expression that had to be on my face too and didn’t
answer immediately. Then his eyes locked on mine. “Would you like to?”

His question
was the last straw. Suddenly tears were flowing, my nose was running, and my
throat was burning from trying to hold it all back. He wrapped his arms around
me and pulled me against his chest. He stroked my hair in the same manner that
had comforted me for so many years. As I calmed, his mouth found mine and his
lips were still home. Jack’s kisses were good, wonderful in fact, but Briggs
was familiar. He was where I learned to accept and be myself. And I was where
he learned to be somebody else. I pulled back from him. “I can’t.”

He sat back. “It’s
really over?”

I shook my
head. “That’s not what I meant. I just meant I can’t kiss you right now. It’s
too confusing. I’d like to know the real you, but I can’t come back with you.
My life is here now. I’m building a relationship with my brother and my aunt
needs me. I’m going to see if I can salvage whatever’s left of me and my
family.” I bit my lip. “And there’s Jack …”