For All You Have Left (19 page)

I lie there for another minute, until I feel as if I just can’t lie there anymore, and I pick up the phone and read over the message from Jorgen again. And this time, a smile instinctively dances to my lips.

I type in a few letters asking him if he’s up yet and hit
send
. Then I wait. And within a couple seconds, there’s a response:
Yes. You?

My fingers go to typing another sentence before hitting
send
again.

Seconds later, the phone beeps and lights up, and I look down at the screen:
Get your cute butt over here then!

I laugh to myself, then stand up and make my way to the door. On the way out,
I tame my hair into a ponytail and grab a piece of gum sitting on the counter and shove it into my mouth.

Three steps later, I’m at Jorgen’s door. I knock softly a couple time
s and wait, but no one answers.

“Jorgen,” I softly say.

I wait a few more seconds. Then, I slowly turn the knob, and the door cracks open.

I hesitate but then step inside. The little rooms are dark, and there’s still no sign of him. So, either he sleeps with his door unlocked, which is completely crazy, or he’s already unlocked it and gone back to bed. How long was I messing with my hair?

“Jorgen,” I say, barely over a whisper, as I make my way to the back of the apartment. Now, I think I’m expecting him, at any moment, to jump out at me from some dark corner.

There’s no answer.

“Jorgen,” I whisper again.

I wait. Nothing.

I finally get to his bedroom and freeze in the doorway when I see him.

He’s there—in his bed. He looks perfect. His eyelids are covering his eyes, and his thick eye
lashes are resting on his cheekbones. His short, barely-there curls are tossed every which way on his pillow. The covers are strewn all about him; one leg is sticking out. I lean up against the door frame and just watch him sleep for a few moments. I love him. I’m scared to say it out loud. I’m scared to even think it, but I do. I have fallen for the paramedic across the hall—the normal, motorcycle-driving, blue-eyed, abs of steel paramedic that lives exactly three steps from my door.

He turns over, and it snaps me out of my trance. I watch him tuck the comforter under his chin and stop moving again. Then, I tiptoe over to the side of the bed closest to me and lie down beside him. He doesn’t even flinch. I lay my head on the pillow next to his head and blow a gentle stream of warm air onto
one set of his eyelashes. It doesn’t faze him. I wait a second and then blow a gentle breeze onto the other set. His head rolls the other way but then returns to mine a second later. I’m trying not to laugh as I blow another stream of warm air onto his lips. He twitches and then suddenly, his eyelashes flutter open.

“Hey,” he says in a deep, sleepy voice. “What took you so long?”

I plant a light kiss on his unshaven cheek.

“I had to wait for you to finish dreaming evidently.”

He squints his eyes and wrinkles his brow.

“Come here,” he says, grabbing my hip
s and pulling me closer to him. “I had a dream about you.”

“You did?” My cheek presses up against his bare chest.

“Yeah, I dreamt you wore something other than that sweatshirt and those boxers to bed.”

I lift my head.

“That was your whole dream?”

“Well, no, but the rest is R-rated.”

I laugh and rest my head on his chest again. “Jorgen Ryker,” I scold playfully.

He’s quiet for a second before I hear his raspy voice again.

“My mom ordered your magazine.”

“Yeah?” I ask.

“Yeah. She loved you. My whole family loved you.”

“Really?” I scrunch up my face and
timidly peer up at him.

“Really,” he confirms.

A little wave of excitement overtakes me. I wanted them to like me. And if I were being honest, I wanted them not only to like me but also to think of me as a good match for their son too.

“I really liked them too,” I say.

We’re both quiet again for a moment.

“
Ada.”

“Hmm?” I ask.

“You’re my summer night.”

I feel my face molding into a question mark. For a second, I wonder if he’s still dreaming.

“I am?” I ask, peeking up at his sleepy face. His eyes are closed, but there’s a faint smile hanging on his lips.

“Yeah.” He n
ods. “And my blue-sky afternoon and my rainy Sunday...and...my open road.”

I push out a laugh.

“All those things?” I ask.

“Every one,” he confirms.

“Well...” I lace my fingers in his. “You’re my...” I think about it and let a few silent moments pass. “My sea otter.”

