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Growing up in Minnesota, there was a window overlooking the backyard in Mel's childhood bedroom. Her favorite thing to do was sit in her reading chair and look at the trees outside. The leaves would change with the seasons, lush greens to burnt oranges to bare branches. She loved the sound of the foliage rustling together with the severe gusts of winds throughout the year. The tree closest to her window had long, windy branches. When the winds picked up or when there were consecutive days of precipitation, the wood would brush up against the glass lightly, an arrhythmic scraping that would wake her in the middle of the night.
In the time since she’s moved from Minnesota — to New Jersey, to Virginia, to Pennsylvania — that bedroom has followed her in her dreams. Most of the time, she dreams of her mom holding her, running her fingers through her hair like a comb, soothing her back to sleep. There are many variations of that dream — sometimes Becca comes into the room crying or there’s a storm raging outside or, in the very worst version, her mom is the sickly thin that she was before she passed. Tonight, the dream is serene, and she sinks into the warmth of her bed, the love of her mom, the lull of the tree tapping against her window.
Good dreams never last very long for her.
Mel wakes on an inhale, in her apartment in Pittsburgh. Her room is dark, save for the pink night light that Becca gifted her plugged into the corner by her bookshelf. It takes a moment for her mind to shift from the warmth of her bedroom in Minnesota to the cool shadows in front of her. She blindly reaches for her glasses on the nightstand, reading the analog clock on top of it: 2:03am. The tap, taptaptaptap, tap… tap, tap echoes through her room. She looks over to her window where a dark figure slouches on her fire escape against the glass pane.
The sight would be frightening for any young woman living alone in the early hours of the morning, but Mel just groans as she rolls out of bed, padding over to unlatch her window. She takes him in through the glass separating them: his eyes closed, his cheek bruised, his lip split. He’s in track pants and a sweatshirt, the hood pulled up over his head, hiding his luscious locks from view. His multi-colored backpack is strapped on, the buckles snugly clipped over his chest. His knuckles, split and red, are knocking against the frame almost subconsciously. This isn’t the worst that she’s seen him, but her heart still lurches in her chest at the sight.
She unlocks the window and slides it up. His body sways forward, his eyes darting open and his arms jerking out to catch himself. He falls into her, the top half of his body collapsing onto hers, and she has to widen her stance to brace his weight as he drags his legs into the room, “Frank!”
“Shit! Sorry, sweetheart.” Frank grumbles as he straightens, wrapping his arm around her shoulders to steady himself.
“Are you okay?”
He shoots her a winning smile, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight. It’s dimmed by the blood coating one of his canines. “You should see the other guy.”
It’s what he always says when he comes to her like this. She never knows how to respond. Does she want to see the other guy? If he looks anything like Frank, she’s not sure that she should. It’s also not a response to her question, but she figures that if he really was not okay, he wouldn’t be as jovial. She dispels her overwhelming thoughts for now. Instead, she focuses on dragging him to the bathroom down the hall.
Let the record show that Mel didn’t mean to encourage this habit of his. However, she’s not doing a very good job of dissuading him either, considering he keeps showing up at her place about once or twice a month looking like this.
It started six months ago. Frank and Abby divorced earlier in the year. The custody arrangement didn’t pan out the way he hoped — he lives on his own except for the two weekends a month that he gets to have the kids. It hit him pretty hard. She could see the weariness he brought to work each morning and the reluctance to leave at the end of each shift, lingering in case anyone needed him. They rarely ever did. Mel could relate, in some ways. Becca has been staying at the center’s independent living facilities more and more. She’s proud of her sister, but it doesn’t get rid of the sting of returning to an empty apartment most nights. The loneliness starts to creep in when every day ends the same way.
