I'll be Waiting

I couldn't lie to him. He always knew. He understood me better than he probably understood himself. He knew how I worked, knew what made me tick, knew exactly how to make me laugh and cry and scream and just--fuck... be alive.

Even now. Even after all these years.

"A long time ago," I admitted. "A Twinkie sounds really fucking good right now."

"Hell yeah it does," Jude said, giving my shoulders a little squeeze.

The streetlights kept flickering, even creepier as we walked under them. Cars drove past on the street with a whoosh, making our clothes rustle. It was a surprisingly cold night, not balmy as I'd expected from an entire childhood of summer-like perfect nights in SoCal.

Jude smoked his cigarette as we walked. The smell wafted and swirled in the thick, cold air, mixing with his warm breath. Memories came flooding into my mind. Those damn cigarettes. One after class. One after dinner. Always at least one or two after fucking me senseless in his dark apartment.

I remembered the details. I couldn't shake them.

His hand clamping around my neck, squeezing just tight enough to make me breathless, panting for him like a dirty little bitch in heat.

"My pretty little princess," he'd say. "So fucking good. You're taking me so well. That's it."

I'd melt under his praise. Melt.

"You're so close. I can feel you, baby. You're so fucking tight. Fuck."

The noises we'd make--they were so fucking filthy. The sounds would bounce and echo in his room, the moon shining in from the window, hardly a star or two to be seen in the polluted sky. Not like that mattered. Jude always made me come so hard that stars would explode in my vision.

We'd come together. It was always nice when that happened because we could lie there on his bed, covered in sweat, panting as Jude reached for a cigarette. He'd light it up, and it was the only time I ever smoked. We'd share it, passing it back and forth like a joint, except there was no way we'd jeopardize our careers over marijuana, so we stuck to tobacco.

The memory faded. The biting cold forced me to lean into Jude for warmth.

"You cold?" he asked.

Without another word, I plucked the cigarette from between his fingers and took a giant drag, nearly coughing from the sudden noxious cloud of smoke that went down my lungs. The nicotine rush was gorgeous. It rushed through my veins, straight for my head, clearing all my thoughts. I felt lightheaded.

"Whoa, slow down," Jude said, steadying me. "I have plenty more. The cigarette's not gonna grow legs and run away."

The vision of that had me choking--and laughing.

"You and that goofy-ass laugh," Jude said, shaking his head, grinning.

"What's wrong with my laugh?"

"I already told you. It's goofy, Mai."

"Fuck you."

Of course, at that exact moment, we walked right past a motel. Jude gestured to it and I swatted his arm.

"No," I said. "Absolutely not."

"Right," Jude said. "Gotta feed you first. I remember how this works."

"Nice try, but no."

Up ahead, I could see the twenty-four hour Walmart. The parking lot was a quarter full. What the fuck were people doing shopping at ten o'clock at night?

Maybe every person in that store had their own Jude with them. Maybe they were reliving old, painful memories. Maybe, just maybe, we weren't the only people walking around with broken hearts.

"Give me back my cigarette," Jude said.

"No. Light another."

He did, the lighter illuminating his handsome face. His striking blue eyes flashed to mine, full of wonder, full of pain. I had to look away.

I stared ahead, smoking that cigarette, trying desperately to forget how it had felt to be beneath him, my legs spread, his thick cock pounding an orgasm out of me. Lying there in the dark. Sharing a cigarette. Whispering "I love you" with only the moon as our witness.

"Mai?"

"Huh?"

I blinked and looked up. Jude had his eyes fixed on me.

"Thank you."

"For?"

"Tonight, I guess. I didn't realize how badly I needed closure until we started talking. Thanks for not running away."

Closure. Right. That's what this was.

"Of course," I said, even though it didn't feel right.

"I'm thinking a whole box of Twinkies," Jude said, grabbing a cart. A cold wind was blowing against the store, following us in through the doors. I hugged myself and followed Jude inside, listening to him chatter about eating exactly the kind of trash we advised our patients to avoid.

"Do you still like Hot Cheetos?" he asked.

"Hm?"

Jude turned to look at me. "Earth to Maira Khan."

"What? I heard you. I don't like Hot Cheetos anymore."

He rolled his eyes. "You're such a fucking liar."

I wobbled over, my veins thrumming with alcohol, and took the cart from him, pushing it past the aisle of junk food he'd led us to. He could pick the food. I needed the cart to stand straight, so I decided to browse the store and walk off the alcohol in my system.

