Can't Hold Back (18 page)

When both sisters had stopped crying for the second time, Alia told Becca about Nate, from the moment Jake had come to her to ask if she would be okay with treating him. She told Becca every detail she could without breaking therapist-patient confidentiality—and without getting gory.

When Alia was done, Becca said, “When we first met him at the picnic. When you gave him to me—”

“I never should have.” Alia remembered the little flutter of panic, the faintest awareness, far under her skin, that he was something she wanted so badly that she couldn’t let herself even think it. She had to push him away, fast and far, put him out of her reach before he could become yet another person who couldn’t love her. “I pushed him away. I pushed him away so many times. And I don’t know if it would have turned out any differently. It might not have. Because he was pushing me away, too—but maybe—if one of us had been able to be honest—”

She had come so close that night. So close to telling him the very most important thing.

“Do you think—” Alia began, then stopped.

She had never realized what a good listener Becca was, how quiet her face got, how her eyes held Alia’s, warm and sympathetic.

Becca had always been ready to give Alia what she needed, if only Alia hadn’t been so busy trying not to need anything at all.

“Do you think there’s still a chance it’s not too late?”

It had been only a couple of weeks, but the more Nate got to know Jim, the more he admired him.

Everyone who came into the store and met Nate wanted to tell him how amazing Jim was, as if Nate couldn’t see for himself.

The little old lady with her puffy gray hair pinned tight to her head wanted to know if Nate had heard the David and Goliath history of the store. Ten years ago, Yard & Home had opened less than five miles away, and everyone had predicted that Jim’s store would be out of business within the year. But Jim hadn’t been afraid. He’d shrugged and laughed it off. He’d quit selling lawnmowers, table saws, gas grills—the kinds of things he could never compete with Y&H over—and focused on what he knew he could do well. He offered repairs and advice, hiring even more salespeople with specialized plumbing, electric, and carpentry expertise. And he started selling specialty items: colorful wrapping paper, candles, perfume, local apparel, housewares.

His sales went up, not down, and after a while, he became the place Y&H referred customers to for repair and installation help.

Nate had made all the appropriate noises, because it really was a terrific story, and because the little old lady’s crush on Jim was totally adorable.

You only had to watch Jim work for a few days before you realized what kind of guy he was. The kind of guy
everyone
liked. The kind of guy who dispensed not only nuts and bolts, but also life advice. The kind of guy who was equally unfazed telling you how to install a toilet, how to help your kid build his Eiffel Tower project, and where to find a good divorce lawyer in town.

Watching Jim at work conferred the same kind of pleasure as watching an Olympic gymnast or figure skater. That pleasure you could take in watching someone do his job to the utmost, someone in the thorough flow of concentration.

For a day or so, Nate hoped that if he watched Jim long enough, he would have an epiphany about how much he wanted to be Jim when he grew up.

But instead, something else happened.

Watching Jim made him realize how much he wanted to do something he loved. Truly loved. Because watching someone work like that—watching someone do what he was clearly made to do—was a great thing.

He was envious of the joy Jim took in helping people, but that didn’t make him want to sell them screws. It made him want to find the people he’d always wanted to help and help them the way he knew he could.

Just like Alia had said when he’d told her the plan to take over the hardware store. She’d reminded him of what it was he’d always said he wanted to do.

You said when you were out of the Army, you wanted to work with troubled teenagers. Because you almost weren’t going to go to college at all, because of the money, and then that teacher—

She’d remembered, from the letters. She’d read, and she’d remembered, and when it had mattered, she had reminded him.

I’d be helping Braden,
he’d responded to her.

But as he watched Jim with Braden, he wasn’t so sure. The two of them, so alike, Jim leaning in close to instruct Braden in some detail of screen repair, or drilling Braden on customer service technique, or sitting down to their identical paper sack lunches, courtesy of Suzy. Nate had a sack lunch, too, and he often sat with them and ate. And they were always friendly and included him in whatever they were discussing, but—

He wondered.

He wondered if he was doing anyone any favors. Trying to
fill in
as if J.J.’s life were the sort of thing you could
staff.
What an absurd notion it seemed right now.

You couldn’t pick up someone else’s life as if it were something stray that had been cast aside. There was this alchemy to putting together a life, a blend of talent and passion that Jim seemed to have.

