Chapter 13
“Who in the hell are you?”
Jonah flushed the toilet, yanked up his briefs, and ran into his bedroom as soon as he heard the loud shout. That sounded like a woman’s voice. It took him a few minutes to take in the scene before him.
A very pregnant woman stood just inside the bedroom door, shaking keys menacingly at Peter. Or was it Paul? Hell, what difference did it make? The woman was yelling at the Mary he’d picked up at the bar that night. When Jonah had gone into the bathroom, his date (wow, was that ever a strained use of the word) had been naked in the bed. Now the man was feverishly yanking his pants back up and stuffing his feet into his shoes.
“I’m leaving. I’m leaving. I didn’t know he was married. I swear.”
Married? What was Peter…Paul…fuck it, Jonah would have to do a better job getting names next time he picked up a guy. That is, if there would be a next time.
The first time he’d tried to bring someone home, he’d ended up throwing up all over whatever that guy’s name was. He managed not to upchuck on the next guy, but in an even more embarrassing physical malfunction, he couldn’t get it up, so he ended up calling the whole thing off on the grounds of ED. Now, he had guy number three in his bedroom, and a strange lady had shown up and started shouting before they’d been able to get anything started. Clearly, this wasn’t meant to be. As if he didn’t know that already. The whole idea of being with someone other than Zev made Jonah feel ill.
“I don’t want to hear your excuses, you slut. Get out!”
Despite the fact that the woman was smaller than him, well, other than in the belly, Jonah cowered a bit when he heard the tone of her voice. She sounded pissed as hell and not like someone you’d want to mess with. The guy in Jonah’s apartment certainly agreed, because he got his ass out the door before he’d even put on his shirt. Jonah was about to ask the woman who she was and what she was doing in his apartment when she turned and flipped her hair back. He got a look at her face for the first time and almost fell down.
“Lori?”
He didn’t think he’d had all that much to drink. Just one beer and two diet sodas. That wasn’t enough to cause hallucinations. Plus, he was usually asleep when the disturbing childhood-related visions entered his head.
“Not now, Jonah. We don’t have any time. I know you’re only human, but that’s no excuse for this kind of behavior!”
The way Lori said that sentence, it seemed to take on a meaning different from the traditional “you’re only human, you’re bound to make mistakes” shtick. But Jonah didn’t have time to focus on that.
“What…what are you doing here?”
Lori dropped her purse and keys to the floor and stalked around the room, looking at everything. The way she kept sniffling, Jonah wondered whether she had developed allergies with her pregnancy.
“I’m here to celebrate your med school graduation with you, Jonah Marvel. My brother thought you’d like to have Toby and me here, so we left the twins with my folks and spent half a day traveling.” She walked over to the bed as she kept talking. “I get motion sickness even when I’m not pregnant, and carrying the next generation in my body just makes it worse, so Zev dropped me off here while he and Toby look for a parking spot. He gave me your keys so I’d be able to let myself in if you weren’t home, but I had to pee so I didn’t bother knocking.” She turned to Jonah and put her hands on her hips in a straight-from-television mother move. “With that useful background in place, do you have any other pressing questions for me or do you want to start fixing this mess?”
Jonah was struck dumb. He just stared at Lori and tried to process what she’d said. He was stuck somewhere around the part where Zev was outside his apartment.
“But…but Zev isn’t coming to town until Friday.”
“Seriously, Jonah? That’s your focus? Fine! Toby needs to be back for work on Saturday so the two of us can’t stay for the weekend. This trip is too long for just one night so we all decided to surprise you by coming a couple of days early.”
Lori elbowed past him and walked into the bathroom.
“Sorry to interrupt your fun,” she said, not sounding the least bit sorry. “Now, take your sheets off the bed and put them in a thick garbage bag. No, make that two thick garbage bags. I really need to pee.”
Those were Lori’s last words before the bathroom door slammed shut. Jonah still hadn’t moved from his spot when he heard the toilet flush and the sink run, and then watched a still furious Lori walk out of the bathroom.
“Jonah! Were you listening to me? If my brother comes in here and smells another man, he’ll lose it! And if you hurt him that way, pregnant or not, I’ll kick your ass from here to next Sunday.” She threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “You know what? Forget about the sheets, I’ll take care of them. Go get in the shower and scrub until you take off the entire top layer of skin.” She walked over to the window and pried it open, then turned back to Jonah. “Now!”
That scream was the final push Jonah needed to unglue his feet from the floor and run into the shower. He put the water on a higher temperature than he’d usually use and poured a liberal amount of bath gel on his sponge. He hadn’t seen Lori in eight years. Not since they’d graduated from high school. And this was not how he’d imagined their reunion. When he was sure he couldn’t get any cleaner, Jonah turned off the water and pulled the shower curtain open.
“Ahh!” he shouted when he saw Lori standing in front of him, stuffing the clothes he’d worn that night into a garbage bag. He automatically covered his groin with his hands. Lori rolled her eyes.
“Save it, Jonah. Your dignity’s already shot. Go get dressed. If we’re lucky, we can get out of here and meet Zev and Toby downstairs. Then by the time you come back here tonight, there’ll be a chance this place will have aired out.”
He didn’t understand what Lori was talking about. It wasn’t as if his apartment smelled of sex. The clothes had just come off before Lori had walked in, so truly, nothing had happened. Besides, Zev hadn’t told his family about their relationship, so she couldn’t be worried about her brother being jealous.
