CHAPTER ONE

10,000 Lakes and One Mythical God

Three months after landing in Minneapolis, a Greek god moved into the apartment across from mine. Okay, maybe not an actual god, but close. The view from my peephole might not have been entirely accurate. Nevertheless, my eyeball remained glued to it with no signs of blinking; I had a peephole addiction—along with Netflix, marshmallows, and cinnamon.

“It’s not gonna fit,” I narrated the situation to myself.

Two scrawny, pale-skinned boys danced with an oversized, black leather chair, working to maneuver it through the doorway. Apollo stood just opposite my door with his tree-trunk arms crossed over his chest. The guy could carry the chair on his pinky finger with Beavis and Butt-Head sitting atop, yet he gave them nothing more than a slight head shake.

My mumblings continued. “Turn it the other way.”

“Don’t scratch the legs,” he said, eliciting a whole new round of sweat from the movers.

Left. Right. Up. Down.

“Gah!” Enough was enough. I threw open my door. “Flip it the other way. That’s the only way it will fit.”

After a few seconds of frozen silence and three who-the-hell-are-you looks, the moving guys angled it back out, flipped it, and had it inside the apartment in less than ten seconds.

I turned. He wasn’t a god.

Stupid peephole.

He was a mountain of muscles wrapped in dark skin perfection.

“Men are supposed to have better spatial abilities than women, but I have yet to witness it firsthand.” I shrugged and smiled.

His eyes shifted down to mine, arms still crossed over the continent of his chest. He quirked an eyebrow.

“I’m a man.”

No words had ever been truer. The man before me stood close to 6’5” and maybe 275 pounds, with calves the circumference of my waist. A solid rock with a few scattered tattoos on biceps partially covered by his gray T-shirt. And that voice … it vibrated my body in all the places that weren’t already awakened by the slight scent of spice, which had to be something lingering on his skin. Whatever it was, my nose approved.

“That was my first guess.” My tight-lipped smile accompanied a resolute nod.

His eyes shifted to my chest.

Please don’t squint.

With a subtle arch of my back, I attempted to look confident, because nothing said confidence like a good push-up bra. My boobs weren’t the ripest mangoes on the tree, but they were a step above fleshy acorns. It seemed unlikely that Apollo was the kind of guy to be impressed by barely average-sized ta-tas, but a girl could hope.

A subtle smirk pulled at his lips. I knew they hid a beautiful set of white teeth … I just knew. However, he didn’t indulge me with as much as a glimpse. Too bad.

His gaze moved to my legs—my real one and my prosthetic one on full display beneath my green running shorts.

“You lost your leg.”

“Genius. You’re two for two today.” I winked.

He stared and stared, cocking his head from one side to the other like it was a puzzle to solve. I wasn’t a puzzle, just a below-the-knee amputee with a kick-ass robotic leg.

“Hmm …” He pushed a quick breath out of his nose while shaking his head. “Bummer.”

I narrowed my eyes, tracking his path past me to his door as the two moving guys squeezed by him. “Bummer?”

“Yup.” He turned, taking in my leg once more. “Never seen any leg quite like that.”

“It’s a prototype. By the way, I’m Lake Jones.”

“Okay,” he called, his back already to me. Two seconds later his door shut.

Biting my lips together, I tapped them with my finger then huffed out a laugh. “That went well.”

After returning to the sanctity of my apartment, nestled in a quaint neighborhood just outside of downtown Minneapolis, I typed out a message to my BFF, Lindsay.

Lake: Hot guy alert.

I pitched my phone on my alabaster and Spanish yellow striped ottoman and walked to the window. Opening my peacock blue curtains—because it was the best shade of blue ever—I frowned at the dismal clouds shadowing the city, confirming the April afternoon rain shower prediction. My phone chimed. I smiled while retrieving it. There was a lot to be said for independence, spreading one’s wings, and moving to a new place with no family and friends.

Words like daring, adventurous, and driven described my frame of mind when I decided to leave behind everything that was familiar. Two months later … bored out of my fucking mind was the accurate description of how my newfound freedom felt.

