Chapter 58

Dawn was the last one to come down with the flu, a few days after my doctor’s appointment. Up until that point, she had done her best to nurse me back to health. She administered my medications and breathing treatments, clapped my back to loosen the mucus in my lungs, and compressed my abdomen to help me cough it up. She took my temperature twice daily and monitored my oxygen level even more closely, clipping the pulse oximeter she’d purchased to my fingertip every few hours to make sure it didn’t drop too low.

After two days of taking Tamiflu, I felt well enough to get out of bed and sit up in my wheelchair. I was still so weak that just wheeling myself around the house made me winded, but the movement seemed to help break up the mucus, making my coughs more productive. By the third day, my chest congestion was almost gone.

“How ya feelin’ this morning?” Dawn asked after she’d finished helping me cough up the phlegm that had collected in my airway overnight.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t hear any wheezing that time. “Much better. I finally feel like I can breathe freely again,” I replied with a sigh of relief.

“Well, I’m glad one of us can,” Dawn grumbled as she pulled back my covers to take off my catheter.

Hearing the hoarseness in her voice, I felt a sinking sensation inside. “Oh no… are you getting sick, too? I’m sorry… I was hoping I wouldn’t give it to you.”

“It’s okay. Occupational hazard,” she replied with a shrug. “After all the close contact I’ve had with you and Mason, it would have been a miracle if I’d managed to avoid it altogether, no matter how many times I washed my hands.”

I forced an awkward laugh, feeling guilty. “Yeah, I guess that’s true…” I trailed off as she took my catheter bag into the bathroom to empty and clean it. When she came back, I said, “You should go back to bed, Dawn. I can call my mom to come over and help me and Mason get ready for the day.”

She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m okay. I’ll get you up, get Mason on the bus… and then I’ll go back to bed,” she said, flashing me a weary smile.

I knew better than to argue with her. Dawn was a workhorse; I could count on one hand the number of “sick days” she had used since she’d started working for me. “I like to keep busy,” she would tell me whenever I tried to convince her to take time off. “Less time to sit around and think.”

I understood. After Kristin died, I had nothing but time to sit around and think. It was torture to be trapped inside my broken body, wrapped up in my depressing thoughts. Work would have been a welcome distraction.

Dawn moved through my morning routine more slowly than usual, stopping every few minutes to blow her nose. Thankfully, it was a short day, so we didn’t have to do my bowel program. I would have skipped the shower, too, but Dawn insisted she didn’t mind. “The steam might clear out my sinuses,” she said as she helped me transfer out of bed.

Breakfast that day was simple: oatmeal with fresh fruit. “Don’t worry about this, Dawn,” I said when she stood up from the kitchen table and started clearing the dishes. “Mase and I will clean up. You can go back to bed now.”

She hesitated, opening her mouth as if to protest, then seemed to change her mind. “Well, okay,” she finally said. “Thanks, guys.” To me, she added, “You know where to find me if you need anything.”

I nodded, but I was determined not to need her until bedtime. With Mason’s help, I cleared the table, balancing the empty bowls on my lap as I carried them to the counter. Glancing at the microwave clock, I said, “Your bus will be here soon, buddy. Go brush your teeth, and then we’ll get going.”

Rather than “walk” all the way down the driveway to wait for Mason’s school bus, we drove instead, sitting inside the warm cab of my truck with music playing until the bus pulled up. “Bye, Dad!” Mason called as he scrambled out of the back seat, slinging his dinosaur bookbag over his shoulders.

“Have a good day, son! I love you,” I called back before he closed the door. I watched him climb up the tall bus steps, stopping at the top to wave at me like he always did before the driver shut the doors behind him. When the bus pulled away, I turned my truck around at the bottom of the driveway and drove back up to the house.

I did my best to tidy up the kitchen, carefully washing the breakfast dishes and wiping down the counters with a damp cloth. Then I started a load of laundry. Everything took me ten times as long as it would have taken Dawn, but I didn’t care – it made me feel good about myself to be doing something useful, helping her out for once instead of the other way around.

While the washer was going, I went back into the kitchen and gave Natalie a call. “Hey, babe,” I said when she answered. “Whatcha up to?”

“KEVIN?” she shouted above the techno music I could hear blaring in the background. “I’M AT A CLUB! IT’S KINDA LOUD IN HERE, SO YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO SPEAK UP!”

Wincing, I pulled the phone away from my ear. The fourteen-hour time difference between Lexington and Sydney meant that it was almost eleven o’clock at night there, but I hadn’t expected Natalie to still be out on the town. “I said, what are you up to?” I repeated, raising my voice. “Sounds like you’re having fun!”

