Breakdown (Crash into Me) (17 page)

“Here.” William handed me two small pink pills. “These will help too.”

I swallowed them dry, not willing to take my hand from the cold water for even a second.

Sighing, William shook the hair from his eyes as he sat on the toilet seat lid. “Now how do you know I haven’t just roofied you or something?”

I shrugged and leaned my head on the light switch behind me. From this angle I could see his messy blond hair better and stare openly at the muscles of his arms through his shirt while he riffled through the first-aid backpack.  “I don’t know—have you?”

“No, but—” The sound of something slamming in the backpack startled me. My hand flinched away from the water. The second I realized it I put it back in. “Damn it, Jumper! Are you trying to give me gray hair?”

“Why would I do that?” I laughed. “I like your hair just the way it is.”

“Then use your head.” He sighed. “You’re too smart to be doing dumb shit.”

I floated on the compliment for a good three minutes while he sorted through the mess of a backpack, throwing away empty boxes of band-aids and what I guessed were expired medicines. Finally, when I grew bored with my own thoughts and the sound of pots and pans from above, I spoke up, curiosity and pain killers starting to get the best of me.

“I—how’d you know this was a second degree?” I didn’t have to gesture to my hand for both of us to know what I was talking about. “I mean, I knew it was a second degree, but how did you? Have you had medical training or something?”

“Nah.” He looked back up at me and smiled. Still, I told myself that weakness in my knees had to have been from the pain in my hand. “I did a couple semesters at a junior college, but that wasn’t for me. I only know some of this stuff because I’ve been in so many accidents myself.”

Accidents? The word alone made me feel jittery, but somehow I got the feeling that it didn’t mean the same thing to me that it did to William. While I would call a fender-bender an accident, he would probably consider that a regular part of his weekend routine.

“You don’t look like you’ve been in any accidents.”

Nodding, he put down a wrap of gauze and pulled up the side of his shirt. A lump formed in my throat at the sight of the definition I saw there, the clear-cut muscle splashed with thin white lines.

“See these?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Crashed my first car into a post-office when I was seventeen—chunks of the windshield got me pretty good.”

I counted to five before making myself look away. After all, how much longer could I stare before it would be considered outright gawking? “Wow. What else you got?”

Smiling still, he rolled up his gray shirt sleeve and pointed out a long red scar, almost impossible to see beneath the tattoo of a Route 66 sign. Surrounding it, colorful blue stars, black aces, Celtic symbols, and random pieces of machinery went as far as my eyes could see. As he rotated his wrist, I could see a heart surrounded in bright orange flames. Though maybe I should have expected it, I wasn’t ashamed to admit that the sleeve of tattoo surprised me a little—though why exactly I could not say.

  “A sore loser,” William said, pointing out the scar to me “After one of my first races.”

I titled my head to the side, studying a gear shift on his other arm. “I didn’t know knife fights and tattoos could be accidents,” I teased.

“You don’t like them?” The painkillers must have had me by then, because for a second I could have sworn he sounded disappointed. William shook his head at me but still smiled. “What else am I supposed to do with all the scars I get?”

I shrugged. What could I say? While his tattoos definitely made him more attractive—an issue I was going to have to explore with myself later—I wasn’t going to beg him to see more. But I did ask myself how I could have gone a week without seeing his arms, not to mention how he could afford such extensive tattoo work on a mechanic’s salary. 

“Hey, you.” He nudged me. “Get that hand out of the water so it can dry.”

Chapter Ten

With the cold water and pain killers, my hand was pleasantly numb, tingling just a little at the fingertips. I used my right hand to shut off the faucet, feeling the slightest twinge of guilt for possibly running up William’s water bill. Grimacing, I shook out both of my hands and looked away. I was glad now that I had bought the car shaped cookie-cutters. After all this, I would definitely owe William a little something.

