Just This Once by Evelyn Jeannie Hall
Nineteen
Lacey had come into Bread and Breakfast with Elizabeth at five that morning due to a gigantic order of cupcakes some lady had made for her nine-year-old daughter’s birthday.
“How many kids did this woman invite? Every single one in the greater metropolitan area?” Lacey asked her sister.
“Feels that way,” Elizabeth replied as she poured yet another batch of cake batter into the industrial mixer. “Have we really been at this for over an hour?”
“Yep.”
A fine layer of flour puffed up from the bowl and lingered as if by magic in the air. Despite her griping, Lacey felt perfectly satisfied working in the kitchen. It smelled like frosting, rising dough, and brewing coffee. And since the bakery had been configured so that the kitchen and the office shared a wall, that meant she could pretend that office didn’t even exist. Neither did anything that might’ve once theoretically transpired in there.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Not to say that the past two weeks hadn’t weighed heavily on her. They had. But she couldn’t get Zane’s vitriolic accusations out of her mind. He’d acted like a caveman for no reason whatsoever. All she’d done was share a conversation and a brief hug with her friend Ethan—her gay friend, not that she felt like she should have to explain his orientation—and her fuck buddy had gone ballistic.
So now Zane had become her ex-fuck buddy.
Lacey knew she had to cut her losses while she still could. She had no clue where Zane’s out of left field behavior had come from, but she didn’t appreciate it. Moreover, she wasn’t about to put up with shit from a man who obviously didn’t reciprocate her feelings, no matter how inconvenient those feelings might be.
No wonder she’d stayed single for so long. Love sucked. Maybe she’d been smarter than she’d ever given herself credit for by staying away from it.
After the cupcakes had been baked, iced, and packaged up, the day stayed busy. When the mother showed up to collect her order—in a compact taxi, no less—Elizabeth helped her get all their hard work safely stacked into the backseat. The shop had meanwhile been hit with a rush that went nonstop until after closing. It ended up being four in the afternoon before she and her sister were able to leave, and by that time Lacey swore she didn’t want to see another baked good for a year.
Elizabeth had gone to Katrina and Benji’s to discuss some mind-numbing business-y thing like taxes for the bakery or some such, which left Lacey with a rare evening at home alone. It’d been a long time since she’d been given the luxury of a few hours to herself with nothing pressing, and she relished the thought of it.
She would take a long, hot bubble bath in their claw-footed tub as she listened to Enya, indulged in a pint of Ben and Jerry’s strawberry cheesecake ice cream, sipped a glass of chardonnay, and watched a sad movie until she cried Zane Morrison out of her system. Beyond the well-meaning yet prying eyes of her youngest sibling.
Lacey had begun stage one of her plan: Operation Bubble Bath, when she glanced down at her breasts. They’d been covered in mulberry shaded speckles resulting from the suckling of Zane’s mouth, something he’d delighted in maintaining ever since their naughty little tryst at the bakery, even if he’d never marked her neck again. Over the course of these past twelve days, though, they’d faded into oblivion. She’d been waiting for this, for time to erase the final vestiges of the last time they’d had sex. Yet now, here she was, hickey free, and she felt even more heartbroken.
It was so unfair.
It was also proof that this entire friends with benefits thing had been an awful idea. The only conclusion Lacey could make was that her destiny must not include either love or romance. The meaningless facsimile she’d tried with her brother-in-law’s best friend only served as a reminder that she couldn’t ever go there again. Sex and friendship shouldn’t mix.
Lesson fucking learned.
She’d adjusted to the steaming water for all of five minutes when her cell phone rang from her purse in the living room. Lacey ignored the call. This was her time, and she refused to squander it. She sank back into the lavender-scented water, purposely dunking her ears below the water line to muffle the sound. The ringing ceased, so she lifted her head and continued her soak as Enya’s soft Irish melodies flowed from her iPod’s Bluetooth speaker, rinsing over her.
That was better.
Settling back down, she absently licked her lips and caught a taste of the bath salts she’d put in. The flavor reminded her of the Maldives and how Zane’s skin had tasted out there in that beach hammock. Why did he have to kiss like Don Juan and pleasure her like an adult film star? No one else had ever made her feel what Zane had, either physically or emotionally, and her chest ached with missing him.
She was such an idiot.