"I'm getting my Twinkies," he said, stepping back and disappearing into an aisle. I kept walking, guiding the cart around the store.

Memories flashed in my head. Jude dragging me to the grocery store in the middle of a study session, buying junk food and eating until our bellies hurt, the books forgotten. Waking up with a headache, cramming hours before an exam, sobbing over a textbook and declaring to my chill, unbothered boyfriend that I was going to fail. Jude calming me down, reminding me that I was strong enough, smart enough, brilliant enough.

"You can do it, babe. Look at you. The biggest nerd in our class. If anyone can ace this, it's you."

A sniffle. "Really?"

"Would I ever lie to you?"

We both laughed because the answer was "yes," always. Jude lied all the damn time.

I wandered through the store, walking from aisle to aisle, quietly browsing. When had Walmart started stocking such nice things? When I'd been growing up, it had always been the place to get the cheap stuff. Now, the cheap stuff actually looked... well, nice.

Stopping at a home goods section, I looked over some throw pillows that didn't feel anywhere near as soft as they looked. It was only surface-level beauty. Figured.

"Dr. Maira Khan," the PA system suddenly crackled. "Dr. Maira Khan, your child is at register two."

Your child.

I held back a laugh and made my way to the front of the store. Standing at register two was Jude, a plastic bag of goodies in one hand, and a half-eaten Twinkie in the other.

"There she is," he said to the lady at the register. She looked at me and laughed.

"Good luck with this one," she told me.

Five minutes later, we were sitting at a table in the Subway restaurant section of the Walmart. Jude had emptied his bag, consisting of Twinkies, Hot Cheetos, mild salsa and tortilla chips, a couple Mountain Dews, and a handful of candy.

"Used to be a McDonald's in every Walmart, remember?" Jude said, dipping a tortilla chip directly into the jar of salsa. "But maybe they didn't renew their contract or something."

I remembered the piping hot french fries. Dipping them in ice-cold, creamy McFlurries. Jude slowly sucking my fingers clean, his eyes fixed on mine.

"Man, I miss the fries," Jude said. Maybe he was having the same thought.

My cheeks felt flushed with heat. "I miss the McFlurries."

Jude glanced at me, his eyes darkening. "You miss when I used to lick your fingers clean?"

More heat flooded my cheeks. "I... No."

"Uh-huh."

He grinned and looked around. The Subway had to have closed hours ago. The lights were off in the restaurant section where we were seated, but beyond the Subway, the Walmart was still lively for a weekday night. The sounds of shoes against floors, registers dinging, the chatter from the cashiers... it was all familiar. A life we'd once lived.

But that was a long time ago. Now, all that was left was my scarred, barren heart and all the emotions that only Jude knew how to make me feel. They bubbled to the surface: happiness, anger, regret, lust and desire and a hunger that gripped me from the pit of my belly.

I ate a Twinkie. Ate half a bag of Hot Cheetos that I did still love. Drank down some Mountain Dew.

But the hunger stayed.

Jude told me about CHOC. About his friends, like Dr. Wes What's-his-name. About the apartment off State College Boulevard that he called home. About his mother's candle business that she'd just started from her garage six months ago and the piles and piles of candles he'd buy anonymously to hand out to anyone who'd take them. And without delving into details that could violate HIPAA, he told me about his patients. Their little giggles, the pranks they'd pull on each other, stealing away during his lunch hour to sit and talk with the kids whose parents worked too much to come visit.

My chest constricted the more he talked. For four years, I'd had these massive blanks in my head. I never knew where Jude matched and ended up with his residency. I hadn't even known what specialty he'd chosen. I hadn't known where his life had taken him. I'd wondered about his mom, Jules. The only family member he had, outside of a first-cousin from his late father's side that made appearances once every few years to ask for money.

Jude filled in the blanks. CHOC. Candle business. New apartment. Tiny patients. His life sounded like it was full.

Me, on the other hand. I was made of mistakes.

Strung together, one wrong move after the other, until I was here, almost thirty, with nothing but a board certification, endless sleepless nights, and a dead marriage to show for it.

Residency had mostly been a blur, the thirty-hour on-call shifts piling up as one night connected seamlessly to the next. My pager going off in the middle of the night. The biting cold of a New York winter freezing me down to the bones as I'd rush down the elevators and into the street, still tugging on my gloves and my hat as I hailed the nearest taxi.

