Jerk It by Lani Lynn Vale

CHAPTER 17

You need to stop living for someone else’s idea of perfect.

-Murphy to Mavis

MAVIS

A few weeks later

“Can’t. Breathe.”

I reached into my pocket for the aspirin that I carried everywhere now—I never left home without it—and shoved two practically down his throat.

“I’m going, baby. I’m going.”

I blew the stoplight that was turning red, and quickly drove to the hospital like I was on two wheels.

By the time that we pulled up to the ER entrance, it’d been two minutes and fifteen seconds since he’d first shown signs of a heart attack.

I screeched to a halt and all but screamed my head off for someone to come help me.

A brawny young man in green scrubs came out seconds later with a wheelchair in front of him, looking nervous.

I yanked open the van door and all but lifted Murphy out of his seat.

All I had to do was pivot and turn Murphy into the wheelchair before I was screaming, “He’s having a heart attack! Take him back!”

The green-scrubbed guy didn’t hesitate after that.

Vlad was screaming his head off in the backseat, and I turned woodenly and stared at his face.

He was staring at where Murphy had disappeared through the large doors.

I sat down on the concrete right there, put my head in my hands, and cried.

It took them twenty minutes to come out to me and tell me that Murphy had suffered a heart attack.

Five minutes later, I was walking into my worst nightmare.

“Baby?”

He was so weak he could barely hold his head up.

His eyes were sunken, and he couldn’t sleep worth a damn because of the coughing that kept him up all night.

Weeks ago, when he’d had his heart attack after we’d left dinner with our friends, he’d gone from moving around to…not.

He’d gone from being able to do just about everything, just with a hitch in his step, to barely able to move from the bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen.

Now, he couldn’t even do that.

“Read to me,” he pleaded.

I swallowed past a lump in my throat, my fingers scraping down the length of his scruffy jaw.

“What do you want me to read you?” I asked.

He cleared his throat. “Read me the romance book you started reading me last night.”

I choked out a laugh. “That was a joke.”

“It might’ve been, but I got into it. Now read, woman,” he ordered.

I dashed away the tear, hopefully before he got a chance to see it, and reached for my phone.

I’d already started to read on the book, but I knew exactly where we’d left off.

There was a specific scene that’d left me all hot and bothered.

One that I had to stop reading because I couldn’t go about reading it anymore in front of the man that, though weakened and barely able to lift his head, still had the power to undo me.

Even with a heated, sallow-eyed look, he could totally and completely do it for me.

“You know, she has it in audio. I could lay in the bed next to you, and we could listen to it together while I knitted,” I offered.

He grumbled something under his breath. “I could do that, but then I wouldn’t get to hear your voice.”

I felt the tears course through me at his words.

I didn’t let them spill over, though.

Not when I knew what crying did to him.

“Okay,” I offered, picking up the book.

I’d read it before, of course. It was one of my favorites.

The name of the book was called Hide Your Crazy.

It was one of my favorites because of the two main characters. At first, they’d hated each other.

Kind of like Murphy and me.

That had to be why I’d liked it so much.

Getting up, I decided to join him in bed anyway.

His hand went to my leg as I snuggled in deep, and his head moved so that it was resting on my stomach.

His face turned so that he was pressing the side of his face against my belly.

Then I began to read.

I stared at the ceiling, wondering if I’d done something to God to make him hate me.

Three weeks ago, I’d moved out of my old apartment into this one because my old neighbor liked to hold orgies at all hours of the night.

Now, I had a pacer above me that never slept.

“What in the hell have I done to deserve this?” I asked the ceiling.

Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Shuffle to the left. Step. Step.

Step. Step. Shuffle to the right. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step.

Over and over again it went.

It was on my second hour of listening to it when I finally decided enough was enough.

Grabbing the broom that I’d gone and gotten from the kitchen but hadn’t worked up the courage to use over the last two hours, I walked to the middle of my bedroom and came to a stop at the foot of my bed.

Step. Step. Step. Step.

Then, with trepidation, I lifted the broom and tapped on the ceiling.

Lou, who’d been on the end of my bed sleeping blissfully, started to bark.

I whipped my head around and growled, “Quiet!”

He settled down into a low growl, but the stepping, thank God, had stopped.

At least, it did for all of twenty seconds.

Then it resumed again.

Step. Step. Shuffle to the left.

So, I tapped the broom a little bit harder, biting my lip.

“He’s asleep.”

I looked up, swallowed hard, and felt the tears come to my eyes at Giulia’s words.

“He’s not sleeping much,” I admitted.

“I know,” she whispered, her eyes on her son.

My son was asleep in her arms, and I felt my heart lurch. “You going to go?”

She nodded, walking farther into the room, and hefted Vlad in her arms slightly. “I can’t remember the last time I picked my son up like this.”

Her words felt like a dagger to my heart.

Vlad had done a lot of growing in the last few months, growing that had been somewhat overshadowed with Murphy’s illness.

But Vlad, being the good baby he was for everyone but me, had hung in there.

I smiled as I thought about how heavy he’d gotten lately.

“I read a book when I was pregnant with him,” I said, smoothing my hands across Murphy’s hair. “Pretty much said to cherish everything, because one day you’ll pick them up for the last time. I never really put much thought into it, but last week I found one of his old pacifiers under my bed, and I thought, when was the last time he’d used one of those?”

She smiled sadly and brushed a kiss onto Vlad’s forehead, then walked to the bed and looked down at her son.