Her stupid cell went off again, this time finishing with a tone that told her a voicemail had been left. Whatever. Lacey reached over to her speaker and turned it all the way up to drown out the noise. The problem was her damn phone wouldn’t quit ringing. It went off over and over, and by the time she stood to silence it, she was seething at the interruption.
Spilling bathwater and lavender scented bubbles all over the bathroom rug, she wrapped a thick terry cloth towel around her middle and stomped out to their open living space.
“Can’t even get a goddamn bath,” she grumbled to herself. “Gonna turn the dumb thing off.”
She hadn’t intended to check whose name might be on the screen, figuring it had to be Zane. There’d been nothing for those first two days, only for him to oversaturate her voicemail box and text messages after that. She hadn’t responded, though she hadn’t gone so far as to block him. Still, what part of no didn’t he understand?
Lacey had gotten nothing from him this morning, which she thought meant he might at last be giving her a break.
Apparently not.
When she snatched up her phone, she caught sight of the number despite herself. It hadn’t been her ex-fuck buddy, though. All six of those calls had come from Katrina. Lacey’s pulse skyrocketed. Neither of her sisters would keep attempting to contact her without cause. While she didn’t feel the same sense of cold foreboding from when Duncan Bolton had tried to kill Katrina, she no longer felt comfortable avoiding those calls, either. Deciding to forego listening to all those voicemails, she pressed her older sister’s number.
“Katrina? Everything okay?”
“No,” Katrina’s voice sounded high and distressed. “Benji found Zane in his condo unconscious.”
Lacey’s heart leapt right into her throat. “Oh my God. What happened?”
“We don’t know. Zane has a heartbeat and is breathing on his own, but Benji couldn’t revive him. An ambulance just took him to the hospital.”
“He didn’t wake up at all?”
“No. We wouldn’t have known anything was wrong had Benji not contacted him about a work-related thing. We don’t even know how long he’d been laying there like that.”
Laying there like that. The phrase hung in Lacey’s brain, and her reply came out hoarse because her mouth had become as parched as a desert.
“Wh… Which hospital did the ambulance take him to?” she stammered out, having trouble regulating her oxygen intake.
“Lenox Hill on 77th. Benji…” Katrina broke off, and Lacey had the godawful realization that her sister was stifling a sob. “Benji’s frantic, and I don’t know what to say to help. Please come, Lacey. Can you meet us there?”
Hurrying to throw something on despite her dripping state, she told her, “I’m on my way.”
Lacey stood in the corridor outside the ICU waiting room staring at the white on cream color scheme without actually taking it in. She and Elizabeth had arrived on the scene within minutes of each other, huddling together with the rest of their family. Due to HIPAA regulations, since the four of them weren’t blood relatives, they couldn’t be told anything confidential, which essentially meant anything pertinent. Thankfully, according to Katrina, Benji was currently on the phone with Zane’s mother.
“Roberta and his sister are flying in from Michigan,” he told them the second he hung up. “She contacted Zane’s doctors, but all they could tell her right now was that he’s in critical condition and comatose. Not that we didn’t pretty much know that already.”
“They didn’t say anything else?” Katrina asked.
“Just that they’re running a bunch of tests.” Obviously rattled, he tore one of his hands through his hair as he began to pace, then raked at his eyebrow scar. “Jesús bendito, this is worse than last time. So much worse. When I walked in and found him… he looked dead. I thought he was dead.”
Lacey swallowed, but it was like a spiky softball in her throat.
“They wouldn’t even tell his mom what the likelihood of him coming out of this is,” Benji continued.
“He’s alive, though. Right?” Katrina asked her husband.
“So far, yeah.”
“That’s thanks to you, Benji,” Elizabeth reminded him. “If you hadn’t discovered him, he might not have any chance at all.”
“Elizabeth’s right,” Katrina said, and when he paused his vicious back and forth patrolling long enough to let her, stroked a hand up and down his forearm. “Zane is young and strong and has so much to live for. He’s going to wake up. He’s going to kick this and be fine, you watch.”
Her older sister’s words didn’t give Lacey any comfort, though. It didn’t seem to do much for Benji, either, considering he commenced his pacing again.
Lacey knew what her siblings were attempting to do. As the perennial optimist of her family, Lacey had done the same thing countless times. Tell people what they want to hear. Bolster their attitudes. Believe that everything will turn out to be okay and broadcast that belief to everyone else. But this time, she felt no such optimism. To her, those statements sounded hollow and trite. How could they offer up such empty sentiments when none of them understood what was truly going on?
