When I see Stanley the next day, he’s sitting up in his hospital bed, propped on a stack of pillows, his arm in a fiberglass cast and a sling. He’s pale, the flesh beneath his eyes dark and bruised.
“Hey.” His voice sounds different. It’s like hearing a song slightly off-key. He won’t meet my gaze.
I hang in the doorway, uncertain. “How is your arm.”
“Hurts, but I’ll live. They’re releasing me today. They wanted me to stay longer, but I said no. This is nothing I haven’t been through before. I just want to go home.” He gives me a hazy smile. “Think you could drive me?”
During the drive, he remains silent and withdrawn. Maybe he’s still groggy from the pain medication.
I wonder if he’s going to report the attack to the police. I don’t deal with the authorities if I can help it, but as far as I know, he has no such inhibitions. “What did you tell the people at the hospital. About what happened.”
“I told them I slipped on a patch of ice.”
I clutch my bloodied shirt with one hand, wondering—was it for my sake that he lied? So I wouldn’t have to deal with the repercussions?
“I owe you one,” he remarks. “If you hadn’t done what you did, I’d probably be in a full body cast instead of a sling.” But still, he doesn’t look at me. He’s disturbed. Of course he is. He just saw me go full primate. He watched me almost bite off a man’s ear.
When we arrive at his house, I help him into his bed and prop up a stack of pillows. I notice him shivering and pull the covers up to his chest.
“Thanks.” The lamp is on, but the room is full of shadows. The model planes stand in rows on his shelf, their colors muted in the dim glow.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
His eyes slip shut, the lids thin and bruised-looking. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
I blink. “For what.”
“He said those awful things to you. I was so . . . so angry. But I couldn’t do anything. It wasn’t even a fight, it was a beating.”
That’s what’s bothering him? “It’s over now. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters.” His hand curls into a fist. “The world is full of those people. What good am I if I can’t even protect you from them?”
My shoulders stiffen. “I never said I needed to be protected.”
“I know. But I want to. Just for once, I want to make someone’s life easier instead of more difficult. I want to not be a burden. Is that wrong?”
“You aren’t a burden. Stop saying ridiculous things.” The words come out harsher than I intend.
His unsteady breathing fills the room. “Sorry.” He smiles without teeth, gaze averted. “Just groggy, I guess.”
I push myself to my feet. “You should take your pain meds.”
I give him his pills we got from the pharmacy earlier, along with a glass of water, and he swallows them down. “You can go, if you want,” he murmurs. “I’m just going to sleep for a while.”
I don’t move. Something is wrong, something that goes beyond what happened with those thugs. “Talk to me.”
His lips press into a thin line. He looks away.
“Stanley.”
He closes his eyes. Several minutes pass, and I start to think he’s fallen asleep. Then he begins to speak, his voice quiet and strangely calm. “You’ve noticed, right? I mean . . . my eyes.”
“What about them.”
“I thought for sure you’d have figured it out by now,” he says. “You know so much about so many things. But then, it’s a pretty rare condition.”
“What is.”
“Osteogenesis imperfecta. Which is a fancy way of saying my bones break easily. I can do most things without trouble, but . . . let’s just say I didn’t play a whole lot of sports as a kid.”
I remember him talking about breaking his fibula, about how much he hated hospitals. I’m a klutz, he had said. “How many did you break.”
“Over my whole life? I don’t know. I lost count around fifty.”
“Fifty breaks.” My voice sounds odd. Distant.
“Most of those happened when I was a kid. Bones are more fragile when they’re growing. I missed a lot of school. Lots of surgeries. Sometimes I feel like Frankenstein’s monster, I’ve been cut apart and sewn back together so many times.” He chuckles. Like it’s a joke. “I set off metal detectors now, because I’ve got surgically implanted rods in both my femurs. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to walk without crutches. But I get around pretty well, all things considered. And I haven’t lost my hearing, which happens to a lot of people with OI. I’m lucky.” A brief pause. “Anyway, that’s my long-winded explanation for why I have these weird-looking eyeballs. Something to do with the collagen not forming correctly.”
There’s a pressure and tightness in my chest. It takes me a moment to identify it as guilt—though guilt about what, I’m not entirely sure. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’m okay with how I am. Sort of. But I know what it’s like, walking around with a diagnostic label hung around your neck, being told by the world that you have limitations, that there are certain things you’ll never be able to do.”