It’s why she started inviting him over for dinner a few times a week. They’re friends after all, attached at the hip at work more often than not. The first time she asked Frank, his face lit up and he insisted on bringing ingredients to cook his famous chicken parmesan. It was on one of those nights that he confessed he was looking into trying to find a second job: he was behind on the invoices from his lawyers and he needed to make hefty deposits for Tanner and Lizzie’s school tuition. She remembers what it was like when both her parents passed away suddenly, leaving her as the sole provider for herself and Becca. The sudden, overwhelming pressure to pay rent on two part-time minimum wage jobs while juggling a full course load at school. The insomnia and the anxiety and the constant running numbers on how much money was coming in versus how much was going out.
She offered him some quick solutions — unconventional sleep studies that paid a chunk of change and Craigslist ads for low-impact labor gigs — and then gave him the contact for a temp agency that had been pretty reliable at getting her some one-day gigs when her schedule allowed a few years back. He took all her suggestions sagely, jotting them down in the notes app on his phone, and thanked her profusely. She figured one of her suggestions must have worked out because he didn’t bring it up again.
Then, he called her in the middle of the night on a random Wednesday back in October.
Her phone buzzes incessantly on her nightstand, waking her from a dead sleep. She doesn’t think as she bats her hand around, trying to find her cell to turn it off. Her glasses are off, but she would recognize his contact picture anywhere. It was taken on a morning walk through Frick Park, when the leaves were orange and falling from the trees. He’s turning over his shoulder to say something to her, a smile already on his face.
She swipes the call open, still half-asleep, “Hello?”
“Hey,” he starts, voice hoarse over the phone’s speaker, “I’m outside, can you let me in?”
“What?” She asks groggily, looking over to her alarm clock and grabbing for her glasses. 2:15AM.
“I’m outside.” He repeats.
“Okay. One second.” She hangs up the phone, too out of it to ask any follow-up questions, half-convinced she’s still sleeping. He’s shown up in her dreams a few times before, in scenarios just like this one. Normally, he’s telling her he just got divorced and confessing that he can’t wait any longer to be with her. She feels a little guilty the next morning when she gets to work and finds him waiting for her at the lockers, totally oblivious to the delusions of grandeur her mind consistently supplies her with.
She treads down the hallway lightly, extra careful when passing Becca’s room, to the foyer and swings open her front door. The sight of him at her doorstep, slumped over on the ground against the brick wall wakes her up immediately, “Frank!”
“Sorry to wake you.” He groans as he sits up straighter. She crouches down to his level, cataloguing his injuries: potential broken nose, split eyebrow, bloody knuckles. His shirt is torn on the side, from what she doesn’t know, but she can see dark bruising over his ribs.
“What happened?” She asks, arranging his arms around her shoulders and trying to lift him up on her own. Santos showed her how to carry someone out of a burning building once, maybe she can —
“Are you trying to do a fireman’s carry right now?” Frank asks, bemused. When she pulls back to look at him, there’s a teasing smile on his face.
“Can you get up? Or do you need —“
“Yeah, just —“ He stands slowly, grunting as he makes it to his feet. He stumbles into her, his arm going around her shoulders, hers automatically looping around his waist as they hobble into her house.
“I have a first aid kit in my bathroom. We just have to be quiet so we don’t wake Becca.” She whispers, guiding him with light steps down the hallway. He doesn’t respond — assuming to be mindful of her sister — and lets her lead the way to the bathroom next to her bedroom. She helps him to the toilet, where he sits down on the porcelain with a muffled groan.
“Frank, what happened? Who did this to you?” She asks, placing her hands on his shoulders to keep him upright. Now that she can see him more clearly under the bathroom lights, there’s no doubt in her mind that these are assault injuries. She’s worked enough night shifts to know what an injury from a bar brawl looks like, and these line up almost exactly.
“It’s nothing. I’m sorry to bother you. I just didn’t know where else to go.”
“You could have gone to the hospital.” She scolds half-heartedly.
“I didn’t want someone from work seeing me. They’d ask too many questions.”
“I’m someone from work.”