The next six hours were the longest of her life.
Despite the time creeping by, the hospital’s personnel couldn’t update any of them, so they all remained in the dark. Since Zane’s family was in the air, that line of communication had been severed. An hour ago, Benji had finally worn himself out enough that he’d taken a seat, and Katrina sat in his lap, letting him bury his face in her hair as they wove their arms tightly around each other. At one point, Katrina had broken down, so Benji soothed her. Watching them support one another might have been heartwarming had Lacey not felt so frightened herself.
Worse, she couldn’t express it. After everything that had occurred between her and Zane, exposing their fling now would be pointless. So, she sat there across from Benji and Katrina, Elizabeth at her side, doing her best not to picture Zane dying before she had the chance to see him again.
She glanced up and caught a glimpse of Benji repositioning his dozing wife back into a chair as he rose to his feet. Crossing over the thin grayish-green carpet of the waiting room, he brought his phone to his ear and spoke in low tones Lacey couldn’t make out as he struck out towards the corridor. Since he stayed in sight, she was able to observe his fitful movements as he talked to whoever might be on the opposite end of the line.
And all at once, she began to fume.
Why couldn’t any of those nurses or doctors tell them anything? Why did that privacy thing even have to exist? It only made everything ten times more dreadful for those waiting for news. How could the hospital staff not break it? Didn’t they know how cruel it was to withhold such vital information? And how far would they go with it? If Zane were to pass away, would they even alert them to that fact? Or would they continue to go about their duties as if nothing important—nothing that would alter Lacey’s life forever—had changed?
Movement snagged her attention and she looked up, hoping to see Zane’s family so she would no longer be in the dark, only to identify the motion as nothing but Benji returning. He started up his pacing routine again, and Lacey clenched her hands into fists. Much as she loved her brother-in-law, he couldn’t provide her with the answers she needed. Also, this outward display of his anxieties got on her nerves, so she advanced away so she wouldn’t say something she would regret.
For once, she’d managed to engage her brain to mouth filter, but it brought her no solace.
Slipping into a nearby single stall restroom, Lacey plopped onto the closed commode without using it. It drove her crazy that she had a much higher stake in Zane’s prognosis than anyone else knew, especially since she couldn’t confide in her sisters and Benji like she normally would. Never in her life had her resolve been tested more. Had she not known that each of them had their own worries and apprehensions to deal with, she probably would’ve broken long before now.
Going back to that waiting room felt tantamount to torture, so rather than retracing her steps, she loitered near the entrance. This may have been why she was the first to see two African American women dashing inside as if the hounds of hell were chasing them. Instantly, Lacey’s gaze zeroed in on the two, promptly identifying them based on the photographs she’d seen in Zane’s hallway. Lacey juddered forward automatically, but it was Benji’s name they called out as he crossed over to meet them.
It wouldn’t be appropriate for you to go over there, she reminded herself, even as her stomach hurt at the acknowledgement.
Lacey could only make out bits and pieces of their short conversation before he led them over to the nurse’s station. All this suspense was fucking killing her. When a woman in blue scrubs and a white coat appeared, asking for the family of Zane Morrison, Lacey had to force herself to remain stationary, which was insane. She couldn’t consider herself any more his family than Katrina or Elizabeth could.
And, of course, the physician led Zane’s mom and sister down the opposite corridor where she couldn’t hear anything.
If Lacey shrieked in defeat right now, would they kick her out?
Since the answer to that would likely be yes, she chewed on her lips to keep them cemented shut. Not knowing what else to do, she followed Benji back to the same seats they’d been sequestering themselves in all along. Elizabeth sat thumbing through an ancient magazine looking tranquil, but her fingers tapping out an erratic melody on its pages gave her true feelings away. Benji returned to where Katrina had huddled across from Elizabeth, planting himself next to his wife. Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he didn’t glimpse up at any of them as Katrina—now awake—massaged circles into his shoulder blades.
“Tell us everything that happened again in case we missed any helpful details,” Katrina requested from her husband. They all already knew the story, but Benji obliged her, nonetheless. To keep from succumbing to her own tidal wave of despair, Lacey listened in.
“I texted him with a question, and he didn’t get back to me. He always gets back to me within minutes, but when he didn’t this time, I blew it off. I should’ve kept tabs on him better. He’s been having periodic issues with his sugar, but I didn’t pursue it. Jesús bendito, I let it go all day long.” Katrina dug her knuckles into his neck, and Benji closed his eyes.
