WORTHY, Part 1 (5 page)

“You know, I found some things in your pockets last night when I was washing your clothes,”
I said. “You had a cell phone that didn’t work—sorry for snooping, but I was trying to figure out who you were. Maybe if you held it, it’d bring back some kind of memory for you. Worth a try, right?”

As
I babbled nervously, I bustled over the table where the cell phone still rested from my sleuthing. I handed it to the man, watched eagerly as he turned it in his hands, trying to figure it out.

“
It doesn’t really seem familiar,” he said sadly, looking up at me. “I mean, it’s obviously a cell phone. But it could be anybody’s for how attached I feel to it. Maybe if it worked …” His voice trailed off and he studied me silently. I turned to my right quickly, unwilling to let him to look at me fully. We were trying to get him figured out, not me.

“I don’t have a cell phone,” I said. “Do you think you’d recognize the charger to this one if you saw it? We could always order one. Who knows? It could just be a dead battery.
There would be numbers on there, numbers of people who know you. What do you say? Should I fire up the old laptop?”

He gave
me a small smile and shook his head. I was in the middle of opening my mouth to call him a pessimist and defeatist, but he held his cell phone up and shook it a little bit. Droplets of water flew out, illuminated by the lights overhead.

“Pretty sure it’s safe to say that the phone’s dead because of the water,” he said. “If only I could just remember my name! It’s the easiest thing in the world. Why don’t I know it?”

“I think you hit your head pretty hard in the woods,” I said. “It’s good that you’re at least awake, up and moving, even if you still don’t feel well. Or can’t remember your name.”

“What happened out there
, anyway?” he asked, looking down at the cell phone in his hands, toying with it. “How did you find me?”

“I was walking in the woods after the storm,”
I said. “We’d needed rain for the longest time, and I was curious to see what the creek was doing. I—I’m kind of a nature enthusiast, I guess you could say.”

“It’s apparently lucky for me that you are,” he said. “What happened next?”

“When I reached the creek, it was flooding,” I continued. “I was about to head down to see where it meets the river—that’s where I usually fish—when I heard a voice. I thought it was my imagination at first, but I realized I was curious and wanted to see what it was. I crossed the creek—”

“You crossed a flooded creek?” he interrupted, looking up at
me. I covered the right side of my face with my hair, flipping it forward and knowing I looked foolish, but still unable to allow him to gaze at my scar.

“Yeah,”
I answered, shrugging as casually as I could. “I worked up the bank until I found some shallows, but the water was still flowing pretty fast.”

“That’s crazy,” he said, shaking his head. “Why would you do something like that?”

“I felt like something was pushing me to figure out what the sounds were coming from,” I explained. “I thought they sounded like a voice.”

“You came to live in this place five years ago to get away from people,” the man said. “Why would you go to investigate something you thought sounded like a voice?”

I shrugged again. “I was curious.”

“So curious that you risked your life by crossing a flooded creek
?”

He was getting upset, that much was clear, but
I didn’t understand why.

“Would you have rather I hadn’t?”
I asked, my brow furrowing. “Because once I crossed the creek, I found you, unconscious, wet, freezing, and bleeding.”

“I just don’t like the idea of you risking your life for mine,” he said. “I’m sorry. Please go on.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to leave you there,” I said, frowning. “If I hadn’t been able to bring you back, I would’ve stayed, done what I could there until you woke up and were able to try to make your way to the cottage.”

The man
scowled deeply. “Wait. How far away is the creek from your cottage?”

“Maybe about two miles,”
I mused. “I don’t know. I’ve never really tried to figure out the distance. I just like walking in the woods.”

The man’s eyes bugged practically out of his head. “You mean to tell me that you carried me
—Jesus, back across the flooded creek—and all the way back to this place?”

I
just didn’t get why he was so angry. “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I did. That’s what I had to do. I had to help you. Though it probably didn’t help your ribs. I apologize for that. I didn’t know exactly what your injuries were until I got you back here.”

The man shook his head, incredulous. “A girl carries me across a flood, two miles through the woods, and then apologizes for doing it. Do you know how ridiculous that is?”

“I mean, would you rather me have left you there?” I asked shortly, beginning to feel cross. What was his problem? I’d done what I had to do. I’d gotten him to safety, and neither of us was too terribly worse for wear. I was getting a little sore, but that could have as much to do with the night I’d spent in the chair as hauling him through the woods.