“You’re not just someone from work, Mel.” He says pointedly. She ignores the immediate flush crawling up her neck at his response.
“Do we need to call the police? Or we don’t have to go to the Pitt, we could go to Presby —“
“How could you even suggest that? Presby? They’re the enemy.”
She knows he’s joking, but she can’t stomach it right now, “Frank, please. You’re really hurt and you’re freaking me out.”
He sobers at that, straightening on the toilet, his hands coming up to squeeze her wrists where they’re still resting on his shoulders, “We don’t need to call the police or go to the hospital. I’m fine. Really. Just got the shit kicked out of me.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you. I promise. I just… need a second.” He roughly exhales, running his hands over his face.
She nods, releasing his shoulders and making herself busy while he collects his thoughts, She retrieves her first aid kit from under the sink and rifles through what supplies she has. She finds medical tape for his split eyebrow, antiseptic wipes for the small cuts littering his cheekbones and knuckles, and compression wraps for the bruising that’s swelling in his ribs.
She sets everything aside methodically, reaching for the antiseptic wipes first to disinfect the open wounds around his face.
“I didn’t come here for free medical care.”
“Why are you here then?”
“I wanted to see you.” He says simply, as if a wake up call at two in the morning is totally normal for them, “I’ll pop some ibuprofen and put an icepack on it when I get home.”
“You’re a doctor. You know an icepack is insufficient for the injuries you’ve sustained.”
“I’m a big believer in sucking it up.”
She gives him a look to which he responds with a cheeky grin. In a weird way, his blasé manner about this is putting her at ease. If he was really hurt, he wouldn’t be able to make jokes like he normally does. Still, her eyes linger over his beaten up face, the fatigue in the way he slumps over on her toilet, “Just let me do this, okay? I’ll feel useless otherwise.”
His eyes search hers and his mouth drops open like he’s going to refute her again. She stands her ground, refusing to look away from him. He glances away first, nodding reluctantly, “Okay.”
She sets to work, wiping his face clean and disinfecting the open cuts. She bends over to delicately apply the bandage to his split eyebrow, careful not to get any of the hairs unnecessarily stuck in the adhesive. She ignores the way she can feel his eyes hot on her face as she hovers over him. Their noses are close enough to touch, their lips inches from meeting.
He clears his throat, “You know, I used to box in college.”
“Did you?” She moves to pick up his right hand, carefully cleaning the scrapes underneath the crusted blood.
“Yeah. My roommate was really into it. It was a hell of a workout and it helped me burn off some of the stress during pre-med. Eventually, I got really good at it and started competing in local rings on the weekends, earning a little extra cash on the side to help with tuition and stuff.”
“I didn’t know people could get money for things like that.” She ponders it as she puts some ointment on his knuckles. It makes sense, she supposes. Her uncle was really into wrestling when she was growing up and he was always going on about the massive paychecks wrestlers got from the big pay per view events. Those wrestlers probably started somewhere similar, at their local gym.
“I wasn’t making a lot back then, just a couple hundred bucks. But as a college student, it felt like a small fortune.” She nods as he swallows, clearly thinking something over, “I was looking into those help wanted ads you mentioned on Craigslist when I found… a club for boxers. Fighters. They meet in a basement warehouse not too far from here on a regular basis. Depending on the match, there’s a big prize pot that gets split amongst the fighters. I signed up and I’ve been to a few matches. Tonight’s the first time I won.”
“Wait,” she pauses her work on his knuckles, dropping his hand back down to his lap, “you willingly signed up for a fight tournament? On Craigslist?”
Frank winces, “Is it bad if I say yes?”
“Oh my god.” A wave of nausea passes over her body. He got hurt tonight because — “When I suggested Craigslist, I meant, like, helping people move or cutting someone’s grass. Not this!”
“Mel, sweetheart —“
“This is all my fault!” She cries, putting her head in her hands.