That Alia had.

He suspected it was part of what had attracted him so fiercely to Alia. The glow that lit her from within when she was doing what she loved, when she was standing over him on the table, telling him what was wrong and how she could fix it, when she was fixing it, her hands sure and professional on his body—

He made himself stop. There was nothing to be gained anymore by thinking of her. It could only cause pain, a tightening in his chest that circled his ribs and caught him across the shoulder blade, that pulled at that unruly nerve in his neck until he had to go back into the storeroom and take a few minutes with the pain, which at least distracted him from the useless craving.

“Hey,” Jim said. “You okay?”

He’d surprised him, coming up behind him.

“Yeah. I have this pain sometimes. From—”

They both knew what it was from.

“It used to be a lot worse, but I’ve been working with it, and it’s getting better.”

“You take breaks if you need breaks.” Jim’s hand, warm, a paw, on his shoulder.

Nate nodded, his chest tight with how much he wanted to be who Jim wished he were. How impossible that was.

He couldn’t be anyone other than who he was. And he had to let Jim and Braden be who they were, too.

“Hey,” Nate said. “I’ve been thinking about the kayaking trip.”

A shadow passed over Jim’s face, and Nate knew his intuition had been right.

“You should go with Braden. I’ll watch the store.”

He’d known, before he said it aloud, that it was the right thing.

The relief on the other man’s face told him for sure.

The pain got bad on the way home from the hardware store that day.

He knew it was his mind lashing out. Because the last little bit of certainty was gone now. There had been something he’d known he needed to do, and that had given him a reason. A reason to stop the pills, a reason to seek out Jake and healing, a reason to lay himself out and open on the table before Alia.
Here I am. Do your worst.

But now the reason was gone, and the pain came back with a vengeance. And stayed.

On the second day, he called his doctor at the VA and asked him for another prescription. Drove himself to the pharmacy and picked it up. The bottle was in his pocket now, three days later, burning a hole there. He’d held on to it like a talisman. If the pain flared and spiked again, he’d take one. Just one.

So much easier than looking the pain in the eye, the way Alia had made him do. So much easier than looking into the void. Coming face-to-face with uncertainty.

Braden and Jim were gone, kayaking together somewhere on the Lower Owyhee. Nate was still staying with Suzy, though an apartment was opening up not too far from the store on the first of September, and he’d chatted informally with the landlord about taking over the lease.

Suzy had made pot roast and egg noodles for dinner, and she’d set the table as nicely as she did when everyone was there, even though it was only the two of them. She served him and then sat down, and then, as she always did, she asked how his day had gone and what crises he had had to avert in Jim’s absence.

Nate was no Jim, but he could hold his own, make jovial conversation and comfort panicking divorcées who had depended on their husbands to mow the lawn, change the oil in the car, fix leaks, and replace lightbulbs. Nate was not even really in the hot seat, surrounded as he was by longtime employees who knew the store, and its loyal customers, better than he did. All he really had to do was work hard and follow instructions, both of which he was damn good at.

The only entertaining story he had from that particular day at work was the old guy who’d fought with him about which end of the hose was male and which was female. Finally Nate had to say, “Dude, it’s just like
people.
Male goes into female.”

To which the guy had said, “Oh. Well. It’s been quite a while, for me.”

He didn’t feel like that was a story Suzy would appreciate. The person he
really
wanted to tell the story to was Alia.

He could text it to her.

But that would be unfair, just as it would have been unfair for him, at any point over the last week, to text her to tell her how much he missed her, how he was almost (but not
quite
) too unhappy to jerk off, how hard it was to make himself think of a generic, nameless woman when it was images of her that filled his head and hurt his chest.

He told Suzy another story instead, about a guy who’d needed help yesterday picking out a birthday present for his wife, and after much debate had chosen the most hideous scarf Nate had ever seen, despite three employees pointing him to numerous other choices. And then today the wife had come into the store with the scarf, and they’d all been certain she was going to exchange it, but instead she’d thanked them for helping him shop and said how much she loved it.

Suzy got tears in her eyes. “Aw. That is a great story.”

Alia would love that story, too.

