I’m Keeping You. Jane Lark

it for the years she’d lived here. She’d taken a massive bite out of the apple. I’d left it to go rotten. It had never tasted good to me.

      Our hotel was in Brooklyn, near the area where I used to live, DUMBO, Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. The hotel was a narrow, sky-scraping building. It stood out, tall amongst the lower-story buildings surrounding it. We unloaded our stuff and walked into the place.

      I guess its whole theme was tall and narrow; the welcome desk area was the same.

      I checked us in as Rach stood near me, her arms crossed defensively in front of her chest and her hands clasping either elbow.

      The last time I’d checked us into a hotel it had been in Las Vegas, when we’d gotten married.

      We were up on the fifteenth floor. Rach pressed the button for the elevator, then stood staring at the numbers above the elevator doors. The doors opened. I lifted a hand encouraging her to go in first. I followed, with the suitcase.

      She leaned her shoulders against the wall, so I stood next to her, slid a hand around her and gave her ass a pat to make her smile. She did smile—slightly.

      Everything was ruined. She never gave me bright smiles anymore, and it was all Mr. Rees’s fault. She’d been fine until he’d started messing us around over Saint. First off, before all of this, he wouldn’t do the DNA test and I’d needed him to do it so I could start the adoption process. That was about the time she’d walked into the river with Saint. So then I’d come to New York, alone, and forced him into doing the fucking DNA test. Only since then he’d stopped not wanting Saint and started sharpening fucking knives to chuck at us.

      Our room was alright, nothing special. It had a desk in front of a mirror outside the en suite, a chest of drawers, a king-sized bed with a nightstand either side and a long window which looked out across the city. Rach walked over to the window as I lifted the suitcase up on to a stool.

      “This reminds me of your apartment.” She turned back and looked at me.

      “Yeah.” It did a little. I’d had a floor-length window like that; it had looked out over DUMBO.

      She looked back out.

      I walked up behind her, slid my hands over her belly and kissed her neck. “What do you want to do, go out?”

      Her head fell back on to my shoulder. “I don’t know.”

      I missed my Rachel, the vibrant, half-crazy girl I’d met. She was smothered by her meds. But she’d been vulnerable then too, and lonely, and easily hurt behind all her bravado. She had crashed down into sad moods as fast as she’d gotten happy and dragged me into doing something I’d have avoided like hell if it hadn’t been for her.

      I’d been reading up on bipolar on the internet, though, and she might need to be on her strong meds right now, but people didn’t have to stay on heavy doses forever, they reduced them. She’d get back to herself one day. Soon, I hoped. “Then let’s walk down to the Brooklyn Bridge Park?”

      She turned around and pressed her face into my neck. Her lips touched my skin when she said, “I’d like that.”

      “I thought you might.” It was one of our old haunts. We had memories there.

      I pressed her back against the window and kissed her properly. Her arms lifted up on to my shoulders and rested there as her tongue wove about mine slowly. My hands slid to grip her butt and I pulled her hips against mine.

      Many things had gone wrong in our marriage in the last few months, but the one thing we’d recently managed to fix was the sex. We’d been to a party a week ago, for Halloween, and gone outside in the dark. But then she’d told me about this threat from Mr. Rees.

      I broke away from her. “Come on, let’s go to the park.”

      I got the first proper smile I’d had out of her all day. Those smiles were way too rare.

      We walked through Brooklyn holding hands. Then headed into the park and looked up at the massive bridge, with Manhattan Bridge as its shadow. I let go of her hand and slung my arm around her shoulders.

      The Brooklyn Bridge was a giant. It dwarfed us. I’d forgotten how dominating the New York skyline was. It put you in your place, made you realize how much of a nothing you were in the world. That’s how I’d always felt in New York.

      We walked along the path by the river.

      This park was so familiar and yet we’d been different people when we’d been here last. She’d poured out her sordid past to me here, the night I’d found out about Saint. But that had been in the dark. We’d generally come here in the dark after I’d picked her up from work, when all the lights were reflected on the water, swaying with the rock of the waves. It was a different place in the daylight and there were more people here, tourists as well as locals.

      When we were far enough away from the main tourist area, I stopped and held the railing, looking down at the water as it washed up against the bank.

      Rach gripped the rail too.

      I looked at her.

      Her gaze stretched to the far bank. “When will we go and see Declan?”

      “Monday, so we can have tomorrow to do normal stuff before we face him.”

      She turned around and looked at me. “What will you say?”

      “I have no idea. It depends on what he says… and what he’s like.”

      “An asshole.” A smile parted her lips as she quoted back what I’d called him for the year he was my boss.

      I chucked her under the chin. “That I can guarantee. He’s always that. Shall we walk up to Manhattan Bridge?” Where I’d found her, alone, destitute, and desperate. “Then I thought we could go and eat at Joe’s, where you used to work.”

      She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Thanks, I’d like that.”

      It was nearly a year since I’d found her in a tee and jeans, she’d had nothing else on but her sneakers, on a freezing night in New York.

      A subway train passed as we reached the DUMBO end of the Manhattan Bridge’s path. It rattled along on the rails, making a racket. I’d used to deaden the sound with the music in my earphones when I’d jogged along here. We didn’t walk out very far on to the bridge, but we walked along the path until we saw where she’d been the night I met her. She caught hold my fingers and turned away from it. “Can we walk back past where you used to live? Some of those days were my happiest.”

      Her words cut, but she hadn’t meant them to cut—it’s just—I wished she was happy now. She should be happy now. I needed to make her happy again.

      Joe, the restaurant owner, her old boss, made a fuss of her when we went in there. Rach was really pretty and one of those girls that when you met her you didn’t forget her; so even though she’d only worked there for a few weeks, Joe and the others remembered her. But the thing was, that when we’d lived here, what had made her memorable had been the light of joy and mischief that had shone out of her. That light had gotten snuffed out by her meds.

      Sitting in the restaurant, remembering how she used to be, made me miss that girl more than ever. But then, maybe this was who she was really—the person who wasn’t sick—and I had to just suck it up and get used to it.

      She’d have to get used to it too, though, and she wasn’t coping so well with it either. She was scared I’d stop loving her now that she was different.

      I’d spent the last seven days proving to her just how much in love with her I still was. I still was… But it was painful loving her now, not an exciting rush. My heart hurt and my head was a mess—and I hoped when everything was fixed with Mr. Rees it would all calm down, and she and I, we could just be us again.

      When we got back to the room, Rach dropped her purse on the bed, then bent over and took out her cell. “I’m gonna call Mom and speak