Whole Read online

  Whole is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 E.A. Rohler

  All rights reserved.

  www.earohler.com

  Cover design and illustration: Jason Rohler

  For Jason, my most important person

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Thank You!

  If you enjoyed Whole, look out for the next book in the series by E.A. Rohler, Born, coming soon!

  Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I met Jake two years ago, at the eighteenth birthday party of a mutual friend. Kaitlin, the birthday girl, had rented out the rooftop of a restaurant downtown, and I had shown up early to help her decorate with string lights and streamers. When I arrived, I went to the back door, the one that led straight into the kitchen where delivery trucks would go. I was just starting out as a pastry chef, baking cakes out of the kitchen in my tiny studio apartment that I shared with my younger sister, and Kaitlin had requested an elaborate four-tier birthday cake as a way of “doing me a favor.” I’d known Kaitlin my whole life, though she was in my younger sister’s grade. We grew up together in the suburbs of Chicago, her in the affluent part of the Lakeside community, and me just on the other side of the railroad tracks where the community became decidedly less affluent. Most people would describe her as “a bit much,” but I liked that about her. I could sit for hours listening to her blather on about hair or make-up or boys and never have to say more than the occasional “mmm-hmm” in return. It was like having a friendship without having to do any of the work, and that suited me just fine. I was never much of a talker anyway. An over-thinker, sure, but a talker? What’s the point in talking when no one listens to what you have to say?

  The cake had taken me days to make—the better part of a week, actually. It was the most anyone had ever paid me for my services, albeit on the low end, but Kaitlin was a friend after all. I wanted it to be perfect, impressive. I wanted people to talk about it long after the party was over. After helping the restaurant staff hoist it up onto a shiny silver cake stand, carefully, so as not to damage the delicate lace piping and tiny, glistening sugar pearls I had spent hours intricately placing, I thanked them for their assistance and headed up the backstairs and out onto the roof.

  “Hey betch!” Kaitlin called from across the roof where she was standing with her boyfriend, Dash. “You’re heeeeeere!”

  She was dressed in a fluffy pink number, almost like a tutu, with dainty little silver shoes and a sparkling silver crown. A huge diamond necklace shone around her neck—her mother’s, I supposed. “Hey,” I said, beaming as I walked up to them, still excited about how the cake had turned out. “I just left your ca—”

  “Oh my god,” she said, cutting me off. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

  “Oh, um, yeah,” I mumbled, pulling on the hem of my skirt to try to make it a little longer. “I borrowed it from Ellie.”

  “Well, it’s a bit trashy, but you look HOT,” she continued, nodding her head a little too enthusiastically. “Dash, doesn’t she look hot?” she said, jabbing him in the side with her elbow.

  Dash glanced up briefly from his phone. “Smokin,” he said as he went back to scrolling.

  Ellie is my charming, hilarious, better looking little sister. She’s two years younger than me, much cooler than I will ever be, and unlike me, she knows a thing or two about style. When she saw me getting ready to head to the party earlier that night she took one look at my jeans and black t-shirt and shook her head saying “No, that won’t do,” before going into our shared closet and emerging with the floral mini-skirt in her hands.

  “This is a downtown party on a rooftop, Mara,” Ellie had said. “You need to look the part.”

  Her black leather biker jacket completed my look. She had tried hard to get me into a pair of her knee-high boots, but I stood my ground and insisted on wearing my dirty old Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars, the only shoes I’d worn since I was fifteen. I wasn’t about to risk delivering a four-tier buttercream cake in heels, after all.

  I scanned the rooftop to see what decorating still needed to be done. Kaitlin’s parties were always a little over the top, but she had really gone all out on this one. Long tables piled high with fancy looking hors d'oeuvres lined the back wall, giant silver balloons in the shape of a one and an eight providing their backdrop. A photo-worthy flower wall made up of hundreds of pink, white, and red roses sat near the entrance, and a red carpet was being rolled out so guests could have their picture taken upon arrival, like you would at a movie premier. Though most of the guests were too young to drink, there was an open bar where several waiters stood filling up their trays with Kaitlin’s signature drink, the Kaitail, a bright pink concoction with a foamed rim and wisps of vapor floating out of the glass like it was made with dry ice. Seemed like a bit of a waste to me, but Kaitlin wanted it to feel grown-up.

  I spotted a dance floor, and a live band was setting up in the corner. Not much of a dancer myself, I didn’t care for the dance floor, but I thought the band was a nice touch. I looked over at the three guys who were standing near the setup, and I thought I recognized the drummer who was standing and running a hand through his mop of dark hair while talking to Dash. I stopped to watch him, trying to place where I’d seen him before, when suddenly he looked up and we caught eyes, his hand still resting on top of his head. He smiled at me, a shy yet intriguing smile, and I blushed at the realization I had been staring. Shit, I thought as I quickly looked down and pretended to be engrossed in my fingernail polish.

  “What are you doing?” Kaitlin asked as she came striding up to me. “I really need your help setting up, and you’re just standing around.”

  “Oh, I was just...looking for...the string lights,” I covered, hoping my cheeks weren’t still red. “You wanted to hang some, right?”

