Jonas finished the last sip of beef broth from his pho, setting down his bowl and leaning back against the footboard of the bed with a sigh. “I’m stuffed,” he said. He glanced at Brennan. “Did you get enough to eat? There’s more in the fridge.”
“Yeah,” she said. They’d spent a bit of time playing Mario Kart with Sam and Travis. She was quieter now that they were once more in Jonas’s room, the next-door duo having hiked to another dorm for some impromptu video game tournament.
“So,” he began, breaking the silence. “You’re pretty good at Mario Kart, huh?” She’d handily beaten Sam and Travis, much to Sam’s frustration as self-proclaimed video game champion of the suite.
A small smile crossed her face. “I guess,” she said. “I find video games pretty fun. They distract me from my thoughts for a little bit.” She seemed like she was getting into uncomfortable territory—like she hadn’t meant to say that—and she fell silent once more.
“Jonas?” she said suddenly. “What’s your favorite color?”
He glanced at her, surprised. “What?”
“Your favorite color. I feel like we’re dating now but we’ve had such big issues, what with your leg and my anxiety, that we’ve never gotten to just focus on the little things.”
He frowned, her answer not quite satisfying him. Though it was no doubt true, she wasn’t fully looking at him, and he guessed that perhaps she was trying to awkwardly transition to some other bigger question.
He’d let her though, if it helped.
“Green,” he said. “Or blue. I don’t actually really have one favorite.”
“You have two siblings?”
“Yeah. Taylor and Rhys, both of whom you’ve met in passing. Taylor has anxiety, though it’s not the same as yours. Everyone with anxiety tends to feel it differently.” He paused. “Of course, you know that. I didn’t mean to—sorry. I didn’t want to make it sound like you didn’t know or like I was trying to act like I knew more about anxiety than you.” He ran a hand through his hair, no doubt messing it up even more than it already was.
“No,” Brennan said. “You’re fine. Go on.” She crossed her legs and wrapped her arms around herself, leaning back against the headboard. They were sitting directly across the bed from one another now. Face to face. He saw her eyes go to his left leg, and then he couldn’t look at her.
“Okay,” he forced himself to keep going. “Taylor has anxiety, but it doesn’t make her feel sick like it does for you. She just feels dizzy and claustrophobic, or at least that’s all she’s told me. She loves sports though; she plays soccer and basketball and does cross country. Not sure how she manages with the schedule she has, but apparently keeping busy helps her.
“And Rhys, he’s a pretty normal older brother. He thinks he’s pretty cool, though I beg to differ.” He smiled as Brennan giggled. “We fought like cats and dogs until the semitruck hit us and I lost my leg. Then we fought like cats and dogs again, after an initial period where he felt guilty, and now we’re better friends than we’ve ever been. It’s been a roller coaster.” He looked at her. “What about your brother?”
“Ayden’s pretty good as far as brothers come. We sort of operate in different orbits most of the time, but every once in a while we connect, I guess.”
They fell silent again, before Brennan spoke up, her eyes flitting to and from his like she was trying to make eye contact but couldn’t quite make herself do it. “Jonas?”
“Hm.” He absentmindedly massaged his leg above the prosthetic socket, gritting his teeth a bit against the pain. He honestly couldn’t wait for surgery, if it only meant they’d get rid of the neuroma pain. He wasn’t keen on the idea of surgery and subsequent rehab and recovery otherwise.
“Are you afraid to show me your leg?”
There it was, the harder question she’d been trying to ask. He wasn’t expecting that, though. Of all the things he’d expected her to ask, that was last on the list. “W-What?” he stuttered, doing his best to regain his composure. No. No, no. Not this question. Anything but this.
“Are you afraid to show me? Without the prosthesis and such, I mean.”
He opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to formulate a response. Yes was the short answer. He sighed. “Can I ask you something, Brennan?”
She looked up and a flash of what almost looked like fear crossed her face, before she smiled hesitantly and said. “Okay.”
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“I’ll try to answer.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
That seemed to catch her off guard. “W-What?”
“Do I make you nervous?”
“I mean, yes. A little. I don’t know. You don’t, specifically. But maybe the idea of being with someone is a little scary to me. I just—I feel so needy. I feel like I’m always seeking assurance, validation. And I don’t exist in my own little orbit now; there’s someone else to consider.”