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” she replied. “HANG ON… I’M GONNA TRY TO GO SOMEWHERE MORE QUIET!”

“Don’t bother; it’s not a big deal! You can call me back later!” I tried to tell her, but the words got caught in my throat as my attempt to talk even louder triggered my cough reflex. Of course, I could only sputter weakly as I began to choke on the phlegm that filled my throat, threatening to cut off my airway. In desperation, I dropped the phone and folded my arms across my chest, digging my fists into my diaphragm. Then I threw myself forward, doubling over in my chair so that my chest was resting on my knees. Thankfully, this position created enough core pressure to allow me to cough productively, clearing my airway in the process.

Lying face down over my own lap, I took a few deep, ragged breaths until I’d recovered enough to reach down and retrieve my phone from the kitchen floor. On the fourth try, I finally succeeded in hooking my fingers through the loop on the back of my phone case. Pushing myself back into an upright position was even more difficult, but I managed to do that, too. “See, Dawn?” I muttered to myself, wiping my mouth with the side of my hand. “I don’t need you during the day. I do just fine on my own.” Red-faced and lightheaded, I leaned back in my chair. That was when I remembered Natalie. Raising the phone to my ear, I said, “Whoops – dropped my phone. You still there?”

I heard nothing but silence; the line was dead. Lowering the phone, I looked down to see that the call had been disconnected. Whether it had happened accidentally when I’d dropped the phone or she had purposely hung up on me, I wasn’t sure. Before I could decide whether it was worth calling her back or not, the phone buzzed in my hand as a new text from Natalie popped up on its screen:

Sorry, babe, I couldn’t hear a thing! I’ll call ya when I get back to the hotel. ❤️

I had just finished reading her words when a second text came through. This time, it was a selfie of her standing on a balcony inside the club. She had taken the photo from a high angle, allowing me to see the crowded dance floor beneath her, the colorful lights coming from the DJ booth in the background, and the fancy cocktail in her hand. But those weren’t the details I noticed first. It was her clothing that immediately caught my eye: She was wearing a pink, sequined crop top with a flirty, black miniskirt, an outfit that showed plenty of skin and left little to the imagination. With her skin still bronze from our week at the beach and her brown eyes framed by layers of mascara and smoky black liner, Natalie looked like Britney Spears in her prime. I couldn’t stop staring – a compulsion undoubtedly shared by many of the men in that club.

Looking good! 😍 I wrote back, but my hand hovered above the send button without tapping it. The longer I hesitated, the more conflicted I felt. My heart had begun to beat faster; I could hear my pulse pounding against my eardrums and feel the rush of red hot blood flooding my cheeks. My whole face felt like it was on fire. I wasn’t even sure what was causing me to react that way. Was it anger? Arousal? AD? It could easily have been a combination of all three. As much as I loved seeing my girlfriend in sexy clothes, I hated the idea of other guys looking at her that way. Of course, it was summer in the Southern hemisphere, but couldn’t she have worn something slightly less revealing?

Impulsively, I pounded the backspace button with my pinkie knuckle, using more force than necessary to erase the unsent text. I tried drafting a different reply: It’s okay. Have fun and be safe! But I deleted that one, too – it made me sound more like her dad than her boyfriend.

With a sigh, I wedged my phone between my knees and wheeled myself slowly across the kitchen. As I rolled closer to the window, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the clear glass. I had to do a double take, hardly recognizing the middle-aged man in the wheelchair at first glance. Sometimes, I still had moments of denial, when I would stare at myself in the mirror and think, That can’t really be me. But the sad reality was that, at that moment, I looked more like Natalie’s dad than her boyfriend.

Maybe I should just send her back a selfie of me, I thought, snorting in disgust as my eyes dropped to my snot-crusted sweats. There was nothing sexy about the way I was dressed. Gazing out the window at the gray sky and brown grass of my backyard, I felt worlds apart from my glamorous girlfriend. She was literally on the other side of the world, dancing in a club on a warm summer night while I was spending a cold winter day at home, washing dishes and doing laundry. I was living the stay-at-home dad life, and she was living like a single woman.

I supposed that was what bothered me the most. It wasn’t the distance or the difference in age or ability. It was the self-doubt that had snuck back inside my head, the uncertainty of not knowing what Natalie was doing or who she was with when she wasn’t with me.

