Elf on a Shelf

Honey swallowed and nodded, wincing at the pain in her neck and head. That just seemed to make Zach angrier.

"While you are here, you will do as you're told. You will eat what you get, and you will not complain. You see these, here?" he said, holding up the magic caplets that made everything better. "These are the last ones you're getting. I'm switching you to ibuprofen and Tylenol because, unchecked, this Sackler shit will fuck you up for good and that's not happening on my watch. Do you understand?" he asked.

"Yes," Honey whispered. At the sound of her voice, Zach's mouth twitched, but at least he didn't look as angry as when she'd nodded and winced.

"You will follow your doctor's orders to the last goddamn word. You will rest. You will do your therapy. You will let me help you and you will ask me for what you need because I am not a fucking mind reader. And so help me, if you do anything stupid like get out of that bed without me here to help you, or push yourself away from me like you did at Gatsby's, or any other drama shit that hurts even one hair on that head again, I will personally make you regret you were ever born."

"Yes, Zach," Honey breathed, confused. Two more tears rolled down her cheeks. Without thinking, she leaned over to wipe them off on her shoulder and cried out in pain. Zach squeezed his clenched hands together and several of his knuckles cracked.

"You don't use my name. You don't get to use my name. You're not getting under my skin again, you hear me?" Zach growled, using his rough knuckle to wipe her tears. "Orders a fucking angel shot in my own fucking club... fuck you. I don't have a name, you don't have a name. You're nothing to me. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," she whispered.

*** *** ***

Honey leaned forward and took the last spoonful of broth into her mouth and swallowed, looking longingly at the noodles at the bottom of the cup. Zach caught a drop of broth at the bottom of her lower lip with the spoon and returned it to her mouth. "No," he said, seeing where her eyes lingered.

"I can do it," she pleaded. "Please... I haven't had anything solid since... how long has it been?"

"I said, no. You throw up on another pair of my skivvies and I'll be doing laundry twice a week," Zach said, dabbing her mouth with a paper towel.

"Why do I have to wear your boxer briefs anyway? They feel weird. They have this hole-flap thing... and there are some places that aren't supposed to feel a breeze," Honey said, lifting the blanket to look down at his underwear loosely covering her hips.

"Are you complaining?" he asked quietly.

Honey's eyes darted quickly to his face, "No sir," she murmured, looking down at her lap. "I just thought if I had some of my things here, you wouldn't have to do the laundry so much."

"I'll worry about what I have to do, Honey," he said, unthinkingly using her name. Startled, she looked up to see his eyes wandering over her, his massive t-shirt sleeves going down past her elbows. She felt ridiculous and disheveled, but something about the way he looked at her made her hold her breath. Then, without another word, he slurped the noodles out of the cup and took the tray downstairs.

After that, the two settled into a quiet routine of him feeding her, giving her medicine, and watching her sleep most of the day. She would sometimes awaken to the soft repetitive sounds of him running on a treadmill, or the clinking of him lifting weights downstairs where she couldn't see him. Then, he would go to the bathroom and shower. After his shower, he came upstairs again in his towel and took some clothes from his dresser before going back downstairs to change. Honey found herself looking forward to those few seconds each day, watching his droplet-covered torso twist as he leaned over his dresser. He frowned as he flipped through his carefully folded underwear. "You wearing the grey ones?" he asked, not looking at her.

Honey peeked under the covers, "Um, yes sir," she replied.

"I'm supposed to wear the grey ones today," he grumbled to himself. Honey didn't say anything. Zach was the one who picked out which underwear she wore today. He was the one who looked away while he painstakingly slipped the old ones off her hips and pulled the new ones over her boot and up her legs until her bottom was covered again. There was nothing about her life that wasn't chosen and executed by him. If he wasn't happy about the color of his underwear, that was his fault.

Still, Zach kept rummaging around in his underwear drawer as if another crisply folded grey pair would somehow magically appear. Finally, rather than offend him by laughing, Honey spoke, "Um... you know, if they're clean, I could wear the pair I had on when I went to the hospital and you could have these. It would get you back on schedule..."