“If it meant keeping you safe, then yes,” the man snapped, wincing as he held his ribs. “Damn.
Ugh, sorry. I don’t mean to curse in front of you.”

I
snorted at how ridiculous that was. “I’m not some wilting lily,” I said. “You should’ve heard my blue streak the time I cut myself in the garden. Good lord, I think the chickens were blushing.”

“Chickens?” the man asked, curious. “You’re pretty serious about this nature thing, aren’t you? You’re just a kid. Kids shouldn’t be serious about anything.”

“I’ll have you know that I’m 23 years old,” I said haughtily. “I’m not a kid. How old are you, anyways?”

The man shrugged and smiled, looking back down at the
cell phone in his hands. “I wish I could tell you.”

I
felt terrible. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean—”

He gasped suddenly and
I stopped talking. “The engraving.”

“
Engraving?” I asked. “Did you remember something?”

“No,” he said. “Not
remembered. Found. There’s an engraving on the back of the phone.”

Shocked,
I sank down on the couch beside him. I’d been so disappointed at the phone not working last night that I hadn’t examined it any further.

“Well, what does it say?”

“Jonathan.”

“Jonathan,”
I said, trying it out. I liked the way it sounded. “I think you look like a Jonathan.”

“I hope so,” he laughed.

“Jonathan?”

“Yes?”

“Nothing,” I said, smiling. “I just wanted to say it. To try it out. To see if you’d answer to it. But just Jonathan? No last name?”

“No,” he said, gazing at the phone as if it would reveal something else to him. “Just Jonathan.”

“Just Jonathan is a big step, anyways,” I said, trying to make him feel better. Without a last name, though, there’d be no Google searches trying to help him figure out his identity—or answer my questions.

“You know, I think I actually might be hungry,”
Jonathan said, grinning at me. He was so handsome when he smiled. “Thanks for making me feel better, Michelle.”

“You’re welcome, Jonathan,”
I said, smiling back at him. It was good to have a name to call him by, and not just “the naked man on the couch.” It was even better to hear my own name on his lips.

I woke suddenly. I had the feeling that something had just echoed throughout the cottage. The cry that followed made me sit up quickly.

Not another nightmare.

I felt sorry for Jonathan. This kind of restless sleeping, the pained tossing and turning, the night terrors and sweats and talking, was bad for him. It was also bad for me. I needed my rest just as much as he did.

His nighttime travels
—wherever he happened to go in his mind that scared him so terribly—had been waking me up for the past few weeks. I knew that I couldn’t fault him. He probably didn’t want to wake up screaming every night, either.

But it was getting harder and harder.
I was tired, he was tired, and tempers were getting short.

I
tiptoed to the couch, where Jonathan was thrashing and moaning in his sleep. The thrashing had to hurt his ribs, but his sleeping self didn’t seem to care. It was his waking self that always paid for these sorts of escapades.

“Jonathan,”
I called. “Jonathan, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”

When he didn’t respond,
I laid my hand lightly on his shoulder and shook him a little bit. He was sweaty, and I was a little nervous about touching him. I gave him a wide berth in the cottage, always turned carefully away so he didn’t have to see my scar, and hadn’t touched him since that first day.

“Wake up,”
I called again. “It’s just a dream, whatever it is.”

But no. Whatever had its claws in him wasn’t going to let go so easily.

I knelt in front of him, grabbing him by both of his shoulders and shaking him so fiercely that I felt a little scared about his healing ribs. I was tired, after all, but would they be able to take it?

“Wake up!”
I shouted. “Jonathan!”

He surfaced
, gasping, from wherever he had been, the shock of his sudden waking sending me scrambling backward over the floor like a crab.

“Fuck,” he swore. “Sorry. I’m sorry,
Michelle. Another fucking—ah, freaking nightmare.”

“You can curse in front of me,”
I said in a small voice. “I don’t mind.”

“You should mind,” he said mildly, ripping off his T-shirt and using it to mop the sweat off his face. Even in the dark,
I could see the ripples of muscles on his torso. I was happy that he couldn’t see me blush.

“Would it make you feel better if I cursed more often?”
I asked. “Because I can do that.”

“Cursed more often?” Jonathan repeated, giving a short laugh. “You never curse. Ever. I’ve never heard you.”

He let the T-shirt drop into his lap with palpable disgust.

“Want me to get you another?”
I asked. “I’m right here by them.”

