Page 63 of Near Miss

Those things had me back at his house. On his couch. In his bed. Even sitting at his island in one of his sweaters while he made me what he swore was a nutritious, post-sex meal.

He wasn’t wrong. It covered all the bases—lean protein, complex carbs, and vegetables.

But it turns out he’s not as lackadaisical as he might have you believe. He’s serious about what he puts into his body during the season, and there wasn’t much in the way of seasoning.

Earlier, he told me about the temperature Napoleon liked his bath.

Beckett swears all this knowledge is going to be a hit with my patients.

I test it out on Rav first.

“Did you know that Napoleon loved a scalding-hot bath?”

One eyebrow kicks up and amusement glints in his eyes. It echoes in his voice, too. “No, I can’t say I did. Where’d you learn that?”

I wave a hand in the air. “I happen to know an expert on the French Revolution. Fascinating stuff.”

Rav leans back, resting his feet on the coffee table between us. “How’s your anxiety been? Any recent panic attacks?”

“Fine.” It’s not a lie.

I haven’t worn the earmuffs since the game, but sometimes, I feel like maybe I never took them off. Nothing sounds as sharp or as jarring.

I think a lot of things in my life have dulled to the same quiet, pleasant murmur.

If my life were one of the books I read, it would be explained by the presence of Beckett, this person made just for me by whatever benevolent gods ruled the sky.

But here, in this life, it’s just science. I’m having more orgasms. That equals more endorphins. Serotonin, dopamine. All the things that calm my brain.

My heart beats a bit funny at the thought—and it whispers,Liar.

“I’ve noticed something.” Rav props his head up on his hand, elbow digging into the arm of the leather couch. “The closer we’ve gotten to the end of your fellowship, the more closed off you’ve gotten. You were close to an open book when we started seeing one another.”

“I’m not sure anyone in my life would have defined me as an open book, Rav,” I answer truthfully.

I’m not an intentionally closed-off person. I don’t always mean to lie.

I think there are things I would like to share. But there’s this weird code we learned when we were kids. I’m not sure where we picked it up because our mother wasn’t around to enforce it, but even as children, we kept our father’s secrets.

You don’t tell your friends on the playground your father drinks too much. That he’s not violent, but he can be unpleasant and just not a real dad. That you tuck yourself in because he needs bourbon more than he needs you. You certainly don’t tell anyone that he drives you around like that and one time, he drove you off a bridge and you had to give him a part of your liveras a result because his wasn’t healing properly and it was going to kill him.

I’m not even sure why it was a secret, but it was. I don’t remember being particularly scared someone was going to come take us away. Those were just the confines of the cage we lived in.

The irony is that it is sort of a tenet of sobriety. Sobriety isn’t yours to share.

Somewhere along the way, Stella shed the shackles clamping her mouth closed, and I think maybe during the car accident—the water rusted mine shut.

It took me all of college and too many bottles of wine to finally tell Willa and Kate.

Rav nods thoughtfully, before conceding, “An open book with me, then. I didn’t know you before, but I’d wager your feelings of resentment about your donation have grown as your fellowship has progressed. How do you think you ended up here?”

“We were in the car and then we weren’t and then I was short part of my liver and then I was in college and then I was in med school. I blinked and it was residency, and I took one step and here I was. Taking from people.”

“You don’t take from people,” Rav interjects. You’d think he’d be tired of it by now—Willa said my whole “live life for me” was a diatribe, but this is probably the only sermon I make.

“Someone took from me.” My voice fractures when I say it; it cracks my scar open too, revealing all that empty space in me, and I think little me peeks around the corner from wherever it is she hides in there, and she wonders where all the pieces of her have gone.

With an air of maddening patience, he shifts forward. “You gave your consent, Greer.”

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