Unglued (Holding On) Read online

  Reaching up, I can feel my muscles start to tighten as my arm stretches above my head. I pulled my arm back down and go through some of the exercises my therapist still has me doing. Once I felt the muscles start to loosen, I reached up again, but my arm doesn’t seem to want to stretch the way I want it to, so I repeat the stretches again. I will get those damn sheets if it’s the last thing I do today!

  I finally gave in and reached up quickly, standing on the tips of my toes to give me just a few less inches to stretch, and snagged the sheets before my arm completely feels like it’s on fire from the pain. They drop out of my grasp and onto the floor, but I’ve gotten them off the shelf. It’s a small accomplishment but I feel great, except the burning sensation that’s still lingering.

  Two hours later, the house is completely clean, and the last load of laundry is in the dryer. My goal for the day has been accomplished. I’m putting all the folded towels and sheets in the linen closet when I feel his presence behind me. My body has been tuned in to his for years, so even though I didn’t hear him come in, I know he’s here. I still jump when he slides his hands around my waste, but not as high as I used to. I let him hold me for just a few minutes before I pull out my ear buds.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself, gorgeous.”

  “How was work today?”

  “Not bad, actually.” He hates his job and we both know it. Any day that he comes home and says not bad is a good day at work for him. “The house looks great. Need any help finishing up?”

  He knows that I have trouble putting the clean sheets away. I normally let him help me or leave them out, indicating that I couldn’t do it, but today I need to conquer this. I’ve spent seven month avoiding the things that I can’t do, and with the New Year coming around, I plan on conquering all my fears.

  “No thanks. I just need to put these sheets away and wait for the last load to dry. I started dinner. It should be done in a few minutes if you want to change and set the table.” I can feel the smile on his face as he kisses that spot on my neck that drives me crazy. I know he’s proud of how far I’ve come since my injury. I just don’t know if I can be proud of myself yet.

  “All right. I’ll see you down there in a few minutes then?”

  “Yep.”

  “What do you want to drink?”

  “White wine if we have any.”

  “Okay. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  With that, he’s gone. I know he’s just around the corner in our bedroom, but I still feel like he can see me, so I wait. Once I hear him begin to descend the stairs, I pick up the folded sheets from the basket and stare at the shelf that they go on. I can do this. I just have to reach up and slide them on the shelf. It’s barely a reach to be honest with you. The shelf is only about an inch above my head. I can reach it. I just need to be able to reach it without causing myself pain.

  This day was not going how I planned. I woke up to find that my best racquet popped a string. I was going to need to use my backup, and I hadn’t played with it in months. The tension in the strings needed to be adjusted, but I was going to have to make it work.

  Ethan wasn’t going to be able to make it to my match on account of his uber-bitchy boss. I really wished he would find a new job.

  Then, five minutes ago, I find out that I’m playing my least favorite person, my archrival. She’s not a great player, but she’s gotten better over the years. The big problem with her is that she likes to play dirty sometimes because she hasn’t been able to beat me yet. Our rivalry has only gotten stronger over the years, and as much as I dislike her as a person, I have grown to hate playing against her because of her nasty attitude.

  So not how I expected my day to start. I’ll deal with it, of course. I always make the best of a crappy day, and lately, I have been coming out on top. I’ve only lost once this season, and that’s a whole lot better than my first season.

  My first year with the team was pretty crazy. I played well but was completely unprepared for how well everyone else was going to be playing. I thought that playing on the “Super Seniors” team would have given me an advantage but it didn’t. I lost about 40 percent of my matches, and now I have something to prove.

  I have to play my best this season or I may lose my scholarship. They haven’t said as much to me, but I can feel it when they watch me. I feel like I’m under a microscope most of the time, and right now it’s helping me to focus more and play better tennis. It’s a double-edged sword, but it’s motivating me so I can’t really complain.

  Crap!

  They changed my match time. I see my opponent is already on the court waiting for me. The official is staring at his watch which means I’m late. I started to jog over to the court. I toss my bag just outside of the gate after grabbing my racquet and I quickly popped down on the court and started to stretch when the judge begins to walk my way.

  “I’m sorry, but we need to start right now. You are officially fifteen minutes late, and had you not just walked through that gate, you would have forfeited your match.”

  Wow! Really? I can see her snickering behind the official, but I don’t let her get to me. I popped up off the court and stretched my arms as I walked to the net to shake her hand. She’s already sweaty which tells me that she took advantage of my tardiness and got in some practice. I, however, have cold muscles. That’s not a good thing when it comes to tennis. You need to make sure that your muscles are loose. Hopefully, my muscles warm up quickly.

  That didn’t happen. Her first serve was out, and her second was just out of my reach. I dove, missed the ball with my racquet, and landed hard on my right shoulder, and hit my head on the court. That’s the last thing I remembered from that day.

  I woke up two days later in the hospital with my entire arm immobilized, casted from the shoulder down. My greatest fear was quickly becoming a reality. I was injured, again. Not only that, I injured the same shoulder I had in high school. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that I may be looking at the end of my playing days.

