I let her sleep for a while, but when I begin to grow tired myself, I know I need to wake her. She’s out cold when I lean over and whisper, “Candace.”
When I run my hand down her arm, she starts to stir. “Candace . . . Candace, wake up.”
Her eyes slowly flutter open and when she looks up at me, she locks them to mine. I can tell she isn’t fully awake as she continues to stare. Out of nowhere, she startles me when she lurches off of the couch, finally coherent and free from her haze.
“Are you okay?” I ask when I stand up, and as soon as I step towards her, she shoots her hands out, wanting me to stay away. She’s scared of me, and I hate that. Whatever it is she’s dealing with, whatever is causing her to react this way, I just want to comfort her, but there’s no way she’d let me if I tried.
“I’m sorry,” I say as calmly as I can, not wanting to freak her out any more than she is. “I didn’t want to leave you without you locking the door behind me. You fell asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you, so I let you sleep for a while.”
“I’m sorry,” she breathes out.
“For what?”
Lowering her hands, she looks a little mortified when she explains, “Startling easily. I didn’t know I fell asleep. I’m just . . . I was just disoriented.”
“Candace,” I quietly say, not wanting her to feel uncomfortable with me. I step toward her, and when she doesn’t move away, I take my hand and brush aside a lock of her hair that’s fallen across her forehead. I feel her stiffen, and I quickly pull back.
“I’ll lock the door behind you,” she says.
“Let me help you clean this up.”
She looks at the mess and tells me, “I’ll do it. It’s all trash anyway.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
She follows me as I walk to the door. Before I leave, I turn back and she’s right next to me. She has to tilt her head to look up at me, and when I see her from this angle, she looks so fragile. When her eyes shift up to meet mine, I softly tell her, in all seriousness, “I want you to feel comfortable with me.”
I notice her shallow breaths when she whispers, “I know.”
“Okay. So, we’ll talk later?”
When she softens her face and says, “Yeah,” I feel better about leaving.
14
When I pull into the parking lot of the gym, I spot Jase’s 4Runner already here. He got back in town a couple days ago, and the three of them have been busy with school as the quarter is coming to an end, so the two of us arranged to get together to do some lifting.
“Jase, hey,” I say as I walk in and see him mixing his Gatorade.
“Hey, man,” he says as he turns around. “You ready?”
“Yeah.”
We head over to the free weights and pick up our dumbbells to start our bicep workout.
“So, how was Ohio?” I ask him, knowing it was the first time he met Mark’s family.
“Better than I anticipated. Never had to meet parents in the past, so I was uneasy going there.”
Jase told me that before Mark, he was a lot like me. Random hook-ups. But he seems to really love Mark, so I’m glad everything is working out for them.
“His family cool?”
“His sisters are a little wild,” he laughs. “But yeah, his parents are great. Much different than mine.”
“How so?” I question.
Taking his weights over to the bench, he sits down and says, “I’m pretty nonexistent to them. And when I told them I was gay . . . they were done.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Before Mark came along, all I really had was Candace. She’s been my family since I moved here.”
“You guys seem really tight,” I respond as I set down the dumbbells and start racking the weights on a barbell to do some bench presses.
“We’ve always been that way,” he tells me, walking over to spot.
As I lift the bar out of the rack, he stands over me, saying, “Thanks for checking in on her. I didn’t even know she had that blowup with her parents until I got back home.”
Pushing out the last of my reps, he grabs the bar from me as I sit up.
“Yeah, well, I was home with nothing to do, so it was nice to have someone around to hang out with,” I say, downplaying the whole situation. I’m not sure how Jase would react if he knew how I’m starting to feel about his best friend.
“Well, for what it’s worth, it’s good to see her hanging out with someone else besides me and Mark.”
“Is she really that closed off?” I ask. I know what I’ve seen, but it isn’t much.
“Lately? Yeah.”
That’s all he says when I lie back down to pump out another set, and I wonder what he means by ‘lately.’ Was she not always like this? Then I make the connect—I wasn’t always like this either. Never really. Not until her. But it was before that—it was that night that got me thinking so differently. That night that messed with my head so much that I started drifting away from old habits, old friends.
My mind goes back to the alley, and I get a flash of Candace on that rainy night in the coffee shop. Fuck. Why am I thinking about that? I thought I let it go, but it’s back—the question. Ripping through my reps, I force that sick thought out of my head.
There’s no connection there. It’s just your mind trying to put an end to what was left unresolved. I repeat this silently to myself a few times, knowing that my subconscious is just screwing with me. There’s no connection . . . is there?
I spend the next hour distracting myself, talking with Jase about football and how the season is going so far for the Huskies. Anything to keep my mind away from that night. After we finish up and say our goodbyes, I head out.
When I’m not around her, my mind seems to drift, so I selfishly pull out my phone and text her, knowing when we hang out, I’m too consumed with her to think about the other shit that tends to creep up in my head.
You hungry?
I start driving home, which is only about ten minutes from the gym, and it takes about that long for her to reply.
Can’t eat. Have a 2-hour dance studio today.
Well shouldn’t you fuel up?
Not if you want me to barf. :-)
I laugh at her text as I sit in my jeep that’s now parked in my driveway.
I’d love to see that.
That’s disgusting.
More for having something to tease you about and less for the actual barf.
Can we stop talking about barf? LOL
You free for a run tomorrow morning?
Yeah.
Happy to spend more time with her, I type out my last text.
Be at your place around 7.
“You sure you wanna go?” I ask as we walk out to her front porch. She looks exhausted, and by her bloodshot eyes, I can tell she didn’t get any sleep last night.
“I’m sure,” she says with her head down as she walks past me.
We start with a light jog through the mist that fills the chilly morning. I look over at her as she stares straight ahead.