“There is no way that me consenting to duke it out with some other losers in their thirties and forties on a weekday night is your fault.” He assures her, prying her palms away from where they’re digging into her eye sockets.
“How often are you doing this? Where does it happen? Is there some kind of security or background check or at least a medic on hand? How do you know you can trust that they’re going to give you the money? How —“
“Don’t you know the first rule of fight club?” He asks, cutting off her tirade. When she looks at him, he has another teasing smile on his face.
“What?”
“Don’t talk about fight club. Besides, it’s for the best that you don’t know any more than you already do.”
Mel searches his eyes, looking for any sign that this is all a big prank or a giant misunderstanding, “You’re not going to do this anymore, right? This was just a one-time thing to pay off your lawyers or whatever?”
Frank presses his lips together, adjusting his grip on her hands to squeeze her fingers, “It’s a lot of money. Especially when you’re a returning fighter.”
“Oh my god —“
“It will only be a few more times —“
“— I can’t believe you’re doing this —“
“— just until I get enough money to set up Tanner and Lizzie on their new private school tuition. Then I’ll stop.”
“Frank,” she says pleadingly, “you have to be careful. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
His eyes soften and he pulls her into his chest, wrapping his arms around her, “Of course I will. I promise.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I won’t. At least, not too bad.” She steps back to give him an incredulous look. He shoots her a boyish grin. “Not with you to take care of me.”
He slept it off on her couch and was gone before she was up the next morning. The next time she saw him at work a couple of days later, he looked infinitely better and smiled at her across the circle at rounds. He acted like everything was normal and she foolishly believed him.
He shows up time and time again late at night a few times a month, sporting new cuts and bruises along his face, arms, and torso. She’s pried all the information out of him that she can, but he doesn’t give her much more beyond the basics. Each time he shows up, she makes a nest for him on the couch to sleep it off and, every time before he drifts off to sleep, he promises her that he’s going to quit soon.
So far, no dice.
As she leads him into her bathroom, she flicks on the lights, the warm bulbs blinding after trudging around in the dark for the past few minutes. She helps him over to the toilet, where he sits down on the closed lid with a groan. He removes his backpack and his sweatshirt while she pulls out her large first aid kit. Luckily, she restocked after last time, so she has full sets of compression wraps, antiseptic wipes, bandages, ointments, et cetera. She watches him in her periphery as he yanks his shirt over his head, leaving the sinewy muscles of his arms and the coarse hair of his chest on display. It’s not her first time seeing him like this, so it’s really juvenile that she blushes over a shirtless Frank.
Her eyes scan his body clinically. There’s deep bruising around his ribs, most likely from where he took some harsh jabs. His face is mostly unscathed other than the dark bruise on his cheek and his split lip. His knuckles bear the brunt of the beating, shredded open, blood caked around the ligaments. She can feel his eyes staring up at her, but she ignores them, instead grabbing one of his hands and cleaning it with antiseptic. He barely flinches at the sting, even though she knows that it must hurt a lot.
“Don’t you want to know if I won or not?” He asks, breaking the silence.
“You told me you were going to stop.” She throws away her antiseptic cotton pad and reaches over to grab her compression wraps from the sink.
“I know. I promise this was the last one. The pot was too good and I thought the money would be good for —“
“You promised last time.” She reminds him, effectively cutting him off, “You promised me.”
“I know.” He acquiesces. The silence sits between them as she fiddles with the bandages in her hand. She goes back to work, winding it around his torso tightly, crouching down and leaning into his space to make sure it’s nestled over the bruising correctly. She secures the bandages with one of the fasteners. He sucks in a breath and her head almost snaps clean off her neck with how quickly she looks up at him.
“Is it too tight? Is it pinching the bruise or anything?” She straightens, her fingers lingering at the edge of the wraps.
“No. It’s helping.” He answers, “You’re wearing my shirt.”
