Page 69 of When You're Gone
When her bare feet scuffed the plywood, she let out a sigh of relief. The roughness didn’t bother her—she’d rather have a wood splinter than a glass shard in her foot any day. “Thank you,” she crooned, her body physically relaxing into the safety of Jake’s care.
“Don’t thank me just yet… there’s still a lot of glass.” He inched forward on his knees as he pulled an oven mitt on to each hand. “How… how did the glass getonyou, baby?” He peered up at her with genuine concern.
She swallowed down the fear that threatened to bubble back up as she thought about the bottle shattering on impact. She shook her head adamantly, unable to explain the mechanics of everything that had happened without breaking down.
“I can’t talk about it. Just help me get inside,” she pleaded.
Jake paused and considered her request before nodding once and peering up at her again.
“I’m going to roll your leggings down your legs. I need you to step out of them and only step forward, okay? Lean on me for balance.”
He clumsily grasped the waistband of her pants, careful not to catch her underwear in the mitts, then peeled them down her legs. He rolled the fabric as he went, ditching the oven mitts once he got to her knees and had enough material bunched up to protect his hands. He was meticulous as he worked in silence, stretching each pant leg wide so she could step out of it with ease. It wasn’t until her shins were exposed that he cursed out loud. She looked down to see little trails of blood trickling down both legs.
“I can’t see shit out here… I have no idea if there’s still glass on you or not. Fucking Fielding.”
She closed her eyes as he cursed his name. She didn’t want to think about him again tonight. Or ever.
As if sensing her desire to not dwell on the man who had caused so much chaos, Jake shook his head and refocused on the task at hand. He spun the bag of sandwich bread open with a flourish, sticking the twist tie between his teeth for safe keeping. Then he took out two pieces of bread and started stamping them against the bare skin of her feet, calves, and thighs.
“Any little slivers will stick to the bread,” he explained through gritted teeth as he tried not to let the twist tie fall. He methodically covered every inch of her bare skin as she started to shiver from the cold. The white sandwich bread did the job, trapping bits of glass, drops of blood, and slivers of dignity with its sponginess.
“Hang in there, baby… almost done.”
Once he was satisfied with his work, he slowly rose to his feet. He grabbed the robe and scissors next, then moved to stand directly in front of her. He jutted his chin and asked, “What do you have on under your sweatshirt?”
“Just a T-shirt… no bra.”
“Take these,” he instructed as he handed her the pair of kitchen shears. “I’ll hold the robe up for you. You need to cut them off your body, starting at the neck and working down.”
Her eyes went wide in defiance. “I’m not cutting anything off me.”
“Baby. There’s glasseverywhere. We have to get off as much as we can out here. It’s fine. I literally changed your surgical drains a few months ago. No point trying to be modest about your new boobs now,” he teased.
His joke did nothing to lighten the mood.
She doubled down on her objection. “Jake, no. I don’t want to cut this sweatshirt. And I definitely can’t cut the T-shirt.”
“I’ll replace them for you,” he tried with a sigh and a tilt of his head that told her he was running out of patience.
“They’re not replaceable.”
Understanding hit. She was wearing Rhett’s Archway Prep crewneck over one of his old lacrosse T-shirts from high school. She would rather walk around with glass embedded in her skin than destroy either item.
They faced off in silence for several seconds before Jake finally offered a compromise. “Alright, how about I just cut the neck out of the sweatshirt? Then we should be able to slide it down your body so you can step out of it. I’ll have to stretch the T-shirt wide to get it past your shoulders and hips…”
“That’s fine. I don’t mind if it’s stretched out,” she insisted.
They worked in silence again as Jake carefully cut around the neck of the sweatshirt. She could tell he was trying to preserve as much of it as possible.
The crewneck came off with ease. The T-shirt was a different story.
Fabric stitches popped as he manipulated the thin T-shirt past her shoulders, then over her breasts. He grimaced as he tried to shimmy the shirt down her body without feeling her up in the process. She didn’t bother reminding him she didn’t have any feeling in her chest anymore. An errant boob graze was the least of her concerns.
She couldn’t hold back a wince as the soft cotton material brushed against the cuts on her hands and wrists. Jake muttered a string of expletives as he worked as quickly as possible to free her from the fabric.
She felt nauseous as the adrenaline waned and the memories of what had just happened started to replay in her mind. Next came the full-body shakes. It was the middle of the night, and a cold night at that. She was bloodied and aching, standing in nothing but her underwear as her husband’s best friend tried to care for her.
Her husband.
