Which meant—and this was big news—I could feel those feelings.
Suffice it to say, my time in the hospital had not been the most erotic experience of my life. On my scale of worries that month, my future sex life rated comically low. Probably, if I’d had a choice between a future with walking and a future with sex, I’d have picked walking. But I wasn’t given that choice. That said, since all my sensation down there was, as I’d been told over and over, “spotty,” I’d known there was a good chance that I’d lost that part of my life forever. Though, even if I’d been thinking about it enough to check, I likely would have been afraid to check. Part of me didn’t want to know. Don’t go looking for trouble.
But now, suddenly, thanks to this roof, I knew.
My body could feel things. Enthusiastically.
True, my body had just felt those things about a man who—most days, anyway—didn’t even want to be in the same room with me, but I wasn’t going to quibble over details. This was great news, dammit, no matter how foolishly I’d come across it! I could feel the feelings! One of life’s greatest pleasures was still on my menu!
Did I feel joyful about it? No. “Joy” didn’t seem to be an option anymore. I wasn’t really sure I could access “happy,” either. The best I could do right then was “pleasant.” I felt pleasant about it. And—maybe more than that: relief. Relief I didn’t even know I’d been waiting for.
The sunset was completely gone now, replaced by a deep blue night sky full of stars. I tried to sit up then, but lost my balance partway, and Ian lost no time helping. He sat up, too, and cradled me into a sitting position. “You okay?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“You look a little nauseous.”
Reading that so wrong. “I’m fine.”
“Do you want to go back?”
I turned and met his eyes. “I never want to go back.”
He gave a little shrug and then said, “Okay.”
“Tell me about your nebbishy boss,” I said then, as we watched the lights of the city skyline. “What’s going on there?”
“Only if you put on my sweatshirt.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Put it on.”
“Bossy,” I said. But I put it on, and as I did, I got a great waft of that delicious Ian smell. It was so overpowering in that moment, it was all I could do not to press my face into it and gulp down a big breath. But I covered well. I pretended like the zipper was stuck. Then I looked at Ian to prove that I was waiting for him to start talking.
When he didn’t, I prompted: “So? You think Myles would fire you for taking me up here.”
“Myles would definitely fire me for taking you up here.”
“Even though you don’t like me like that.” It was the kind of statement girls sometimes make in honor of the one percent chance that the guy might contradict it.
Ian did not contradict it. He kept his gaze straight out on the horizon. “No. I don’t like you like that.”
“So you’re safe.”
He looked off. “I am far from safe.”
“What’s Myles’s deal with you, anyway?”
“That’s a long story.”
The wind kept blowing one lock of my hair into my face. I tried to tuck it behind my ear, but it was too short. “I truly have nothing but time.”
Ian sighed. “I used to work here before. That’s why I moved to Texas, in fact—to take a job at this hospital. I started young and worked my way to manager of the PT gym. Myles came about when I did, but I got promoted over him again and again.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a rule-obsessed wanker, and a petty tyrant.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Anyway, then a female PT got hired to work in the therapy gym. Her name was Kayla. We hit it off right away, and we started seeing each other.”
It was pushing, but I couldn’t help it: “What was she like?”
He gave a little shrug. “Lovely. Feisty. She had no patience for foolishness. She could be so mean.” He said it with great admiration.
I watched him think about her. After a bit, I said, “What does this have to do with Myles?”
Ian let out a long breath. “Myles liked her, too. He would say that he saw her first—and I stole her away.”
“Did you?”
“He might have seen her first,” Ian said, shrugging. “But she never liked him. I couldn’t steal something that was never his.”
“Of course not.”
“But that fact was not—still is not—relevant to Myles. He liked her, and that was all that mattered.”
“That’s why he hates you?”
Ian nodded. “That’s why he hates me. I ruined his life, and now he is determined to ruin mine.”
“But she wasn’t into him!”
“He feels, very strongly, that he could have won her over.”
“But you’re not still with her?” I asked, to confirm.
“No.”
“You broke up?”
Ian seemed to hold his breath. “In a way.”
“So what’s his problem?”
“I’ve wondered about that a lot. I think Myles is the kind of guy who needs an enemy. He needs an enemy to fight so that he can feel like a hero.”
“But he’s not a hero!”
Ian looked over and gave a little shrug. “I might be a villain, though.”
I waited.
“I wasn’t very nice to him. I gloated a bit when I won her. I wish I could go back and change that. It wasn’t kind of me.”
“Okay,” I said, “but Myles is totally the kind of person who makes you want to gloat.”
“Maybe,” Ian said. “But I should have been the bigger man.”
I didn’t say anything to that. I knew all about regrets.
Ian went on. “Kayla and I had been together about a year when I had this idea to strike out on my own from the hospital. I wanted to start a rehab gym for people who are beyond the critical phase, but who still want to work to get better—people who insurance won’t cover. There’s all kinds of great research out there about ways to stimulate the nervous system, get the brain and spinal cord to rewire and communicate with the body in new ways. I wanted to make use of that research.”
“That’s brilliant.”
“And so she came with me. We took out loans, found a facility, worked out a business plan, printed up Tshirts, and sank everything we had into it.”
He gave me a look. “I poached all the best people from the hospital and talked them into coming with me. I filled their heads with ideas about the fun we could have and the path we could forge. We could change people’s lives. We could change the face of recovery.”
“And Myles?” I asked.
“He wasn’t invited.”
“Because he’s a wanker.”
Ian nodded. “He’s toxic, really, in so many ways. Narrow and vindictive and peevish. Not the kind of guy you want around. I didn’t want to work with him. I kept the whole plan a secret from him—but he got wind of it somehow, and he started asking to join. I rejected him over and over. I was cocky about it. When he demanded to know why I didn’t want him, I laid it all out in no uncertain terms.”
“Like, you said he wasn’t right for the job?”
“I told him he was an idiot and everybody hated him.”
“Okay. That’s laying it out.”
“After we all quit, there was almost nobody left. So they promoted him.”
“And now Myles is the boss.”
“Which was fine with me, until—”
I looked over. “Until what?”
“Until the business crashed and burned. And then I found myself with no savings and no job. Then a spot opened up here. Somehow, in some circle of hell, I wound up working for him.”
“The business crashed?”
Ian nodded.
“How? Why? You had all those great people! And such a great idea.”
He shook his head, and I could tell we weren’t going to travel far on that topic. “Lots of reasons.”
I watched him a long time, but he didn’t offer anything more.
Finally, he went back to Myles. “He’s had it out for me since the day I came back—just a few weeks before you showed up. He’s actively looking to get me fired.”
“And it’s torture for you to work with him.”
He gave a nod. “He goes out of his way to make everything harder. If I don’t play things exactly by the book, I’m out. But I’ve never been very good at playing by the book.”
“Could you go work somewhere else?”