Alone (2 page)

HEATHER WAS GIDDY ENOUGH TO
actually be bouncing as she walked into the Starbucks near school. It was time to meet Josh, and
every nerve ending in her body was alert with anticipation.

He had already ordered up a grande for her, remembering the dash of cinnamon and extra foam. She loved how attentive he was. Suddenly being slighted by Sam and Ed in favor of Gaia didn't matter—Josh was more intriguing than either of them had been, and he was interested only in her.

“Good morning,” she said, taking the foamy drink from his hand and sticking her cheek out for him to kiss.

“Same to you, gorgeous,” he answered, nuzzling her hair so that she shivered with the delicious warmth of it. “And what's on the schedule for this hot student body?”

“I predict a pop quiz on T. S. Eliot in my advanced
English class,” she said. “We're reading
The Waste Land
.”

“Oh, yeah—‘April is the cruelest month' and all that?” Josh asked, his cheeks dimpling in the most adorable way as he flashed his gorgeous grin. “I remember getting lost in that poem. Parts of it are so sad. You're lucky to be reading it for the first time.”

“Oh, I read it in seventh grade,” Heather revealed, shaking her head. “It's brilliant. And ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' too. ‘In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo. . . .'”

“Yeah, I think I overheard those women when I took a shortcut through Bergdorf 's.” Josh laughed.

“Ugh, don't remind me,” Heather said. His joke hit home for Heather. Her own “friends” were like cardboard cutouts, yapping about paraffin manicures, Brazilian bikini waxes, and parties in the Hamptons. And somehow she was their queen. Which meant s
he had to pretend to be as vapid as they were just to survive in their presence
.

She looked at Josh, gazing deeply into his eyes. It was so clear to her that he really cared about her. That was why he was going to help her. Help her outdo Gaia once and for all.

“So I've been thinking,” she said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “About that little visit we made? To your friend's. . . apartment the other day?”

“Oh, yeah,” Josh said, pulling back from her a bit. “I'm sorry if that freaked you out. I wouldn't be surprised if you never wanted to talk about it again. Unless. . .”

“Unless what?” Heather asked.

“Well.” Josh let out a sigh as he seemed to collect his thoughts. “I just—I feel like—ugh, this sounds so stupid.”

“No, go on,” Heather encouraged him.

“I feel like there's a connection between us,” Josh said. “There's something about you that I really respond to, and I just—I really like being around you, you know?”

Heather's heart pounded. “I, uh—yes, I do know,” she said, trying with every fiber of her being not to sound like an immature dork.

“And I think what I'm feeling from you is just, like, this energy, this spirit, that sets you apart from other girls. And I feel like if you could magnify that energy. . .” He looked at her, his blue eyes wide with possibility. “I just think you'd be unstoppable. I think you'd be a bright, shiny creature that would make people gasp with awe.”

“I. . . oh!” Heather had no idea what to say. She couldn't believe Josh saw that part of her, the part she never showed anyone.

“But hey. This is your decision, you know? Anyway, I interrupted you. Were you going to ask me something about it?”

“I was,” Heather said. Then she paused. Josh made it sound so enticing—like this experiment would change her life and turn her into one of those charmed creatures for whom everything seems to go right and over whom everyone seems to flip.
Like some sort of
über-
Gwyneth.

“I just wish I had a little more information—like it'd be nice to know exactly what it is that they're giving me,” she said. “And whether there's some sort of release I'll have to sign? How do I know they're not going to implant a homing device in my skull? Little things like that.”

“Ah. Shoot.” Josh looked disappointed. It felt like the sun had just gone behind a cloud; Heather couldn't stand to see his face fall like that.

“I'm not saying no!” she insisted. “I just have a few questions.”

“Oh, gorgeous,” Josh said, putting his arms around her and dragging both Heather and her chair into the warm place where she was totally surrounded by his presence. “You don't have to do anything. . . .”

“I'm not saying no,” she repeated.

“Yeah. But you're second guessing yourself,” he said, brushing a stray hair off her cheek. “That kind of thinking is for the cookie-cutter people, the ones who inspect every opportunity while feeling too terrified to ever actually act.”

Heather sighed, running her fingers along the
highly toned bicep that was draped across her chest. “You're making it all sound so tempting,” she said. “I just want to think it over some more. Is that all right?” She looked up, meeting his eyes and hoping not to see that awful disappointment again.

He sighed, too. It wasn't quite disappointment. Maybe more like hope. “I wish you'd do it,” he said. “I want the best for you. I want everyone to see what I see in you.”

With that, he locked lips with her, and Heather felt like she was drinking
turbocharged Gatorade
.

“I'll keep taking these,” she promised, opening her bag so he could see the prescription bottle. “That way I'll be ready at a moment's notice when it's time to do it. All right?”

“That's totally cool,” Josh said. “Think it over. I know you'll make the right decision, whatever it is.”

Heather relaxed and nestled into his muscular warmth. As she sat breathing in his musky scent, her mind wandered into a reverie: Her and Gaia facing off, Gaia focused and determined until Heather began fighting back with amazing speed. Then she saw Gaia's face fall apart like a puzzle, confused and startled by Heather's new grace, speed, and bravery. Heather finished her off with a kick to the gut, and Gaia fell. In her daydream Heather turned to see Josh, who nodded, took her by the hand, and drew her in for a passionate smooch. Heather shivered as a delicious thrill ran through her.

“Cold?” Josh asked, rubbing her arm.

“Stone-cold,” Heather answered with a grin.

