I Always Will

Waking

Riley

My right hand is cold.

No.

My left hand is warm.

I don't know how long it's been like that.

I mean, I don't know how long I've been aware. I move my fingers and the warmth turns to pressure.

"Riley? Riley, can you hear me?"

Row. On the verge of tears. The voice once so soaked with surety and sex and song. It always tremors now. With anger or desperation.

I did that.

No, she did that.

"Riley, open your eyes. Look at me."

I open my mouth to tell her to sod off because she's the only goddamn thing I ever see when my eyes are closed—her and Aidan Mosteller— but no sound comes out. My throat hurts, and that awareness causes me to take a sharp breath and then...

Bloody fucking hell.

Everything hurts.

Then I remember. Terror and tumbling and the unnatural movement of the horizon as my car flipped over and over. And Row—with gray hair in a red cowboy hat— the last thing I thought I would ever remember.

I squeeze her fingers mostly just to see if I can.

"Riley! Riley!" she whispers-shouts.

I open my eyes, the light hurts—everything is a blur—and I immediately close them again, focusing instead on what I can hear and feel.

Row talking excitedly, calling the nurse, while a machine beeps and another machine whirs. That's what I hear.

What I feel is pain

Then alarm. Because I was wrong.

Not everything hurts.

My head hurts, my throat aches, my lungs feel like they are filled with glass and as much as that hurts it's even worse on the outside, so I must have broken ribs. But everything below that feels heavy and dull. No, not entirely. Something is wrong. It feels too heavy and numb. I try to wiggle my toes and I can't tell if it's happening or not, beneath the covers.

"Riley, don't try to move, okay? You have to stay still."

"Water," I croak.

Row is asking a nurse if I can have water.

"Of fucking course I can have water." My voice crackles imprecisely. Annoyed, I clear my throat and try again. "Rather necessary to life, darling."

She laughs because in my delirium I have called her a pet name that I haven't used in quite a while, I suppose. I would rather like to see the smile that accompanies her laugh, because I am pretty well buggered here. So even though I wouldn't normally allow myself the indulgence of looking her directly in the face, I turn toward the sound of her and work to make my vision focus.

Right, forgot for a minute—the gray hair is long gone, and with it the cheeky smile. She's bleached blonde now—with dark roots—messy extensions to her waist. Her expressions are more fragile—her eyes and mouth seem larger in her thinner face.

Even though she laughed, her smile looks painful.

Actually, she looks like she's been dying for days and days.

A year of bloody days and more. We both have.

The way she looks scares me and angers me at the same time, but I can't stop myself from trying to reach her, in my way.