Chapter 3

Chester always came home smelling of sun and sweat.

He'd been on the college team back then. I was the one in the crowd cheering for him. Every game, he'd drink only the water I handed him. Every game, he'd toss his jacket into my lap and no one else's.

Once, I loved that smell. I couldn't get enough of it. Like the young hormones coming off a college boy.

But the jersey in my hands now carried something else, something cloying mixed in.

There was a lipstick print smudged into the collar.

And I hadn't worn makeup or lipstick in three years.

“Why aren't you in bed? What are you sitting there staring at?”

Chester came out of the bathroom with his hair still dripping. What he saw was me in the wheelchair, holding the jersey.

“Where did this lipstick print come from?”

I asked him straight out.

He froze for a second, something evasive flickering in his eyes before he smoothed it over.

“I was busy playing ball the whole time. How would I know?”

“Probably during that sweaty stretch. I threw my shirt down in a corner and someone brushed against it by accident.”

Then he snatched the jersey out of my hands and took it off to wash.

The next day, my fever suddenly spiked to a hundred and two.

Chester was picking up his ball to leave. Weakly, I caught the sleeve of his shirt.

“Can you take me to the hospital first?”

He frowned and came to feel my forehead.

“How'd you suddenly spike a fever out of nowhere?”

“A hundred and two?”

“Mm.”

“Did you take anything?”

“We're out.”

He frowned and glanced at the clock on the wall.

“Then lie down for now. I'll go buy you some medicine.”

But an hour passed and he still wasn't back.

Then my phone buzzed with an alert. His heart rate had spiked.

That was when I remembered his fitness watch was synced to my phone.

He wasn't playing ball right now.

So what was making his heart pound like that?

I struggled to move the wheelchair out to the balcony, and sure enough, there was Chester's car parked downstairs.

He got out first.

Right behind him, that girl he called one of the guys, Catherine, came out pulling her clothes back on.

“Chester, you've got some nerve. Your girlfriend's up there burning with a fever.”

“And you drag me out to the car for this. You really couldn't hold out?”

Chester had two boxes in his hand, cold medicine and fever reducer.

Then he slid an arm around Catherine's waist.

“This is just the start.”

“Want something more exciting?”

Catherine met his wicked grin. “What? You want me to come home with you?”

“Right in front of Pamela?”

Chester was careless about it.

“Is that a problem?”

I read the shapes of their mouths, and my hands shook with rage.

Two minutes later, a key turned in the lock and the door opened from outside.

“Pammy, I'm back with your medicine.”

Chester waved the fever reducer in front of my face, then walked in.

“Ran into a teammate on the way. Told her to come have dinner here.”

Catherine gave my severed leg a cool once-over.

Tossed off a careless hello and went to find Chester in the kitchen.

She slapped him on the backside.

“No wonder you can't get enough of me.”

“Your girlfriend's pretty enough, but one look at that stump and it's a real turn-off, isn't it.”

“How long has it been……since the two of you slept together?”

Chester kept working on the food. “Three years.”

Their whispering carried, so clear against the quiet of the living room.

Over the next few days, Catherine kept coming over for dinner under the excuse of playing ball.

Then one day the rain came down hard and she couldn't get home, so she stayed the night.

I woke up to find her in my slippers and the new pajamas I'd just bought.

She was drying her hair with my hair dryer.

Like the woman of the house.

I asked Chester, “What is this?”

“You know I'm a germaphobe. Why would you let someone else wear my pajamas and my slippers?”

He shot me a look.

“It's pouring out there. You'd really make a girl walk home in that rain?”

“Your leg's gone. What does germaphobe even matter anymore? You really have to have that one pair of slippers?”

In that moment I went completely still, only my red-rimmed eyes fixed quietly on him.

Chester suddenly panicked and rushed over to soothe me.

“Pammy, I'm sorry, that's not what I meant.”

“I don't look down on you for losing your leg.”

He gentled his voice. “She's just one of the guys to me. I've never thought of her as a woman.”

“So what if she stays one night at our place?”

One of the guys staying over for a night, sure, that was nothing.

But does anyone book a hotel room with one of the guys?

Looking at the righteous certainty on Chester's face, I swallowed the words back down.

“Do whatever you want, then.”

I turned the wheelchair back toward my room. Chester didn't come after me. He took Catherine to make up the bed in the guest room.

Listening to them go from soberly making up the bed to falling into each other in the end,

I closed my eyes.

And dialed a number.

“Sir, could I rent a car with a wheelchair space the morning after next?”

“And a driver too.”