“What?” he asks.

“My sea otter,” I say again, with more confidence.

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Well,” I say, playing with his thick hair, “if you puffed up your hair a little, and if you grew out your whiskers a little more...”

“Oh really?”

He laughs, and I do too.

“No, I mean you’re my figurative sea otter.”

“Your figurative sea otter?” He narrows a playful eye at me.

“Yeah,
” I say, “when they sleep on the water, one holds the other’s hand so she doesn’t drift away from him.”

I feel his hand squeeze mine a little tighter.

“I won’t let you drift away,” he whispers near my ear.

I can tell he rests his head back on the pillow, and then he’s quiet again. His last words mean more to me than I think he knows because drifting, for me, is dangerous. It only leads me back—to memories and a broken heart.

“Whose shirt is it anyway?”

My thoughts break
instantly, and my eyes fall to my sweatshirt as I let a few seconds pass.

“It’s mine,” I say.

He laughs. “No, I mean before it was yours.”

I don’t say anything for a moment. I just swallow—hard.

“It was my high school sweetheart’s,” I say, at last.

I don’t look at him, and he doesn’t say anything more about the shirt.

“The boxers?” he asks, sheepishly. “Should I assume the same person?”

I take a second before slowly nodding into his chest.

“Why do you wear them?” he asks.

I angle my face up toward his. “I thought you liked this outfit.”

His head lifts slightly. “I said you look good in it. I never said I liked it,” he clarifies.

“Aah,” I say, sending him a playful smirk.
But his eyes only widen, as if he’s still waiting for my answer.

“Why do I wear them?” I ask myself, my voice fading off.

My eyes fall to a spot on his tan chest and get stuck there for nearly a minute before I look back up at him and shrug my shoulders. I could tell him why. I could tell him everything right now, but I just can’t seem to find the first word.

“You don’t still...,” he starts but doesn’t finish.

I know what he wants to ask:
You don’t still love him?

I shake my head. It’s not the true answer to his question, but it is the right
one. It’s the one that matters.

“Do you want some new pajamas, Ada Bear?”

Ada Bear
? I feel a slight smile edging up my face again. I go by a lot of names, but
Ada Bear
has never been one of them. I catch his eyes, and then suddenly, I feel my head slowly nodding. I don’t know if it’s the new nickname or the way his blues hypnotize me, but I nod without any real thought.

And as if the earth all of a sudden shifts, Jorgen jumps up, grabs a pair of basketball shorts lying on the floor and pulls them over his boxers, then runs to his closet. I sit up on his bed and dangle my feet over the side. I listen to him root around the little room for a while until he finally emerges a minute later. He’s holding out a gray sweatshirt with his high school football team’s name stretched across its front and a pair of blue, checkered boxers.

I take the shirt and boxers and stare at them clutched within my fingers and lying against the backdrop of the gray and red, checkered cotton of my old life. And when I look back up, Jorgen is smiling a wide, goofy grin, and I can’t help but smile too.

“Thank you,” I manage to say. “These are perfect.”

If it’s possible, he looks even more content.

“You want some breakfast?” he asks.

I take in a breath and then nod my head.

“Comin’ right up,” he says.

I watch him hurry off into the kitchen, and then I hear some clanging of pots and pans before my eyes travel down again to the sweatshirt and boxers in my hands. Then, slowly, I feel my stare moving to the old sweatshirt I’m wearing. I pull its collar up over my nose and breathe in. It doesn’t smell like Andrew anymore. It used to smell like his sweat and his cologne. It did for a long time, until one day, it just didn’t. And after several days of not being able to smell him, I finally laid the shirt down inside the wash machine, closed the lid and pulled the knob. But as soon as I heard the water pouring into the machine, I flung open the lid and tried to retrieve it. But it was too late. I cried for almost an hour that day, hovered over that soggy sweatshirt. And I still pull it up over my nose every once in a while, just to see if I can smell him again. They say the strongest sense connected to memory is smell. And I believe it because sometimes, if I closed my eyes and breathed him in, I could almost feel him next to me.