ED LAY ON HIS BACK ON A TABLE,
his legs pumping at a beeping machine. He was trying to concentrate on making his legs work on the weird StairMaster thing, but mostly he was trying to ignore the fact that a woman with the body of a Playboy Playmate was kneading the muscles of his thighs. This was like the beginning of a really bad late night Showtime movie.

“So, uh. . . where's Brian again?”

“He's out in San Francisco for the next few weeks,” said Lydia, his substitute physical therapist. “Taking an advanced seminar in dynamic massage. You're stuck with me today.”

Stuck?
Lydia was hot. Which in any other setting would be a fine way for Ed to take his mind off his confusion over Gaia and Tatiana. But in this case, it was cause for distraction. Ed tried to think about baseball.

“Feel the burn?” Lydia asked.

“Sheee-yeah,” Ed grumbled.

“All right. We have to talk.” Thankfully, Lydia took her hand off Ed's upper leg and crossed her arms. She glared at Ed, and he wondered if his
overactive hormones
were somehow showing.
Hey, I'm just a healthy, red-blooded American,
he thought.

“Do you want to tell me why you're still on those crutches when you clearly don't need them anymore?”

What?

“Uh, hello, Earth to medical professional,” Ed said, rolling his eyes. “I was in a massive skateboarding accident? Big hill, no brakes, Ed meets gravel? Two years in a wheelchair? Is any of this ringing a bell?”

Lydia laughed and turned to face him. “Yeah. But that's all in the past now. You've progressed a lot further than you're willing to admit, but you won't take that first step.”

Ed stared at her, flabbergasted.

“I see this a lot,” Lydia said. “The heart wants to get up and walk out of the chair, but the mind is still scared. Ed, there's nothing to be scared of. You can walk without your crutches, and if you let yourself, you can move on from your accident and all the pain it brought you.”

Ed blinked. “Is that true? Why didn't Brian tell me?”

“He was probably just being soft on you,” Lydia said. “Hoping you'd figure it out on your own. But that's not my MO. If you don't try walking before I see
you next time—take a break from the crutches—I'm going to recommend that you get cut off from any more physical therapy.”

A break?
Ed wanted to toss the stupid crutches into a vat of sulfuric acid
. But did Lydia know what she was talking about?

“How come you're so sure?” Ed asked. It seemed too easy, like the end of an episode of “Touched by an Angel
.”
He stared at her. “How do I know I can do it?”

“You
don't
know you can do it,” Lydia told him. “That's the problem. But I do.” She sighed, giving a decidedly unnurturing and rough massage to his calves. What this woman had in
Maxim-
level hotness,
she sure was missing in bedside manner.

Ed stared at the ceiling. He couldn't ask Lydia any more questions. He knew he sounded like a total baby. But even if what she was saying was true, he didn't have the slightest idea what to do next.

Her tough-love treatment was suddenly softened by a couple of words of advice. “All right,” she finally told him. “Here's the five-step plan. First, you get out of this environment. I know you've been working on the parallel bars, but that's the last thing I would recommend for a young guy like you. The sight of all those old geezers getting over their strokes is messing with your head. You need to try this somewhere that's home to you—where you used to be able to walk.”

“Got it,” Ed said. “Nix the hospital setting.”

“You're smarter than you look,” Lydia told him. “Now, the second thing is, don't re-create the hospital in your home. Most people will strategically place large items of furniture all over the place, figuring they can lurch from the kitchen table to the counter and pretend that's walking. It's not.”

“No?”

“Not even a little.” Lydia looked down at him. “When my little brother was learning to walk, he always had to have something in his hand—didn't matter whether it was connected to anything or not. If he was holding a block, a piece of blanket, even a carrot, he could waddle around, no problem. But if you took away whatever was in his hand, he thumped to the ground like his butt was a magnet and the floor was made of steel.”

“I'll bet you took that little hunk of blanket away from him every chance you could,” Ed wagered.

“Yep. I figured he'd be better off.” Lydia shrugged. “Call it early training.”

You scare me,
Ed thought. “So what's three?”

“Step three—fix your eyes on something across the room,” Lydia said. “Focus on it so it's all you see. Never look down. Pretend the floor isn't there. Just fixate on getting to that point on the wall, and you'll make it.”

“Uh-huh.” It sounded like a good idea. Then again,
eating boogers had sounded like a good idea when he was five.

“Number four is you have to just see your legs doing their work in your head. Forget trying to force them and straining to work each muscle,” Lydia said. “You never did that before you lost the use of your legs. Just see them walking in your mind, like you're watching a movie, and it'll jog their muscle memory.”

“Get it? Jog,” Ed cracked before he could stop himself. He wanted so desperately to charm her,
he was willing to go with his weakest material.
Lydia didn't even pretend to smile.

“And five,” she said.

“Leap.” “Leap? I can't walk first?”

“Leap of faith,” she told him. “Stop thinking so much and just do it.”

Ed lay quietly, running through the five-step plan in his head. “Okay,” he said. “I'll try it.”

“Jedi warrior no try,” Lydia told him. “Jedi warrior do.”

Finally, an opening for a decent comeback
—“Thank you, Yoda. But I can't make any promises.”

Still nothing. She didn't even skip a beat. It was as if she had blocked all her joke receptors. “So don't. It's no skin off my nose if you stay on those crutches the rest of your life. It's yourself you should be making the promise to.”

Okay,
he thought.
Ed, I promise I'll. . . walk.
Even inside his head, he sounded like a total doofus.