“There was no possible way you could’ve known he was in trouble,” his wife informed him, but Benji only shook his head, looking miserable.
“His hand was stretched out towards his phone on the nightstand as if to call for help,” he sounded wracked with guilt, and he wasn’t the only one feeling that way. Benji hadn’t mentioned that detail previously, and all Lacey could see in her mind’s eye was Zane desperately seeking assistance and not being physically capable of getting it. Before Lacey could indulge in much self-flagellation, though, Elizabeth piped up.
“What made you ultimately decide to go over there?”
“Later I remembered the question and checked my cell, figuring I’d missed his text somehow. But he hadn’t sent anything back. So, I texted him again. When he still didn’t respond, I called him and only got his voicemail. I thought maybe his phone had lost its charge, so I dropped by.”
Unlike her.
How many times had Lacey denied him when he’d reached out to her over these past two weeks? Calls. Texts. Voicemails. What if one of those times had happened today? What if Zane had experienced the direst of needs and wound up losing his life because of her obstinacy? Like he still might do. Lacey’s eyes prickled dangerously, a tear seeping out and dribbling down her cheek before she could blink it away.
Benji and Katrina were so caught up in their own distraught bubble they didn’t notice, but Elizabeth did. “Oh, sweetie, you’re taking this so hard, aren’t you?” she whispered her query into Lacey’s ear.
Peeking up at her blearily, Lacey did her best to maintain their cover.
“Don’t know why I’m so emotional,” she mumbled out.
Elizabeth squinted at her. “It’s not easy to stand by when someone you love is unwell, especially when their life is hanging in the balance.”
Shit. Somehow, her sister knew. “Elizabeth…”
“Shhhh,” she shushed her, standing and offering Lacey her hand. With something way too akin to relief, Lacey took it, and together they trudged outside beneath the awning over the main entrance. Night had fallen, but the mercury vapor light overhead caught her sibling’s heart shaped earrings and made them gleam. “You don’t have to hide from me.”
She didn’t know why, but Elizabeth’s words fractured the dam inside her. All her reserves dissolved into nothing, making her inquiry come out as a weep. “H-how did you find out?”
“Technically, you just confirmed my suspicions, but I live and work with you, you know. All your hot dates with this one guy? I knew something was up. Because no offense, but until recently, your love life has never been that prolific. When Zane came by the bakery a few weeks ago to offer you that extra lesson… The way you regarded one another was electric. I’d suspected your clandestine lover might be him, but after that, I was ninety percent sure. Then, you went from all smiles to depressed, and Katrina mentioned Zane was distracted and down in the dumps, too. That made the percentage fly up even higher.”
“We had a f-fight,” Lacey admitted, her voice a blubbering disaster, “and now… Now I’m going to lose him before we can make up.”
“No. I believe what Katrina said in there to Benji. We need to trust that Zane is strong enough to pull through.”
But what if he wasn’t?
After Lacey settled down for a minute, she came clean. It felt important to do so, even if ultimately it was a moot point. “What we had wasn’t a relationship like you thought, Elizabeth. We were just friends with benefits.”
God, that made everything sound so cheap and tawdry. Was that how Zane looked at it? Maybe the whole situation had been nothing but empty pleasure for him while she’d fallen head over heels like some naïve schoolgirl.
But if that was the case, why had he repeatedly tried to contact her?
Her sister scrutinized her with a gentle smile. “Maybe you two started out like that, but I witnessed how Zane interacted with you at Bread and Breakfast. That man had the look.”
“What look?”
“The same look Benji has for Katrina.”
Didn’t Lacey wish. Lust wasn’t the same as love, and him adoring her tits wasn’t the same as him adoring her. “I don’t think so.”
“Then, you need to scrutinize him with fresh eyes,” Elizabeth countered with ferocity in her tone. “Let’s get back inside. Now that Zane’s next of kin are here, our chances of hearing an update have increased significantly.”
Lacey couldn’t disagree with that, so she allowed her youngest sister to guide her back into the hospital. They’d just arrived outside the ICU when they saw Zane’s mom and sister approaching Benji and Katrina. She and Elizabeth hurried over.