What person, with an ounce of sanity, moves to Minnesota in the middle of February? Stubborn twenty-four-year-old girls who want to exert their independence at the worst possible time, that’s who. I shrugged off all offers to help me move. The need to overcompensate in everything was a tragic side effect of living with a disability. People without disabilities would accept help; it was the normal thing to do. Me? Not so much.

My brother, psychiatrist extraordinaire, called me contumacious—stubbornly disobedient. Whatever. I made it with the help of a moving company, who arrived three days late. That minor detail was omitted when I told my parents the move went off without a hitch.

Lindsay: Sex?

Lake: No. I think there are security cameras in the hall. But I love that you believe after a year of not having sex that I’d jump my new neighbor in the hall upon our first meeting.

Lindsay: That’s exactly why. You have to be so desperate.

Lake: Thx for keeping it real.

Lindsay: Always. I need details!

Lake: I’ve given up on my vibrator. It makes me feel like a complete loser. I still question the existence of God. If he exists, then that means there is a Heaven and Ben is there, watching me shove vibrating plastic into myself with one hand while I stimulate my nipples with the other. I know he’s thinking “WTF” but it means something more spiritual like “Why This, Father?”

Lindsay: LMAO – I meant details about the hot guy, but thx for the visual.

Lake: Awkward

Lindsay: A bit. The guy. Tell me about the guy!

“The guy.” I wished there were a guy. All-encompassing statements like “the worst” were reserved for drama queens. I didn’t use them much, but when it came to guys, I reserved the right to say, “I have the worst luck with men.” It was safe to say I’d never find “the one,” because I’d met two “the ones,” which went against all mathematical laws of nature. Two perfect guys and I lost them both.

Ben …

This was what I learned from him. Life was a peculiar journey—a marathon for some, a sprint for others. One day I woke up and discovered the shitty part was nobody knew which one. A marathon required a different frame of mind than a sprint.

Live for the moment. What did that mean? Which one? How many? With whom?

Ben died and I lived.

Three months later I awoke from a coma, with an infinity of blank space below my left knee. The shitty part? The pinky toe on my right foot suffered two different breaks years earlier, and it was painful to wear pretty, yet completely impractical, shoes because it never healed properly. But no … I had to lose the foot with the good pinky toe. It was an embarrassing yet completely human thought that went through my head, because the thought that wanted to take up residency in my brain was just too unbearable: Ben died and I lived.

A second chance at life deserved a profound purpose, a commitment to changing the world. Don’t waste a single minute. Don’t take anything for granted. Don’t ever forget …

Ben died and I lived.

The problem: I wasn’t living. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t changing the world.

Over four years later, everything around me remained black and white with the occasional splash of color that quickly faded. I’m not sure if it was grief or guilt, but everything around me, everything I held dear—family, friends, my favorite city by the bay—became suffocating.

So I left.

Lake: Nothing to tell. He’s 2.5 x my size. Looked at my boobs and my leg then said, “Bummer.”

Lindsay: To your boobs or your leg?

Lake: Lol, my leg. I hope.

Lindsay: A guy that size could break you. I don’t think a relationship would work if he could never give you more than just the tip.

Lake: Thx for going there.

Lindsay: Anytime. ;) Gotta run, babe. Keep me apprised and don’t think about God or Ben in Heaven when you’re getting yourself off. Too weird.

***

Soundproof walls my ass!

Apollo liked his music deafeningly loud, with an extra side of bass, and he liked it during the hours of my best sleep.

bang bang bang

I rapped my fist against his door until my knuckles protested such aggression.

The door eased open. His manly pheromones, cologne, or over-all sex appeal wafted in my direction. I breathed out of my mouth to keep my brain from liquefying. He brought a tall glass of something that looked like blood to his lips and took a slow sip before licking them.

“Sup?”

“Sup?” I planted my fists on my hips. “What’s up is I’m trying to sleep and it sounds like you’re running a nightclub in here! Am I seriously the first person who has complained?”

He held up his glass, uncurling his index finger from it, and then he turned, disappearing around the corner. I took a step inside, straining my neck to see where he went.

Stark white walls. He needed a decorator. Then again, the walls probably had ten coats of stain-blocking primer on them to cover up the blood. Rumor was the previous tenant shot his wife in the head, then himself. I figured that’s why the place sat vacant for so long. Who wants to live in an apartment where a murder/suicide took place? Talk about bad chi.