Without warning, he snaked his arms against me—almost required in the ridiculously small bathroom—and turned on the faucet again before grabbing the bar of soap below the medicine cabinet.

“You really do know your first-aid,” I teased.

William looked up at me and smiled. “Trial and error, Jumper. If you behave yourself…” He dried his hands on a paper towel and reached for my hand. “I’ll show you the scars from the dog bite that ended up getting infected.”

“Oh, goody!” I focused on my pretend excitement as best I could, a welcome distraction from the cold goo he applied to my hand, and the silent wish the scars in question were somewhere on his thigh. 

“How did you get bit by a dog? I suppose that was an accident too?”

Smiling still, he tossed the Q-tip he used to apply the ointment. When I saw how easily it landed in the wastebasket, I smiled.

“Cora liked to bring home strays. I was too little to understand taking food away from a starving dog was a bad idea.”

I flinched at the feel of gauze on my hand and the sound of another girl’s name on his lips.

“Cora?”

“My second oldest sister,” he said simply. Finished wrapping my hand, William secured the gauze with a thin piece of medical tape. When he took my wrist his smile grew wider, clearly satisfied with his work. I, however, pulled away.

“Your parents didn’t take you to the doctor?” I asked. “Antibiotics? Rabies shots?”

William laughed a little as he let my wrist go. Not at all offended like I thought he might be, he leaned over to start putting things back in the backpack.

“She had gotten in trouble for bring animals home before.” He chuckled fondly at a memory I couldn’t see. “She knew she’d get reamed out if she got caught with another one, so she begged me to keep quiet, bribed me with hot wheels and candy.”

I ended up smiling just a little. That, was easy enough to picture. “Do-gooding runs in the family then?”

William’s smile fell as he zipped up the final compartment of the backpack. “Nah, Jumper. Not always…”

I hated the change in his demeanor just then, how his body tensed and how his dimples disappeared like a runaway teenager at a train station. And while it did affect his general appearance, my dislike did not revolve around that particular aspect. Instead, my hate had more to do with the tension he gave off, and the darkness that his eyes possessed, not to mention to obvious unhappiness in him.

Feeling brave—I blamed this one the bright pink pills—I reached my good hand up slowly until the nail of my index finger was floating just along the edge of the thin scar by his ear. After everything he had done to make me feel better, this was the least I could do. “And this one?”

Faintly, he smiled, looking at me just from the corner of his eye. “Bar fight.”

“I presume you won?”

Now he smiled until his dimples showed completely. I felt myself relax too, not even aware that I had been tensed up. “Even if I didn’t, I’d tell you I had. Speaking of scars…” William continued to smile as he stood up, easily picking up the backpack once again and slinging it over his shoulder. “I show you mine you show me yours?”

Shaking my head, I walked out of the bathroom in front of him so he couldn’t see me smile. “That isn’t very gentlemanly of you, William.”

Taken aback, he feigned offense, dropping the backpack where he stood. “When have I ever given you the impression that I was a gentleman?”

I looked away to smile again. “Good point.”

I continued to smile even as he shoved the first-aid backpack into the closet, and I tested the springs of the shifty looking couch with my arms. Even as I did this, however, I got the feeling that I was intruding, my invite worn out now that my intended purpose there was served.

I brought my bandaged hand to my chest and held it close.

“You’re really not going to show me any scars, Jumper? Tattoos? Anything?”

Coming up from behind me, William plopped himself on the couch and kicked off his sneakers, instantly comfortable. When I did not react likewise, he looked up at me and frowned a little. Still holding my hand close, I responded to his silent request and sat beside him, smiling at his smile.

“I don’t have any tattoos,” I said finally. “And most of my scars are on the inside. All very cliché I’m afraid.”

“Nothing about you is cliché, Jumper.” He leaned closer and wiggled a single eyebrow. “But I bet
all
your scars are prettier than mine.”

