by DL White
“Like?”
“What’s that electro-therapy treatment he was talking about a while ago? What about new drug trials? Maybe he could try some different things. I don’t want us to limit ourselves. Or him.”
“Who is us? It’s him being treated. And I don’t think he’s limited at all.” She spoons scoop after scoop of dough onto the cookie sheet. “He has a good quality of life, Angie. You’re not here with him all day, every day. You don’t know what he can do, what he’s capable—”
“This is not about the care he gets or the life he leads. But let's look at all of the options available.”
“What options? What magical avenues are you going to pull out of the sky to offer to your dad?”
She slams a scoop of dough onto the cookie sheet, accentuating her words.
“What’s going to take away the tremors that rock his body every single minute unless he’s sleeping? Hmmm?”
Slam.
“And what about the cramps and the upset stomach he gets from the medications he’s on? What options are out there to give him relief from that?”
Slam.
She throws the scoop into the bowl, grabs the full cookie sheet, stalking stiff-legged to the oven. She opens the door and roughly slides the sheet inside, then sets the timer.
“I am not trying to insult you. You know what? I’m sorry I brought it up.”
I stand and brush crumbs from my skirt, grabbing my jacket from the back of a chair. “I should head over to the Reid’s. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Evangeline Nicole Blake.”
Her gritty tone and my full name voice stop me in my tracks. I turn and face her. She’s short and graying. And rounding. Her eyelids droop with how weary she is as she steps forward and grips the back of a chair.
“I didn’t mean to attack you. I’m… frustrated. Your father wants to take any experimental drug out there, undergo every risky procedure to be able to walk. But at what cost? There aren’t enough studies, for my taste and we don’t know how they’ll affect him. I don’t want to take the chance that we’ll lose him earlier than we’re already going to. I…”
Her bottom lip trembles. She sucks it in and inhales a few deep breaths to steady herself.
“I love him; I want him around, in any capacity that he can be around, but mostly I want him as healthy as he can be. I don’t want to experiment. I want tried and true. I want what works, and right now, his medication level is working as best it can. Let’s not mess with it.”
I nod a few times, then open my arms to her. She steps close and lets me hug her, holding her still dough covered hands aloft.
“Oh, Angie.” A single tear slides down her cheek. “I’ve got flour everywhere.”
I wipe her tear, flick some dough from the loose hairs around her face and smile. “It’s okay. I get it, mom. I’m going to go. I love you.”
The reception at the Reid house is warmer. I walk in the door and am greeted with a chorus of “Angie!”
Camille takes my coat, and Troy waves at me from the couch, where he’s snuggled up to Jade. I give them the customary wave.
“Where’s Preston?”
“In his old room. He said he had to find something he thinks he left in there.”
“Ohhh.” I grin. “I think I know what he’s looking for.” I head through the kitchen to the other end of the house.
“Hey, no messing around in there,” says Thomas as I pass him, trying hard to maintain his ‘Dad’ voice. He’s holding a bowl of mixed nuts. “You guys know the rules.”
“We’d never break your rules, Mr. Reid. Swear on a stack of bibles.”
“Unh huh.”
I navigate the carpeted hallway to the furthest end of the house. Preston’s old room has become a shrine to the eldest Reid child. All of Preston’s school photos, certificates, and framed replicas of his degrees grace the wall, interspersed with well-preserved posters of the musicians and groups he’d loved over the years from Boys II Men to Prince.
A bed covered in plain blue bedding and a small bureau are the only furniture in the room. The carpet is thin, the fibers crushed under years of feet in shoes, boots, sandals.
Preston is on his knees, half in, half hanging out of the closet. His letterman’s jacket and the distressed brown leather jacket he wore all through high school hang on the rod above him, but for the most part, it’s stacked with boxes of Preston’s things.
“Finding anything useful?” I slide onto the edge of the bed.
“Bunch of junk. I don’t know why my mom saved this stuff. I’m pretty sure I meant to throw most of this away.”
“You’re not looking for that jersey, are you?” I finger the thin metal hanging around my neck.
He turns to glance at me and smiles. “I want to see if it’s in here. And if it still fits.”
“Preston. Why?”
He pulls out a tattered plastic three-ring binder. “Assignments from my junior year in high school. That box has shit from law school. There’s an orientation booklet from when I clerked for Judge Mendoza—”
“I can’t believe you’re so emotional over your mom keeping your stuff. Just put it back in the boxes. Did you check any of the drawers?”
“No. They’re probably empty.”
I hop up and walk over to the five-drawer bureau. The top drawer is empty, but the second drawer has a few folded items left in it.
“Here’s a couple of things.” I pull out some shirts, ones I recognize, and toss them onto the bed. In the next drawer, I hit pay dirt. “Babe! I found it!”
“You did?”
Preston hops up from the floor where he’s still elbow deep in his college coursework. I hand him the neatly folded Orlando Magic jersey. He unfolds it as reverently as he did when I gave it to him, then shakes out the wrinkles and holds it up to his chest. “What do you think? Can I still get into it?”
“I don’t know. Try it.”