A wave of sadness passed over him. Someday, some other old guy would buy Alia a hideous scarf and she would think it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. And she’d be the kind of woman who would go in and thank everyone in the store who’d helped her husband shop, too. Then she’d go home to her husband, who would definitely not
at all
appreciate her, and more to the point would have no idea how much strength and joy and
fire
were in her because she would never let him see it and he wouldn’t know to ask—

He hadn’t heard a word from her. Not that he was expecting her to beg him to change his mind. And it would be hard, hard for both of them to accept crumbs, text messages and letters, when they’d had
everything
for that short time. So maybe it was for the best that the end had really been the end.

Suzy put her hand over his. “Nate.”

He looked at her. At the grief that had etched lines deep into her face. He hadn’t known her before J.J.’s death, but he could imagine some of those lines away and see the woman Jim had married. The mother J.J. had grown up with. Calm, efficient, loving.

“What happened with her?”

“With who?”

“The one you were texting with last time you were here. The one who’s made you so sad.”

“She didn’t do anything to make me sad.”

She hadn’t. She’d only done things to make him feel better. To feel
amazing.
And happy. Happy at a time in his life when he hadn’t really expected that happy was a thing he could ever feel again.

“But you’re—not with her anymore?”

He shook his head.

It was her eyes that got to him. Suzy’s infinitely sad, infinitely wise, gray eyes. Staring into his like some ancient oracle.

“You know how grateful we are. For everything you’ve done for us. For helping out. For being J.J.’s friend.”

“It’s for me, too,” he said. “It’s something I want to do.”

“Is it?”

Unwavering, those eyes. And under the scrutiny, he faltered a little, and she saw it.

“Nate. We love you like family. And if you want to stay here, you will always be welcome. Always. But—”

Something cracked behind her expression, a split second before she put it all back together again and smiled at him. Not a smile that traveled all the way into those troubled gray eyes, but a smile nevertheless.

“If you were my son—”

Which you will never be.

Because no one can bring J.J. back.

Because there are some promises that are never spoken aloud, but are broken anyway, and when those promises are broken, they can’t be unbroken, no matter what we do.

“If you were my son, I would want you to be happy. I would—I would want you to live the life you were meant to live.”

And really what we have to do is unbreak ourselves.

He touched the container in his pocket again.

Dear Nate,

If I could do it over again, this is the letter I would write you.

This is me. Me, Alia, not me trying to win you over for Becca. Not me trying to help you feel better. Not me trying to fix you up or put you back together. Not trying to change your mind about where you are or what you need to do. Just me. Loving you.

When I saw you standing there at the picnic I wanted you for myself. I wanted you to love me. But wanting people to love me has never worked really well for me, so I decided not to want that. I gave you to Becca instead, because I knew she was lovable because I loved her myself.

When I saw you kayaking on the lake at R&R I still wanted you to love me. And because of what I’d done to screw everything up, it still seemed even more unlikely that you ever would. So I decided to take the consolation prize I have always taken in situations like these. I decided I could be happy if you needed me. And for a while, I was happy with that.

But you taught me that I am allowed to ask for things. I am allowed to want things. I am allowed to say out loud the things I want.

When we were having sex the other night and you kept telling me to tell you what I wanted, I told you everything except the most important thing. I guess I’ve been holding back bits and pieces of myself all along. Hiding behind Becca, and just plain hiding. But here it is, what I didn’t say. All the rest of me:

I want you to love me. Because I love you.

Love,

Alia

“I shouldn’t have sent it through the mail. I should have sent it by email so at least I’d know for one hundred percent sure that he got it and is currently ignoring it. This is torture.”

Becca tilted her head to one side. “Really? That would make you feel better? At least this way you can tell yourself—with no bullshit—that it has to have taken at least two days to get there and it will take at least two days for his response to come back.”

But a response back in the mail wasn’t the way Alia had pictured it. Even though she had wanted to be low-key and sensible and realistic about the whole thing, Alia now had to admit to herself that she had pictured him getting the letter and tearing it open. Reading it through in a burst of barely contained excitement. Tying his shoes, shouting over his shoulder to Suzy and Jim that he would be back but that he had to drive
right now
to R&R because he had something very, very important to do. Showing up at her door with his arms thrown wide—

That had been an egotistical fantasy. A fantasy that had assumed that Nate was idling in Oregon, waiting only for Alia to come to her senses and claim him, and then he would abandon the mission that had driven him since coming home from Afghanistan and realize that all along he had loved her too much to leave her.