I swallow hard,
forcing the lump in my throat back down, before standing up and sliding Andrew’s boxers off and then sliding on Jorgen’s. I fold the red boxers and carefully set them onto the bed. Then, I pull off Andrew’s old baseball sweatshirt and force Jorgen’s old football shirt over my head. After Jorgen’s shirt is on, I carefully fold Andrew’s and set it on top of the boxers.

I stare at the folded pile then. Andrew’s hooded sweatshirt no longer has a drawstring for its hood. And the cuffs at the ends of each sleeve are tattered and torn. The word
baseball
across the front of the shirt is now just a faded and broken semblance of the word, and there’s a tear at the end of one leg on the boxer shorts where I caught it on the arm of my Adirondack chair one day. The pile looks sad and discarded, and all of a sudden, there’s a ripping at my heart, and I want to throw Andrew’s sweatshirt and boxers back on as quickly as I can. But instead, my eyes fall to the clothes I’m wearing and get stuck on the blue in my new boxers. I love the color. It reminds me of Jorgen’s blue eyes. I tug on the sweatshirt that now all but hangs off my shoulders. It’s larger than Andrew’s, and it almost feels as if it’s swallowing me. I kind of like the way it feels.

“
Ada, do you want your eggs scrambled?”

My eyes travel to the kitchen and then eventually fall back onto the little pile
of clothes sitting on the bed.

“Yes, please,” I call out to him.

I stare at the pile for another minute before scooping it up and making my way into the kitchen. But I only get two steps outside the bedroom door when Jorgen’s hungry gaze makes me freeze. His sexy eyes narrow in on mine, and within an instant, he drops the skillet and starts a slow saunter toward me—looking as if he has a million thoughts running through his mind but only one clear goal.

When he gets close enough to touch me, he wraps his strong arms around my body and lifts me off the floor.

“Now, that outfit I love.” He trails a soft, deep whisper into my ear.

A shiver runs down my spine, and I almost gasp when he presses his lips to mine and gives me a long, hard, slow kiss. I take it all in—as much as I can—until our lips part, and he gently sets me down again. A strand of my hair has come to rest over my left eye; he takes it and tucks it behind my ear before flashing me a crooked
grin and leaving me for the kitchen again.

I have to catch my breath. Sometimes, without warning, he just takes the air right out of me. He’s always surprising me somehow—there’s always a new, softer or funnier or sexier side of him—as if each day, I’m discovering him all over again. I’ve really never met anyone like him. He really is an inte
resting—and beautiful—creature.

I take a moment
just to stare at him. A white, sleeveless undershirt stretches across his broad chest now, making his tan biceps look huge. And with his dark, messy hair and scruffy five-o’clock shadow darkening his jaw, he looks as if he just stepped out of an ad for men’s cologne or something. Sometimes I wonder if he’s even real.

I eventually peel my eyes away from him just long enough to situate the sweatshirt and boxers I had been holding on one stool, and I take a seat on the other.

I don’t say anything. I just go back to watching him as he puts two pieces of bread into the toaster and then moves to the stove, adjusts the flame and then turns the bacon over in the skillet with a pair of tongs. He’s done this before. Every movement is like clockwork.

“Do you need any help there, Ace?”

I’d rather just watch him and his sexy self, but I also feel a little guilty not helping.

He glances back at me. “Nah, I’ve got it all under control. You just sit back and relax, baby.”

I smile and then prop my elbows up onto the counter and rest my chin in my hands.

“Where’d you learn to do all this?”

He keeps doing what he’s doing, but he does find a moment in between flipping and placing some scrambled eggs onto a plate to look back at me.

“This?” he asks, eyeing the stove.

I nod my head.

“My grandma,” he says. “She’s one hell of a cook.”

“What about your mom?”

He laughs. “She’s one hell of a woman, but she’s no cook.”

I laugh to myself as he sets a plate and a tall glass in front of me.

“Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice,” he says, smiling proudly.

I look down at the plate and breathe in the aroma of breakfast. It’s a foreign smell. Breakfast for me is usually just a strawberry cereal bar from a generic, cardboard box.

“Jorgen, this smells and looks so good.”

He turns back to the stove, and after another minute, sets another plate and another glass of orange juice onto the counter next to mine. Then, he picks up my old sweatshirt and boxers from the stool and places them on the couch behind us. He’s careful with the clothes—almost as if he knows what they mean—meant—to me. The simple gesture makes me feel better somehow.