I sit motionless, arms crossed over my chest, knees locked together. Looking back, it seems so obvious—his cane, his eyes, the way he talked about breaking bones as if it was more or less routine. How did I not see? Did I not want to?
“My parents were always fighting,” he says. “Mostly about money, because there was never enough. It all went toward my medical bills. I was in the hospital so often, I got to know all the doctors and nurses by name. They liked me, because I smiled for them, and when they asked me how I was, I always said I was fine. I told them how lucky I felt to have so many people taking such good care of me. They all thought I was this brave little soldier. But it wasn’t like that. I mean, they were the ones cutting me open and filling me with pins and pushing the button that gave me my pain meds. I needed them to like me. It wasn’t bravery, it was survival.”
My hand drifts toward one braid and starts tugging.
“I was thinking about that last night,” he continues. “And I remembered that thing you said. About rabbit moms, how they reabsorb the baby if there’s something wrong with it.”
I draw in my breath sharply.
“It’s like you said. Love doesn’t pay the bills.”
No, no, no. I want to jump back in space-time and erase those words. “I wasn’t talking about you,” I whisper.
“I know. But this is going to be my life, Alvie. More breaking bones and more trips to the hospital and being stuck in a sling or on crutches for months on end and needing help with everything. And maybe someday I will go deaf, or end up in a wheelchair, or both. Am I supposed to pretend like that doesn’t matter? Like it’s not a big deal? How can I ask anyone—” His voice cracks.
I clutch my arm, fingers pressing into my own flesh with bruising force. “I’m broken, too.”
“No, you’re not. You should have seen yourself.” He smiles, his expression tight with pain. “You don’t need some white knight rushing in to save you. And even if you did, I can’t—” His voice splinters again. “I’m just a useless—”
I kiss him. I don’t even think about it; my body moves on its own.
I come in too fast. Our teeth knock together, and he gasps against my mouth. I pull back a little, then come in again, gentler, softer. His lips are warm, slightly rough and chapped against mine. I can’t tell if I’m doing this right. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
I pull back, and he looks up at me, eyes wide and dazed. “Why did you—?”
“Because I wanted to.”
He blinks a few times. His expression has gone blank, as if a tiny nuclear bomb has gone off in his cortex, obliterating his thoughts.
“You are someone who should exist, Stanley. I shouldn’t have said those things at Buster’s. I wasn’t thinking. I was upset because—” The words stop as if they’ve hit a wall in my throat. Somehow, this is very hard to admit. “—because I didn’t like seeing you with her.”
“I. Wait. Who?”
My face burns. “That girl. Dorothy.”
His jaw drops. “That’s what was bothering you?”
I want to crawl under the bed and hide.
“Alvie . . . I told you, Dorothy and I just sit next to each other in class. We’re not even friends.”
“She likes you,” I mutter.
“She likes to mother me. Girls tend to treat me that way, because I’m the quiet, nerdy guy with the cane. I’ve never been on their radar, not like that. That’s why I was so surprised when you asked me to . . .” A light flush rises into his cheeks. “You know.”
Of course—Stanley doesn’t see himself as attractive. He wouldn’t realize that woman was flirting with him if she flipped her skirt up and presented her rump like a bonobo in heat.
“Alvie. Look at me.”
I force myself to meet his gaze.
“I don’t want her. I want—I would like to be with—you.”
My insides are a confused muddle. If I were a better person, I would push Stanley right into Dorothy’s arms, because she can give him so many things that I can’t. But I can’t deny the stab of fierce animal joy I feel at those words. I want you.
He reaches up, cupping the back of my neck, and leans up, toward me.
The kiss is slower this time. Softer. He tastes faintly of cherries; he must have eaten some Jell-O in the hospital.
Before now, I never understood the appeal of this. I always thought it would be disgusting, sharing saliva with another person, but somehow it’s not. Maybe because it’s Stanley.
I pull back and lick my lips. “It’s very wet,” I say. “Kissing.”
“That’s kind of the idea.” His eyes search my face. “Do you want to keep going?”
“Keep going.”