Zach lifted his head from the drawer and glared at her, as if he thought she was making fun of him. Honey held carefully still and shrugged her uninjured limb. She wasn't making fun, she just wanted to help. The movement caused the huge neckline to gape over to the side, revealing her bare shoulder. She waited as Zach stared impassively at her, the vein at his neck throbbing. After a long moment, he walked over and stood next to her, the tuck of his towel right next to her face. With every breath, she inhaled the scent of his wet body and the bar soap he used. A rivulet of water painstakingly slid from his chest and down his abdomen, until finally disappearing into the tightly twisted white cotton. Honey glanced up to see that he had been reading her face as she watched the droplet's progress. With a shaking breath, she blushed and pulled the covers higher with her good arm. With a twist of his mouth, Zach pulled the neckline back over her shoulder again and quickly left the room.

That night, after leaving her with a video baby monitor watching her on the nightstand, Zach returned with a bag of her underwear and some of her nightgowns. After watching her excitedly sort through them, Zach pushed them aside and sat on the edge of the bed. "There were a bunch of boxes with tags on them in your living room. What's that about?" he asked.

Honey's eyes dropped, "Oh... that's the charity gift thing for kids. You sign up and get them something they wished for and wrap it up so they can have something under the tree, when they wouldn't have something otherwise. It's nice, you know? I signed up for a bunch and I was supposed to wrap them and get them back to the law firm, but I guess... sorry kids," she trailed off.

Looking furious, yet carefully impassive at the same time, Zach cursed under his breath and left again, returning with the packages and a huge stack of unused Styrofoam clamshells from Gatsby's, and dumped them on the bed next to her. For the next few hours, they "wrapped" the presents, Zach carefully fitting items into an appropriate-sized takeout box, and Honey trying to make them pretty with ribbons. As she watched him work, occasionally cursing under his breath, she found herself smiling at his frowning face when he was strategizing how to fit a basketball into three disassembled clamshells. "What are you laughing at?" he said, glaring when he caught her at it.

"I wasn't laughing. I was smiling."

"Why were you smiling, then?" he asked.

"I guess... I just like you... sir," she said, glancing over at him.

Honey saw a hopeful softness steal into Zach's eyes until he forcibly wrestled it down and a look of hooded sarcasm shaded them. "Yeah, well... fool me once," he sneered.

Angry, Honey closed her eyes, blocking him out the only way she could. "You know, that's... that's not fair. Not after what you said... you scared me!" she said, frustrated that, once again, tears were rolling down her cheeks.

Zach choked out a mirthless laugh, "I scared you? What did I say, Honey? What did I fucking say? God! I was on eggshells all night trying not to fuck it up with you and then you just... why? Those creeps you were dancing with at that party, those fucking 'nice guys' that drugged you, they were saying shit that made my skin crawl! I didn't even kiss you! I couldn't! I could barely breathe just for looking at you on our date... you looked just like a fucking angel. What did I say, Honey? What did I say?"

Honey reached over and grabbed her phone, flipping through her photo album to a screenshot taken shortly before she blocked his number. "You didn't say it... you texted it. I remember watching you leave for the restroom thinking I'd met the love of my life and then you sent me this..." she said, handing her phone to him.

Zach took the phone, his face going from an angry red to pale horror in a matter of seconds. "This... this..." he gasped, "I didn't... send this... to you..." he said, shaking his head.

"Whoever had your phone did, sir!" she said, emphasizing the last word, making him wince. "I spent the last year thinking you wanted to do that to me... to kill me. Every time I felt you watching me, every crowd I saw you show up in, every dark room I had to go into, that's what I thought about. I thought that a man I was head over heels about... that I could be so wrong about him. So, excuse me for thinking I liked you, sir. I promise it won't ever happen again!"

Honey cried herself to sleep that night, refusing to speak to, or even look at Zach again. When she awoke, the bedroom was empty, and a glass of water and a pain pill were waiting on the nightstand. After swallowing the pill, she stared at the ceiling, furious. She didn't want to be there anymore, to be helpless and dependent on him, to obey all his stupid rules. He didn't deserve to take care of her.