She picked at the sleeve of his red sweater. That sweater, he thought. I didn’t like it much until she wore it. She continued softly. “Like I need to be told over and over that we’re okay, that I matter, that I’m not just a temporary passing thing in your life. And I’m afraid that you’ll get tired of always having to be assuring me, of always having to be the strong one because I’ll always be the weak one, the hesitant one.” She sighed, and he could see tears welling in her eyes. “I wait for the bad, Jonas. Even when things are good, I’m sure it will all be bad around the corner.”
Something in him wanted to go to her—move to sit next to her at the head of the bed and pull her into his arms gently, like she was something fragile that he was afraid of breaking. He pictured her burying her face in his chest, her tears wet against his T-shirt, like that night he’d come to get her out of the playset at Road’s Edge. Part of him felt selfish because he couldn’t—he was too worried that, in this close contact, she might brush his leg, hit plastic and metal instead of skin and bone.
He was fighting with himself. Go to her. Stay.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I always cry too easily. I feel like you see me as someone who’s always breaking down, who’s whiny and not confident enough in herself and who she is to stop being such a crybaby.”
“I don’t think of you that way,” he whispered. “I don’t think of you that way at all.” If you saw me—the way I can’t drive, the way I sit in Gus and don’t go anywhere, the way I can’t sit next to anyone on my left.
“But I think of myself that way,” she whispered back.
“People see you differently than you see yourself.” The half-burned-out Christmas lights flickered.
Brennan was silent for a while, avoiding looking at him. He decided that she was the opposite of fragile; she was strong to survive after breaking and breaking and breaking. He wished he could stop her from breaking, even just once, because he knew that the breaking hurt her. I wish I could stop breaking.
“Anyway,” he said. “I had a point—I wasn’t just avoiding your original question about my leg.” He sighed. He stared at the wall across from them. Brennan stared at her lap. Maybe it seemed easier than acknowledging the conversation they’d just had; were still having.
“I’m afraid of you, Brennan. And it’s weird.” He laughed shortly, surprised at his own admission. It had just come out. Fact: you wouldn’t usually say that. “I’m scared I’ll mess it up with you somehow. I’m afraid I’ll scare you away, and that’s the last thing I want. I’ve never done this before—dating. Having a girlfriend. I mean, I took a girl in my class to homecoming for the first three years of high school until the accident, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t something I was wanting to last. And I would like it to last with you, Brennan.
“The newness of it, you know, is intimidating. It’s never been something that was on the table, showing my leg. Friends don’t exactly care about that, but it’s different with you. It’s not very fair of me to ask you to share yourself with me if I’m not willing to share myself with you, and I know that, but I’m still scared.”
He broke off when she crawled to his end of the bed, reached up and held her fingers to his mouth, effectively shushing him. “It’s okay,” she said. Her fingers were soft, distractingly so. She pulled her hand away, leaving him wishing she’d put it back. “Don’t be scared. I mean, you can be scared. I’m scared. Isn’t it okay to be?”
“Yes. No. I don’t kn—” She shifted slightly and Jonas sucked in a breath as her hand neared his left knee—the prosthesis, the fake, the missing one. He found her hand with his and stopped her. “Brennan.”
She pulled away, like she was hurt that he couldn’t let her be part of that part of him. He should let her. She was good. How broken are you that you can’t even let the good happen? She sat by him—on the left—but didn’t look at him, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.
Do you think there are perfect moments? His mom had asked his dad this, when he was younger—before—when they’d gone out for ice cream as a family. Yes, his dad had said. He’d clarified: There’s no such thing as a perfect life, but definitely perfect moments. Then I wish, she’d said, that there was some way to know you were in one, before it’s gone, and not so perfect anymore. He wished he’d known that it was his last time with two legs before that moment was gone and the rest of his story was irrevocably thrown into this alternate ending. Maybe there was another alternate universe where he had two legs and he was happy. But do you meet Brennan in that universe?
“I like being your friend,” he said. He shifted a little, stretching the remaining part of his left leg to dispel the pins and needles a bit. “I like being your boyfriend. I like . . . you, you know?” And he did. And if he did, he liked this story line. He liked knowing her. He was torn. A world with two legs probably meant no Brennan. Because if no accident, no fear of semitrucks. If no fear of semitrucks, no fender bender. If no fender bender, no Brennan—deli-uniformed, hole-in-her-left-shoe, I’m-going-to-make-you-walk Brennan. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the world where he had two legs, but all he could see was the semitruck hitting their car, over and over again.
So he opened his eyes, and Brennan was there. She was smiling slightly, but she wasn’t saying anything; she just closed her eyes, her eyelashes brushing her cheeks in what Jonas found to be a very distracting manner.
“Are you tired?” he asked her.