  The way I landed popped my shoulder in the opposite direction I had before, dislocating it, and causing a portion of my collarbone to chip away. I had undergone surgery while I was unconscious to repair the break, but the doctor said that my shoulder was never going to be the same again. “Limited mobility” were the exact words he used. No one had to tell me these facts, I already knew the outcome.

  I spent two more days in the hospital under observation for a possible concussion. Once I was released, I locked myself in the house and refused visitors. I sat in bed and cried all day. My phone was constantly vibrating with calls from teammates and texts from friends. I didn’t return a single one of them. I was depressed, and I didn’t want anyone to know.

  Ethan was great during my “tantrum” following the accident. He allowed me to cry when I needed to, and held me when I would let him. He brought home my homework from all my classes and spoke to the teachers about what happened, even though most of them knew since there was a front page picture of me unconscious on the court in the school paper. He even respected my decision to turn away all visitors in the beginning, but I knew that wouldn’t last for long.

  The hardest part was showering. I took a bath most days since it was easier to keep my cast out of the water, but it was a challenge to wash my hair in the tub. After a week of Ethan helping me bathe and washing my hair, I was over it. I wanted a shower in the worst way. I knew that I was going to need his help still, so as he slipped in one morning, I covered my cast the best I could in a garbage bag and slipped in with him.

  That may have been the single best shower of my life. My hair felt fresh and clean, and my confidence may have been a little bit renewed. It’s amazing what a week of frustration and depression and abstinence can do to a horny young woman. Put her in the right situation and all her troubles will melt away. I know mine felt like they did. I started to feel like myself again as I stepped out of the shower. Stepping into the kitc
hen in just my robe that morning was a whole other story.

  “What are you doing here?” I tightened the strap on my robe the best I could and held it together with my left hand.

  “I know you don’t want visitors, but I was pretty sure that didn’t include me.”

  “Um, that includes everyone when I am wearing just my robe.”

  His smile made my stomach tighten a little, and the way he was looking at me was not a good thing. If Ethan weren’t upstairs, I would be afraid to make a move, any move. I would be afraid he would pounce on me. He’s been looking at me this way for too long now and it needs to stop. He knows it and I know it.

  “I’m gonna go get dressed. Help yourself to coffee if you want some. Ethan should be down in a minute.” That’s all it took to wipe the smile off of his face, the mention of Ethan, and there was his “friend face.” Before things could get weird again, I slipped out of the kitchen and upstairs to get changed.

  Reach up, just a little higher. I can do this. Almost there. Just a little...Crap! My entire arm is engulfed in pain. It feels like it’s on fire, and my muscles are starting to cramp up. The sheets have dropped to the floor, and I drop beside them. I can feel the tears streaming down my face, but I’m not sure if I’m crying because of the pain or because of my failure. Either way, the sheets are still in a pile on the floor.

  Chapter 2

  After the breakdown I had last night, the last thing I wanted to do was celebrate my birthday. Turning twenty-one was supposed to be exciting, but I wasn’t really that excited. I didn’t feel like I had too much to celebrate this year. Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty going on for me: good grades, a great boyfriend of over three and a half years, loving friends and family. The list could literally go on and on. The one thing I didn’t have right now was the one thing that I wanted most. I wanted to be able to play tennis again.

  The New Year is approaching. I had to keep reminding myself that I was going to conquer all my fears next year. I was going to pick up my racquet again. I was going to hit a ball. I may never play as well as I used to play, but I was not going to let anyone tell me that I was not able to try. I was definitely going to try.

  With our friends’ arrival approaching, I take one last look at the linen closet with disgust. Ethan left the sheets on the floor because I asked him to. I wanted to be able to take care of them myself, and if it wasn’t going to happen yesterday, then it was going to happen right now. I slowly made my approach, like I was sneaking up on a sleeping bear. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to do it. When I heard the front door open and footsteps on the stairs, I knew that it was now or never.

  Get it over with.

  You can do this! You can do this!

  I kept repeating that in my head the entire time I picked up the sheets, lifted them above my head, and as I was about the slip them on the shelf, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head, and that was all it took to slip them on the shelf. I didn’t even realize that I had put them up there until Ethan started to smile at me.

  I smiled back at him until I realized that the sheets were back on the shelf. My smile turned to pure shock when I realized that my shoulder wasn’t on fire with pain. Before I knew what was happening, I was jumping into his arms with nothing but pure joy and excitement in my heart. It was a small feat, but it felt like I moved a mountain.

  “I did it.” I’m not sure why I was whispering but I was.

  “I know. I saw the whole thing.”

  “I don’t understand.” I pulled out of his embrace and just stared at the linen closet. “Did you move the shelf down?”

  “No. I don’t think those shelves move. I’m pretty sure you did that all by yourself.”

  “Well, I think that calls for a drink.” I turned around and my smile matched his. “Wanna come celebrate with me?”