I
’d ordered some clothes for Jonathan to make him more comfortable. He couldn’t wear his jeans and shirt that I’d found him in all the time, so I’d taken a look at the sizes and had some things shipped overnight—several pairs of boxers, some packages of T-shirts, a couple of pairs of shorts, and a few other things. I’d dragged a storage box from the barn to the cottage to keep the clothes in.

“Another shirt I can soak with sweat?” he asked, an edge in his voice. “Perfect.”

I swallowed. “You don’t have to wear a shirt if you don’t want to,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure that you were comfortable.”

Jonathan gave a long sigh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “These nightmares are just making it hard for me to sleep, and that’s why I’m snappy. You don’t deserve my irritation. Please, go to bed. I’ll stay awake so I can make sure I don’t wake you up with anything.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I protested. “You need your rest.”

“And these fucking nightmares won’t let me have it,” he growled, his hands curled uselessly into fists. “Sorry!
Michelle, you’re a lady. You deserve to not have to listen to foul language. You deserve to sleep through a night without waking up to my nightmares. You deserve a lot of things.”

I
resisted the urge to snort. I didn’t feel like a lady—nowhere near one, in fact. What was he talking about?

“Would it help you to talk about your nightmares?”
I asked. “Maybe they’re your memories, trying to return to you.”

Jonathan shuddered. “If they are, then I’m never going back to wherever I came from,” he said.

That planted a strange thought in my head. I had purchased the clothes—he’d been almost livid when they arrived, saying that I shouldn’t have spent my money on him—but it had somehow given Jonathan an anchor in my cottage, made his being here a little more real. But what if he never left?

I
wasn’t used to the night terrors or the mood swings. Maybe I never would be. But I was gradually getting used to Jonathan being around. The idea that he’d always be around, though, was a little foreign to me. I always sort of thought I’d grow old alone in the cottage. It wasn’t a disturbing thought to me. I loved it out here and didn’t really have a reason to go elsewhere.

“Maybe you’ll sleep easier if you tell me about your nightmares,”
I said, getting up off the floor and plopping down in the armchair. “Go on. I could do with a bedtime story, and you could do with a little dream therapy session.”

Jonathan shook his head at
me, grinning. “It never fails,” he said.

“What never fails?”

“You lifting me back into a good mood from wherever I’ve fallen,” he said. “You have a sharp wit, and I like that.”

“Now you’re just stalling,”
I teased.

Jonathan took a deep breath. “It’s confusing, the nightmare,” he said. “I’ve been having it ever since I got here. I feel like I’m always falling, even when my unconscious
mind realizes that there has to be a bottom somewhere. I never hit it. I’m just falling, and there’s this curtain of water in front of me. Something’s on the other side, and I know it’s important. I keep reaching for it, but the water is always just only at my fingertips.”

“That’s frustrating,”
I remarked.

“Especially when the water eventually parts and there are monsters
—or monstrous things waiting for me on the other side,” Jonathan said, a faraway look in his eyes. “Only, this time, they weren’t monsters.”

I
frowned. “What were they?”

“People,”
Jonathan said. “Just a bunch of faces. I didn’t know a single one, but they all knew me.”

He sounded haunted. “Want me to boil some water for tea?”
I offered. “Maybe some chamomile would help you sleep better.”

He shook his head. “No. Thank you. I have another favor to ask.”

“Sure,” I said. “Anything.”

“I don’t understand how you’re so giving to a stranger,” he said wonderingly. “I can’t believe that you took me in like this, that you’re agreeing to do something for me without even knowing what it is.”

I shrugged. “You need help,” I said. “I can give help. It’s that simple.”

“You’re too good,” he remarked. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you to take me to the place you first found me.”

“Do you think you can manage?” I asked. “It’s about two miles, remember, from the cottage. Two miles there and two miles back.”

“The ribs don’t hurt hardly at all when I walk,” he said. “And I haven’t had a dizzy spell in a few days.”

“That’s good,” I encouraged him. “It’s settled, then. We’ll go to the creek after we both get a little more sleep. Maybe we’ll even take a lunch there.”

“Like a picnic?” he asked, settling back down on the couch.

I smiled. “Sure, if you like. A picnic lunch in the woods. Sounds like fun.”

He sighed. “I don’t know if it’s going to be fun,” he said. “I’m going to be looking for answers. I want to know what happened to me. Maybe there’s some sort of clue there, something that might’ve been left behind.”

