Taming Cross

She finishes the bread and pulls out something else—beef jerky—which she sits on the table. Then she disappears, returning a moment later with a bottle of merlot and two jewel-encrusted wine glasses.

“The bread and jam are homemade. The merlot is local, too.”

I snort. “What a hostess.”

“Hey, I don’t have to share.” With some difficulty she pulls the cork, and my vision doubles as I watch her pour. She takes a small sip and sighs. “I’m just trying to be informative. It’s my go-to, stressed-out mode, I guess.”

“Is stressed all you’re feeling?”

She laughs, but it’s strained. “It’s a good bit more than stressed. Honestly, it’s too much for me to even begin deal with.” She takes another sip of her wine. “So I feel pretty good at this moment. The wine…could be crap and it would still be good.”

“Is that true for the company?” I joke, and she pretends to consider.

“It’s not the worst thing about this situation,” she says.

“Nice.” I take a large drink of the wine. It’s velvety, with a hint of molasses and a taste of plum, but like she said, it’s been a while.

I rub my eyes, take the bread she hands me, and say, “I shot a lot of people you knew.”

She purses her lips and just sits there, staring at her plate. I can tell she’s fighting tears, and I think to myself, what the hell is wrong with me? Impulsively, I touch her arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. This whole thing is f**king weird—”

“Can you say frack please?”

“Huh?”

“Say frack.” She wipes her eyes and speaks from behind the shield of her hand. “I really hate the F-word.”

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “My mom’s Catholic, so I should know better.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not for anything like that. My aunt taught me it was tacky.”

“Taaaaaccky.” I say it with what I think is a convincing drawl, and she shrugs.

“Ooooookay. You can make fuuun of myyyy aceeeeent all you wannnnt.”

I swallow back some of my wine and watch her eat. I’m like a fracking cat. Curiosity is killing me. I need to know more about this woman—now.

“I was in a motorcycle accident.” There. I said it. I shift in my seat, automatically searching for a position that will lessen the painful zinging of the damaged nerve endings in my neck. “Fallout was pretty bad and I was laid up for a while.”

She considers me over the rim of her glass. I can feel her eyes urging me to go on. I take a long sip of my wine, hoping it will take the edge off my zings. “What do you want to know, Mer?”

“What happened to your neck?”

“I fu— fracked up the posterior joint, like pretty bad. Fractured C3, C5, and C6. Those are vertebrae near the top of the spine but you probably know that.” She nods. “Couple of herniated discs around that area and a facet fracture.”

Her eyes are wide, but to her credit, she doesn’t bust out with something asinine or overly pitying. She bites her lip and says, “That sucks.”

“I was in a coma for a little while after.”

Again, her green eyes pop. “Really? But you look so…good.”

That gets a laugh out of me. “Good genes.”

“Good luck,” she says, chewing some bread. “Really, though, it’s a wonder you’re alive.”

I nod. “I had a stroke, too.”

“What?!”

I scrub my hand over my eyes. Why the frack am I telling her all this?

She’s looking at me with sadness, but it doesn’t feel like pity.

“I got moved from one place to another. Like a rehab place, to another rehab. When you’re moving people who have head injuries, or I guess any kind of injury that’s bad enough, sometimes their blood pressure goes up.” I take a swig of wine and force myself to meet her eyes again. This is so personal, it’s hard to get it all out, even though the facts are pretty straightforward. “If they get in too much during the transport…strokes can happen.”

Her mouth twists. “That’s awful.”

I shrug, then feel like I’m bragging. Why am I telling her this? “I wasn’t awake or anything like that, but sometimes I think I remember it. I just get this feeling… Kind of like dread or…I don’t know, doom or something. I think maybe I can remember…almost dying.”

She’s chewing again, beef jerky this time, carrying on with her meal like she talks about these things every day. I heave a deep breath. I’m sweating. I feel awkward. Like I shared too much. Because I did share too much. I take another gulp of my wine and wish that I was Nightcrawler from X-Men. I could vanish in a poof.

I’m not looking at her, but I can see her out of the corner of my eye, and she looks calm and unperturbed. Just a girl eating. She says, “That must be weird. And awful. I bet no one can relate. That’s an experience hardly anyone has had.”

I nod, and it occurs to me that hers is too.

“I can’t picture you as a sex slave.” Oh f**k. Did I just say that? I squeeze my eyes shut. Drop my head into one hand. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“Uh-uh.” She swallows some of her own wine. “Don’t be sorry. You just spilled your stuff, so I think we’re being honest now. And while we’re being honest, thank you. For today. I noticed that you got between David and me.”

I shrug. “You waited for me to get off the bike before you ran. You grabbed my arm to help me off. Remember?”

She nods. “It was no big deal.” She takes a bite of bread, then says, “And as far as the sex slave thing, I wasn’t really a sex slave in the sense most people think. You know, since Jesus was g*y. I was just a beard for him, most of the time.” She says it so naturally, I almost miss the flare in her eyes when she says ‘most of the time’.

I want to know everything that happened to her, and I want to know right now. But it’s not my story to take. And I’m not drunk enough to go there.

“It was a lucky break,” she says. “I guess. I mean, if there’s something lucky about being sold, it would probably be being sold to someone who only wants you for appearances.”

“Like my hand.” I hold up my gun-shot palm and make a bullshit face. “When I think about this, I feel lucky.”

She makes a bullshit face back at me, then sticks out her tongue. “I’m just trying to look at the bright side.”

“Maybe sometimes there isn’t one.”