  Hand in hand, we walked to the kitchen to pour ourselves a drink, my first official, legal, drink. White wine had become a favorite over the past couple of months. After being on pain medication for two months, my “tolerance” for liquor was gone, and as much as I like beer, it’s never been a favorite of mine. When my cast came off and we celebrated, Ethan brought home a bottle of white wine and I’ve been in love ever since.

  Ethan turned up the music and I pulled out the snacks. I was one of the first of my friends to turn twenty-one, so I knew that some of them would be sleeping on my floor tonight. I had already started trading booze for keys and hiding them in a cupboard. More people started to arrive and our living room suddenly felt a bit crowded. I opened the sliding door to the backyard and, like magic, people started to migrate out. It was December, but in Tucson, that meant forty degrees at night.

  I went to grab a handful of chips, but as I was reaching in the bowl, I realized that I hadn’t put any jewelry on. I grabbed my wine and quickly went back up the stairs to our room. I could see my jewelry tray resting on the top of my dresser as I approached. My emerald ring sparkling in the light, shining in from our window.

  I hadn’t worn it since Ethan and I moved in together, just the two of us. It seemed almost wrong in a way. I wanted Ethan to know that my heart belonged to him, and that whatever I had with Brad, that I was no longer holding on to it. He was my future.

  I fingered the ring for just a few minutes before I heard him enter the room. He cleared his throat just about the time his scent reached me. There are only two people in this world that I would be able to identify by scent alone. Ethan—who was probably downstairs entertaining our guests that were starting to arrive—was one, and Brad was the other.

  “So, are you gonna put it on? I haven’t seen you wear it in a while, and if I remember correctly, you told me once that you would never take it off. Or were you just telling me that because I was laid up in a hospital bed on the verge of dying?”

  I could help but let out a little laugh. He was so dramatic sometimes.

  “First off, you were not even close to dying. Secondly, I don’t remember actually using the word promise. And lastly, I do still wear it from time to time, but it reminds me of my past, and right now, I need to focus on moving forward with my life. So, no, I don’t plan on wearing it today, but that doesn’t mean that I still don’t appreciate its beauty from time to time.”

  I set the ring back down on the tray, and picked up my emerald earrings and a matching bracelet that Ethan had gotten me last year for Christmas. I never turned around to face him, but I could tell that his demeanor had changed. The room was no longer filled with energy but with uncertainty. This is not how I wanted my party to start. I had to apologize. I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, but it had to be said. I hated that I had to constantly remind him that I was with Ethan, especially after all this time.

  When I finally had the nerve to turn around, he was gone. When I say gone, I literally mean gone. His scent was the only thing that remained. He wasn’t downstairs when I got down there and no one had seen him. No one had even noticed him arrive earlier. It’s like he was never even here, except the present I found on my dresser later that night.

  After getting the cast off, I thought my life would go back to normal. I was wrong, on so many levels. I missed tennis more than I imagined I ever could, and not being able to do a lot of things for myself right away, made me dependent on everyone around me. I think that’s what bothered me the most. The fact that I felt incapable of taking care of myself. Ethan understood my frustration most of the time and we were able to work through it, but things started to get tense between us anyway.

  My emotions were all over the map, and if I wasn’t crying, I was most likely angry about something. I blamed my injury on my coach for not telling me my match time had changed. I blamed the official for not allowing me to stretch. Mostly, I blamed myself for going after a shot that I should have let go. My ego was the root cause of the injury, but I couldn’t bring myself to blame myself. I wanted to point the finger elsewhere so that I had someone to focus my anger on.

  Thr
ee months of therapy. I had gone through it before and survived, and I assumed I would survive again. This injury was different though. I was having trouble with the smallest tasks, and if I turned my shoulder just right, I would get shooting pains. After the first week of driving myself to therapy, I had to start relying on others to help me. I could get myself there just fine, but the drive home was painful. Anytime I had to steer the car or turn left, I would almost break out in tears. The movement was just too much for my shoulder after an hour of physical therapy.

  Brad was my go-to guy for this. His class schedule was similar to mine, so he had the same mornings off that I did. He would come and pick me up, we would go for coffee, and then he would take me to therapy. His topics of conversation were always light on the way there, trying to keep things positive, and helped me to focus on anything other than where we were headed. On the way back, my anger would kick in, and if we talked at all, he would take my verbal beating without a defensive word.

  We grew close again by the end of the three months. It felt like we were back to the people we used to be. My injury had brought us back together, and it wasn’t until the last session that I realized that none of that was a good thing. My shoulder was feeling better, almost normal, so we decided to stop for an early lunch and celebrate. It seemed innocent, but as soon as we sat down, I realized how dangerous this situation really was.

  “To you, Becca, and your full recovery.” He lifted his glass and waited for me to do the same in return. I only hesitated a moment before I clinked my water glass to his and took a sip. “So, now that you are free, what are you going to do with all your extra time?”

  His question hit a nerve. I was free of therapy, but I was also free of tennis. I hadn’t shared with anyone the news that I had received last week. I was still trying to wrap my head around it. My expression must have told him that something was wrong because he reached over the table and grabbed my hand, stroking his thumb over where my ring used to be.