She looks down at herself. Her pajamas tonight consist of an oversized t-shirt and a pair of old boy shorts, her go-to when she wants to be buried under a mountain of blankets during the cold months. It is a shirt of his — soft, dark blue, from the University of North Carolina. In her half-asleep state, she forgot to put on pants before letting him into her apartment. His hands find the hem of the shirt, rucking it up, up, up until his palms settle on her hips over her underwear.
“Frank…”
“It looks good on you. I was wondering where that one went.”
“You left it.” He forgot it in her living room when he slept over after a fight. When she found it, she tucked it away in the back of her drawers instead of returning it to him. She didn’t think he would miss it.
“You kept it.” He volleys back. She doesn’t have a good response to that, so she stretches over him to grab the Aquaphor. She uncaps the tube and dabs a little on her finger, brushing it across his lip where it’s split. He flinches at the first brush of her finger and she jerks her hand back. He clears his throat, “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting…“
Her hand comes back up to cup his jaw, her finger putting more ointment on his lip, “Does it hurt?”
“You could kiss it better.”
“I don’t think a kiss would help.” She muses, her thumb dragging against his lower lip.
“Only one way to find out.”
There’s a gleam in his gaze, a softening of his smirk, an opening of his features under her scrutiny. He’s teasing her, like he always does. It’s soured when her eyes drift over to the bruise blooming on his cheek. She wipes her thumb with the ointment on a towel, “This isn’t funny.”
“Who says I’m joking?”
She hates it when he deflects from this issue. She removes his hands from her hips and places them back in his lap, “I’m going to get some ice. I’ll be right back.”
She darts out of the bathroom, down the hall to her kitchen. She opens her freezer and sticks her head inside, hoping that the sudden shock of cold will unscramble her brain and calm the blood rushing under her skin. She can’t stop the memories of the last time that he was here from flashing in her mind.
Mel sits on the couch where Frank is sprawled out, his tall, lanky body just barely fitting the length of it. She’s perched by his torso, holding a bag of frozen peas to his swollen eye. His arm drapes over her legs. His hand cups her thigh and his fingers trail up and down her skin lazily. She has to fight the shiver it’s sending down her spine.
He’s worse for wear tonight. He wouldn’t divulge any of the details, but it’s clear he took a pretty brutal beating. He had been nodding off on her toilet only thirty minutes ago, unable to hold himself up without swaying forward. He was punched in the face so hard that the skin around his right eye has blossomed into various shades of purples and reds. She doesn’t think he has a concussion based on the short exam she did, but she can’t be sure. She’s elected to stay at his side for the evening and wake him up every few hours just to be safe.
He groans as he shifts on his back. His ribs are undoubtedly bruised too, which probably makes moving around even more uncomfortable. She whispers, “Do you want me to get you anything else?”
“No,” he grumbles, his hand tightening on her leg, “just this.”
“Okay.” Her free hand gently combs through the strands of his hair. He leans into it, exhaling quietly as he sinks further into the couch.
“Tell me something.” He mutters, hooded eyes peering up at hers.
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Anything.” He sighs, “Just — talk to me.”
Mel swallows thickly. She files through her mind for something light to ease the tension of the evening. “I’m supposed to go on this field trip with Becca this weekend. The center does these monthly outings and she signed me up to ‘chaperone’ before asking me. She said it was only fair since everyone else always had family volunteering.”
“Does everyone else’s family work twelve hour shifts in an emergency room?”
She smiles at his need to defend her, “She has a point, though. It is my turn to volunteer for one of these things. I keep putting it off.”
“What is it?”
She crinkles her nose, already dreading the thought of how she’s going to spend her precious free time this weekend, “It’s at a petting zoo slash farm sanctuary. It’s basically community service — we’re picking up around the land and helping to tend to the animals. Things like that.”
Frank doesn’t respond for a moment, “That sounds like a nightmare.”
Mel laughs lightly. Her thoughts exactly. “I think it will be overwhelming — all the smells and the dirt and mud and the animals around us. Becca will probably hate it.”