His lips move against mine. His eyes open a crack, and he peeks out at me through his eyelashes. “Close your eyes,” he whispers.
I do, and I see immediately why. It’s more intense without the distraction of sight. The room suddenly feels a lot warmer; I’m dizzy, off-balance. Everything about this is dangerous. I am walking a tightrope over a bottomless abyss, and one wrong step will drag us both down into oblivion. But I don’t want to stop. I can’t.
When I finally pull back, he breathes a small, shivery sigh. His eyes slowly open, soft and unfocused.
He squirms, and I wonder if his arm is hurting him.
Then I notice something hard pressing against my thigh. “Oh,” I say.
He scoots his hips away from mine. His blush is visible even in the dim light. “Sorry.”
I remember that night in the motel room. The way his breathing quickened when he looked at me. His gentle, tentative caresses. The warmth of his hands.
Under the blanket, I lightly touch his thigh, and his muscles tense. I don’t plan the words, my next words; they just come out. “We could try again, if you want.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.” My hand rests on his thigh.
He’s silent, unmoving, not even breathing.
“Stanley?” The end of his name curves up a little in a question.
He takes a slow, deep breath and lets it out through his nose. “You remember, before, I told you I felt like Frankenstein’s monster? It wasn’t really a joke.”
After more than fifty breaks, it would be surprising if he didn’t have a collection of scars. “So.”
“You haven’t seen me. Whatever you’re imagining, it’s worse.”
“They’re just scars.”
He swallows; I hear the click in his throat. Lightly he touches my shoulder. His hand slowly slides down my side, along the curve of my waist, to rest on my hip, a gentle, steady weight. I can feel the outline of his fingers, even through the thin denim of my jeans. I wait, holding my breath. A part of me wants to pull away, because even now, that simple contact is almost overwhelming. Waves of sensation pulse through my whole body, as if I were nothing but a collection of raw nerves. The instinctive fear of human touch is still there, pressing against the base of my throat. But there’s pleasure, too—a slowly undulating heat.
Then his hand slides away, leaving a cold spot on my hip. “I don’t know if this is the best time.” He gives me a small, apologetic smile.
I nod. I don’t leave the bed, though; I don’t want to.
Gradually his breathing slows. “Alvie?” His voice is drowsy, faraway.
“Yes.”
“Earlier, when we fought those guys, you were hissing and growling. And stomping your foot.”
“Rabbits will do that sometimes, when they’re threatened.”
“Oh.”
I expect him to ask more questions, but he just dozes off, as if that’s all the explanation he needs.
For a few minutes, I lie still, listening to him breathe. He’s very close and very warm. Though I’m feeling the physical symptoms of exhaustion—dry eyes, headache, a heaviness in my limbs—my mind is wide-awake. Maybe it’s the discomfort of being in a strange bed, the unfamiliar texture of the sheets, the scent of him clinging to the pillow. I turn my face and breathe it in deeply, holding it in my lungs. Particles of his, mingling with mine.
After a while, my bladder starts to ache. Carefully I slide out of the bed. Stanley stirs and murmurs something incoherent under his breath, but he doesn’t wake. Moonlight filters through the curtains, lighting the way as I tiptoe out of the room and down the hall.
On the way back from the bathroom, I pass a closed door and pause. Just a guest room, Stanley said.
I try the door. It creaks open, and I peek in.
The walls, the curtains, and the bedspread are patterned with bunches of pink roses. There are a few necklaces strewn on the dresser. A hairbrush. A stick of deodorant. A floral-patterned blouse hanging inside a half-open closet. And rows upon rows of porcelain figurines inside a huge glass cabinet—children, puppies, kittens, birds, all staring at me with their disproportionately large, inanimate eyes.
I take a few steps inside and touch the pillow. There’s a thin layer of dust that comes off on my hand. On the table next to the bed stands a picture—a blond woman and a tiny blond boy in a blue polo shirt, maybe five or six years old, smiling up at the camera. Stanley and his mother.
Her room. Her things. Left untouched all this time.
Outside the window, a cloud passes over the moon, and the shadows shift. For a moment, the covers on the bed seem to ripple, as if a breeze were blowing through the room, and the hairs on my neck stiffen. I retreat, easing the door shut behind me, then quietly slip back into bed with Stanley and curl against his side.