The visits from my parents on Eid, their smiling faces, so delighted to see me living in such a nice apartment with such an ideal, perfect husband.

If only they knew. If only anyone knew.

But it was my secret to carry because at the end of the day, I was the one who'd made the mistake of marrying Sameer in the first place. No one had made me do it. I'd chosen to make my parents happy. My entire life had been a series of attempts at making them proud.

I'd put myself last.

"...and people call her Dragon Lady at work," Jude was saying. "Not gonna lie, she does kind of scare me."

I blinked. "Wait, who?"

Jude shot me a look. "You're not even listening."

I gave him a small, sheepish smile. "Sorry. My mind was just wandering."

"Where'd it wander to?"

"Our lives, I guess. And how different they are."

Jude shrugged. "It's what we chose for ourselves, isn't it?"

That much was certainly true.

"Are you happy?" I asked him.

Jude was quiet for a moment. "I'm not sure if I'm ever gonna be happy. These last couple of years have been rough, you know? But I didn't mind it. I kind of liked the pain."

I frowned. "Why in the world would you like the pain?" I certainly didn't.

"The pain of losing you... that was all I had left. It was my last link to you."

These conversations were giving me whiplash.

"Jude, I--"

"Spare me the apology, Mai. I'm not looking for one. It's okay."

I shut my mouth. All I could do there was sit and stare back at him, at the unfair way he hadn't changed at all--every smile, every laugh, every tear... all the same. I felt like I'd aged at least a decade. The few gray hairs I'd been finding, coupled with the wrinkles I'd developed from frowning and squinting too much, was proof that time was plummeting forward.

With Jude, I was her again. The young, uptight med student who'd had to be taught what it meant to be carefree. The girl who used to color code her notes and always raise her hand first in class. The girl who hadn't lost her virginity until some smart aleck smooth-talker had sat down next to her in Second Year Pharmacology and offered her pizza and sex in exchange for a copy of her notes.

I hadn't had sex with him that first night. We hadn't even had pizza.

"You think you're funny, huh?" I'd said when he'd parked his motorcycle in front of a BJ's Restaurant and Brewery. I was seated behind him, still gripping him tightly around the middle. I'd never ridden on a motorcycle before.

"What are you talking about? They have great avocado rolls."

I'd heard the smirk in his voice.

"Well, I hope you don't think you're getting a blowjob from me just because you brought me to a BJ's," I'd said, trembling only slightly when he'd turned to help take the helmet off my head. He was so fucking good-looking. Like disgustingly hot.

"You feeling okay?" he asked, pressing the back of his hand to my forehead. "You look like you're burning up, but you're not."

I'm blushing, you idiot.

We went inside and ordered avocado rolls, and then, for probably the fourth time in my entire adult life, I ordered an alcoholic drink. The selection of beers at BJ's was too intriguing to pass up on.

It took three beers for me to blurt out what everyone in the restaurant was probably thinking.

"You're really, really hot."

Jude laughed. "Am I?"

I remember rolling my eyes and getting a little dizzy.

"Don't act like you don't know."

Jude ran a hand through his hair, slicking his golden locks back.

"How about now?" he said, grinning.

I groaned. "Ugh. Yes. Very hot."

Jude tapped my shoe with his. "You think so?"

I kicked his foot away. "Mm-hmm."

He captured one of my feet between his and yanked, pulling my chair closer to the table. I let out a little shriek in surprise, earning a beautiful, hearty laugh from Jude.

"No one's gonna believe me," I mumbled, taking another sip of my beer.

"Believe what?"

"That you took me to dinner."

"Why's that?"

I raised a brow. "Don't you get it, dude? You're like... you're like the sun. And me? I'm... I'm like a disaster."

Jude laughed. "You're not a disaster. You're like a thunderstorm, Maira. You're full of all this energy. You strike people like lightning with how fucking assertive you are. You're a little terrifying, if I'm being honest. But I like it."

"Thunderstorms are a disaster," I pointed out.

"That depends on your perspective. Are you going to be the storm, or are you going to be the one the storm destroys?"

The memory faded away. We weren't in a dim BJ's with glasses of craft beer. We were years older, sitting in that Subway at that Walmart with junk food and emotions, so many fucking raw emotions.