“So, my son suffered an event that caused his kidneys to cease functioning,” his mother was saying. “Based on his tests, he may have experienced at least one seizure to go along with that, maybe more. This sort of condition can happen to type one diabetics with little to no warning.”
“Roberta,” Benji glanced at the older lady, then to the younger woman. “Tasha, this is Lacey and Elizabeth, my sisters-in-law.”
“You’re Lacey?” Roberta asked, and surprised, she met the woman’s stare.
“I am.”
“Has my son shown any signs of illness recently? Tiredness? Confusion? Dizziness?”
“Tiredness, but that was a couple of months ago,” Lacey answered in a quiet tone, and Benji studied each of them, his forehead rumpling in puzzlement. Katrina’s eyes grew wide as she cottoned on, sparing a glance at Elizabeth who offered her the barest nod. Sometimes, being a triplet worked for you and sometimes against you. “But we haven’t been around each other over the past couple of weeks.”
“Yes, I’m aware of your falling out,” his mom stated, her features as inflexible as her son’s when he wanted his way.
She was aware? Zane had told her? When had he done that?
“Okay, not to butt in, Roberta,” Benji piped up, “and I definitely want to revisit whatever that was.” He sent all three siblings a penetrating look. “But did the doctors say anything else?”
“Yes. When they discovered Zane’s kidneys had shut down, they did a procedure to try to get them working again, but it failed.” Roberta Morrison pulled off a pair of eyeglasses and used her finger and thumb to massage the bridge of her nose. “Dr. Rajeesh said it was likely that he experienced a tonic-clonic seizure—the kind that make people spasm forcefully—before he fell into that coma. He has a fractured shinbone on his left side and lots of bruises, probably from him being too close to something unyielding when he…” Her chin trembled and she paused.
“He was on the floor of his bedroom when I found him,” Benji volunteered into the gap, sounding anguished. Lacey could picture that space, had spent so much time there. The unforgiving surface of cherry parquet floor. The wrought iron railing around his king-sized bed. The end tables on either side of his mattress. The wooden framed window seat with its wainscoted construction. So many objects that someone seizing could flail into.
Roberta nodded, then clearing her throat, she pushed her glasses back into place “Right now, he’s undergoing dialysis to get all those toxins out of his system. Hopefully, once they’re cleared, he’ll wake up.”
Tasha looped an arm around her mom. “What he really needs is a donor kidney, though. We’ve just been informed that we can’t donate. Mom’s high blood pressure means they won’t let her. And I’m, well… I just found out I’m pregnant, so that puts me out of the running, too.”
“Congratulations,” Benji told her softly, offering her a fleeting hug. But the celebration was understandably muted. “Zane’s gonna be an uncle.” That last sentence came out as a croak, and Katrina went from anxiously stroking a spot on her collarbone to throwing her arms around his waist. He leaned into her.
Tasha smiled, but it vanished quickly. “Thanks. Oberlin’s getting tested back in Detroit. If he’s a match, he’ll fly out here.”
“Tell him to fly out here, anyway. Zane’s going to need you both,” Roberta told her daughter.
“I’ll cover his ticket,” Benjamin said, as if chomping at the bit to do something useful. Lacey understood. She felt the same way.
“You don’t have to do that,” Roberta said. “You already paid for ours, and we will be paying you back.”
“Not necessary.” Benji waved her pronouncement away. “Zane is family. It’s the least I can do.”
“What if your husband’s not a match?” Lacey asked Tasha, too worried to be intimidated by the fact that she was speaking to the family of the man she loved for the first time.
“Then they’ll do a nationwide search,” Tasha answered her. “They already are. Zane’s status is dire. Dr. Rajeesh said he’ll be at the top of the list.”
“I’ll get tested, too,” Benji offered.
“We all can,” Katrina added.
“That’s very kind,” Roberta said, the sad set of her lips rising by a degree or two.
They approached the nurse’s station and asked about testing for kidney donor compatibility. They took Benji first, and once they escorted him back, the tech eyed Katrina, Lacey, and Elizabeth in turn.
“Uh, are you three multiples?”
“Yes, we’re identical triplets,” Katrina answered.
“Well, in that case, I only need one of you. Since you have the same DNA, either you’re all a match or none of you are.”
Lacey stepped forward. Everyone had essentially been clued in that something had been going on between her and Zane, so what was the use of keeping the rest of the truth concealed? She took an audible breath.
“It’d better be me then, since I’m the one who’s in love with him.”