I Found You. Jane Lark

“No, I don’t mind.”

      I pressed my code in when we reached the building, feeling guilty for covering it up, showing I didn’t trust her, but I didn’t know her.

      “My furniture’s a bit sparse at the moment. I only just moved in a couple of months back. Don’t expect anything fancy…” We entered the elevator and I pressed the button. “I’m on the fifth floor.” That was obvious, the red light behind button five glowed, announcing it.

      I turned and looked at her. What I’d thought was dirt on her face and in her hair, was dried blood. “Did you hit your head?”

      Her gaze struck mine, questioning and cold, and in the white light of the elevator, I faced green eyes. They were a misty green, an unusual sort of green. I’d never seen that eye color before. She didn’t answer me though. She hadn’t spoken since she’d given me her name, and her fingers were curled up, hidden in the sleeves of my sweatshirt, as her arms gripped across her chest.

      She looked down at my Adam’s apple.

      “You don’t have to be worried.”

      Those green eyes looked up again. “I’m not scared of you. You gave me your hoodie. People who are generally mean, don’t give you stuff they need themselves.”

      It was an odd, but reasonable, logic. “Yeah, well….” I didn’t know what to say, yet all my friends in Oregon would say I was never lost for words. “Okay.”

      The elevator bell rang, announcing that we’d reached the fifth floor, and then the doors opened.

      I looked away from her. She was a little too beautiful for comfort. She had untouchable celeb-magazine beauty, the sort you knew you’d never have, so you never wanted. Lindy was pretty, but there was a quality of perfection in this Rachel. Yet she wasn’t perfect was she, or her life wasn’t, she’d been trying to jump off Manhattan Bridge.

      I wanted to know what led her there, but I wasn’t going to make her feel like I was prying, I didn’t ask.

      I pulled the key from the pocket of my joggers, unlocked the door and stepped back to let her go first, flicking the lights on.

      “Chivalrous to a fault…” she whispered. “Do you stand up for pregnant and elderly women on subway trains?”

      Actually I did. Lindy always said I was a dying breed. Mom always took credit. “And sometimes I even carry their shopping back.”

      She looked at me again. “You don’t come from New York do you? Are you some hillbilly?”

      “I’m from Oregon, from a small town there.”

      “Out of college and flying the nest…”

      She sounded like she was laughing at me, but there was no humor in her face or her eyes. What I saw was grief.

      “Do you want some coffee, I can make a pot? It’ll warm you up.” I took her fingers. I could feel how cold they were even through my gloves. They were like blocks of ice. I rubbed them for a moment.

      Her hands fell when I let them go.

      I felt awkward, but the only thing to do now I’d brought her back here, was to act like I was completely comfortable with it.

      I took off my gloves. They were damp. How’d they get damp?

      There was no life in her eyes, once more, when her gaze met mine.

      She turned and looked about the room. It was empty bar my TV, my Xbox and a beanbag.

      I left her and went to make coffee. The kitchen was to one side of the living space.

      “The bathroom’s through there, if you need it?” I pointed to the door leading into my bedroom. “There’s only one bed, or rather one mattress, I don’t own a bed. But you can have it tonight. I’ll manage on the floor in here.”

      Those pale green eyes turned to me again. “You’re too nice, Jason…?” Her pitch asked for my surname.

      “Macinlay.”

      “You’ve Irish blood?”

      “Two generations ago. Dad’s been back there once, kissed the Blarney Stone, driven the Ring of Kerry and stepped on the Giant’s Causeway.”

      She smiled, but it was shallow. Yet I guessed she was doing her best to push aside the awkwardness of this too. “I have no reason to trust you, Jason Macinlay,” she breathed, “but I do.”

      Again, I didn’t know what to say. I just shrugged.

      I’d left the bedroom door ajar; she pushed it wider and went through, her hand slipping off it, leaving a blood mark.

      Fuck. “What did you do to your hand?” I was moving before I knew and she stopped and turned, but took a step away from me into the bedroom when I neared. “Don’t tell me you had a go at your wrists, too…” I gripped her forearm.

      She had nowhere to run to in my bedroom. You could barely swing a cat in it. There was about a foot of space all around the double mattress which lay on the floor.

      I pulled up the sleeve of the sweatshirt I’d given her.

      Her wrists were narrow. They looked so fucking breakable. But they weren’t slashed. The blood had come from a jagged cut across her palm. It didn’t look like it had been done by a knife, and the blood had begun congealing.

      I glanced at her fingers. I’d heard people injected heroin beneath their fingernails to hide the marks. There were no marks on her arms, and there seemed to be none under her nails. It was probably safe to guess her problem wasn’t heroin .

      “How did you do it?” I’d been avoiding questions, I figured she wouldn’t speak, but I couldn’t help myself now. “What happened?”

      She shrugged, letting my question slide away, as she’d been doing on the bridge. Her gaze, which had been looking at her hand too, lifted to me, but she said nothing.

      I let her hand go. “Why don’t you run a bath? You can talk when you want.”

      The cold had probably stopped her losing too much blood. “Don’t get your hand in the water, though.”

      “What are you, a nurse?” There was that mocking pitch in her voice again.

      “No, I work for a magazine.”

      “And from your voice, you don’t like it?”

      “Not at the moment, and I don’t like the city either. I’m new to it.”

      “Well, I’m not. Maybe I can help you in return, then, seeing as you’re helping me.”

      I didn’t want to give her any expectations, we weren’t friends. “You need to just get warm first.”

      She turned away.

      Jason Macinlay wasn’t like any man I’d known. He was considerate. I didn’t know what to make of him. I’d met guys on the street before, but when they’d taken me back to their place, it hadn’t been to get me out of the cold.

      His place was minimalistic and his bedcovers were crumpled and thrown back. Yet he wasn’t untidy. It just suggested he took life as he found it. Like he didn’t need order.

      I looked at the doors.

      The first one I opened was a closet. It contained rough heaps of his clothing. The second was the bathroom.

      I turned the water on and touched it with my bloody hand. A stinging pain burned in my palm. I must have left blood on the doors. I looked at the gash as blood dripped into the water. The warmth had made it bleed again. I saw the scarlet ribbons of blood spinning in the white porcelain sink back at Declan’s.

      I didn’t want to think about how I’d cut it. I shut that out. I’d ended it. I was starting over. I had to find a job, find a life––somewhere to live.

      I