The Tuesday

Nova's POV

Chapter 1:

I remember his hands on my skin. That memory is the only thing keeping me warm at two in the morning.

Right now, though, it is two in the afternoon. The sun is bright. The windows are down. Derek is holding my hand and singing off‑key to an old song on the radio. His thumb traces circles on my knuckles. The same circles he has drawn a thousand times. I know the pattern by heart.

He looks at me with that smile he only gives when no one else is watching. The smile that says I am his whole world.

He says he has something to tell me. Something important. Something he should have said years ago.

I ask what it is.

He says he will tell me at the coast. Over wine. On the beach.

I laugh and press the gas. The engine purrs. The wind whips my hair across my face. Derek reaches over and tucks a strand behind my ear. His fingers linger on my cheek. I close my eyes for half a second, just to feel it.

I do not know that this is the last time he will touch me like that.

The light turns green. I pull into the intersection.

The semi comes out of nowhere.

I see the grille first. Chrome. Massive. It fills my entire windshield. Then the driver's face – a man with a beard and wide eyes, his mouth open in a scream I cannot hear. His hands are frozen on the steering wheel. He is not braking.

Derek yells my name. His hand tightens around mine so hard I feel bones grind. Then the metal folds in on us like paper. Glass explodes. The world twists. I hear screaming. It takes me a second to realize the screaming is mine.

Everything goes black.

I wake up in a hospital bed. Broken ribs. Concussion. A tube in my arm. The ceiling is white. The lights are too bright. A nurse with kind eyes tells me Derek is in surgery. She says it gently, the way people speak when they are preparing you for bad news.

I ask how long.

She says eight hours so far.

I pull out my IV. Blood drips down my hand. I do not care. I walk to the waiting room. My gown is open in the back. My feet are bare. No one stops me. No one tries.

Derek's mother is there. She sits in a plastic chair with her arms crossed. When she sees me, her face does not soften. Her eyes narrow. She looks at me like I have done this on purpose. Like I aimed the semi myself. I want to tell her it was not my fault. The words stick in my throat.

I sit in the plastic chair next to her. We do not speak.

Eight hours become twelve. Twelve become sixteen. A surgeon finally comes out. He is young, with tired eyes and blood on his scrubs. He asks me to step into a small room.

I follow him.

He closes the door. The room smells like antiseptic and fear. He says the words I will replay every night for the rest of my life.

Spinal injury. Incomplete. Possible loss of motor function below the waist. Sexual function may never return.

I do not cry in front of him. I wait until I am alone in the bathroom. Then I press my fist against my mouth and sob until I cannot breathe. The sound is ugly. Animal. I taste blood from where my teeth cut my knuckles. The tile floor is cold against my knees.

Not because of the sex. Because I know what it will do to Derek. To his sense of being a man. To the way he looks at me. To the way we fit together in the dark. I know him. I know this will destroy him slowly, from the inside out. And there is nothing I can do to stop it.

Derek survives. He is in the hospital for three months. I sleep in a plastic chair every night. My back is a constant ache. My eyes are always swollen. I learn to smile at nurses and doctors and Derek's mother, who still looks at me like I am the enemy. I stop trying to defend myself.

When he finally comes home, he is in a wheelchair. The doctors say it is temporary. He will walk again with crutches. But his body is different. Distant. When I touch his lower back, he flinches. When I kiss his cheek, he turns his face so my lips land on air.

The first night home, I try to hold him. I climb into bed beside him and wrap my arm around his chest. I press my forehead against his shoulder blade. I can feel his heartbeat. Fast. Uncomfortable.

He goes stiff. His breathing changes. After a minute, he pulls away and turns to face the wall.

He says he is tired.

I lie there in the dark, staring at the back of his head, and feel something crack inside me. A small crack. The kind that spreads. I do not know then that it will keep spreading for two years.

Weeks pass. Then months. Derek stops kissing me. Not all at once. It happens in stages. First the morning kisses disappear. Then the goodnight kisses. Then the forehead kisses. Then nothing. Not even a hug that lasts longer than three seconds.

I try to talk to him. I sit him down on the couch one afternoon and hold both his hands. His fingers are cold. I tell him I love him. I tell him the accident changes nothing for me. I tell him we will find a way. There are therapists. There are specialists. There is hope.

He listens. He nods. He says he needs time.

Then he goes back to the bedroom and closes the door.

I stand in the hallway and count the cracks in the wallpaper. There are seventeen. I have counted them many times. I know each one by shape and length.

I start crying in the shower where he cannot hear me. The water runs hot and then cold. I stay until my fingers prune and my eyes are dry and my chest is empty. I watch the water swirl down the drain and wonder if I am going down with it.

One night, I find myself standing in front of the bathroom mirror at three in the morning. My reflection is a woman I do not recognize. Hollow eyes. Shoulders curved forward like I am already in a grave. Skin pale from too many days indoors. Lips chapped from not speaking.

I whisper to myself: This is not living.

The woman in the mirror does not argue. She just stares back with empty eyes.

Then I go back to bed and lie next to Derek and say nothing.

Tonight, something is different. Derek asks me to sit with him on the couch. His hand finds mine. For a moment, I feel hope. Real hope. The kind that makes your chest ache and your eyes burn.

He says he cannot give me what I need. His voice is soft. His eyes are wet. A tear slides down his cheek. He does not wipe it away.

I tell him not to say that.

He squeezes my fingers and says he is not trying to hurt me. He is trying to love me. And love means wanting me to be happy. Even if happiness comes from somewhere else.

I do not understand. I ask what he means.

He looks toward the guest bedroom. The door is closed. The room has been empty for two years. Dust gathers on the doorknob. I have not opened it since the accident. I do not know why he is looking at it now.

He stares at that door for a long time. Then he says the words that change everything.

Maybe we need help.

My heart stops. I ask what kind of help.

He does not answer. He just looks at me with those wet eyes and that small smile. The same smile he had in the car on the Tuesday, right before he said he had something important to tell me. The smile that says he knows something I do not.

I want to ask more. I want to shake him. I want to scream. But my voice is gone.

He stands up – slowly, using his cane – and walks to the bedroom. His gait is uneven. His shoulders are hunched. He looks small. Fragile. Nothing like the man who used to lift me onto the kitchen counter.

He closes the door.

I sit alone on the couch.

Outside, the wind picks up. The house settles. Somewhere in the dark, a branch scrapes against the window. The sound is like fingernails on glass. I pull my knees to my chest.

I do not know what kind of help Derek means. I do not know who would come. I do not know what he is planning.

But the way he looked at the guest bedroom tells me something is coming.

Something I am not ready for.

I go to bed alone. Again.

I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks I cannot see.

And I wonder what my husband wants.