“You don’t think she’s cheating on you, do you?” It had been more than two weeks since my conversation with AJ, yet his words continued to haunt me. A part of me hated him for asking that question – and for causing me to question my own relationship. As I’d told him then, Natalie had never given me a reason not to trust her, and that much remained true. But the thought of her dancing alongside attractive, able-bodied, Australian men in a steamy Sydney nightclub did nothing to ease my mind. I couldn’t stop myself from imagining one of them striking up a conversation with her… wooing her with his accent… buying her drinks… lowering her inhibitions…

This must be how Kristin felt, I realized, remembering the fights we’d had over the phone when we were dating. It was the worst during the long-distance phase of our on-again, off-again relationship, when I was recording and touring in Europe while she was working in the States. Kristin had always been supportive of my music career, but nothing could have prepared either one of us for the way the Backstreet Boys would suddenly blow up in popularity. She became increasingly insecure about the idea of me hooking up with other women overseas, which caused us to break up more than once before we finally got back together for good. Now I was the one dealing with the same sort of insecurity, albeit for different reasons. I didn’t want history to repeat itself with Natalie.

A lump rose in my throat as I watched a crow fly across the colorless sky. It reminded me of the tattoo on her back. As it landed on the bird feeder hanging outside the window, bowing its head to peck at the seeds inside, I fished my phone out of the gap between my legs. I had finally figured out how to respond to Natalie’s last text. I sent her back a single red heart, hoping it would serve as a reminder of my love and our relationship.

Natalie didn’t reply right away, but she FaceTimed me a few hours later as Dawn and I were eating lunch. “Hey!” I said in surprise as her face appeared on my phone screen. “I didn’t know if I’d hear from you again today.”

“Why not? I told you I would call when I got back, didn’t I?” she replied. She was walking around her hotel room, still wearing her shimmery, pink crop top. I couldn’t help but consider the possibility that someone else had been in the room with her before she called – or could still be there now, lurking off-camera in a hidden corner – but I pushed it to the back of my mind.

“You’re just now getting back? Isn’t it almost four in the morning there?” I frowned as I did the math in my head.

Natalie nodded. “Yes, but my body’s still on Pacific time.” She laughed and flopped backwards onto the bed. “My flight back to LAX doesn’t leave until later this afternoon, so I’ll be able to get some sleep before I have to be at the airport.”

“I see,” I said, propping my phone up against the fruit bowl in the center of the table so I could continue eating while I talked to her. I didn’t want my soup to get cold.

“What’s for lunch?” she asked, watching me wedge my fingers through the loops on my spoon.

“Chicken noodle soup. I made it myself,” I replied proudly, dipping my spoon into my bowl to scoop up some more broth. “And, by ‘made it myself,’ I mean I used an electric can opener to open up a can of Campbell’s, managed to pour it into a bowl without spilling it everywhere, and then nuked it for two minutes in the microwave. It’s my specialty.”

Natalie giggled. “Good for you, babe. You must be feeling better!”

I nodded as I finished my bite. “Much better. But now Dawn’s sick, too, so I’ve been trying to do as much as I can by myself today.”

Sitting across the table from me, Dawn flashed me a tight-lipped smile as she swallowed a mouthful of soup. I would have brought it up to her bedroom if I’d thought I could have done so without spilling hot soup all over my lap and making a huge mess for her to clean up – but since we both knew that wasn’t likely, she had come downstairs to eat with me in the kitchen instead.

“Oh no! Well, I’m sure she appreciates your efforts,” said Natalie. “I know I would.”

Dawn nodded but said nothing as she reached for her glass of water and took a sip. I could tell it hurt her throat to talk; she wasn’t normally so quiet.

“She does,” I said, smiling back at her before dropping my gaze to my phone. “So, how are things down und-ah?” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Dawn shake her head and put her face in her hand when she heard my terrible Aussie accent. I bit down on my bottom lip, trying not to laugh.

Natalie must have thought I was trying to be sexy because her tone suddenly turned seductive. “Hm… how ‘bout I show you?” She panned her camera slowly down her body, pointing it right at pelvic level as she lifted her short skirt to reveal a lacy, black pair of panties.

I glanced up in time to catch the wide-eyed look that flashed across Dawn’s face. She couldn’t see my phone screen, but she must have inferred what Natalie was doing based on my own facial expression. “Hey, babe, maybe you’d better…”

“Nope,” croaked Dawn, abruptly standing up from the table. “That’s my cue to leave. Carry on, you two.” She took her bowl over to the sink, dumped the rest of her soup down the garbage disposal, and quickly escaped the kitchen.

“…not,” I finished flatly as Natalie gasped.

“Was that Dawn?!” she demanded, refocusing the phone on her red face. Her jaw had dropped, her mouth hanging wide open as she stared directly into the camera. “Don’t tell me she’s been in the room with you this whole time!”

