HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (29 page)

“I don’t want to bother you while you’re working,” I said, propping the laundry basket on my hip.

“Does it look like I’m working?” Nate asked, raising a dark eyebrow and putting his arms behind his head.

I shrugged. “You could be concocting the next scenes in your mind at this very moment,” I offered.

Nate rubbed his face. “Wrong,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’m sitting here, inactive, not thinking about scenes in my book, not even reading the work of other writers to get inspired for scenes in my book.”

“Writer’s block?” I asked, naming his most-hated nemesis.

“Writer’s block,” he confirmed, “and a hell of a headache.”

“Your office is too dim,” I said automatically. “You need to open the curtains and get a desk lamp, at least. We’ll need to move all those books stacked against the window for better light.”

Nate smiled at me, but its tightness told me that he was in pain. “You have all the solutions.”

“And here’s one more,” I said saucily. “Let me get you some aspirin for that headache. I hate to see a man suffer needlessly.”

“Don’t bother,” he said. “I’ve already taken something.”

“Let me put this laundry away and I’ll fix some lunch,” I said over my shoulder. “You’re probably just hungry.”

But once I’d gotten all the clothes put away, exhaustion overtook me. I eased down on the bed, closing my eyes, and tried to ride it out.

It came in waves, which was normal, the doctor had told me. Nate had taken me to his personal physician. Everyone there knew Nate’s name, which I chalked up to good service. I didn’t have health insurance—one thing Jeff and Brenda had overlooked when they were trying to get my life up to speed, I mused. Nate covered the exorbitant cost of some of the drugs I needed while his doctor gave me samples of the others. I had to get a medication organizer just to keep track of it all.

“Rest when you feel like you need to,” the doctor said. “Take your medication on time. Call if you have any questions. Come back in a few months.”

I was fully prepared to adhere to all of these instructions. I must have drifted to sleep. A cool hand on my forehead woke me up.

“You have a fever,” Nate said softly. He brushed my bangs away from my face. The touch was comforting and I leaned into it without thinking.

“What a pair we are,” I said tiredly. “You with your headache, me with my HIV.”

Nate laughed and ruffled my hair. “You know, I have a better plan for lunch,” he said. “What do you like to order when you have Chinese?”

I frowned. “I’ve never had Chinese.”

Nate fell into a mock swoon, flopping on the bed and making me bounce in spite of the shock-absorbent mattress. I giggled.

“Never had Chinese!” he exclaimed, propping himself up on one elbow and looking at me. His face looked genuinely shocked but the warmth in his gray eyes told me he was teasing. “You’ve told me a lot of surprising things about your life, Jasmine, but this really takes the cake. Prostitute? Fine. HIV positive? Okay. Never had Chinese food? Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. If you do not allow me to order you sesame chicken, fried rice, and egg rolls immediately, you just can’t live here anymore.”

I was howling with laughter after his staged tantrum, shoving him off his side and onto his back. Nate was like a balm on my past. He could tease or cajole me about it and make me smile. How was that possible?

“Order away, then,” I said, feeling inexplicably better than before. Maybe it was the power nap I’d taken, but I was pretty sure it was the man I was living with.

* * * *

A day in my life: woke up at 5:00 a.m. Nate liked to work in the mornings. It was one of his most productive times, he said, probably since he just had a full night’s sleep. Made coffee, added a dash of milk, took it to him in the office without saying much. Didn’t want to distract him from the muses.

Had my own cup of coffee, bite of breakfast, took meds at 6:00 a.m. Showered and dressed. Picked up newspaper debris, books, shoes, etc. Swept and dusted. Wiped down countertops in kitchen. Cleaned bathroom. Cleaned bedroom. If it was Monday, I took inventory in the refrigerator and cabinets, went to market to restock. Tuesday, laundry. Wednesday, washed windows. Thursday, vacuumed rugs. Friday, dusted ceilings and walls with extendable duster. Laid down if pervasive exhaustion took hold. Begged off chores if feverish.

