One Day Soon (22 page)

When he left me, he had shattered me at an impressionable age that you don’t always come back from.

Most people get over their first loves. They picked up the pieces and moved on.

That hadn’t been possible for me.

Because what Yoss and I had shared was more than first love.

It was deeper than adolescent lust and affection.

It had been soul changing.

Life altering.

It had been a reckless attachment during bleak, dangerous times. It had been a light in a murky darkness that had almost consumed us both.

I had gotten away, but I had left my heart behind.

Yoss had stayed and had apparently buried his heart deep.

We were
both
different.

I wasn’t sure either of us could ever go back to the people we had once been. Nor did I necessarily think we should try. Those kids had been foolish, careless, ruled by bad decisions and wild emotions.

But we had loved each other with a ferocity that I hadn’t felt since.

“Of course I’m different. People change, Yoss. It
has
been fifteen years,” I pointed out sharply, crossing my arms over my chest and almost wishing someone would get on the damn elevator. It was unusually empty for that time of day.

“The first thing I ever noticed about you was your eyes. You looked at me and that was it,” he mused, running his fingers over the healing scratches. His swelling had gone down days ago and the bruises were starting to fade. He had grown a thick scruff on his chin that gave him a rugged appearance, completely unlike how I was used to seeing him. But the evidence of his experience was in the hesitance of his movements, the stitches healing on his arms and on his head.

It was in the blank hardness in his deep, green eyes.

But right now, his eyes weren’t blank or hard.

They were gentle.

Tender.

They were lost in things I could never, ever forget.

The elevator doors opened and we were interrupted as people filed in. I made sure to stay close to Yoss so that he wouldn’t get jostled about as the space became more crowded.

I noticed that he leaned in slightly, turning his head so that his nose brushed against my hair. “But maybe some of you is still the same, Imi. I hope so. I really hope so,” he whispered and I couldn’t help but shiver.

I didn’t say anything. Yoss moved away slightly. As much as he was able to while surrounded by people.

When we reached the ninth floor, I helped him off the elevator. We moved slowly. One step at a time.

I led him to the glass doors at the back of the café and held it open for him to step out onto the balcony. It was cold. The wind had picked up, blowing my hair in my face. The view wasn’t anything spectacular. We could see the small park behind the hospital and the giant parking lot. We could hear the distant noise of the highway.

“It’s pretty cold out here, maybe we should go back inside,” I suggested, watching Yoss as he walked to the railing.

“Just a few minutes. Let me enjoy the fresh air.”

“Okay. Only a few minutes though.” I watched him look out at the world below.

“Did you ever get to the beach?” he asked out of the blue, surprising me.

I wrapped my arms around my middle, berating myself for not wearing a coat, hoping that if I ignored his question, he would forget he asked it.

I should have known better.

Yoss glanced back at me over his shoulder, his hands gripping the railing, his eyes piercing and intense. “Did you, Imi? Did you walk on the sand the way we talked about?”

I bit down on my bottom lip, trying to rein in the regret and anger. “No, Yoss, I never made it to the beach.”

Yoss frowned. “Why not?”

I walked up to the edge of the small balcony and leaned over, the wind frigid on my face. “Because life gets in the way sometimes. You should know that better than anyone.”

“You’re happy though. You have a good job. You have a house and a car and friends. Right?” He sounded strange. More than curious. Not quite frantic.

“I have a good job. A house. A car. A friend or two, I guess.” I didn’t sound convincing.

Yoss picked up on it immediately.

“You were supposed to find your happy life, Imi.” He sounded accusatory. As though I had done something wrong. As if by not going to the beach, I had let him down in some way. It irritated me.

But it also made me feel ashamed. Because even though I loved my job, I had very little else to show for myself.

My marriage had failed. I didn’t have any children. Sure, my mother and I were on better terms, but that really depended on the day.

I had little depth to my life and while I had thought myself content with the existence I led, I realized now that wasn’t true.

The realization made me defensive.

“What about you? Is this what you consider a happy life? Still living in abandoned houses, scrounging for food, barely getting by? Is it a happy life to contract hepatitis B and not realize it? To have so little regard for your health and safety that you would be in a position to contract it in the first place?” I stared out over the park. “You lied, Yoss. You were going to do something better. You told me over and over again that that part of your life was over. Your promises are all broken. Why should I have bothered to keep mine?”

Yoss was silent.

Our breath puffed out in front of us. Small, white clouds drifting off into nothing.

One heartbeat.

Two.

Three.

On and on. Constant and continuous. Infinite.

“Tell me a story, Imi.”

I sighed. “I’m not in the mood for fairytales, Yoss. I haven’t been for a long time.”

He looked at me, his eyes full of remorse and something else. Something stronger. Something that made my heart constrict and my throat tighten. “Then tell me a true story. Something that really happened. Something happy. Something about you.”

“I don’t think I have one of those kinds of stories.”

Yoss put his hand on top of mine. Cold fingers wrapped around frozen skin. “That’s not true, Imogen.”

We stood there, staring at each other, and I wanted to give him what he asked for. My anger was gone. I had never been able to hold onto the useless emotion, much less when it was directed towards Yoss.

“Let’s go inside.” I inclined my head towards the door.

Yoss nodded and followed me back into the warmth of the hospital café. We stood just inside, neither of us moving.

Tell me a story, Imi.

