Page 64 of The Brave and the Reckless

“That’s all renovations. What about the therapy part?”

“I have some plans.” I weighed my head from side to side.

“Are they secret?”

“No, but…” My eyes dropped to Esra’s hands, only the tips of her fingers poking out from the sleeves of myshirt as she held an old mug with some car dealership’s faded logo on it.

“Oh. You don’t want to tellme.”

“This place, and what it could be, is important to me.”

“Right, and I’m just the Buckle Bunny you eat out in the break room.”

“Aren’t you?” I challenged, not sure how I wanted her to answer. She was infuriating and carefree and irresponsible– and meant for much bigger places than Wild Fields, Tennessee.

Instead of yelling and running like she had last night, Esra held my gaze. She stood, unmoving. Her dark eyes burrowed into me like claws. She stayed.

“I’d never even been eaten out until about five months ago,” she said, voice low, still not breaking eye contact. “Which is a very roundabout way of saying that I grew up very sheltered, basically bubble-wrapped, and even throughout college never had even a shrivel of fun. I’ve been completely focused on school for as long as I can remember. So maybe you think that I’m just easy and in it for a good time, but it’s not that easy for me. I’m making conscious decisions every day, allowing myself to indulge in things I’ve been denied my whole life.”

I swallowed and nodded. I had to tell her that the shit I’d said last night wasn’t even about her. It was about me and my own stupid hang-ups. But this was the first time Esra mentioned her life before Bravetown in any detail, and I was too curious not to ask for more. “What changed five months ago?”

“Nine months ago, actually, I went to my first anatomy lab class, and I fainted.”

“You fainted?”

“It’s not uncommon. A lot of med students faint the first time they see a dead body, or the first time they have to cut.”

I grimaced.

“Exactly,” she laughed but tore her gaze away, back to the dark skies outside the window. The thunder was getting louder, closer. “I grew up onGrey’s Anatomy. I watched so many surgeries in training videos, so I’d be ready for med school. Confronted with the real thing though? I keeled over. I came back the next week, doubled my OR mask against the smell because I figured it clearly wasn’t the visual that bothered me, and still fainted. I thought I’d get used to it eventually. Most people do. I went to the third class, and it was fine at first. I stayed in the back. I was going to ease myself into it. Then when the professor demonstrated… well… it wasn’t… That time, when I went down, I fell really badly against some lab equipment and dislocated my elbow. I didn’t go back after that. I knew, instinctively, that I wouldn’t get used to it. I was done. I’d just spent fifteen years working toward a medical degree, but when I was confronted with a real person,my own bodywas like ‘double nope’.” Despite her lighthearted phrasing, her voice clogged up. She bit her lip as her next breath stuttered through her chest. “Nobody seems to grasp how much it hurts when you do everything right, everything the way you’re supposed to, and your silly body just ruins all your plans. I couldn’tjustswitch major. I couldn’tjustgo from med school to grad school and pretend it wasjustabout finding a different job in the medical field. There was nothingjustabout it. It was unfair.”

That same archaic instinct that wanted to shelter her from the storm took over, except this time the storm was inside of her, and I couldn’t fix that. I gently freed the mug from her fingers and set it on the windowsill. Esra let herself be pulled into my arms, her face nestled against my collar bone and her fingers splayed across my chest.

“I really wanted it. More than anything,” she whispered, brushing her cold nose over my skin, “but losing it has given me the chance to catch up on all the fun I missed out on over the years. I want to feel normal for a bit.”

Her words set off a pang in my chest. Normal. I’d never had normal, and I’d envied all the normal people around me for so many years that I wasn’t sure I even knew what normal looked like anymore.

“I know that feeling. I didn’t exactly have a normal childhood.” I brushed a hand through Esra’s hair, tracing circles across her back with the other. “My mom was very sick while I was growing up. She had an aggressive form of MS. Horseback riding was good for her though. Even when she couldn’t walk anymore and needed help into the saddle, she could still ride on her own. Staying active like that helped with all the other symptoms. It gave me a few more years with her. It was also the only way I could cope. At home, I helped with taking care of her a lot, and in school, I was always the boy with the dying mother. None of that mattered when I was with the horses. That’s what I want to offer here. Physical and emotional support that includes care-givers.”

Esra slipped her hand around her back to where mine was still tracing invisible patterns over her spine. Her fingers folded around mine and offered a gentle squeeze.

“What about your dad?”

“He wasn’t much of a dad, even less so after my mom died. If you want, I’ll tell you about him some other time,” I said and actually meant it.

The seriousness of the moment was ruptured when her stomach growled loudly enough to compete with the thunder overhead.

“Ohmygod.” Esra laughed and shook her head, pushing back just enough to blink up at me. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I could really use one of your carrot sticks right about now.”

“Make yourself at home,” I said and nodded toward the sofa. “I’ll grab the bags.”

When I came back from the kitchen with the saddle bags and a fresh cup of tea, Esra had pulled the throw blanket from the sofa and spread it out on the floor. She arranged the cushions around it to face the fireplace, creating something resembling half a nest.

“We can have a picnic.” She beamed. “That feels less depressing than eating veggies on the sofa while waiting for the rain to stop.”

“My veggies aren’t depressing. They’re healthy.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive attributes, Noah.” She rolled her eyes at me.

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