When really her letter had been all about her. About
her
owning the mistakes she had made, about
her
taking enough of a chance
on herself
to be willing to ask for love she hadn’t somehow earned.

Writing the letter had been the right thing even if he never wrote back. She had to remember that.

“I don’t want to go,” Becca said. She was layering her things into her suitcase. She’d stayed a long time, explaining that now it was her turn to take care of Alia and she wanted to do it right. And she’d done a good job, although Alia had sometimes secretly laughed at what
taking care of
seemed to entail in Becca’s mind. A lot of alcohol and sugar and earnest speeches. Making Alia
talk about things,
which included a lot of rehashing of childhood wounds. And remembering the good times. Those times when they’d been part of a happy family.
Before.

And those times,
after,
when they’d managed to make for themselves a very small but genuinely happy family. Those days as teenagers when they’d had breakfast for dinner and then gotten in Alia’s big bed and talked too late, because Alia was taking a break from being the perfect mom to be just a kid, too.

Those were good times. Maybe not family road trips to the Grand Canyon, Mom and Dad spatting over driving directions, Dad buying too many T-shirts and insisting on too many stops at visitors’ centers, mom gently mocking behind his back and overspending on ebooks—but good times, nevertheless.

“I don’t want you to go,” Alia said.

“You wouldn’t consider coming back to Seattle?”

She
had
been considering that very thing. Because in light of all the thinking she’d done this week about how and why she’d made a lot of her decisions—well, she’d realized a few things. That Becca was her family and it would be a good thing to be a lot closer, geographically, to her. That a big part of why she’d wanted to stay at R&R was the feeling that Jake and the veterans appreciated her—which was really another way of saying they needed her. But she didn’t want
being needed
to make so many of her decisions anymore. It was time for her to do what she wanted, and maybe what she wanted was to start her own pain-management practice and see a whole variety of patients, from all walks of life—all genders, all ages, all kinds of situations. That sounded like a great challenge and an awful lot of fun.

So much fun, in fact, that it made her extra wretched that she couldn’t tell Nate about it. Because he would love the idea.

“It’s something I’ve thought about,” she said carefully.

“Really?”

She’d made Becca’s day, she could tell.

“Don’t get your hopes up. I have a lot of figuring out to do first.”

“And you have to see what Nate says in his reply.”

Alia frowned. “Don’t. It makes it worse.”

“You can’t give up on him so soon.”

“I haven’t given up. I’m just…I’m being realistic.”

She helped Becca carry her suitcase down to the car, gave her a huge hug, and promised to visit soon.

“Very soon. Like not months, but weeks.”

“Promise.”

Then Becca was gone, and that was worse. Like she’d taken all her optimism with her, and now Alia had to face the truth.

There was no reply from Nate. There wasn’t going to be any reply.

Her phone buzzed and she practically jumped out of her skin. Yanked her phone from her pocket—

Jake:
Can you come to the office?

It was hard to breathe, the disappointment was so crushing.

“There’s a package for you.”

Jake indicated a good-size brown cardboard box on the credenza in his office. He raised an eyebrow.

She crossed the room to peer at it. It was addressed to her in block handwriting, no return address. “Do you think it’s from the Unibomber?”

Jake grinned. “Seems doubtful. Although it came overnight, so someone obviously wanted you to get it quickly. You don’t have any enemies, do you?”

She shook her head.

“You going to open it?”

“I feel like I should use tongs. Gloves. I don’t know.”

He laughed. “You want me to open it?”

“No, I’m good. Wait, actually—do you have a knife?”

He pulled his penknife from his pocket and slit the packing tape that held the box shut. “I’ve actually got a patient now, so take it back to your office. I want to know what’s in there, though.”

“Okay.”

She didn’t lift the flaps and peer inside the box. Something in her wanted to prolong the moment. The hope—the hope that it had something to do with her letter. The hope that it had something to do with Nate.

She carried it into her office. The package was surprisingly heavy. She tried to guess, but couldn’t. She folded back the box flaps. The box was crammed with balled-up newspaper, underneath which she discovered a number of items individually wrapped in blue tissue paper over bubble wrap.