“Okay… I won’t tell you…” I looked down as I lowered my spoon to the bottom of my soup bowl, fishing around for the last of the noodles.

“Kevin Scott Richardson!” she cried. “You need to tell me these things before I go humiliating myself like that! How often do you let her listen in on our phone conversations?”

I cringed. “Um… not that often. I would’ve said something sooner if I’d known you were gonna start the sexy talk. That kinda came out of nowhere.”

“Well, forgive me for being a little bit tipsy and a whole lot horny. I haven’t seen you in almost three weeks! I miss my man,” she replied with a pout. “And I apologize if Mason’s there listening, too.”

I laughed, feeling a rush of relief that she wasn’t really mad at me – and, moreover, that she apparently hadn’t slept with any Australian men. “Don’t worry; he’s at school,” I said, setting my spoon down.

“Thank the good Lord in Heaven for that!”

I adored the way her Southern drawl got thicker when she was drunk. It was so endearing that, despite the fact that I was sitting in the middle of my kitchen in broad daylight, I found myself getting in the mood, too. Clearing my throat, I pushed my soup bowl aside and said, “Now, where were we? Oh yeah – you were about to show me what’s happening down under!”

“Not anymore!”

“Oh, c’mon. Dawn went back to bed; she can’t hear you now.” I leaned closer to my phone, flashing the camera a grin. “Lemme see those sexy little panties you had on.”

“You mean these panties?” Natalie held them up in front of her face, twirling them around her finger.

“You tease. I wanted to watch you take them off.”

“Too bad,” she replied, tossing them aside. “You’re being punished.”

“Punished?” I repeated, smirking. “I didn’t know you were into punishment.”

“Oh, yeah… you’ve been a bad, bad boy,” she said in a low, sultry voice, fixing the camera with a smoldering look as she brought the phone closer to her face. “You let me embarrass myself, and now you’re gonna pay. You don’t get to watch me touch myself this time. You’ll just have to listen.” She turned her phone face down, so the camera went dark. “I’m taking off my top now…” I could hear her rustling around on the bed, apparently removing articles of clothing. Her teasing was torturing me.

“Aw, c’mon, now… you’re not really gonna deprive me like that, are you? I’m already paralyzed, baby; don’t make me blind, too,” I begged, trying to sound as pitiful as possible. “It’s bad enough not being able to feel your body the way I wish I could. At least let me look at you.”

“Don’t you go playing the disability card, trying to make me feel sorry for you,” Natalie scolded, but her flirty tone of voice told me she wasn’t being any more serious than I was.

“Fine, then I won’t let you watch me either.” I flipped my phone over and left it lying facedown on the table while I balanced my soup bowl on my knees and wheeled myself over to the sink.

“Watch you what? Wash dishes?” I heard her ask as I rinsed out the bowl.

Busted, I thought as I burst out laughing. “Hey, now… I’ve heard watching men help out around the house is a huge turn-on for most women.”

“Well, that may be true, but-”

“So let’s make a deal,” I said, drying my hands before I rolled back to the table. “You turn your camera back on for me, and I’ll let you watch me fold the laundry next.”

She laughed. “Deal.”

I put my phone in my lap while I wheeled myself into the laundry room. The dryer was done. I perched my phone on top with the camera facing me while I pried the door open and leaned over, pulling out an armful of freshly-washed clothing. Natalie probably thought I was kidding about folding the laundry, but I knew it would wrinkle if I left it in the dryer for too long. “Mm… still warm,” I moaned, burying my face in one of my favorite Wildcats t-shirts. “And it smells so good…”

“Did you use fabric softener?” Natalie’s face reappeared on my phone screen as she turned her camera around.

“Dryer sheets. Much more quad-friendly,” I replied with a grin.

“Of course.” She climbed off the bed and carried her phone across her hotel room, putting it somewhere high enough to allow me to see the whole bed behind her. “I wish you could come dry some of my clothes,” she said as she walked back to the bed, wearing nothing but a pink bra with her short black skirt. Slowly, she bent over, giving me a peek at her bare ass as she bent down to pick up her black panties off the floor. “They’re so wet…”

My mouth watered as I watched her perch on the foot of the bed. Slowly, she scooted backward, making no effort to prevent her skirt from flying up as she brought her legs up onto the bed. Leaning back on the heap of pillows pushed up against the headboard, she bent her knees and spread her legs, letting me watch as she pleasured herself. “I miss you so much,” she murmured as her fingers moved in and out.

“Where’s that magic wand when you need it, huh?” I said with a smirk.