My heart felt heavy as I said, “Want to switch places for a bit? I can get him ready for bed.”

She swallowed hard, her throat bobbing as if she was swallowing past a large lump. “I think I’d like that.”

We switched, and together we moved the man that held my heart until he was resting in his mother’s arms instead of mine.

She curled her hands around his face, and then bent low to press a kiss to his forehead.

“When he was little,” she said softly, “he used to sleep in a ball. Like curl up so tight that I could barely see him in his little bed. From the moment that he was old and strong enough to do it. There was one time that I went to check on him and swear to God, I thought he’d been kidnapped. I tore his bed apart. His room. Then the whole house. Then to go back into his room with this frantic feeling in my heart only to find him sitting curled in the middle of his crib with stuffed animals surrounding him.”

Vlad made a fussing sound in my arms, and I rolled my eyes. “I seriously don’t understand what everyone else does for him that I can’t.”

Guilia didn’t look up as she said, “Sometimes, as a mother, a child knows that they can just be themselves when the person they love most is holding them. They can cry and scream, and they know that we’ll love them anyway when they’re through.”

I felt tears clog my throat as I left the room.

It was only after I’d gotten my son in bed—awake now that I’d learned that it was his desired way of doing things thanks to Murphy showing me—that I went back to check on the two.

I found Guilia crying silent tears while Murphy slept in her arms.

I left them alone, and only when I was far enough away, did I let the sobs fall free from my throat.

• • •

2 weeks later

I got home from work to find Murphy asleep on the couch, and Vlad asleep on top of Murphy.

My eyes instantly filled with tears.

Ever since that day of doctor’s appointments, though he hadn’t officially ‘moved in,’ he’d been there every night.

I loved it and hated it.

Mostly because I was going to get used to it, and at some point, he would no longer be there to give me that instant feeling of ‘rightness.’

“You’re staring like a weirdo,” came the grumbled reply from the couch. “And you’re letting all the cold air in. Hurry up and get in here and close the door.”

I snickered as I did what he said, not because he’d ordered me to, but because I wanted to.

At least, that was what I kept telling myself.

I walked to the couch and bent over the arm, placing the first kiss on Murphy’s lips before moving to my kid next.

He allowed me to kiss him only because he was still asleep.

“Was he good for your mom and you today?” I wondered.

He grunted out a ‘yeah’ as he sat up, being careful not to jostle my baby in his arms. “He was fussy after my mother left, though, so I gave him a bottle and we took a quick power nap.”

I smiled as I reached for my kid, relishing in the way he snuggled in, likely not knowing that it was me.

“I wish I knew why he disliked me so much,” I grumbled.

Murphy snorted. “He doesn’t dislike you.”

I rolled my eyes. “We both know that to be a lie,” I said as I walked into the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”

He shook his head, and I felt yet another lead weight get added to the ball in my stomach.

“You have to eat,” I ordered.

He smiled. “Have to. But don’t want to. Maybe soup?”

Broth. He’d drink the broth, because that wouldn’t take any effort on his part.

“Okay,” I said softly, heading to the kitchen to get his soup on.

I made myself and Vlad a small frozen meal and waited until all three were done before heading back into the living room where I could hear Murphy breathing heavy.

“You okay?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Breathing’s bad today.”

It was getting worse and worse as the days went on.

Not even oxygen was helping anymore.

He looked awful, too.

He was overdue for a haircut, his eyes had large, black circles underneath of them, and they looked sunken, as if he’d had all the water sucked out of him.

Which was funny, because everywhere else he was so swollen he looked like a different person.

I sat carefully on the couch beside him and brought the cooled soup up to his lips.

He didn’t protest when I held it there because he could barely hold a spoon up anymore, let alone a bowl of soup.

Honestly, if Vlad had woken up and had needed anything, Murphy wouldn’t be able to provide it for him.

But today, Guilia had hurt herself in the kitchen, and she’d gone to the doctor to see if she needed stitches.

I’d rushed home from work as fast as I could, but that’d still left Vlad alone with Murphy who couldn’t do anything for a good solid hour.

Luckily, Vlad was a good baby and chose to comply with his best friend instead of making it harder on him.

Murphy touched my arm, and I frowned.

Only half the soup had been consumed.

“You’re sure?” I asked.

He nodded. “Sure.”

I sat the soup down with a slightly shaking hand, and then went to my food as the man beside me got more comfortable on the couch.

I was half-finished with mine before Vlad woke up and wanted his own.

I fed him completely before I went back to my now-cold dinner.

“I love you.”

I smiled at Murphy over my shoulder. “I love you, too.”

His eyes took me in for a few long seconds before he said, “When I’m gone, I want you to know this. Vlad loves you, too. He may not show it in the best way, but in the beginning, I didn’t either. Okay?”

That lead ball had yet another weight added to it.

Murphy didn’t shy away from the ‘when I’m gone’ comments anymore.

We both knew he was going to be gone soon.

It was inevitable when you focused on his decline.

But that didn’t mean that I wanted to admit it.

“Okay.”

That ‘okay’ cost me.

He knew it, too.

When he brought me into his arms by tugging lightly on my hair, I could barely hold in the sobs.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “One day, you’re going to look back and smile. You can cry for now, though. I have my crying shirt on.”

I snorted.

Then proceeded to cry into his ‘crying shirt.’

Funny thing was, all of them seemed to be crying shirts lately.