That was how she’d wrapped the items in Nate’s care package.

She tried to suppress the giddy joy rising in her chest, without success. It kept trying to surface and break, and she was grinning now, trying not to do that, either, because really, Nate didn’t have a monopoly on blue tissue and bubble wrap, and the care package could be from anyone. Her mom (though her mom wasn’t the care-package type). Becca (though Becca had been the one to claim that care packages weren’t worth the trouble). An old patient wanting to thank her for a job well done.

But she had to admit no patient had ever sent her a care package.

She wanted so badly for it to be from Nate.

The items were numbered, numbers written on half-size index cards in black Magic Marker, taped to the tissue paper. On the back of the first half-card, it said—she had to work to make out the words in the scrawl—
This isn’t the
real
beginning, but it was a new beginning.

She peeled back the paper and bubble wrap to find a pair of water shoes and a photo, printed on plain paper, of a woman kayaking. On the back of the photo, he’d written,
I couldn’t fit an actual kayak in the box.

She laughed. Out loud. She could actually hear his voice when she read the words. She could feel him in the room. And her heart was so full it almost hurt, because a care package meant he’d gotten her letter and he hadn’t crumpled it up and thrown it away. A care package meant he—

Well, it might not mean what she thought, right? It might just mean he’d wanted to be in touch…

She wasn’t going to allow herself to hope for more. He hadn’t come himself. He’d only sent objects. When she’d poured herself into that letter—

But there were those words,
a new beginning.
Surely he wouldn’t have said that if—

And a care package. No way that was a coincidence, which meant it was meant to echo the one she’d sent him—

In the next tissue-and-bubble-wrap package, there was some kind of device, with a hook and a nubby ball—some kind of…
sex toy
? Well, that would indicate that he wasn’t just being chummy, wouldn’t it?

It’s a tapper. An actual tapper, so you can reach back and tap behind your shoulder blades. Seriously, you can buy
anything
on Amazon. And I confess, I bought one for myself, too.

Okay, so not a sex toy. But kind of cool. No, really cool. She tried to picture how he’d found it. Had he typed “tapper” into Google? Or stumbled on it accidentally? It didn’t matter, she guessed—either way, he had bought it and wrapped it up, thinking of her all the while.

The next item was a swimsuit. A sporty blue one-piece. One she definitely would have picked out for herself. The note inside said,
I wanted to get you a string bikini so next time we go swimming together it’s
way
easier to get you naked. But I know this is more your style.

Happiness fizzed in her chest.
Next time. Get you naked.
Not a casual, friendly sort of care package, not at all. A
care
package.

Now her heart was pounding, trying to escape the cage of her ribs, and she was breathing fast, like she’d run a race. Blood rushed in her veins, light and hot as smoke.

Suzy’s homemade cookies. You’re lucky I didn’t eat them all before they made it in the box. I wanted to send Cow Chip cookies, but a) there are none in Oregon, and b) I didn’t want to copy you.

A baseball scorecard. No, not just
a
baseball scorecard, but
the
baseball scorecard, the one she’d helped him fill out that day at the Mariners game. And packets of mustard, ketchup, and relish.
Because, and I quote, “That’s how you eat a hot dog at a ballpark.”
I think I knew that day. I don’t think it’s 20/20 hindsight. I honestly think I fell in love with you while leaning over Becca. Probably not something I should admit. Possibly not very romantic. Don’t tell her. But you know me well enough by now to know I’m more honest than romantic.

He was, and she
loved
that about him.

And a hideous scarf.

Huh?

Her happy internal soundtrack ground to a halt with one of those record-scratching noises.

There was no note with the scarf.

She shook it out in case there were answers in there somewhere.

She examined the pattern, in case it had some significance, but she couldn’t detect any. In fact, there was nothing good you could say about the textile design, except maybe that it seemed to have incorporated every possible type of floral and paisley in every possible shade and hue, and therefore got points for thoroughness.

“What, you don’t like it?”

Nate stood in the doorway, tall, muscular, burnished, smiling. Looking every bit as beautiful and capable as he had that very first time she’d seen him. Intimidating, powerful, infinitely desirable—and for a moment her mind pulled away into that old place—
I want him too much—

And then she hurtled across the room and into his arms, and he was kissing her and kissing her.