Maybe she was just disgusted with the idea of Jonah being gay and thought Zev would be too? Yeah, that made sense given the way Zev had first reacted to their feelings toward each other. He did say his family didn’t think he could be gay. Jonah snorted at that one. Like family had any control over how a person was made.
Still, Jonah had no desire to argue with a furious, pregnant Lori. That was just stupid and possibly suicidal. He dried off frantically and hurried into the bedroom, where he pulled on clothes as quickly as possible. He noticed the open window and considered making a snarky remark about how environmentally destructive it was for them to air-condition the entire neighborhood, but then thought better of it. Good thing at least some synapses were still firing.
“Where’s your laundry room?”
Jonah took a break from bouncing on one foot and yanking on his sock to answer Lori’s question.
“I don’t have a laundry room. This is a two-room apartment. This bedroom and the living room slash kitchen area.”
“Huh. Well, that won’t work,” she said as she marched over to the window and threw the trash bag out into the alley.
“Hey! Were those my clothes?”
“Yeah, and your sheets.”
Jonah ran to the window and looked outside, not that he could see anything in the dark from seven stories up.
“Why’d you do that, Lori? I’m a student. I’m not rolling in dough here. I can’t afford to just throw out my clothes and bedding!”
Lori turned on him with an anger so ferocious that Jonah backed away several steps and held his hands in front of him in a defensive posture.
“That person you had in here was naked in your bed, Jonah. And even I could smell him all over your clothes. You think my brother won’t notice that?” She scoffed and looked at him in disgust. “Finish getting dressed. We need to get out of this apartment before…”
She never got to finish her sentence because they both heard the front door open.
“Shit!” she whispered. “I guess your lover boy didn’t lock up on his way out.”
“He’s not my lover. Honest, Lori, nothing…”
“Not now, Jonah!” she hissed in an angry whisper. Then she smoothed down her skirt, tucked her hair behind her ears, and walked into the living room. She seemed to be going for casual indifference, but Jonah could still hear the tension in her voice when she spoke.
“Hey, I caught Jonah in the shower, he’s just finishing getting dressed, and we thought we could go out and grab a late bite.”
With Lori out of the room, Jonah took a moment to sit down and collect himself. What the hell just happened?
He’d been completely out of control lately. More than usual. He snorted out loud with that thought.
He no longer knew what was usual. He’d been slowly losing his mind, and he didn’t have the ability to rein it in. How else could he explain the feelings he’d been having? It was like he wanted to tear his skin open, like his own body was a prison from which he couldn’t escape.
At first he thought the feelings were a stress-induced reaction. That medical school was getting to him. He wouldn’t be the first person to suffer that fate. One of the women who’d started school with him ended up dropping out after six months when the police found her wandering the streets late at night, completely unaware of her own name. After a few nights in the psych hospital, she got herself together but she refused to go back to school. He heard she was happily running a flower shop in Austin now.
But Jonah truly loved what he was doing. His last couple of years had been spent more on clinical work than classroom work. Patients reacted well to him. He seemed to have a knack for making them feel at ease. And he enjoyed helping them. So school wasn’t the problem; the problem was rooted inside him.
Jonah knew his father’s family pretty well and didn’t think there was a history of mental illness there, but he knew nothing about his mother or her family. Over the years, he’d wanted to ask his father many times, but the pain in Kevin Marvel’s eyes when the man so much as looked at the picture he still kept on his nightstand told Jonah more than any words ever could. Bringing up his mother would cause immense pain to his father.
So Jonah hadn’t asked, but now he wondered whether there was some medical condition on his mother’s side that would explain what was happening to him. He rubbed his hands over his tired eyes. The early to midtwenties were the right age for several different mental disorders to manifest. And, if he were honest, the signs had already been around for the past couple of years. But Jonah had done some research on his symptoms, and they didn’t quite fit anything he’d learned about in his psych block.
Unable to get to the crux of the problem, he had made a decision to just move on with his life. He forced himself to focus on school, friends, when he could next see Zev, and just ignore the pain in his body and the skitters in his mind, hoping they’d get bored and go away. But then the dreams had started, and Jonah could no longer ignore what was going on in his body. He had to stop the dreams.
That was what had led to the bar pickups. He’d hoped that sating the deep-seated desire he had to be filled by a man could stop the disturbing images that plagued him in sleep. Of course his desire was for only one man, but Zev continued to refuse him, and eventually, Jonah’s frustration beat out his good sense and common decency. Good thing his body hadn’t allowed him to actually have sex with those strangers. Even if Zev would have found it in his heart to forgive him, Jonah was pretty sure he’d never have been able to forgive himself.
Shaking his head free of the distracting thoughts, Jonah tried to focus on the here and now. He hadn’t cheated. Zev was here. And the man had brought Toby and Lori.
Oh, damn it, Lori. That had been an unpleasant reunion. Seriously, like an adult version of the “showing up to school in your underwear” dream. Speaking of Lori, she was being awfully quiet. For that matter, so were Zev and Toby.
Jonah had lost track of time while he was lost in his own head, but now that he was paying attention, he couldn’t help but notice the silence. His apartment wasn’t that big. How could he hear nothing if three people were waiting for him in the living room? Jonah’s heart began slamming against his ribcage as he had a horrifying thought that he’d imagined the whole thing. Would he have to add visual and auditory hallucinations to his list of symptoms?
He willed his body to get up and walk into the living room. His friends would be out there. They would. Lori’s visit wasn’t some elaborate vision his mind had conjured. But he couldn’t force himself to get up, couldn’t take the risk that he’d slid farther down the rabbit hole.