“Yeah,” she whispered.
“I’ll let you go to sleep now,” he said, moving to get up.
“No,” she said. “I mean, stay. You can stay. It’s okay.”
“I don’t have to.”
“I actually really want you to,” she whispered. “I mean, if you want to.”
He smiled slightly. “Okay, just let me go to the bathroom really quick.” He crutched out of the room and into the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror. Breathe, he thought. It’s not that big of a deal. You want Brennan to stick around, right? Yes. Then these things will happen. You can’t just hold her at arms’ length. That’s not how it works.
He left the bathroom. He thought of Sam and Travis. How long do you have to be on crutches for your ACL, man? More people at arm’s length.
He lay down across from Brennan. Somehow, it felt too close. He lay on his right side, watching her while she looked back at him, wide eyed. He tried on a smile, hesitantly, and she smiled back, a smile that reached her brown eyes and warmed them.
“Remember Road’s Edge, when you told me that just because I had a thing to deal with that’s different from some of the other people I know, it doesn’t make me broken?” She touched Jonas’s cheek and his jaw tensed.
“The leg thing doesn’t make you broken, Jonas.”
“But I—”
“I’m okay with it. Are you afraid I won’t be okay with it? Because I know, and I’m okay with it, I promise.”
“You haven’t seen it,” he argued. I haven’t seen it—really seen it. I can’t look at it. How will you? “I’m sure you grew up picturing yourself with someone who had all their limbs. Even if you say you’ll be okay with it, you don’t know.” When his mom first looked at it, post-op and still held together with stitches, the skin red and angry, she’d had to look away, tears in her eyes. His dad had done the first dressing change. He knew it was just the overwhelming feeling of seeing her child maimed, and the idea of having to hurt him by cleaning the wound and rebandaging it (and he didn’t hold it against her) but still, the idea of having anyone else see it, even now that it was healed . . .
“So let me see it.” Her voice was earnest. “Let me see it, Jonas. I’ll be fine. This is the career I’m going into after all.”
“Brennan, I—”
“Come on, Jonas. It’s okay. Really it is.”
What if.
What if he let her? What if she was okay? What if she wasn’t? And if he didn’t let her, then where was this going? Why was he even letting himself lay across from her; think about her?
“I saw another amputee earlier that day, the day I shadowed my aunt—”
“No. I can’t. Stop.” I’m afraid you’ll hate it the way I do. That you won’t be able to look at it, just like I can’t. “I look in the mirror every day and I look the same, but I have to know that it’s missing. I hate thinking about it.” But it’s all I can think about.
“Keeping the prosthesis on makes you feel a little less different from the person you were before.” She smiled hesitantly, the corners of her lips just turning up. “But you’re a good person now, Jonas. And I didn’t know you before. I know you now.”
“You know me with two legs! Even if you know I have—” The stump. “It, you see the prosthesis every day. If I take it off, there’s no going back to that.”
“Do you really think I would turn on you the moment I saw it and somehow see you differently?”
Yes. “How can I know? You already backed away before!”
She looked taken aback. Instantly, it seemed like part of her had closed off. But she tried one more time: “Jonas, I’d be fine. I really would. I was scared to tell you about my anxiety but now—”
“Brennan, no! Okay?” He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see her look hurt again. “I’m really tired. I’m sorry.” I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
“It’s okay,” she said, but she turned over, like she couldn’t look at him right now. Still, she curled into him, tucking herself under his arm.
“I’m really sorry, Brennan,” he whispered again. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just—I can’t.” Showing you my leg feels like facing it. He said it again, felt like he couldn’t stop saying it. “I’m really sorry.”
“Jonas, it’s okay. Maybe someday. And that’s fine.”
“Still . . .”
“Stop,” she said. She touched his hand with hers, her skin soft on his. “It’s okay. Go to sleep. Okay?”
Jonas lay awake for two hours, until midnight.
He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t relax. His entire body was tense. Don’t relax. Don’t let the prosthetic leg touch her. Is it touching her? How would you know? It can’t feel anything. And You already backed away before ran through his head. How could you say that to her?
At midnight he slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb Brennan. He took the elevator down to the first floor. You can wish for the alternate story line where you have two legs, but the fact is, you’re here, living in this one.
He crutched across campus, through the thick wet snow to the parking lot outside Rhys’s dorm.
He unlocked Gus and got inside. He started the car.
He sat there for about fifteen minutes. No sweat and his heart rate was relatively normal. Progress.
When he put his hand out to shift the car into reverse, however, tachycardia and sweat.