“It’s waiting for you in L.A. When are you gonna come and get it?”

“I’ll be there for Valentine’s Day,” I told her. “The guys and I are gonna be working in the studio that week.”

“Valentine’s Day? That’s, like, three weeks away!” She pulled her fingers out from between her legs, lowering her hand with a look of dismay. “Are you saying I’m not gonna see you again for another three weeks?!”

“No,” I said patiently as I folded the shirt on my lap, refusing to get riled up just because she was. “All I’m saying is that I’m not gonna be in L.A. for another three weeks. But you’ll see me next weekend for Brian’s Super Bowl party, right?”

“Um… actually, no, you won’t.” Natalie got up from the bed and walked off camera.

“Wait, what?” I stared at the empty bed in confusion. Where the hell was she going? I wondered. Was she coming back? What was going on? I could hear water running in the background and realized she must be in the bathroom, washing her hands.

Sure enough, she reappeared a minute later, rubbing her face with a makeup removing wipe as she walked across the hotel room. “Sorry,” she said, stopping in front of her phone. “I meant to tell you… I’m working next weekend.”

“What? I thought you were off! That’s the main reason I agreed to go to Georgia!” Brian had invited us a few weeks earlier, when the Atlanta Falcons were favored to go all the way to the Super Bowl. At the time, it had seemed like a no-brainer for Natalie and me to go to his house to watch the game together. It wasn’t far for either of us to travel, and we would be in the heart of Falcons territory.

“Well, I was, but I just traded trips with my friend Jared, so he can have that weekend off instead,” she explained, tossing her wipe into the trash can. “Turns out, his boyfriend’s from San Francisco and a big 49ers fan. They wanna host their own watch party.” As she talked, she reached behind her back to unhook her bra, shimmying out of both it and her black skirt.

I sighed as I bent down to drop my folded t-shirt into the empty laundry basket at my feet. “You’re too damn nice, Natalie,” I said, not bothering to hide my disappointment.

“Don’t be mad. He would have done the same for me if the Falcons were in the Super Bowl and I had to work,” she replied, pulling her lavender nightgown over her head. “But, hey, this means I’ll be off the following weekend instead! Let’s do something then.” She picked up her phone and carried it back to the bed with her. “We can make our Valentine’s Day celebration last the whole week!” she added brightly as she crawled beneath the covers.

Taking that to mean sexy time was over, I pulled up the calendar app on my phone and studied the month of February. “Looks like Mason has another three-day weekend then; he’s off that Friday, the eighth, for a professional development day. How about we take that ski trip you promised me? I wanna try out the new snow gear you got for me before winter’s over.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Where should we go?”

“I dunno… I’ll do some research, try to find a good resort that offers adaptive skiing or snowboarding,” I said, thinking of Mammoth Mountain, Lake Tahoe, or Aspen. “You don’t mind if Mason comes along with us this time, do you? I’d really like to introduce him to skiing… and I’d feel bad leaving him behind again so soon after our last vacation.”

“Oh, no, of course he can come! Dawn, too, if she wants to. She can watch Mason while we have some alone time,” Natalie said with a wink.

I laughed. “Sounds like a plan,” I said, putting my phone back on top of the dryer. “I’ll talk to her about it later.”

“What about this weekend? I’ll get a whole day back when I fly home from Sydney. I could probably fly standby to Kentucky Friday or Saturday.”

I shook my head. “You’d better not, not with the flu still going around the house. I don’t want you getting sick, too.”

“But who’s gonna help you while Dawn’s sick?”

“I don’t need that much help. I’m doing just fine on my own. See?” Picking up a pair of Mason’s pants, I folded them over my forearm and held them up for her approval. “And I can always call one of my brothers to come over if Dawn doesn’t feel up to doing my morning and night routines.”

“So you don’t need me.” Natalie sounded disappointed.

I remembered what Dawn had once told me about women wanting someone they could take care of. “It feeds their nurturing instinct, you know?” At the same time, AJ’s advice echoed through my head: “You’ll just have to make her miss you… Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?”

“No,” I said. “I do wanna see you, but it’s not a good weekend.”

“Fine. I guess I’ll just see you next month then,” Natalie replied with a pout.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. February’s only a week away.”

“It feels like forever.” She heaved a sigh, then hid a yawn with her hand.

“You gettin’ sleepy?” I asked her as I reached for another shirt to fold. “Want me to let you go now?”

“Not just yet. Stay on and keep talking to me until I fall asleep,” she pleaded. “I miss you.”

I nodded, trying not to smile too wide. It seemed that my plan was working.

“I miss you, too.”

***