Checked on Nate at noon. Asked what he wanted for lunch, fixed it, ate some, banished him from office. He took a shower. Cleaned and straightened office, continued to catalog and organize books. Frowned at book-covered futon, wondered if Nate got enough rest. Resisted urge to look at book in progress on laptop.

Nate decided whether the muses still favored him at 2:00 p.m. If so, made myself scarce, reading one of many books, taking walk, planning dinner. If not, I did something with Nate. If tired, nap. If sickly, accept comfort from Nate.

Dinner at 6:00 p.m. Did something with Nate afterward, even if I had been spending time with him since 2:00.

Muses sometimes seized Nate about 8:00 p.m. Looked in on him at 10:00 p.m. Recommended getting rest, as muses always returned in morning. Took shower. Went to bed, wondered a little about light coming from beneath office door.

* * * *

“I don’t ache,” I told the doctor, sitting on the examination table. “I only get tired when regular people get tired. I haven’t had a fever in weeks. That’s good, right?”

He was listening to my heart and lungs while I was prattling, which was probably not helping him.

“If you’re feeling well, that’s always a good thing,” he said. “You’re taking your pills on time?”

“Yes, I set an alarm,” I said.

“Excellent,” the doctor said. “You’re genuinely committed to staying on top of this, Jasmine, and that’s a really good thing.”

I flushed with his praise.

“It seems your body has entered the asymptomatic latent phase,” he said, scribbling something on his tablet computer with a stylus.

“What’s that?”

“Well, you still have HIV,” he said. “That’s never going to change, unfortunately, unless we have some significant medical breakthroughs in the near future—and there’s always real hope there.”

A cure for HIV? That really was something to hope for.

“This new phase of the virus means that it is lying dormant in you,” the doctor continued. “You won’t really see any of the flu-like symptoms you were experiencing before. You’ll feel practically normal. With continued adherence to your treatment plan, the HIV will be nearly undetectable. I don’t want to give you false hope, though; it will always be a part of you. Not taking your medicine will make it rear its ugly head.”

I nodded. When Nate had first taken me to the doctor, the man had drilled it into me: take the medication. Do not fail to take the medication. Take the medication at the same time every day. Do not skip a day of medication.
Take the medication.

“Since you’re taking the medication on time, you also have the perks of some degrees of protection,” the doctor said. “You can live a long time in this phase if you treat it properly. The medication will help keep you from passing HIV to any sexual partners. You will feel normal.”

Normal. That’s all I ever wanted.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely. This doctor was no-nonsense, but he always steered me true.

“I’ll see you in a few months for a blood test,” he said.

Nate was waiting for me outside, doodling on the pad of paper he always carried in his pocket.

“That doesn’t look like something the muses are responsible for,” I said, looking over his shoulder. It was a row of elaborate squiggly lines on the paper.

“The muses are fickle today,” Nate said. “Let’s forget about them, too.”

I hushed him, looking scandalized. “Don’t talk badly about the muses,” I said in a stage whisper. “They might hear.”

“I mean, let’s spend all day having fun so I can clear my head to be more receptive to the muses tomorrow morning,” Nate said loudly. I laughed and hid my face as everyone in the office looked up at him.

We walked to the parking garage and I waited while Nate unlocked the car.

He paused and shook his head. “You know what? No. We’re leaving the car here.”

I cocked my head at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Today we’re going to have a quintessentially New York day and do everything normal—walking and public transit included.”

“Why do you ruin my life like this?” I teased as we walked arm and arm out to street level. “Today’s laundry day. I was so looking forward to pairing up all those socks of yours.”

“Alas, it will have to keep until tomorrow,” Nate sighed dramatically. “Now. I need to know what it is you’ve never done in the city but want to do. This is essential information.”

I shrugged. I’d lived in and around the city my whole life, but it wasn’t like I’d ever had the ability to really see it or do the typical New York things. Then, I laughed and unzipped my jacket. I’d unwittingly worn my “I love N.Y.” shirt.