"What do you want me to say, Jude?" I asked. "If I can't apologize, what do you want from me?"

"Nothing," he said. "I'll choose your happiness over mine, Mai. Every time."

I slammed my hand down on the table, surprising us both.

"I am not happy," I said through gritted teeth.

Jude leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. "You're not?"

"Of course I'm fucking not."

His mouth twitched, as if he was about to say something, but stopped himself at the last second.

"What?" I said.

"You're at Mount Sinai. That was your dream."

No, Jude, I wanted to say. You were.

"Residency doesn't make anyone happy," I said instead.

"You're done, though. It's over. Now you're even board-certified. You're a pediatrician. Just like you always wanted."

Just like my parents wanted.

"I guess," was all I could say.

A moment of silence passed.

"Run away with me."

My eyes flashed to meet Jude's gaze. "What?"

"Run away with me," he repeated.

I titled my head to the side, a little amused.

"Where would we go?"

"Preferably somewhere I can finish my residency."

"Maybe St. Jude," I offered.

"Oh, ha ha," Jude said sarcastically. "As if I haven't heard that one a million times."

"Sorry," I said, not at all meaning it.

"You could support us until I finish my residency," he said. "We could buy a little house, like we always planned. Settle down and get married. Have a couple kids."

My chest ached. "I'd have to get a divorce first."

"Let him have everything," Jude said. "We'll start over. Just the two of us."

My mouth fell open for a moment. This wasn't supposed to get serious, but something about Jude's tone of voice told me he wasn't entirely playing around.

"I might as well sign my own father's death certificate. A divorce in the family? That would kill him."

Jude looked unimpressed. "When are you gonna start living for you, Dr. Maira Khan? Or is that not your name anymore? Mrs. Maira Something."

"I'm still a fucking Doctor," I snapped. "And I didn't change my name. Too much hassle. My husband doesn't care, anyway."

"I'd care," Jude said quietly.

"Well, you're not him, are you?"

"I wish I was."

Silence again. It spread between us, until there were rivers and oceans of space between us, filled with silence and more silence. Roaring, tumultuous wave after wave of absolute quiet. Two minutes passed, maybe five. I didn't know for sure.

"I should go," I said. "I'll take an Uber back to my hotel."

I got to my feet.

"That's it?" Jude said.

"What do you want me to say, Jude?" I said. "That yeah, I'll take you up on your bullshit offer to run off into the sunset together? That, sure, fuck my parents and everything they ever worked for to get me to where I am today?"

Jude rose to his full height, casting a shadow over me.

"When are you gonna live for you?" he repeated. "When everyone else is finally dead?"

I shoved past him.

"Mai, come on. I didn't--"

"It was nice seeing you again, Jude. Have a nice life."

I turned and walked right into the women's restroom and got into a stall to lock myself away from Jude and all the painful memories he'd pried out of where I'd hid them in the back of my mind. Tears were brimming in my eyes, threatening to fall with each quick blink I was taking to hold them back.

When are you gonna live for you? When everyone else is finally dead?

Maybe.

Probably.

The restroom door opened and someone walked in. I could tell from the heavy footsteps alone that it was him.

"Go away, Jude."

"How'd you know it was me?"

"Because I know you," I said, swallowing back a sob.

His shoes came to a stop outside my stall. I could see the top of his head. God, he was so freakishly tall and gargantuan.

"Come out," he said, his voice soft. "I'm sorry I said that thing about everyone being dead. I don't want your parents to die, babe. I didn't mean--"

Babe. It was just like one of our old fights. Somehow, he always ended up groveling. It was like nothing had changed.

"You're gonna get in trouble. Get out," I said.

"Then you'd better come out fast because I'm not leaving this restroom without you."

I unlatched the door and swung it open. Jude was standing there, staring down at me with a look of genuine concern on his face. Good.

"You have five minutes or so until my Uber arrives," I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket. "Say what you have to say."

Jude put an arm over my shoulder and led me outside.

"How do I fit a lifetime into five minutes?" he asked.

My phone dinged. I'd been matched with a driver exactly five minutes away. Huh.

A cold gust of wind was blowing toward us, making me shiver. Jude pulled me into his arms, holding me like he had held me a million times. Like I was fragile. Like I could break. Like he'd lose me if he let go.

This time, it was true. This time, when he let go, I'd really be gone.

"Didn't you want to say anything?" I asked, leaning my head back to look at him.