  “O-M-G, YES!” she squealed. “I want to put them near the band. Like, all over their instruments and stuff so when it gets dark you can still see them playing.”

  The logistics of wrapping the band’s instruments in string lights that had to be plugged in to a wall socket didn’t quite make sense to me, but Kaitlin seemed set on this “look” and I didn’t want to disappoint her on her birthday. Plus, it would give me a legitimate excuse to talk to the drummer, whose smile was still on my mind.

  “Where’d you find this band?” I asked Kaitlin, fishing for clues as to how I might know him. “Are they part of the restaurant?”

  “Oh, no, they’re Dash’s weird friends,” she responded, condescendingly. “I don’t even like their music, but he insisted I let them play, you know, as a favor to give them exposure or whatever.”

  “I think I recognize the drummer,” I said, attempting indifference.

  “Who, Jake?” she said. “He’s been at my parties before, though I doubt you would have talked to him. He’s Dash’s age—a year older than you—and he didn’t go to our school. He’s strange. He doe
sn’t ‘like parties,’ whatever that means. And he hardly talks to anyone. Come to think of it, you two would probably be perfect for each other.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said, trying not to blush again. “I’ll get on these lights.”

  String lights in hand, I strode over to the stage where the band was still setting up, trying to look cool and tugging on the hem of my skirt one more time for good measure. Dash and Jake were talking, and I approached and stood awkwardly next to them, waiting for my turn to speak for what felt like forever before Jake saved me from my own discomfort.

  “What are you doing with those lights there?” he asked, looking from the lights to my face and back again.

  “I... uh...need to put them on your instruments,” I responded, trying to sound casual.

  “You what?” Jake asked, glancing at Dash, clearly confused.

  “I mean, Kaitlin wants to wrap them around your instruments,” I clarified, feeling more and more idiotic as the words came out of my mouth. “She wants the band to look ‘lit up’ when it gets dark.”

  “What the princess wants, the princess gets,” Dash chimed in as Jake rolled his eyes at me.

  “That’s not going to work,” Jake said, speaking to Dash at this point. “Max and Eddie play guitar. They need to move around on stage, and they can’t be tripping over lights. There’s only one available outlet over here, anyway.” He motioned behind him at the power strip that was already near-full from the band equipment. “She can light up my drums if she must, but that’s it.”

  “Alright, take it easy, buddy,” Dash said while clapping Jake on the back. “I’ll go talk to her.” He walked off to let Kaitlin down easy, leaving Jake and me alone, the string lights still dangling from my hand.

  “Thanks for offering up your drums to the lighting gods,” I said. “I know it sounds stupid, but it means a lot to Kaitlin to have everything looking exactly how she imagined it.”

  “She could stand a little disappointment for once in her life,” he responded bitterly. Then he seemed to catch himself, and followed up with, “But it is her birthday, so I’ll give her a pass.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m sure the cake I made her will be disappointing enough.”

  “You’re a baker?” he replied, raising his eyebrows, impressed. “That’s cool.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m just starting really,” I covered, suddenly embarrassed. What if my cake was terrible? “Kaitlin’s really helping me out by letting me make something for her party.”

  “From the looks of it, you don’t need any help,” said Jake, nodding in the direction of the dessert table where the restaurant staff were busy lifting my cake into its place as the centerpiece.

  It looked even better than it had before, here with the balloons and the lights. My eyes lit up when I saw it, and my heart swelled with a sense of pride and accomplishment, like this is what I was made to do. When I turned back around, Jake was looking at me with that shy smile again and I immediately blushed.

  “Thanks,” I said, looking down at my shoes. “I should probably go help them get the dessert plates ready.” I started to leave, but then I remembered I was still holding the lights. “Would you mind putting these lights on your drums?” I asked.

  I held the string of lights out for him to take, and his hand lingered on mine for a second longer than necessary.

  “It would be my pleasure,” he said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  I smiled and turned to step off of the stage and head over to help with the cake, but then I stopped and looked back at Jake.

  “I’m Mara, by the way,” I told him. “Mara Martin.”

  “I know,” he said, smiling, as he turned to his drum kit and began stringing the lights.

  Chapter 2

  I wake up and immediately reach for my phone, which is sitting on the little shelf on the headboard of my bed. There are three notifications at the top of the screen: two from my calendar reminding me I have cakes to deliver today, and one text message from Ellie asking if I want to go shopping at the boutique stores later. I open the text and begin to respond when Jake rolls over beside me and smiles.

  “Working already?” he says.

  “No, it’s just Ellie,” I say. “She wants to go shopping.”

  “She knows you hate shopping, right?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.

  “Ha-ha, very funny,” I say. “I don’t hate shopping. I’m just not any good at it.”

  “Well, I like your clothes,” he says and kisses me on the shoulder, eyes closed.

  I smile and sit in the moment for a second, burying my nose in his dark, messy hair before hopping out of bed and pulling on my shorts. Our dog is sleeping on the end of the bed, like always, and I give him a little pat on the head to say good morning.

  “I have two hours before I have to be at the bakery,” I say. “You want to get breakfast?”

  “Let’s go for a run first,” he responds.