So, she tightened the straps on her boot and increased the air pressure to hold her broken ankle tightly enough to walk without her crutches. Then, she took off Zach's t-shirt, pulled on her elf dress, and called herself an Uber. It was when she saw the anticipated arrival time of 8 minutes that she realized her mistake. There was no way for her to get down from the loft and out of the apartment quietly in that amount of time. If she used the crutches, she would be able to descend the stairs quickly enough, but they made such a distinctive clicking racket that they would surely wake up her gorilla-like guard. If she hopped down the stairs on her good foot, it might have worked, but her good arm was on the opposite side and she kept losing her balance.

Eventually she decided on the most painful course, of going down on her good and bad legs, using her good arm for support. Her boot thunked horribly the first few times, until she got the hang of it and could place it more quietly on the next step and then hop her good foot down to support it before the scream inside her could escape her lips. By the time she reached the bottom, though, she was shaking with pain and exhausted.

Curiosity forced her to look around the rest of the apartment as she caught her breath, sitting on the bottom step. It was clean and unmistakably masculine. Exercise equipment took up a lot of the space not already claimed by a leather couch and TV arrangement. Zach lay on the couch, made up with sheets to act as a bed, his feet sticking out over the arm, his hand tucked under the back of his head, his chest rising and falling under the rumpled sheet. If she wasn't so angry, she'd find him handsome... or maybe he still was handsome, she thought grudgingly, closing her eyes miserably and looking away. Why couldn't he be ugly? Life wasn't fair.

Uber. Right. Screwing up her courage for what was ahead, she stood and slowly hobbled across the hardwood floor, agonizing over every painful thump and noisy squeak until she finally reached the door. She unlocked the five locks on his large door, each of them being well-oiled and working perfectly. She expected no less of her anal-retentive, grey-skivvies-on-Tuesdays captor. Finally, she tugged open the heavy door to find endless flights of icy steel-mesh stairs leading all the way down to the street where her Uber was waiting. "Oh, you gotta be kidding me..." she cried, breaking down into tears.

A strong arm slid down around her waist and mercifully shifted her weight off her throbbing foot, "I know. It sucks. You should try it with a rucksack full of bricks," Zach said, leaning his head down and breathing into her hair.

"I want to go home," she whispered.

"Let me take care of you... please," Zach murmured into the top of her head, "I... it was my fault this happened to you. I scared you, I know that now... but, please believe me that I would never want to hurt or frighten you like that."

"It wasn't just that text," she said, pulling her head away and looking up at him angrily. "All year, I never had a moment's peace. Even when I couldn't see you, I could feel you waiting in the quiet or dark places. Even if you weren't there—"

"I was there," he confessed. "I was always there. I didn't understand what had gone wrong. You didn't want to talk to me, and the world just didn't make sense to me unless I knew where you were, what you were doing... unless I knew you were safe."

"Maybe you knew I was safe, but I didn't! I thought I'd done something... that somehow I deserved to have this beautiful, scary monster hunting me. I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd done to destroy something that was so... wonderful."

"You didn't do anything, Honey. Nothing at all. You were perfect. You were so perfect that I couldn't keep... you didn't do anything wrong. I never meant to send you that message... please, please believe me."

"Why did you send it?" she asked, finally looking up into his eyes.

The dark blue liquid pools of her eyes turned violet in the moonlight, and Zach felt a tightening in his chest. "I... I can't tell you that... but it was never meant for you."

"You mean, you meant to send that message to someone else? To hurt them like that?"

"Honey, I..." Zach said, looking around, unable to meet her eyes, "Please, I can't... you wouldn't underst— my life isn't like that anymore."

"I want to go home, Zach... please," she whispered.

Zach closed his eyes for a long moment before he swallowed and nodded, looking like he was in more pain than she was. "I'll take you home tomorrow, okay? Or Terry will, if you don't want me to. He'll check the place out, make sure you're set up and safe there. You're tired, you're hurting, and your Uber's gone, now. Let me take you back upstairs and you can go in the morning. Please."

At that moment, a throb of pain shot through her entire leg, and as angry as Honey was, she knew she couldn't face her empty apartment without a few more hours of rest. "Okay," she whispered.

When she woke the next morning, Zach was standing next to the bed with a pain pill and a glass of water. "Terry's gonna be here in about half an hour. I could make you some breakfast?" he said, putting the pill and the water into her hand.

Honey shook her head, feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders. "I'd... I'd like to take a shower before I go... if that's okay," she asked.

"Right...uh... I'll just set it up for you. I'll get your things together after you're done in there... if you still want to go, that is..."

