want to do that. Just give it a night, you’ll feel different in the morning.”
She shook her head, still looking at the water.
If zombies were real, they’d look like her. My sweatshirt swamping her, she stood like a sorrowful statue, her complexion as pale as marble.
I couldn’t just leave her. I rubbed her arms, gently, answering an instinct to put my arm around her, but I denied that. I didn’t even know her name.
“Look, you can trust me. Honest. When we get back to my apartment you can call my Mom, or my friends, and they’ll all tell you I’m the nice guy. Seriously, if you need references…” I smiled as she looked back at me, trying to convince her. “What do you say? Are you a gambler? Are you going to try trusting me?” Silence and stillness. This girl was messed up. But then I’d known that from the moment I’d seen her. She’d been standing in the freezing cold, in a tee, trying to jump off a bridge.
I held her gaze, trying to look inside her, as she looked back, trying to see inside me.
Once more there was a sudden pool of desolation and a glitter in her eyes, and she simply nodded, making the choice to put herself into the hands of a stranger––my hands.
Shit. I was taking her home. She could be a drug addict. I’d been so busy trying to persuade her, I’d forgotten about my own concerns. But I couldn’t leave her here alone; fragility and loneliness rang from her, like she was crying out for help. And the damned Good Samaritan story I’d been brought up on wouldn’t let me leave her in the street.
But what the hell was I getting myself into?
“This way.” My fingers carefully closed about her upper arm, and I guided her to turn and start walking off the bridge with me, like this was a normal thing to do––like every night of the week, I took a stranger home. My guts churned. This was crazy. But my fingers wrapped right about her skinny arm, and my instincts yelled at me that she needed protecting, and she needed safety. I could let her have a haven for a few days.
She was probably a size zero, she was so skinny.
Lindy would kill to be size zero. She would hate me taking this woman home. She wasn’t flooded with human kindness. She wouldn’t have felt any instinct to help this woman.
“You haven’t told me your name yet?” I prodded as we descended the steps onto the street.
She was moving robotically. I was a stranger to her, too, and she hadn’t questioned me verbally at all. She was going home with a guy she didn’t know.
Maybe she did this all the time.
Maybe her lack of concern should warn me off.
As if sensing my thoughts, she stopped and looked at me, hard, really looking into me, like she’d done on the bridge just now, maybe at last deciding she ought to check me out a little more. “It’s Rachel.”
“Rachel––pleased to meet you. My apartment’s in a block near here, it’s not far. You’re sure about this, yeah? I could still take you somewhere else, if you like?”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go. So I haven’t got any choice. You don’t mind?”
I do, really, but I’m not mean enough to dump you here. “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,