  After Kaitlin’s party, Jake and I had fallen fast for each other, quickly becoming inseparable. I discovered that while I was just noticing him for the first time at the party that night, he had been noticing me for years. He could recall what I was wearing at Kaitlin’s sixteenth birthday or the way I pushed my hair behind my ear when I was nervous. Early on, when I would look into his eyes, dark brown with flecks of green that widened as if in surprise every time he looked at me, I felt whole, noticed, completely understood as if we had known each other for decades. As I laid awake the night we had met, telling Ellie all about him, her first response was, “Sounds like the skirt worked.” After the third time she tried to go to sleep and I kept finding excuses to bring the conversation back to Jake, she rolled over and said, flustered, “I guess I need to find a new place to live. You two will be living together in no time.”

  Jake and I moved in together after just six months of dating. Kaitlin expressed her concern for my sanity, as she and Dash had been dating for four years and still weren’t planning on moving in together. But we had found an adorable two-bedroom coach house in Westville—more of an up and coming area of Chicago, but it had a lot of charm—and the rent was so reasonable we couldn’t pass it up. Besides, I didn’t see any point in delaying the inevitable. No one had ever seen me the way Jake did, and I had no plans of giving that up any time soon. On the contrary, all I wanted was to spend as much time as physically possible with him, and living together would make it that much easier. The house itself was old, built in 1880, just after the great Chicago fire. It had creaky old wood floors, uneven door frames that led to more than one guest getting stuck in the bathroom, and a whole host of plumbing issues, but I saw this all as part of its appeal.

  Jake had grown up in similar conditions as me, with no money for extraneous luxuries like professional plumbers, and he had learned to be somewhat of a “handy man” through necessity. All I really cared about was the kitchen, and while the oven definitely had some hot spots, it was at least in working condition, which was good enough for me. Plus, when I saw the large marble island and pictured using it to stack up tiered cakes, cut out sugar cookies, or roll out fondant, it was love at first sight and nothing else mattered. When I told Ellie about the house, trying to gauge any concern she might have about me moving out before we went ahead and signed the lease, she just smiled, saying, “Please, go, I’ll finally have my own closet.”

  On the day we moved in, I walked into the empty house to find a beautiful bed frame sitting in the master bedroom. It was a platform bed made of rustic looking barn wood with a gorgeous dark stain and a headboard with a built-in shelf on one side. Jake had spent months collecting the supplies and building the bed in his parents’ garage without ever mentioning it to me.

  “I wanted to surprise you,” he said, giving me that shy smile that still stopped my heart every time. “That’s your side,” he pointed, “with the shelf for your books so you can read before you go to bed.”

  My eyes welled up with tears and I put my hand up to my face to brus
h them away, unable to speak a reply. No one in my life had ever done anything so nice for me before.

  “I love you,” he said as he wrapped one arm around my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  “Same,” was all I could manage to say without full-on crying. This was the first time we had said “I love you,” and it became the way we would always say it, our little inside joke.

  Shortly after moving in, we found our dog Rufio, or rather, he found us. A mutt who resembled a mix of a Pomeranian and a Husky, he showed up on our front porch one day tattered and hungry, looking like a tiny little fox. We took him to the vet to get cleaned up, and they told us he was probably around three years old and likely full size. Jake named him Rufio, the leader of the Lost Boys who would never grow up.

  I go into the closet to change my clothes and emerge in my full running gear—shorts, old t-shirt from Goodwill, running shoes, double laced. I pull my hair up into a messy bun and look at myself in the mirror, pushing down on the cowlick on the side of my head and watching it bounce back out again. “Let’s make it a short one,” I say to Jake as he laces up his shoes.

  Jake had taken up running when he was a teenager as a way to get out of his house and clear his head. His parents weren’t exactly warm people. They mostly ignored him and went about their own lives as if he wasn’t there, and something about running made him feel less alone. It also helped him come up with new material for the band, playing the beats out in his head as he ran, sometimes banging out a riff in front of him with invisible drum sticks. He was good at it and in great shape—on the skinny side but still muscular, like you would expect a runner to be. I, on the other hand, was sort of forced into running out of unavoidable obligation. It took up so much of Jake’s free time that if I wanted to spend any time with him at all I had to get onboard.

  He preferred long runs, five or six miles through the city, all the way to the lake and back so he could feel the breeze coming off the water, but he pared it down on occasion to appease me. We tried to mix it up a bit, running through a different neighborhood each time to keep things interesting. We had been running together for the better part of two years, yet I still couldn’t keep up with him, always lagging a few steps behind, my legs aching the entire time. You would think I would be getting better, stronger over time but I remained fragile and weak, my body clearly more cut out for sampling cupcakes while watching trash TV on the couch with Ellie. Jake always tried to push me to be faster, but I don’t think he fully understood that I was trying as hard as I could. Sometimes I wished he would just slow down instead of encouraging me to speed up. It was nice that he believed in me, but it was also nice to feel catered to, taken care of. As much as it pained me, though, I did actually enjoy my runs with Jake. I liked being involved in that part of his life, his gentle teasing when I couldn’t keep up, and the way he looked back at me over his shoulder and smiled.