“Yes, it is.” I opened the door, I needed to get out, to stand up and stretch my back before my muscles seized up for good. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you tonight, Mrs. Knight.” I just wanted to call her that once. Just once.
She caught my arm, nails digging into the fabric of my sleeve, surprising me with her strength. “That’s not…you can’t…we agreedno onewould know.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” I said, meaning every word. “I won’t say a thing. Just keep the ring. Please, just keep it.” It made me feel better knowing that she had it, as if it tethered us together in a tangible way, other than the legal documents we’d just signed, that is.
We just looked at each other for a moment, the kind of look where you both know you’re standing at the edge of a cliff, but neither one wants to mention the drop.
Then she said, in a voice that was more nervous than angry, “Are you going to wear yours?”
"No.” I slipped it off my finger and into my pocket. “Thanks for the ride.”
Then I turned and walked away without looking back. It was sort of my thing with Billie. If I looked back, it was too hard to keep moving forward. Her pull on me was too intense.
The glass doors of the Golden Gate Rehab & Sports Medicine Clinic glided shut behind me with a pneumatic sigh. The congested traffic a block away and the buzz of the city was muffled by double-paned glass. The first thing that hit me was a gust of brisk, menthol-charged air, tinged with the scent of industrial-grade sanitizer as well as a wave of eucalyptus and fresh bleach smacking me in the face. The tiled lobby gleamed in a way that made your footsteps sound both important and a littletoo loud. On the walls, autographed jerseys and candid shots of pro athletes in various states of recovery proved that this was where the best came to get put back together.
The only person at the reception desk was Leanne, who always wore scrubs a wild, cartoon pattern. Today they featured banana peels and monkey faces. She didn’t even ask my name, just waved me over and turned the computer screen so I could check myself in.
“Hey, Adam,” she said, like we were regulars at the same bar, which made me realize I’d been here enough that we kind of were. “Charli’s running five minutes behind, so just hang out in the lounge. Coffee’s fresh.”
“Thanks.” I moved to the waiting area with a practiced limp that was more habit than necessity these days, something I should definitely address so it didn’t become irreversible.
I sat down in one of those weird ergonomic chairs designed to make your spine realign, and fidgeted with my phone for a minute, then stopped. Instead, I pulled out my dad’s ring and rolled it between my thumb and middle finger. I wondered which wedding it had been used for. The band was worn thin around the edges, so maybe it was one of the longer entanglements. I’d only had it on for an hour, but I’d felt naked walking in here without it. I slipped it back into my pocket, trying to ignore the way my reflection caught in the glass-fronted magazine rack. For a second, I thought about what it meant, wearing a wedding ring that was both a prop and also…not.
“Adam?” It was Charli’s voice, carrying around the corner. She had this way of walking really fast but still perfectly in control, her ponytail bobbing with each step. “Ready to work?”
I followed her past the check-in area and into the gym, which looked like a cross between a high-end fitness center and a mad scientist’s garage, with cables and resistance bands and racks of brightly colored dumbbells, interspersed with medical devices.She tapped the iPad in her hand and shot me a quick look. “How’s the pain scale today?”
“Two, maybe three,” I lied. “Not bad.”
“Right.” She sighed. “You know, you don’t get brownie points for bullshitting.”
I didn’t do it on purpose, I just wasn’t a whiner. “It’s an eight, but I was on my feet a lot this morning.”
“Oh really, why?”
“I had some things I had to take care of.”
“Things that superseded your recovery.”
“Legal things.”
She waited for me to elaborate. I didn’t. Finally, she nodded. “Right, okay. We’ll take it easy, then.”
“No. I just need to get better.”
“You can’t rush this, and pushing yourself when you’ve already overtaxed yourself by being on your feet will only cause you to do further damage. In fact, let’s do some work in the water today just to be safe.”
I headed to the locker room to change into swim trunks for today’s session. The entire time, all I could think about were our vows. My brain kept replaying the moment Billie said, “And I promise to be there for you always. Forever, on the good and bad days I will never walk away.” It was fake. But I knew Billie. We might not have been close for the past twenty years, but I felt like those vows… she meant those vows. I kept having to remind myself it wasn’t real.
Charli met me at the therapy pool, where the water steamed beneath the glass atrium in a way that made everything feel slightly otherworldly, like we were training on a spaceship.
“Let’s start with pool noodle pushdowns for your shoulder to warm up, and then we’ll move on to your back,” she instructed.
I did as she asked and lost myself in her counting. Something about being submerged made the pain feel manageable, almost like it belonged to someone else.
When I finished, she grinned, her teeth perfectly white, and for a split second I wondered if she’d ever had braces or if the universe had just handed her everything on a silver platter. The thought was fleeting, but it made me wonder why I always felt more at ease around people who’d had to fight for what they had.
I wondered if that’s what had drawn me to Billie crying on that porch. Had I seen myself in her. My mom left, her mom died. I hadn’t known that’s why she was crying, but maybe somehow, I recognized that in her.