I made a mental note to offer my services. Peacock blue. He needed the window wall painted peacock blue with pewter blinds. The music cut off, and I shuffled back into the hallway.

“Sorry, what were you saying?”

My eyes narrowed. “The music. It’s too loud. You’re waking up the whole damn neighborhood.”

There it was—and no less brilliant than I thought it would be—a smile. Large, perfectly-aligned pearly whites. I sort of had a thing for smiles.

“Listen, Stick … it’s eleven-thirty in the morning. I reckon you’re the only one in the neighborhood still sleeping.” He took another sip of blood.

If he knew what had happened in that apartment, he would not have chosen beet juice, or tomato juice, or whatever the hell he had in that glass.

My nose wrinkled at the glass then my eyes shifted to his. “Did you just call me stick?”

He nodded once, his gaze making another assessment of my whole body. “Angry Bird, huh?” He shrugged. “Fitting, I suppose. But that shirt is the worst fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

Yes, I wore Angry Bird women’s boxer shorts and a 49ers T-shirt.

“What’s wrong with the 49ers?”

“You’re in Minnesota Kings country. That’s what’s wrong with them.”

I shook my head. “It’s a nightshirt. And who cares? It was a gift. I don’t follow football.”

“Are we done, Stick?”

“Why are you calling me stick?”

“Why ya sleepin’ at 11:30 a.m.?”

“I work nights.” That was a stretch of the truth.

He grinned, an enticing one that made the rest of my body wake up, even if my eyes still needed the sleep rubbed out of them. I wanted to climb him like a tree and—

“Doing what?”

“What?” I shook my head. I was halfway up the tree. “Oh … video chatting.”

“Porn?”

“None of your business.” I huffed. No. No was the answer. Why didn’t I just say no? Did I want him to think I liked porn?

Resting his shoulder against the door frame, he sipped his drink again, then smirked. “Now I’m curious.”

My chin jutted forward as I narrowed my eyes. “Are ya, Apollo? Are ya really curious?”

“Apollo?” A boisterous laugh rumbled from his chest. “As in Creed?”

“What?” My eyes narrowed. “Creed what?”

“Apollo Creed. Rocky?”

“Rocky?” My head tilted to the side, eyes still narrowed.

“For fuck’s sake, Stick. Please don’t tell me you’ve never watched Rocky.”

“Boxing movie? No. I have not.”

“Then why the hell are you calling me Apollo?”

“Well, you have not told me your name. And you’re well … um … fit of sorts. Strong looking. Not exactly ugly. So Apollo came to mind. You know … mythical god, son of Zeus?”

He fisted his free hand at his mouth.

“You’re laughing at me?”

He shook his head, but his massive fist still wasn’t big enough to hide his grin. “See the color of my skin? Do I look Greek to you? If you must call me Apollo, let’s go with Creed, even though I’m not a boxer either.” He chuckled a little more.

“That’s it!” I pointed a stiff finger at him. “I’m not going to stand here and take this.” My stubborn personality grasped for a phantom shred of dignity. Pivoting, I returned to my apartment with as much confidence as an amputee wearing Angry Bird boxers could have.

“Hope this isn’t your way of playing hard to get, Stick. It’s not happening between us. You’re not my type.”

The nerve of him …

“I’m not playing hard to get, and I never implied I wanted anything to happen.” I may have thought about his tip, but nothing beyond that. “It’s very arrogant of you to assume I thought something was going to happen between us. AND I don’t have a stick up my ass!”

I slammed my door and opened it again two seconds later. “And just to be clear … why exactly am I not your type?”

He finished the last of the blood drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “ ’Cause you’re a skinny-as-a-stick white girl without a damn thing to hold on to.”

I slammed the door again.

***

I landed a dream job two years ago—a dream job because when I had two complete legs I never would have dreamed of being a “subject” or “tester” of prosthetic legs. However, using the label “prosthetic leg” around my boss was off limits.