“That’s always possible,” I agreed. “I left in a hurry. We’ll try to follow my path to see if maybe we dropped anything. I feel like you should have a wallet, but you didn’t have one on you. A wallet might give you more answers.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Thanks for putting up with me,
Michelle. You’re a good person.”

“Try to get some rest,”
I said. “We’ll leave when we wake up again. After breakfast, of course.”

“I wouldn’t dream of leaving until after breakfast,” Jonathan said.
I wondered if he was mocking me, but decided to let it go, walking to my room and closing the door.

As
I tried to fall asleep again, my thoughts turned to Jonathan. They were always turning to Jonathan these days. I worried about him a lot—first, of course, when I’d found him. Then, I worried about his recovery. I wanted him to get better, wanted him to heal. He’d been walking a little bit around the field, following me around while I did the chores, gradually building his strength. Was he fit enough to get to the creek and back? Maybe not. But it was important to him to go to where I’d found him, to see if it would jar any memories loose.

Maybe
we both needed this.

It was late morning by the time
I woke up. After a quick trip to the bathroom, I got dressed and went out to check on Jonathan. He was sound asleep, for once, not tossing or turning or sweating. Good. I’d leave him to rest just a little bit longer.

Slipping out the front door,
I quickly completed my daily chores, bringing a load of eggs and vegetables back to the cottage. The day was overcast but not too muggy. It would be decent walking weather, and to tell the truth, I was looking forward to it. I hadn’t been into the woods since I’d carried Jonathan out of them, and I was beginning to miss them.

Jonathan was beginning to stir by the time
I was whipping together a couple of the freshest omelets a person could get. Along with a tall pitcher of orange juice, this was going to be an excellent breakfast.

“Smells good,” he said, startling
me. He was at my right elbow, looking down into the frying pan at the omelet I was cooking.

“How do you keep all the ingredients together like that?” he wondered. “Why doesn’t it just turn into scrambled eggs with a bunch of vegetables in them?”

“Patience and practice,” I said, trying not to be distracted by his shirtless torso right beside me, the smell of him. He was using the soap and deodorant that I used, but there was something else, some sort of musk that I liked. The realization made me blush, and I carefully focused on the omelets.

I
worked the spatula beneath one of them and flipped it skillfully, making sure it got cooked completely.

“I’d like to learn how to do that,” Jonathan remarked, peering at
our breakfast.

“Really?”

Jonathan nodded. “I could start helping you out around here,” he said. “You do everything, and it’s not fair.”

“I’ve always done everything,”
I said. “Comes with living alone for so long. I don’t mind it.”

“Well, now that you’re not living alone, I’ll pitch in,” he said. “Teach me to cook and we can switch off preparing meals. Show me what to do around here or what needs to be done and I’ll pull my weight. It’s something I want to do,
Michelle. I could never pay you back completely for what you’ve been doing for me, but I can try to make your life a little easier.”

I
smiled at him, dumping the omelets onto plates and carrying them to the table.

“You really don’t owe me anything,”
I said. “I’ll have to admit that it’s been strange having someone around, but it’s also sort of pleasant.”

“So
,” Jonathan said, plopping down as he filled our glasses with orange juice. “What’s on the docket for today? How do you start your day?”

“Well, our docket for today is to walk to the creek,”
I said. “I’ve already taken care of the chores. I thought you could use the extra sleep.”

“You could’ve woken me up to help you,” he protested, cutting into the omelet.

“I didn’t want to,” I said. “You need it to heal. To rest up for the walk.”

After breakfast,
I packed a couple of lunches in a backpack and filled some empty bottles with water from the tap while Jonathan got ready. In no time, we set out, walking across the field to the tree line.

“Do you go walking in these woods a lot?” he asked, peering around a little nervously as the trees started to thicken and the air
to darken.

“I try to,”
I said. “Sometimes I’m a little busy with things at the cottage. But I don’t know. It’s relaxing for me to walk through here.”

“It’s kind of creepy,” Jonathan admitted. “Like something’s in here with you.”

I laughed. “Plenty of things are in here with us,” I said. “Deer, coyotes, raccoons, weasels, snakes, and all of your creepy crawlies. Are you afraid of anything like that?”

“Not animals,” he said. “I can’t really explain it. There’s a thickness to the air. You never see any people in here?”