“I can’t wait to hear you report back on that.”
“I will.” She pauses, “It could be nice. I rarely spend any time outside anymore.”
“Why would you? It’s cold as fuck right now.”
“It’s still nice to be outside. Have you ever been to the Poconos?”
“The Poconos? No, never been.”
“It’s where my parents got married. They met on the east coast before they moved to the midwest. They had a winter wedding at a resort up there. Every time I see the photos, it seems so peaceful and quiet and idyllic. I don’t know. I think it would be nice to spend a week away, tucked into the mountains, buried under some snow.”
“Have you been?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
Mel shrugs, taking the peas off his face and setting them down on the coffee table. Her hand still brushes through his hair, which is tantalizingly soft under her fingers, “Don’t really have the money for it just yet. Plus, I probably still need to put in some time at work before they’ll give me a week off just for vacation. But I want to go in the next year. I’ve been trying to save up for it.”
“You’ll figure it out.” He murmurs encouragingly.
“Thanks.”
“Maybe we could go together. I can’t remember the last time I took a week off for something not drug-related.”
“You’d want to do that?”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
She mulls it over for a moment, “You don’t like the cold.”
He huffs a laugh through his nose, a brief smile appearing on his face before it turns into a grimace, “You got me there. But seriously, it would be nice, right? You and me. The Poconos. No hospital pagers or hand sanitizer smell for miles and miles.”
She can picture it clearly. Going on early morning hikes, curling up in a little mountain cottage, sitting by the fire at night, looking up at the stars above them. It’s too good to be true.
“It would be nice.” She clears her throat, clogged with emotion, “This time, next year?”
“You got yourself a deal.”
His eyes are closed and his face relaxes as she continues stroking his hair. He looks so much younger like this, even with the bruising around his face. Her eyes linger over the hurt he’s endured, the marks he will carry from this fight. She worries about him. She can’t seem to turn it off.
“What are you going to do about work?”
He sighs, “Luckily, I have tomorrow and Thursday off. If it doesn’t look better by then, I’ll put in a sick time request. It should be okay. It’s not that bad.”
“If you say so.” She wants to push him, but that’s only gotten her so far in the past.
“Are you going to take tomorrow off?”
“Why would I?”
“You seem pretty determined to stay up to make sure I don’t have a concussion, Dr. King.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah. Okay. Sure.” He grumbles. “You could at least go in late.”
“I’ll see how I feel in the morning.” She compromises. He makes a noise of approval in the back of his throat.
It’s a bit of a give and take between them. He always comes to her after his fights and gives her what she craves: to be the person to take care of him when he won’t let anyone else do it. And she knows that he’s toned down his recklessness for her sake. If she had it her way, he would give up fighting entirely. He paid off the lawyer fees and school tuition a while ago, so why does he keep doing it? Maybe because he feels like he has no other choice. Or even worse, maybe he likes it.
Come to think of it, she’s never outright asked him to stop. Maybe it’s worth a try. She doesn’t know if she can handle another night like this.
“Frank, can I ask you something?” She broaches timidly.
“Anything.”
“Can you promise me you won’t do this again?”
He peels his eyes open, his pupils glazed over with sleep. She holds his gaze, attempting to show that she’s resolute in what she’s asking of him. Still, he jokes, “Getting concussed? I don’t know if I can make that promise.”
“You know what I mean. You don’t need the money anymore, right?”
He shrugs, “I still have some things to pay off.”
“But it’s not as bad as before?” He doesn’t answer, clenching his jaw, “Just — please promise me you won’t do this again.”
He looks at her, really looks at her, “Would it really mean that much to you?”
“Yes.” She answers without hesitation.
“Then I promise.” He swears, squeezing her leg.
The relief is immediate, her body loosening with his words, “Thank you, Frank.” He nods silently, his eyes drifting close, “You should rest. I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours.”
