Page 5 of Be My Reason

“Good. Tonight was really great, Brooklyn.” He smiles, leans in and kisses me lightly on the lips and then turns to walk away, looking back at me. “I’ll see you Monday then.” I watch him walk down the sidewalk to his car, get in and drive away waving a hand out the window as he does.

~~ ~

As I sit on the bus to school, courtesy of Emma’s early morning dentist appointment, I think about spending yesterday holed up with Emma, re-living the entire night I spent with Nate down to every minute little detail. Nothing less would satisfy her curiosity. We both cried a little, laughed a lot and there may have even been a high five or two mixed in.

As I glance around,I wonder if I look different because I seem to be getting some strange stares.Can they tell I’m not a virgin anymore? Maybe it is just this huge smile I’m wearing this morning.

I hear bits and pieces of conversation through the regular commotion that ensues on the very loud bus.“. . . they just up and left?”, “. . . mom was arrested . . .”, “. . . my dad said it was prostitution . . .”, “. . . Nate say anything?”Nate?This gets my attention and I stretch in vain to try and hear more as we pull up to my school.

When I get off the bus, my friend and fellow flautist, Abby, grabs me by the elbow and practically runs me to the nearest bathroom, shooing out everyone that was in there. “What happened with you and Nate this weekend and have you heard anything yet?” she asks, with a worried look on her face that more than concerns me.

I give her theabbreviated version of my Saturday night. Then I ask, “What do you mean have I heard anything yet?”

“Oh, Lyn.” She closes her eyes and sighs big.I mean big. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Oh my God, did something happen? Did he get in an accident?Is he dead?” I’m seriously freaking out right now. My hands are getting shaky and she had better start talking or I’m going to beat it out of her.

“Um, his dad took off yesterday with him and his sister. They just up and left. Apparently his mom and some other women were arrested Saturday night. Something to do with running a prostitution ring out of her spa.” She looks like she is about to cry as she says, “Nobody seems to know where they went but my friend who lives down the street from Nate said a moving truck showed up late yesterday and totally cleaned out their house.”

“What?” I’m trying to process this information.He said he had to help his dad all day yesterday but he didn’t say anything about moving. I’m so confused. “He said he would meet me at my locker today.” I look up at her like she will have all the answers.

“I’m so sorry, Lyn.” She looks at me with a helpless look on her face. “He’s gone. Not even his teammates know where he is. I don’t think he is coming back.” Her voice cracks a little.

My shirt feels wet and I look down at it when it dawns on me that I am crying. I’m crying and I can’t breathe. I drop my books, spilling loose papers over the dirty linoleum. I lean over and put my hands on my knees and try to take in a breath, but all I’m getting are short little puffs in and out.

“Lyn, are you okay?” I shake my head at her, unable to talk, barely able to breathe. “I think you are hyperventilating. I’m going to get the nurse.” She runs out of the bathroom and I’m alone. Alone, just like he has left me. I back up until I hit the cold, hard concrete wall and I sink slowly down to the floor, struggling to breathe, trying to figure out if my heart is still beating. I know it’s not, because it is no longer within me. He took it with him.

Chapter One

Eight years later . . .

“Again, Michael?”I ask through the wave of exhaustion that has taken over my body. “You know I love you, but aren’t you worn out yet?”

“Well, you know what they say. If at first you don’t succeed—”

Swat. I hit him playfully on the chest.

“What?” he says. “I really want to get you there and if we keep going, I think I can.”

I think men are brainwashed by the movies.I mean, in real life, we don’t always come. And we definitely don’t always come at the exact same time. In fact, I think I could knock on wood and cross my fingers while hopping on one foot at the precise moment that all the stars align and that still wouldn’t happen. But, hey, I guess all this trying doesn’t exactly hurt my chances.

“I wish you would understand that it’s good for me even when I don’t always come.”Besides,I can always get myself off later.

“Lyn,” hewhines, when he notices the scowl on my face, “I just want to send you off with a bang. I’m going to miss you so much.”

He’s so cute when he pouts.I smile up at him. “It’s only for a week. Plus, you’ll be at the hospital so much that you won’t even know I’m gone.”

“Sweetheart, one day without you is too long.” He kisses my cheek as he springs out of bed. Who springs out of bed at five o’clock in the morning?Oh, right, third-year residents who are used to living on four hours of sleep. “I’d better get going anyway. I’ve got rounds in thirty,” he says.

I smile as I watch his perfectly sculpted ass head towards the bathroom.I bring my knees up to my chest and cover myself with the bed sheet as I thoughtfully watch him through the open bathroom door.

Michael’s toned abstighten and relax as he bends over to brush his teeth. His reddish-blonde hair is cut short to fit under his scrub cap. I wonder if someday he’ll grow it out a little so I could run my fingers through it. As he gets into the shower, I pad into the bathroom and grab his toothbrush—a habit of mine ever since I first stayed the night at his place. It feels so intimate, like I’m part of him somehow. I stand and stare at myself, toothbrush in mouth, and ponder what I see in the mirror. My skin—far too pale for my wavy dark-as-night hair—stands out even more now that I’ve lost that summer glow. The nose I got from my dad is too pointy, but I make up for it with Mom’s green eyes. I lean over to spit in the sink and jump when I rise back up. “Ahhh, Michael!” I scream half-heartedly as he reaches around to grab my breasts.

“Mmmm,” he murmurs. “They fit perfectly in my hands.” He smiles at me in the mirror, eyeing his toothbrush hanging from my mouth. “You know, now that we’re engaged, don’t you think you should at least have your own toothbrush at my place?” I shrug my shoulders, watching him run his hands down my hips as I reach for a towel.

“Lyn, you don’t need to cover up in front of me. You are so beautiful,” he says so sweetly that I know he thinks it’s true, even if it’s not. It’s not that I think I’m fat, just curvy. But I think women are conditioned to believe that if anything jiggles, except our boobs, it is a bad thing. So that is why I run. And with all of the running I do to keep the pounds off, my legs and butt have become my best features.

He slips a t-shirt over his head and quickly dresses in the requisite light-blue resident scrubs. “Everything covered at the shop?” he questions. “Is Kaitlyn good running the show all week alone? I could swing by and help her out,” he says, with not so much as a thought to his own killer schedule. I can’t help but love this man for all of his self-sacrificing qualities.

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