Page 17 of Love What's Left
Rufus isn’t a feline to be bossed around. He gives his attention and affection on his own terms, but at the sound of her voice, he leaps up and butts his head against her side. She places her hand on his back and lies quietly, her breaths growing deep and slow.
Josh approaches, looking down at her from where he stands. “I thought you’d end up with someone less serious. Someone you partied with.”
“That sounds awful.” I mean it to the depths of my soul. “Sydney isn’t serious all the time. She knows how to play. She’s just a fuck-ton smarter than I am.”
Even now, when she can barely string a coherent sentence together, I can see that she’sthinking. She figured out from the phrasing of Price’s questions, alone, that they were considering taking her for a psych eval and what she needed to do to prevent it. The way she repeated back “husband” in that flat tone was her deciding then and there that they wouldn’t help her the way she believed she needed them to. She thinks I manipulated the police to be “on my side.”
“She was a hell of a soccer player back in the day,” Josh says.
“The newsreels are showing the Stanford clip again.” It’s not a question, and I’m not surprised. When Sydney and I announced our engagement, they plastered it everywhere. It was a feel-good piece, then.
“The final goal that gave Blackwater their first title. Defender thought she had her pinned down the line. Next thing you know, Sydney Walsh spins out, flicks the ball behind her, cuts in, and—BAM—top corner. That keeper didn’t even move.”
“You sound like a fan.” I don’t have room for amusement, but the irony doesn’t escape me. He’s impressed by my wife. In another life, we’d have probably gone on double dates and shared family get-togethers. He’d have been a groomsman at my wedding. “If they showed the whole thing, you’d have seen she didn’t even take a second to gloat. She turned straight back and pointed at her teammate to give her the credit for getting her the ball in the first place.”
I hadn’t known Sydney then and was more interested in nightclub hookups than I was in women’s soccer, but I’ve watched the replays since. Every one of them.
“They’re showing clips of Allen Walsh at the Rose Bowl, doing side-by-sides. Him breaking tackles. Her breaking lines,” he says.
“If they brought her father into it, it’s only because they love to rubberneck other people’s pain.”
Josh lapses into silence.
I slide a lock of dark hair off Sydney’s forehead. Without waking, she captures my hand with her own and holds it against her cheek. She hates to sleep without me.Hatesit. I only keep this stupid fucking hospital bed here because Josh’s dad recommended it and reminded me that she wasn’t capable of giving consent to sleep in the same bed beside me. I’m not sure if he thought I’d be too depraved to sleep beside her safely, if it’s just protocol, or if he was concerned she’d be afraid to wake up next to me. But it’s led to many days and nights just like this, of me, half sitting, half sprawled on the edge of her bed, unwilling to move away when she needed my touch. And when I desperately needed hers.
Josh doesn’t know her. The highlight reels they’re showing to punch home the tragedy of how Markov laid her low aren’t enough to understand her.
“The week before she was taken, she sat in a diner with me and explained molecular polarity using salt packets and straws. I stretched it out forever just so she’d keep talking with that light in her eyes,” I say.
Josh scratches the back of his head, his dark eyes troubled. “She lied when she said she knew her age. She was more afraid of what would happen if she went with them than if she stayed.”
“Yes.” I speak through the lump lodged in my throat. “Tell me she’s coming back from this. I need her to come back.”
He takes a long time to answer. “Before last week, I expected the next time we met to be your funeral.”
I flinch, but he doesn’t try to soften the blow.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m not sure about this. It might be better for the two of you to handle things away from each other,” he says.
I shake my head, not surprised by the words, but hurt, when I shouldn’t be. “You’re wrong.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. You’ve stayed sober eight years,” he says.
“Eight years, four months.”
“She married you. She called your number first for help, and she held on to you in that hospital room.” He indicates the way Sydney holds my hand to her cheek. “You’re the only one she trusts at all, even if it takes sleep for her to realize it. I have to believe it means something.”
“It’s not enough.”
Josh watches me and visibly weighs his words. “We were ten years old, and I knew you were dying, no matter what your parents said. Mom brought me to visit you, and you scared the hell out of me. You stared into space. You cried. You wouldn’t talk when I asked you a question. Wouldn’t play. If someone turned on the TV, you told us to shut it off.”
“They shouldn’t have exposed you to that. It’s too much to ask a kid to deal with once, let alone for months.”
“They didn’t ask me to do it. I insisted, and I was glad I did. But it wasn’t fast. I visited you for twenty-four days straight before you let me so much as read to you.”
“You were a good friend. You deserved better than what I put you through when I was drinking,” I say.
“We all did.”