Honey closed her eyes and nodded, "Thank you," she whispered, unable to look at the silent pleading in his face.

When the shower was ready, Zach carried her down the stairs and set her down in his large walk-in shower on the bathing chair he'd set up for her. "I, uh... I warmed up the water. The... soap and shampoo stuff is right here," he said, gesturing to a collection of bottles put down within her reach. "If you need anything, I'll be right... right here," he said, sitting down on the toilet, looking like he didn't know what to do with his hands.

Honey nodded and took off her nightgown and panties, putting them on the floor outside the shower. She leaned down and began unwrapping the velcro the straps on her boot, finding that she couldn't reach the last one. She opened her mouth to ask for help, but Zach was already sliding the door open to undo it for her. When he disassembled the boot around her foot and lifted it away, a slight whimper escaped her when the motion bumped her ankle slightly. Zach's eyes flashed to hers as she tried to cover herself with her arms, "I'm okay," she whispered. Clenching his jaw, Zach nodded, stood and left the stall.

The water felt like heaven after the sad sponge baths she had given herself in bed. Her skin came alive in the heat and flushed a deep pink. "Is that too hot? You're getting red," Zach said, standing next to the door looking concerned.

"No... it's perfect," she sighed. She twisted around to reach the shampoo and tipped it over, groaning as she watched it roll out of reach.

Zach reached into the stall and returned it to her, growling in annoyance as he watched her try to squeeze some out with only one fully functional arm. Soon, he stepped into the shower with her, clad only in his underwear. "I don't know how you think you're going to do this by yourself..." he grumbled, glaring at her as he massaged the shampoo into her long hair.

"I'll figure it out... put a folding chair in the tub or something," she said, trying not to notice that the fabric of his underwear was leaving nothing to the imagination the wetter it got.

"A fucking folding chair will slip. I'll send this one with you. You still can't reach shit, though."

"I haven't done this before. I'll get better as I go."

"Yeah, but until then, you'll— Look, you need to give me a call when you... so that I know you're okay."

"You wouldn't be able to hear me talk... the water makes this growling noise," she said.

"Well, why the fu— nevermind. You call me before and after. No longer than 10 minutes, or I send Terry."

"And he just does whatever you tell him? You're really kinda bossy."

"Glad we sorted that out. Put your head back."

With a smirk, Honey leaned back, letting him support her with his arm as he rinsed the shampoo out of her hair. After one minute, Zach began swearing under his breath. "I've been rinsing this shit out of your hair forever and there's still more! How the fuck is this possible?"

Honey began giggling, despite the pain it caused her shoulder. "I guess you should allow me longer than 10 minutes to shower, then..." she murmured.

"Ten fucking minutes, or I send Terry."

"Do you have any conditioner?"

"Any what?"

"Nevermind," Honey said, trying to control her face.

When he finally released her from being rinsed, Honey grabbed the loofa and put some body wash on it, washing what she could reach with her right arm while Zach glared down at her. "Oh, for fuck's sake," he grated, roughly taking the fluffy sponge from her and then washing her with surprising gentleness. When he delicately supported and washed her broken ankle, he waited until he finished before looking up at her, "Remember, doctor says you can take off your boot for a while now and then, so that should help with the smell. I'll pack the extra sock so you can put a clean one on and wash the— well, just how the fuck are you going to do the laundry?" he asked, as if she created the concept of dirty laundry just to bother him.

"Hand wash?" she suggested.

"That won't work for these boot socks! They smell like gangrene or some shi—"

"Well, now you're just flirting..." she said, smiling up at him. For a moment Zach's face went completely blank, his eyes slowly traveling down her naked body as his face turned bright red, then he turned away and cursed under his breath again.

"Grab onto my arm and I'll finish you up," he said, clenching his jaw and holding out his forearm to her, as he diligently looked away. Cautiously, she took his arm and tried to stand, rising wobbly on her left leg. Before she could gain her balance, her hand slipped on his wet arm and he pulled her tightly against him before she could fall. Body to body, they clung on to each other in the hot spray, each of them shaking. "Honey... you may notta noticed, but I'm hanging on by a fucking thread, here," Zach said quietly in her ear, "Try not to get yourself killed for two seconds."