He tugs her closer to him and she goes willingly, leaning over his body to rest against the back of the couch. His face goes slack, his breathing evens out, and his chest rises and falls slowly. She shuts her eyes too, just for a moment, comforted by the fact that he’s here with her, safe and sound.
She sifts through the freezer angrily, ignoring the tears welling up in her eyes. It was all for naught because he’s back here again, beaten and broken in her bathroom. She should turn him away, she should rip him a new one, she should present him with an ultimatum. She doesn’t know if she can bring herself to do any of those things. She finds two bags of peas to use as ice packs on the bottom shelf. She takes deep breaths to calm her rising emotions, but it’s no use. When she walks back into the bathroom, his attention snaps over to her. She had hoped that she could get her face under control, but he takes one look at her and jumps to his feet.
“Mel, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable —“
“I hate seeing you like this.” She blurts. At the stricken look on his face, she continues, “I’m so worried about you all the time and I hate the idea of you fighting someone for money. I know you, Frank, and I know your hands aren’t meant to hurt. They’re meant to heal. Every time you show up here, it’s both good and bad. Good, because at least I can see that you’re okay and help you get better. Bad, because when you leave, I know you’re just going to wind up in another fight where you could get really hurt. I know you need the money, but there has to be another way. If you’re really that desperate, I have some savings that I can give you —“
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Mel, honey. Take a deep breath.” He soothes, his voice surprisingly gentle considering how she’s berating him. He takes the frozen peas from her hands and sets them on the counter before he tugs her closer to him.
The tears really take over at his touch, her heart tripping in her chest as she tries to will her emotions aways. She leans her head against his sternum to hide her face, “Please, just tell me what I can do.”
He wraps his arms around her, holding her firmly. His hands run through her hair down her back, gently rocking her back and forth. She cries into him, letting all her worry and sorrow and grief out. Once she finally catches her breath, he presses his lips to the crown of her head, “I’m sorry.”
She pulls away from him, wiping the tears and snot from her face with her hand, “I don’t think I can do this anymore. I can’t stand to see you hurt.”
“I promise tonight was the final one.”
“You said that last time.”
“I meant it about last time, too. It’s just… you were telling me about the Poconos and how you always wanted to go and I had this stupid idea…”
“What?”
He steps away to grab his backpack from the floor. He rips open the top zipper, pulls out a folded brown paper bag, and hands it to her. She opens it to find a large stack of cash, bound in plastic wrap. She’s never seen this much money in her life, not even when she sold her old car in Minnesota before moving here.
“What is this?”
“A little more than eight thousand dollars.”
Mel shoves the paper bag back into his chest none too gently. “Why do you have that?”
“I won my matches tonight. It should have been ten, but the house always skims for their bullshit fees. They took a little extra too because I copped out after the third round, but —“
“You fought three times?“
“— I figured that eight thousand is enough to rent a house for a week and cover the center fees for Becca to stay overnight. Unless you wanted Becca to come, which of course she can, but you mentioned that she wouldn’t like doing all the nature stuff and I wouldn’t want her to be miserable —“
“Hold on. Let me get this straight.” She interrupts and he shuts his mouth finally. “You got beat up tonight to go on a trip to the Poconos?”
“For us to go on a trip to the Poconos.” He places the paper bag back in her hands. It feels heavier now that she knows how much it physically cost him, “I’m only going if it’s with you.”
“Frank, I can’t accept this.” She argues, trying to give it back to him. He just wraps his hands around hers, keeping her grip tight on it.
"I know you’re upset about the fighting. I’m really sorry about it, but I don’t regret getting the money. You deserve something nice, Mel. I never hear you talk about what you want, so as soon as you said something I knew I had to do this for you. And, selfishly, I did’t want to wait a whole year to spend a week alone with you. If I’m coming on too strong — “
Mel carelessly tosses the money to the side, using her free hands to drag his mouth down to hers. His lips are soft, a little greasy from the ointment, but she doesn’t care. His mind catches up to what’s happening and he places his hands back on her hips and crowds her into the wall. Her body melts as his lips move in tandem with hers. She’s on her tip topes and her neck strains from where she’s angling it up, but she can’t possibly stop when kissing him feels so right.
