"If you give me that one chance, you'll be taking a chance of your own. You'll be gambling with your own feelings that I am true to my word and that I won't hurt you again. I think that love is like that. But if you tell me to leave you'll be taking another kind of chance. You'll be taking the chance that it might have worked out and you will never have known it. I think we have something special Nina, something very special. Thanks to my stupidity we never got to explore it fully. I'd like to try now. Just one shot Nina, that's all I ask. Just take one little gamble."
She wiped her eyes again with the back of her hand and then sniffed. "It's not a little gamble." She said. "It's a big one. The biggest one."
"We can start slow Nina." I told her. "I'm not saying we should rush out and get married. I just like to be with you. I'm not complete when you're not with me. I know that sounds like a freakin' cliche from a romance novel but it's true. I think about you all the time. I want to be with you, to talk to you. Is that too much to ask?"
She shook her head. "I don't know anymore Bill." She said. "I just don't. I need some time to think about all of this."
"Take all the time you want Nina." I said. "Just don't tell me to leave yet. Just don't tell me that until you've thought it over. I will if you want me to, but I hope you won't."
"I have to get back to work." She said. She turned and headed back through the curtain.
"Nina," I said.
She turned to look at me.
"Thanks for listening to me."
She nodded and slipped out of my sight again.
The doctor came in a few minutes later. I don't know if you've ever had stitches before but it is certainly not one of life's greater pleasures. He stuck a needle into my hand in eight different places in order to inject lidocaine. The pain from this rivaled everything associated with the time I'd been stabbed. There are an obscene amount of nerve endings in a person's hand. When he was done I had a neat line of eight stitches keeping the wound closed. He promised he would write me a prescription for some pain pills and then he shot off to his next patient.
It was Nina who came in to give me my discharge paperwork. Her face was once again blank as she entered the cubicle, clipboard in hand, and sat down on the stool the doctor had used. I looked back at her.
"You know something?" She asked me quietly.
"What's that?" I asked.
"The girls at school have been complaining about you lately."
"They have?" I asked, not at all sure where this was going.
She nodded seriously. "I hear them in the bathroom and between classes all the time, just like I always did before. Of course before I could never bring myself to believe what I was hearing."
"Nina I told you…"
"Shhh." She hushed me. I shut up.
"Anyway," She continued. "Lately they've been saying things about how you're getting kind of uppity and so forth. Saying you won't go out with anyone anymore, won't do your vacuum cleaner routine," She gave me a sharp look, "Whatever THAT is."
I swallowed, blushing.
"I ignored them when I heard them talking about you." She went on. "Like I said, I didn't want to hear ANYTHING about you lately. But after what you just said, it came back to me."
"Did it?"
She nodded. "It did." She looked at me for a moment. "What I'm trying to say is," Another deep breath. "Well, if you're not doing anything else at lunch tomorrow, why don't you come over and sit with me? I just read a cool book and I've been dying to discuss it with someone who has some intelligence."
I smiled, my heart warming as I heard this. "I'll be there Nina. I've read a few books too."
"I'll keep an eye out for you." She said, "Now, here are your discharge instructions. You need to keep this wound dry and change the dressing every day. When you take a shower…"
Chapter 8
The best of times
Are when I'm alone with you
Some rain, some shine
We'll make this a world for two
All memories of yesterday
Will last a lifetime
We'll take the best, forget the rest
And someday we'll find
These are the best of times
STYX
I don't believe I ever looked forward to a simple lunch session in the school cafeteria as much as I did that Tuesday afternoon, the day after Nina invited me to join her. I hardly slept at all that night, tossing and turning restlessly as my mind kept screaming at me: Nina is back! Nina is talking to me again! Bleary eyed I drug myself off to school and experienced a near crawl of the time continuum through first period. When the bell rang I nearly sprinted to my second class, feeling like the teenager I was charading as for perhaps the first time since returning.
I took my seat and waited nervously while other students filed in, my eyes drawn to the seat next to mine, the seat that had been so recently occupied by a silent and reproachful Nina. That would be different today, wouldn't it? She hadn't changed her mind, had she? She was talking to me again, wasn't she?
When she entered the room her face was blank, expressionless. She walked to her chair and methodically removed her book and notepaper from her backpack before stowing it in under her seat. She arranged her supplies on her desk and sat down.
"Good morning Nina." I told her nervously.
For a horrible instant I thought that she was going to simply ignore me as she had in the past. Just keep her eyes facing forward, her psyche radiating a stern signal that communication was not desired. Had she changed her mind? Had she decided to wash her hands of me after all?
Finally she looked over at me, her expression remaining blank. "Good morning." She told me.
"Are we still on for lunch?" I asked her, dreading her answer but needing to hear it all the same.
A slight smile gave me hope. "Sure." She nodded. "If you still want to."
Relief and renewed hope washed over me. I returned her smile. "More than anything." I said.
Her smile widened, warming her face and making me feel giddy. She was smiling! At me no less! In that instant I blessed that idiot Brett and his carelessness at leaving the scalpel blade up in the tray. In fact I wanted to buy him a beer for doing that.
The entrance of the instructor and the initiation of that day's lecture brought our conversation to an abrupt end. I hardly heard a word that was said.
Third period offered us little chance to talk. By the time we found our seats in the classroom it was time for class to start. I barely heard that lecture too, so intent was I on the agonizingly slow ticking of the clock as it marched its way towards lunch.
Finally, lunchtime came. We walked in silence together to the cafeteria, unsure of what to say to each other, unsure how to begin. We got our food and then found seats at an empty table. I wasn't sure what I'd expected from this reconciliation but the awkward silence we were experiencing was certainly not it. We picked at our food, neither one of us able to make the first statement, both of us secreting nervousness as we secreted perspiration when hot. What was happening here? I'd never had trouble talking to Nina before. Why couldn't I say anything now? Was it because, for the first time, we were both aware of our naked feelings for each other?
Because we'd both used the word love in conversation? Because we both knew that our relationship depended absolutely on what transpired? Were we both deathly afraid of saying the wrong thing?
I wanted to reassure her that I loved her. I wanted to promise once more that I'd never hurt her again. I wanted to hear her say she loved me, only this time not in a break-up conversation or in anger. But none of that seemed right. I'd said my piece the day before and she knew how I felt. I knew I was on probation here, an extremely rigid probation. If I said or did one wrong thing, Nina would possibly disappear from my life, moving back to the fate which was still trying to claim her.