I wait for him to take a seat in the barstool next to me before I dig into the bacon.

“Mmm,” I say, chewing. “I think I’ll keep you.”

I swallow, and Jorgen finds my big, cheesy grin. I take another bite of the bacon and flash him a quick wink. And just like that, he seems to freeze. I start chewing slower and slower and then finally force myself to swallow. His eyes are serious now.

“I love you, Ada.”

I lower my head and feel my heart start to race. I don’t even think. I just say what I want to say in this very moment.

“I love you too,” I say, lifting my eyes to his.

A grin slowly crawls across his rugged morning face, and then, I watch as he picks up a piece of bacon and takes a big bite.

“You know, this really isn’t so bad,” he mumbles to himself as he eyes the bacon.

I’m still staring at him when his
wide-eyed gaze finally falls onto mine again.

“What?” he asks. “I’ve loved you since the moment you showed up at my door naked.”

Without warning, a soft laugh escapes me. I swear I don’t know what I’m getting myself into. I go back to my plate and stick my fork into some scrambled eggs, but I keep an eye on him. And all the while, I can’t stop smiling. The three little words I thought I would never be happy to hear again from a man just melted my heart. And he had said them over eggs and bacon, as if it were just another day—as if I should have known all along how he felt about me—as if I should have known all along that he loved me. And I had said them too, and I hadn’t shattered; I didn’t break. I’m still fully intact. I mean, I had every reason to, but I never gave up on love, not even after... I stop and push the memories back.

I still believe in love. And now, in one morning, I had woken up with my first love, crawled into bed with my new love, shed a layer of my old life, had grown a new one and had said
I love you
–all before finishing my eggs, bacon and toast.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Love

“W
ell, what do you want to do today, Ada Bear?”

Jorgen picks up my plate and sets it into the sink, while I take in a deep breath and breathe out a smile.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

He nods his head. “Absolutely nothing sounds pretty good to me.”

He comes up behind me and kisses me softly on my neck, sending goose bumps down my arms and legs. Then, all of a sudden, he scoops me into his arms.

I laugh out loud and tighten my arms around his neck. He carries me to the couch and lays me gently down, then lies next to me and rests his forehead on mine.

“I do love you,” he says.

I let go of a wide grin.
“So I’ve heard.”

“You know, I pictured it being more romantic when I said it—like maybe there were fireworks in the background or rose petals on the floor or there was this plane writing it in big cloud letters in the sky. But you just looked so darn cute in my sweatshirt, and you said you liked my bacon; I just had to say it.”

I laugh. “I did like your bacon. And I liked that you said it over breakfast.”

He’s quiet for a moment, but he keeps his eyes in mine. I wish sometimes I could tell what he was thinking.

“I don’t know what it is about you, Ada, but I want to be around you all the time. I mean, I know it’s only been a few months, but I just know, you know?”

My eyes drop from his. I can feel the heat rushing to my face.

“You’re just so dang beautiful,” he goes on, brushing a strand of my hair out of my face with the back of his hand, “with your green eyes and your pretty lips and your little nose.” He presses his lips to my nose, then pulls away. “But it’s not just that. Ada, you make me laugh. And you’re grounded. And you really see people, you know?”

My eyes venture back to his.
I’m still blushing, but now my eyebrows are also knitting together a little. I’m not sure what he means.

“In your stories—every day—you see more in people,” he
explains. “You see more than just an old man owning a bunch of old tractors or an eccentric woman who might or might not harbor strange illusions about cats. You can appreciate that some things are strange and you can laugh about them, but you can see past it all too. You see a soul, a life, a heart that beats.”

He lowers his eyes. “That sounds really corny.”

“No,” I say. “It doesn’t.”

Now, he’s blushing. It looks cute on him.

“Well,” I say, “if you had my job, you’d learn to do that too.”

I watch him slowly shake his head.

“You didn’t learn that, Ada. People don’t learn that sort of thing. That’s a heart thing. You either got it or you don’t. That’s what my dad always said, anyway.”

My gaze gets stuck on the leather in the couch.