When her tongue swipes at his bottom lip, a metallic tang fills her mouth and only then does she remember that his lip is busted and she probably shouldn’t be defiling him in her bathroom after the night he’s had.
She moves her head back, his lips landing on her chin clumsily, “Frank, your lip —“
“You were wrong before,” he tells her, his breath puffing against her swollen lips, “The kissing helps. More than anything else.”
His lips are back on hers before she can blink. She gives in to the sensation, eyes slipping close, letting her hands trail down from his cheeks to his neck to the broadness of his shoulders to the firm plane of his chest. He picks her up and turns around to set her down on the counter next to the first aid kit. In the next moment, he’s back up in her space, one hand on the mirror behind her and the other slipping under her — his — shirt to rest on her ribcage right below her breasts. The faucet digs into her lower back, but she forgets about the discomfort when his tongue glides into her mouth, drawing a muffled moan out of her.
“So you’ll come?” He asks between sloppy kisses that steal her breath away.
“What?”
“To the Poconos?” He reminds her, a teasing smile on his face as he moves his lips down her neck, biting and sucking the skin there.
“Promise me that you won’t do this again.” She fights to keep her voice steady, but it’s hard when his teeth nip at the juncture where her neck meets her shoulder. Still, she insists, “Promise me.”
“I promise.” He vows into her clavicle, his voice gruff, “No more fighting.”
She grips the strands at the nape of his neck and tugs his head back so that she can look him in the eye, “How do I know you’re going to keep your promise this time?”
“We can put it in a legal document for all I care. You can have my car, the deed to my house — whatever you want.”
“Frank.”
“I’m serious, Mel. I promise. I just got you. I’m not going to lose you over this.”
Mel searches his eyes, but all she sees is sincerity in the two pools of blue staring back at her. She doesn’t think there’s a world where he could lose her, but maybe it’s for the best that he doesn’t know that. She kisses him again to seal the deal between them. He groans into her mouth, the hand on the mirror moving to cup her cheek.
She pulls away sooner than she wants, his lips chasing hers, “You need to rest.”
“In a minute.” He utters, stealing another kiss from her.
She turns her head to the side so the next time his lips land on her cheek. “Doctor’s orders.”
He snorts, kissing her temple before stepping back, his hands settling on her hips as she hops down from the counter. She looks at the mess they’ve made — the peas are melting, the first aid kit has been haphazardly opened and picked through, there are used antiseptic wipes littered around the floor. She takes his hand and pulls him out into the hallway, turning the light off behind them. She can clean up the mess in the morning.
She guides them back to her bedroom, still illuminated by the pink glow of her night light. He shuffles to the other side of her bed while she double checks that the window is locked. He sighs in relief as he melts into the mattress, pulling the covers up over his body. She joins him, sliding into her side of the bed, inching closer to his warmth.
“Your bed is so nice.”
“Sorry for making you sleep on the couch all those other times.”
He shakes his head, like all is forgiven. He reaches across the bed, grasping her arm and pulling her closer, “Come here.”
She eyes the compression wraps around his torso warily, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Not possible.” He argues, dragging her to him and tucking her into his side, “You heal me.”
She adjusts, pillowing her head on his shoulder and looping her arm over his chest. Her fingers move in soothing circles over the bandages and she feels him relax more and more under her touch. His hand smooths over her backside as he falls under the spell of slumber.
Bundled up in him, it reminds her of the dream she was having before he woke her up — in her childhood bedroom in Minnesota, in her mother’s arms. The longing it left her with has been chased away by his presence here tonight, the knowledge that he’s real, that he’s here, that he’s safe in her arms.
Her eyes slip close and she dreams of a blissful nothing.