Later in bed that night, Robert is heavy on Jen’s mind as she lies awake, listening to Jace wheeze. It’s like there’s an energy field wobbling around her, sparking and crackling in the moon-sliced dark of the room, as if she’s traveling through the time warp that increasingly surrounds her, blending her past and her present. She pulls the sheets up to her chin and snuggles down, and feels an almost delicious delight at having the quiet and the privacy to let her mind wander back to those days she’s held down so long, with Jace sound asleep to not notice tears or prod about her faraway gaze. Her mind is almost bouncy. She thinks back to that night after the power washing and pepper steak, of how a few glasses of wine, the exhilaration of frank discussions, wore her down.
“What I don’t understand,” Robert said, leaning forward to pour what must have been her sixth glass of chardonnay, “Is why we can’t be ‘friends with benefits’.”
Suddenly, the Robert she thought she knew sounded different, earnest, vulnerable. There was a small part of her that was alarmed. The alarm bled into full alert when he placed his hand on her inner thigh. She mustered reason through the fog, although she was surprised to find how much she was throbbing, how much her body agreed with his assessment.
“Robert, if I fuck you, then I’ll objectify you. I’d hate to lose our honest friendship. But I know I’ll start to lie. It will start with little things, like, why I can’t come over for dinner. Then it will creep into bigger things, like, yes, I came. Then it will get all gooey. Trust me. We don’t want to fuck,” Jen said, convinced she spoke the truth.
Robert responded with a kiss. Not an unwelcome one. There was a part of her that was pulled way back, watching with interest what their bodies would do. There was another part of her in the now of it. Now was winning. So when he led her to his bedroom and began to slowly undress her, she started with the realization that she was the only one who would save their friendship from a certain and untimely death. Stark naked and still standing, she placed both her hands on his chest and slid her elbows between them. They were shy with each other the way long-time friends who suddenly find themselves naked can be, but not as shy as they should have been.
“Please wait, Robert. This is not a good idea,” she pleaded.
“I’m not certain you honestly feel that way, Jen. I think that’s what your brain says. Your body has a different opinion.”
Of course, Robert was smart. He’d read Jen’s own mind. This is why they could have been good, or dangerous, depending on your viewpoint. This fact is why Jen didn’t want to go there. The dangerous part. Love with an equal was a luxury Jen did not believe she could afford.
“My brain gets to have a say too,” Jen pouted. He stepped back a foot, and Jen could feel his awkwardness. He walked around to the other side of the bed and slid under the covers. She was still standing.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s lie here and think about it. Really. We’ll just touch. Is there anything so wrong with that?”
She could not think of a single objection. She needed to be touched more than she could imagine. It was almost not fair. She climbed into bed. He pulled her toward him until her head was resting on his chest. He was stroking her hair. She started to cry.
“Shhh. It’s okay. Let’s just lie like this. Let’s just be connected. Let’s just not be alone.” He continued to whisper, while she cried like there was no tomorrow.
Two Sundays later, he called her cell. Could she pick him up from the airport, he wanted to know. His friend was stoned out of his head and Robert won’t get into the car with him unless he agreed to let him drive. The friend told Robert unequivocally to fuck himself and drove off, leaving him stranded an hour and a half from home.
Sure, Jen told him. She’d leave right away. It was her only day off and despite the fact that at the time, she spent most of her days on the road, she somehow didn’t mind this trip. It was like there was this part of them that had agreed to be surrogate significant others. Robert had been in Key West all week, but had called her every night for phone sex. Somehow the distance has made it possible, non-consequential.
On the drive down, Jen pondered her apparent inability to fathom intercourse. Was it Robert? Was it everyone? Should she just bite the bullet and get back in the saddle? And how much of Marty is in this equation. Marty, who may be having sex at this precise moment with his new live-in girlfriend. She hadn’t quite realized that these thoughts were causing a building sadness, a blackness that was eating her hope. Were she aware at the moment, she might not have been teetering on the brink, dancing along the edge, oblivious to the imminent crash.
Robert was waiting patiently, parrot-head hat canted on his mop of curls, tropical shirt unbuttoned to reveal a sunburnt swatch of hairy chest. Some of the hairs, Jen noticed, were turning grey. He rushed up to her as she exited the car to open the truck.
“Wow, am I glad to see you! I’ve about had it with the great unwashed humanity and their snarling drama!” He threw his arms around her. He still smelled like coconut.
“You look Key Wested,” Jen grinned.
“The only thing I’m missing is a margarita,” he said. “Let’s go find one while we’re in Detroit.”