I smiled freely, running the nail of my index finger up and down the gauze on my hand and now wishing I had been bold enough to touch William’s face when I had the chance. If he had rebuked me I could have pretended my hand hurt too much to notice I was being inappropriate, openly blamed my boldness on the painkillers he had given me…

“How’s your hand feeling anyway, Jumper? You want some more Advil?”

Damn
. Maybe I couldn’t have blamed my behavior on the painkillers.

“No, thanks.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t feel too bad.”

“Why’d you do it then?” he asked suddenly. “Want some scars for the outside?”

I could tell he was trying to make me smile, but I couldn’t. Instead, I looked away in shame at the way I had behaved in front of William’s friends. While not intending to, I had undoubtedly embarrassed him around the elite group. It was doubtful, but the idea that my destructive behavior could have somehow diminished the respect other people held for him made me queasy.

“I’m sorry I ruined your night. I didn’t mean—”

He brushed off my apology with a wave and a smile. “You didn’t ruin anything, Jumper, don’t worry about it. It’s you I’m worried about.”

I bit hard on my lip, truly believing if I let myself talk I might tell him everything, crawl right out of my skin and expose myself completely. I stayed silent.

“Okay, Jumper, I’ll tell you what. I-I won’t ask you to spill your guts, tell your life story or anything. But you gotta tell me why you did what you did tonight.” William sighed and propped his feet up on dingy coffee-table covered in scratches. When I still said nothing he tried again. “Just give me some… explanation, okay? Make me feel better about taking you home, Jumper. Because, I gotta say, I don’t feel real comfortable leaving you alone right now.”

In a way I wanted to laugh. If I never spoke up would he stay with me forever? How weird would it be to be stuck in William O’Reilly’s place for the rest of my life? To bake and grow old with him as my human antidepressant?

If I didn’t think I would be such an inconvenience, I would have been tempted.

“I-like I said before, I just started feeling things again; things other than sad anyway. I guess I got a little paranoid it would just go away again. That ride was so amazing… ” I sighed, looking up and away at the happy, familiar memory. Unfortunately, the memory wasn’t enough to give me a rush, and when I realized it I looked back down at my wrapped hand. “I know it wasn’t logical, I even knew it when I put my hand over the fire, but I sort of had the theory that if I hurt myself I could make the adrenaline keep going, at least for a little while longer.”

From the corner of my eye, William nodded, taking his time before speaking again. “Have you been sad for a long time, Jumper?”

“Since my senior year of high school. Going on three years now, I guess.” I flinched at my own words, the way I sounded like a petty child. There were people who spent their entire lives in captivity, children who did nothing but live painful lives and die terrible deaths, people trapped in their own bodies. And I was complaining about a few months of depression? “I know that doesn’t seem like a long time in the prospect of things—”

“No,” William scoffed. “You don’t have to justify it to me.”

“I tried to feel better,” I explained. “I really did. It just—got worse.” Now I laughed at the memory of it, the pettiness of it all. “I read self-help books, tried religion, meditation, feng shui, even changing my diet to feel better, nothing seemed to work. I only really gave up about a month ago.”

“What about your friends?” he asked angrily. “Your family?” Though I had only known him for a week, the change in his temperament surprised me more than even the tattoos. “What are they doing to help you out?”

I hung my head in outright shame. Though I hadn’t intended to annoy him, certainly not anger him in anyway, I clearly had. William wasn’t even bothering to try and hide how mad he was now. With his face scrunched up he leaned forward on the couch and tapped his thumbs together impatiently.

“Friends?” I tried not to laugh. “The people I used to hang out with in high school were the closest things to friends I had, but we basically stopped talking after graduation. And my family?” I considered my words carefully before continuing. “There’s just my parents. My dad is a good guy, just awkward with heavy stuff. If my mom knew…” I shook my head, unable to think on it any longer. Did straightjackets come in individual sizes, or were they a one size fits all sort of thing? If Mom ever got wind that I wanted to hurt myself, I would definitely find out.