Could I give him a story? Could I open myself up to him the way I once had?

An angry, obstinate part of me didn’t want to.
He left me. Discarded. Thrown away. He let me wonder where he went. What I had done wrong. I was alone in my love for him. All alone…

Yoss pushed his hands into the pockets of his robe. “Are you sure I can’t talk you into a cup of coffee?” He tried to laugh. It didn’t quite work.

“You want a true story from me? Why should I give you anything that’s true, Yoss?” I asked him, forgetting for a moment that we weren’t alone.

Yoss’s shoulders slumped a little. He rubbed his newly grown beard. “You don’t have to give me anything, Imogen. I have no right.”

And it was his self-condemnation that shattered my resistance. That broke my heart and mended it.

This was Yoss.

And I was Imi.

That meant something.

He asked me for a story.

I had always given him one.

I’d give him one now.

“Come on,” I told him.

We walked quietly towards the elevator and I took him down to the sixth floor.

He gave me a strange look when he realized where we were, but he didn’t ask questions. Even though I knew he wanted to. I was glad. I wasn’t ready to give voice to what I was handing him.

Then tell me a true story. Something happy.

Sure, there had been happy moments in my life. Some more vivid than others. Meeting Yoss underneath the bridge on a warm summer evening, blood on my hands and tears in my eyes.

The first time he kissed me. How scared and exhilarated I felt when his lips touched mine.

The night we made love for the first time after the fire. With snow falling from the sky and grief on our tongues. All trembling hands and hot skin.

There were other moments too. The ones that came after Yoss. The day I graduated from high school. Making the Dean’s List during my first semester in college. Moving into my own house. Starting my job. Meeting Lee.

But there was one moment that trumped them all. Even though the ending was far from a fairytale, the brief instant at the beginning was one of the few times in my life I remember experiencing true, complete joy.

It had been different from the happiness I had felt with Yoss.

Different, but powerful. Profound in a way I knew I would never experience again.

We continued to move slowly, but Yoss was walking easier now. He still held onto my arm, though he no longer relied on me to support him.

“Hi, Imogen!” a nurse named Brittany called out. I lifted my hand in a wave.

“Is it okay to go back? We won’t be long,” I asked with a small smile. Brittany nodded and then noticed Yoss beside me. “We’re just taking a walk. Getting the blood moving. I figured he could use something cheery after looking at hospital walls all day,” I explained

Brittany grinned. “Enough said. Go on back. But just so you know, Maria’s on duty. You won’t be able to actually go inside. You know what a Nazi she is about germs,” Brittany laughed.

“We just want to peek in through the window. I’ll make sure not to anger the Kraken.”

Brittany snorted and hit the button opening the double doors in front of us. “Thanks,” I said as I led Yoss down the brightly lit corridor. The doors shut behind us, closing us in. The air smelled different here. Like baby powder and something sweet. I inhaled deeply.

Yoss gave my arm a small squeeze. “You come here a lot, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Sometimes I just like to imagine how different my life could have been,” I admitted. I turned left and then stopped in front of a large window that looked into a lovely room painted in colorful swaths of blue and pink. A matronly woman with grizzled grey hair and a mole on her chin prepared a bottle at the counter, her back to us.

Yoss looked confused. “And that makes you happy? Thinking about how things
should have
been? How things
didn’t
turn out?” He seemed horrified.

I pressed my palm to the glass. “I like to remember when things seemed
possible.
”

I watched as Marie dabbed the formula from the bottle on the inside of her wrist before picking up a small baby swaddled in a blue blanket. He latched onto the nipple and began to drink.

Marie rocked him back and forth while he ate, patting his bottom the whole time.

My eyes drifted over to a little girl in the bassinet closest to the window. She wore a tiny pink and blue striped hat, her face scrunched up as she slept.

I felt myself smile. I couldn’t help it. Maybe I should have felt devastated standing there, staring at babies that weren’t mine.

But I wasn’t.

“You wanted me to tell you about a happy story. A true story. This is it,” I said.

Yoss glanced at me, then back at the sleeping infant. “You have a child?” He sounded surprised.

“It’s been fifteen years, Yoss, a lot happens in that amount of time,” I reminded him.

“I just didn’t think…” His words drifted off and he never finished the thought. But he was shocked. I could tell. As if he hadn’t expected me to be a mother. That hurt more than spending time with babies that could never be mine.

“No. I don’t have a child. Not now anyway,” I told him. Yoss glanced back at the baby sleeping in the crib.

“Then why—?”

“Chris and I had been married for a year,” I began, cutting him off, wanting to get the words out before I lost the nerve. “We both wanted children. It was one of the few things we ever agreed on. So we started trying to conceive. There were a lot of disappointments at first. I started to think something was wrong with me. That I wasn’t meant to have children.” My chest constricted painfully at the memory of those horrible few months when I’d get my hopes up only to have them dashed into the ground.

But then my heart lifted at what came next. “After a few months I missed my period. I started to get sick in the morning. So I took a test.” My smile grew wide. “I was pregnant.” I sounded breathless as I remembered that moment when my entire world changed.

I could still feel the joy. The hope. It was the only time Chris and I were truly happy to be together.

“I was going to be a mother. And I was going to be a good one too.” My hand that was pressed against the window curled into a fist. “I was never going to let my baby grow up feeling second best or unloved. They’d always know that they were first in my heart.”