“Okay, so you pissed Steve off because he was driving under the influence and you call me to get you and now you want to stop and put me under the influence?”
“Pretty much. I trust you. You’re a good driver and you hold your liquor. Steve is a shitty driver to begin with, and never knows how stoned he is. Besides, I wanted to see you. I have something for you.”
They were navigating the riot of lanes leaving Metro while Robert rummaged through one of his bags in the back seat. Jen noticed he’d unbuckled his seat belt.
“Put your seatbelt back on,” she said.
“Just a sec,” he said, still rummaging.
Jen sighed, merging onto the highway. She could not stand people not having their seatbelts on. Strange, considering all the other risks she’d been known to take. It made her feel very on edge.
Maybe that is why she failed to see the SUV swinging into her lane. Apparently, the SUV also failed to see her. She swerved and heard the rumble strip, the gravel, the deep purchase of earth. They swung around in an arc at the edge of the road as Jen struggled for control. The SUV, which had also lost control, was careening toward them, black glint of looming metal. It clipped their arcing back quarter and then rolled. Jen’s car skidded a few more yards, but she’d managed to both straighten and avoid reentering the lane. This was why she was alive.
Robert was unconscious, blood oozing from his mouth like a thick slimy creature in an alien movie. Jen was shaking and outside herself. She could barely function, trembling uncontrollably, screaming or saying something but she could not hear herself. It was an animal instinct, keening. A man was holding her by the shoulder, his car parked behind them. The man checked Robert’s pulse. He’s alive, the man told Jen. Help was on the way. Jen collapsed to the soggy autumn ground beyond the roadside, sobbing with both relief and guilt. Guilt for thinking “buckle your damned seatbelt.” As if she called it to them. As if she wrote the script.
She saw other people gathered around the SUV, which was on its side after rolling several times. Three young men climbed out. The driver didn’t. Jen could see a crumpled body against the windshield. Suddenly, she felt death all around her. She moved away, back over to her car, to Robert. Two men were applying pressure to open wounds. Move him out of the car, she told them. No, they said, he’s bleeding from the mouth. Internal injuries. The paramedics would know the best way to move him. Approaching sirens grew louder. Hang on, Robert, she prayed. Still in his hand was a necklace with a black coral pendant carved beautifully with some kind of symbol. Luck, she learned later. The symbol was Luck.
A week later, Robert was transported to a hospital near home. Jen stayed in Detroit, despite her bruised, stiff body and shuddering sense of disconnection. There were three of her studios in the area where she could work. Her superiors at HQ thought she was nuts. Go home, they said. Recuperate. A hotel room was no place to recover. But Jen didn’t feel her home was any place she could recover either, and she didn’t want to leave Robert alone in Detroit. So she worked in the mornings to get the sales staff going, and then took liberal time between her two shifts, spent in ICU with a semi-conscious Robert. One of his ribs had punctured his spleen, and he’d had a splenectomy as a result. He’d never be able to drink again.
He had also suffered a concussion, which meant they couldn’t risk putting him under while they removed his spleen on arrival at the hospital. The screaming was unbelievable, piercing the haze of the emergency ward where Jen sat in a shocked fog with a motley crew of desperate Detroiters. Two more ribs were fractured. His left tibia was shattered. His clutch leg. Driving would be an issue. Jen could not fathom how he would manage all alone. She felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility. She also felt angry. Angry at the world, at the college-bound drivers who couldn’t mind the road, at Robert for being stupid enough to sacrifice his safety to find a damned pendant he’d bought her, angry at herself for even being there, for failing to see it coming. Part of her wanted to put it right, to nurse Robert back to health, to help him. An equal part of her resented this impulse. How could she do that and make a living? He chose to be alone. It wasn’t her fault.
In the weeks after the accident, the nightmares and searing headaches would not relent. The panic attack that had first gripped her on her favorite beach after the fight with Saint returned in unpredictable multiples that would squeeze the breath from her lungs. It all would have been easier had she died, she’d taken to thinking. Instead, she was without serious injury, just a swollen knee and some defensive bruises. No occasion for nursing, healing. And no one to administer healing. Yet she felt literally beside herself, unable to get grounded or focus. An empty husk.
The last time she saw Robert, she was visiting him in the hospital, holding his hand. He was still heavily medicated, barely knew he had changed hospitals. She’d be back next week, she had promised. She explained she had to hit the road to get her sales teams whipped back into shape, but she’d be back. In response, Robert squeezed her hand and slowly opened his eyes. He looked right through her.