“Well,” I say, “I might be able to see well enough to tell someone’s story, but you actually put your hands to people. I admire that.”

I find his blue eyes.

“I really admire what you do—more than you know,” I continue. “I can’t imagine how much courage it takes to see what you see every day and to still put a smile on your face at the end of it and to still want to get up the next day and do it all over again.”

I stop and look away. I don’t want him to see my emotions betraying me.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Why are you thanking me?”

The words are on my tongue. I want to tell him that someone like him once rescued me, but I let the moment pass instead. I’m afraid I’ll fall into a billion, tiny pieces, and I won’t be able to put myself back together again.

“Because you probably don’t hear it enough,” I say instead.

I lock onto his eyes again and fall deep into their shade of blue. Then, all of a sudden, I feel his strong arms tighten around me.

“I had a crush on you even before I saw you naked outside my apartment that first day, Ada Cross,” he whispers into my ear.

He loosens his grip on me, and I pull away a little.

“Before?” I question.

“Yeah,” he admits, nodding his head. “From afar—from the other side of a magazine article.”

He stops and laughs to himself.

“No you didn’t,” I say, shaking my head.

“Oh, but I did,” he
confesses. “I fell in love with a writer who saw the good in strange people.”

His sexy, crooked grin makes me smile.

“Jorgen.” My voice is almost a whisper. “I love you.”

He meets my
longing gaze and then leans in and kisses my lips. I wish he knew how much those words mean to me and how hard it is for me to say them—not because I don’t love him but because I love someone else too—someone who I know will never say the words back to me.

“I love you too, Ada Bear,”
I hear him whisper into my ear as he pulls me into his arms again. “I love you too, my Ada Bear.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Marriage

“Y
ou ever think about marriage?”

I almost drop the glass pitcher to the floor when his words hit my ears.

“Uh, what do you mean?” I try my best to quietly clear my throat.

“Like what it’ll be like,” Jorgen says. “I think about it sometimes.”

His eyes wander over to me. His face is scrunched up in thought. “Is that weird?”

I rest the pitcher safely onto the counter.

“No,” I say, simply.

I watch him smile softly, seeming
ly vindicated.

“I think it would be the coolest thing, you know?” he goes on. “Coming home to someone every night and taking trips together and getting to say, ‘my wife.’”

My breath hitches as I open the refrigerator door and slide the pitcher onto the top shelf. And when I turn around, I catch him in the living room flipping through my coffee table book full of awkward family photos and smiling to himself.

“Jorgen.”

His eyes find mine. I inhale deeply and then slowly force it out. “I have to tell you something.”

He hesitates, then sets the book down into his lap.

“What is it?”

He’s wearing a smile, and it looks as if he’s not the least bit prepared for what I’m about to say. It makes me nervous for him—and for me.

“I...,” I start and then stop.

I look down and grip the edge of the counter with both hands. I would swear that time had stopped if I couldn’t hear
the clock on the wall noisily ticking out the seconds. I feel as if someone else has taken control of me. It’s as if someone else is about to say what I can’t. I squeeze the countertop and open my mouth just as my apartment door bursts open.

“Lada, I have coffee!”

Hannah’s cheerful song echoes through my little apartment, cutting straight through the silence, as she takes a step inside and stops when she notices Jorgen.

“Oh hey, Jorgen.”

She doesn’t seem as thrown off as she had been the first time she had barged into my apartment and had found Jorgen in my living room.

“I didn’t know you were off today,” Hannah continues. “Here, you can have my coffee.”

She tries to hand him her cup.

“No,” Jorgen says, smiling and gesturing for her to keep her coffee.

“I only took one sip,” Hannah tries to persuade him.

Jorgen smiles wider.
“No, it’s really okay. I’m not a big coffee drinker anyway.”

Hannah flashes him a playful expression of disapproval.
“Gotta watch those non-coffee drinkers,” she says, turning her attention to me. “They make me nervous—always awake and happy without reason.”

Hannah quickly turns back toward Jorgen and smiles. Jorgen returns her smile with his own. Then, Hannah takes a seat on one of the barstools facing me.

“I really should start knocking,” she whispers to me.

I nod
. “Not a bad idea.”