Good For You

I do not belong here.

“Immaculada, just the woman I wanted to see.” We’ve entered the kitchen through paneled doors with beveled glass inserts. Stainless steel, granite and dark wood combine to make this room as stunning as the rest of the house. I snap my mouth closed and turn when I realize Reid has introduced me to someone.

“Senorita,” the woman says, her accent familiar from my side of LA. “Nice to meet you.” She’s got that middle-aged heaviness around the midsection and her hair is pul ed into a coiled braid. She’s wearing a uniform. Though she’s polite, there’s something unreceptive in her manner, and my ears grow hot because of course she must know I was here overnight.

“Yes ma’am, it’s nice to meet you, too.” I’ve never felt so out of place. Wel , no—I felt equal y out of place at the nightclub. I didn’t just step out of my comfort zone, I’ve catapulted myself from it. I want nothing more in this moment than to find it and scramble safely back in.

Immaculada leaves the room, and Reid tugs my hand and seats me at a smal table near a window. At the high back wal of the property, a man trims a flowering shrub to picture-perfect roundness—not one blossom, stem or leaf outside of the visual sphere. Another man whisks the pruned bits from the lawn and into bags, which are loaded onto a motorized cart. This is what people mean when they speak in terms of “grounds” rather than a “back yard.” Holy cow.

Toast and a smal , plain omelet are arranged on the embossed white plate in front of me, and orange juice in a heavy tumbler sits just behind the folded napkin and silverware. As Reid seats himself next to me, I swal ow nervously, unsure I can get anything down. But the juice tastes fresh-squeezed from actual oranges, the toast has been lightly buttered, and I even manage a bit of the omelet.

We eat in silence, except for the sounds of silverware on china and chewing, and I feel a little better after. Reid is clearly not the slightest bit hungover—he’s ingested three times the amount of food I had on my barely-touched plate, plus coffee, the thought of which makes my stomach turn.

The moment I wipe the soft napkin across my mouth, he pushes his plate away and folds his arms in front of it. “Are you going to tel me what happened?” he asks without preamble.

I look at him directly for the first time since I left his bathroom, and in the sunlit cheeriness of this room, his face stil takes my breath away. There are so many ways to answer his question that I don’t know where to begin. “What do you mean?”

“I worked my ass off next to a girl for a month, almost daily, and though that girl looked like the spitting image of you, she and the girl I rescued last night are poles apart. I can’t help but wonder—what occurred to cause that sort of change?”

I start to speak and have to clear my throat. “Rescued?” His expression doesn’t change, except for an almost unnoticeable tic in his jaw. “You were sloppy drunk and about to go home with some douchebag—and I’m pretty sure he was a complete stranger. I can’t say for sure what would have happened, but I have an idea none of it would have been in your best interest.”

“Oh.” My heart is hammering. I’m not a girl who wants to be saved by a boy. I have never been that girl. Even when I fel for Colin, I fel for the myth of thinking we were in love.

That we were on equal terms within that relationship. Yes, I was oh-so-aware that he was older and popular, and I was dazzled by these facts at the outset, but that wasn’t what mattered to me. The loss of that status when we ended didn’t faze me. The loss of what I thought was love, the realization that it was al a lie, was what ground my heart to a slow stop.

If what Reid says is true… but I have no reason to believe it isn’t, from the snatches of last night that I remember. I know it’s the truth. And I know that he did rescue me, simply because I’d neglected, or refused, to save myself. I feel like a child who carelessly ran across a busy street without looking—a child who’s been shaken and asked What were you thinking? I have no good answer. I wasn’t thinking last night, beyond the desire to numb myself.

“So.” His gaze is steady on mine, his voice stil low, but firm. “What’s going on?”

I force myself to think about the thing from which I spent last night trying to escape, and tears wel up for the first time in a while. He seems to stop breathing, fingers curling into his palm, but he doesn’t make a move or look away. I take a deep breath. “My sister, Deb?” He nods once, encouraging me to continue. I stare down at the cold egg and toast crumbs on my plate. “She had an accident—she fel and hit her head, and is mostly unresponsive now. She can’t walk, can’t feed herself, blinks and makes some facial gestures but never looks anyone in the eye, never speaks.

Her doctors say that any vocalizations are al involuntary, not reactive.”

A tear blinks out of my eye and lands in a splat on the plate, gets soaked up by an adjacent scrap of toast. I press the napkin to my eyes, glad the makeup from last night is gone.

“Were you—very close? I’ve never had a sibling,” he stumbles over the last word, “so I wouldn’t know what a normal degree of intimacy would be. She’s several years older, right?”

“Eight years. But we’re very close.” The effort of keeping the tears dammed inside is excruciating—my throat feels bruised, my entire neck hurts as though someone has pummeled my windpipe just under my jaw. “She’s my best friend.”