“It was meant to be,” Nate said somberly. “You will have a tourist day in New York. We’ll begin in Times Square.”

We hopped aboard a bus to get to our first destination. I told Nate how my mother and I would ride the buses all night when we were between places to live. They felt like a second home to me.

“Please excuse me,” Nate said, looking pained as he ripped his pad of paper from his pocket and began scribbling something down on the pages. “I must acknowledge the muses.”

“Doing so will put you in their favor,” I remarked loftily. I leaned my face against the window, remembering what it was like to have Mom’s arm around my shoulder, being the only passengers on a quiet, well-lit bus, a metal cocoon against the dark, unfair world outside.

We disembarked at Times Square. The sun darted in and out from behind the swiftly moving clouds above. It was springtime in the city, and it was wonderful. The crush of people in the area was incredible, vibrant, inspiring, and terrifying all at once. I heard four different languages as soon as I stepped off the bus. New York truly was a cultural center of the world.

“My lady, may I present Times Square,” Nate said grandly, bowing and sweeping his arm out to indicate the scene.

Marquees advertising everything from Broadway plays to footwear rose like monoliths into the sky. News headlines ticked by on the sides of buildings. Everyone wanted to be here, to see this spectacle, and I was a part of that.

“Oh, they made ‘The Lion King’ into a play?” I wondered aloud, squinting up at a billboard that featured a stylized feline face.

“Item number two on our schedule for today,” Nate announced. “See ‘The Lion King’ on Broadway. It’s a musical, of course.”

“I didn’t mean we had to see it,” I protested as he dragged me across the square by the hand. “I just didn’t know they’d made it. I begged my mom to buy a tape of the Disney movie at a thrift shop one day. We didn’t have the money, but she did it anyway. I’ve probably seen it a hundred times.”

“All the more reason,” Nate said over his shoulder. In no time, we were standing in front of a box office, purchasing tickets for the matinee.

The theater was cool and dark, forcing me to zip my jacket again. I soaked in the surroundings while Nate jotted some things in the notepad.

“Look at that,” I murmured. “You think you’re going to take a break from the muses and they just won’t let you go.”

“I think there’s one muse in particular that I can’t let go of,” he said softly, looking over at me. His gray eyes were warm, making me shiver and giving me butterflies. What was this feeling?

I didn’t have any time to analyze all the fluttering in my belly because the lights went down and the curtains went up. A parade of elaborate animal puppets moved across the stage amid the signature opening African chanting. It was beautifully done. The tears running down my face were halfway in appreciation of the artistry of the show and halfway in remembrance of Mom. We watched that “Lion King” videotape so many times we both knew it by heart and regularly sang along. It was her voice I heard when each performer sang.

When Mufasa died during the stampede, I wept just like I had as a child. I’d never been able to make it through that part with dry eyes. Nate noticed and put his arm around me.

The arm stayed for the remainder of the show. I liked it that way.

When the lights came up and we’d given no less than three standing ovations, he looked at me.

“Where to next?”

“What do you mean, next?” I asked. “This is all I could ever ask for.”

“It’s hardly past noon,” he said, checking his phone. “The day is ours.”

“I don’t even know what to do,” I said. “There’s so much I haven’t done.”

“Let’s make a list so we can check it off,” Nate said. We sat back down in our seats as the rest of the theater patrons filed out. “We’ll call it the ‘What Jasmine Needs to Do in New York City’ list.”

He opened his notepad and put pencil to paper, looking at me expectantly.

“Well, you can mark off Times Square and a Broadway show,” I said a little uncertainly.

“I’ll mark off Times Square in general, but not Times Square on New Year’s Eve,” Nate said, taking notes. “And I’ll mark off ‘The Lion King’ on Broadway but not Broadway shows in general. Next, we’re going to ‘Wicked.’ You should see as many Broadway shows as possible. And off-Broadway shows. And shows in general.”