A designer in England made me several pretty legs with painted nails. They looked freakishly real. My boss hated them. He said they were as ‘fucking impractical as a pair of high-heeled shoes.’ Those legs were ‘prosthetics,’ and wearing them only revealed my vanity. He designed robotic legs, and comparing them to the average prosthesis was the ultimate insult.

“Hey love, tell me about my baby.” Thaddeus “Thad” Westbrook wasn’t British, but he always called me love. Why? No idea. I was not his baby, but I think his baby ranked higher than his love. The “smart limb” aka my bionic leg was his baby. I had a lot of his babies, yet we’d never had sex.

Thad was my first date from a matchmaking site. And for the record, he was not one of the “ones.” We should have had sex. He took me to the brink of an orgasm, yet he had no clue what he did to me. I was open about my disability on the dating site, he was not. Thad lost one hand and two fingers from his other hand in a farm equipment accident when he was twelve.

He invited himself into my apartment after dinner, and then he removed my leg. It wasn’t exactly a first-base move, but as his hands skimmed over my flesh, inspecting my residual limb. I shivered, heart racing. At first it tickled my knee, but then it shot tingling goose bumps up along my skin while the much neglected area between my thighs screamed, YES! But, no—we never happened.

I put him on speaker phone and combed through my wet hair after a long run and a shower. “I like her … a lot. In fact, I think I’m keeping her. She’s not sexy, but she’s smooth. No limp, not even when taking the stairs. I got caught in the rain the other day and worried about the sensory electrode shorting out, but—”

“She’s waterproof, love.”

“Yeah, where have I heard that before? Oh that’s right, with your last baby that shorted out and nearly set my pants on fire. That shit would never happen with a prosthetic leg.”

“My smart limbs are made to mimic a human’s movement in every way, only better. But much like the human body, sometimes there can be a few glitches. That’s why I have you.”

“The guinea—”

“My test subject, not guinea pig, love.”

“Whatever, so why’d you call?”

My memories of Thad were surreal. People just didn’t meet like that. I had an official paying job by the end of our first and only date. I also fingered myself into a sweaty mess that night in bed, but it was a small sacrifice. Thad admitted he was looking for a “subject” to join his geek team experts in prosthetics, robotics, machine learning, and biomechanics—geek being my word not his—to “test the future of robotics that would make physical disabilities obsolete.” He also confessed that his attraction to me was unplanned and not going to work out if I took the job. Thad was a stickler on not mixing business and pleasure.

Job versus male-induced orgasm—I mean boyfriend. It was a toughie, but in the end, I made the right decision. Thanks to Thad and his ingenious team of geeks, I felt like a superhero, not a young woman with a disability. Thanks to Thad, my disability was non-existent.

“I already booked your flight and hotel,” he said with his usual passive voice. Always multi-tasking. The guy could do brain surgery while practicing his golf swing and reciting Pi to infinity.

“For?” I stopped mid-comb and stared at my phone.

“Beijing. Next Wednesday. You’ll be there about a week or so.”

I rolled my eyes. “Jerry Chu. I was up half the night video chatting with him. I showed him our latest baby, and he needs to tweak his before I give it a go.”

“Yes, love, I know. I just got off the phone with him, and he needs you there for the tweaking. It’s supposed to be the best one yet for rock climbing. Besides, half the parts of my baby that you have were designed by Jerry.”

“I hate flying to China.”

“You told me you love Beijing.”

“I do. I hate getting there. Fourteen hours on a plane. I get restless.”

“Take a friend.”

“I don’t have that many friends here yet.”

“Take a sedative.”

“I don’t like how they make me feel.”

“You’re being difficult, love.”

“Strong. I’m being strong-willed. That’s why you hired me.”

“I hired you because you’re active yet submissive.”

“Pardon me?”

“Don’t act offended. Who lets a guy get away with, ‘I want to take your leg off,’ on the first date—before so much as a kiss?”

“You were handsome.”

“Were?”

“Yes. Now you’re just bossy, and that’s not very attractive on you.”

“Next Wednesday. Ass on the plane, love.”

“Bossy cow.” I sighed, plugging in the dryer.

“Mmm hmm.” He disconnected our call.

I aimed the hairdryer at my phone and blasted it on high with an evil glare.