“I don’t want to rip it.”
“You are not that built, Preston.”
He’s already flipped it over his head. It drops around his shoulders, and he pulls his arms through. It fits differently than it used to, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. His chest and shoulders are broader, his arms thicker. He fills it out more.
“Wow. You look...well, it doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would.”
“Don’t hurt yourself almost complimenting me.”
He turns to check himself out in the mirror that hangs behind the bedroom door. “I can’t believe she kept this thing.”
“She wouldn’t have thrown away anything I gave you. All of these shirts in here…” I sift through the pile and note that they all look familiar because I either picked them out for him, or I bought them. “She saved all of these.”
“I told you she loves you.”
I grin as I place the shirts back in the drawer as neatly as I found them. “Okay, take that off, so I can put it back in here with the other stuff.”
Preston stares at me like I grew a second head. “Nah. I’m wearing this.”
“You are not wearing that over a cashmere sweater to Christmas Eve dinner.”
“Why not? You’re wearing that.” He points to my locket.
“Preston…”
“Evangeline…”
He wiggles his brows at me, then sits down on the bed. Then lays down, taking up most of the space the full-sized mattress provides. “You know, we can mess around in my room, now.”
“Your dad told me five minutes ago that there wasn’t to be any messing around.”
Preston pats the spot next to him. “At least come sit here and let me kiss you. I want to feel like I’m breaking the rules.”
I edge around the bed and plop down next to him. He tosses an arm over my shoulder and leans back, dragging me with him, so we’re lying next to each other.
“I should have remembered that trick.”
“Works every time,” he says, grabbing a pillow and shoving it under his head
. “Come over here and don’t get any makeup on my awesome jersey.” I wiggle over until I’m up against him and lay my head on his chest. An arm drops down and around me. His fingers curl around my waist.
“I always wanted to do this. Lay here with you and talk, not worry about getting caught.”
“Well, we still might get caught. We won’t get in as much trouble.”
“What happened over at your parent’s place?”
“Nothing. Mom’s baking up a storm. I’m afraid some of that might make it to our house.” Preston rubs his belly and moans appreciatively. “Dad was napping. He’s going to the dealership later. His annual visit.”
“Did you talk to her?”
I nod. “Didn’t go over well.”
“Why’s she against him seeking other treatment?”
“She’s scared. She doesn’t want to take the risk. Doesn’t see the value in it.”
“Do you think he wants to?”
“Yeah. If it weren’t for her, Dad would be all for it. She’s the holdout.”
“So why does he need her permission to change his treatment?”
“Because he loves her. And she loves him—”
“So, she should want him to have what he wants.”
“And if something goes wrong, she’s the one that has to take care of him for the rest of his life. If she doesn’t want him to experiment…” I shrug a shoulder. “He won’t.”
“Do you want me to say something to him about it?”
“No, I think you’d better not go down that route with them. You just got back into my parent’s good graces. Let’s not mess with it.”
“Babe, I thought—”
“I thought that too. I wanted something different for him. But it’s not about me. It’s not up to me. If we get married, he can roll me down the aisle in his wheelchair. It doesn’t matter, as long as he’s there.”
Preston is silent for a few beats, then taps my hip with his fingertips. “Excuse me, Evangeline. What’s this if we get married, thing?”
I laugh, craning my neck so I can press my lips into his cheek. “It’s a saying, Preston. I know where we’re headed.”
“So, given your dad’s condition, do we need a timeline? I mean, whatever you want—”
The thumping of feet in the hallway interrupts our conversation. Troy bounds into the room, stops, and points. “I’m telling!”
“What do you want?” Preston hasn’t moved an inch. Neither have I. There are benefits to being adults.
“Dinner. Mom won’t serve unless you’re at the table, and I’m hungry.” We both sit up at the mention of food. I roll off of one side of the bed; Preston rolls off of the other. “Why are you wearing that smedium Magic jersey? Is that from high school?”
He smooths down the fabric across his chest. “My girlfriend gave me this for Christmas one year.”
“So you’re torturing the rest of us with it, this year?”
“Please tell him he can’t wear that thing to dinner.”
“I can do whatever I want. And you two can’t stop me. Get used to seeing this, because I’m wearing it.”
“I don’t believe you wore that thing all night.”
Preston chuckles as he folds the thin polyester into thirds and then in halves and reverently lays it into a drawer. “I didn’t wear it all night,” he says, pulling his sweater over his head and tossing it into the basket we use for dry clean only clothing.
I follow suit, pulling off my sweater and unzipping my skirt while stepping out of my Rothy flats. “Through drinks and hors d'oeuvres and dinner. And almost through dessert until your mom threatened to withhold pie if you didn’t take it off.”
Preston was laughing, as was I. “I said I’d find it and wear it, and I did.”
“You did. And I don’t want to see it again.”
“You are a hater.”
“Of that jersey? Yes, I am.”
“It was a good gift at the time. You were trying to keep up with me. You don’t get much classier than a vintage pendant.”
I fingered the smooth round silver pendant it as I did a hundred times a day. “I think this was the last gift you gave me.”
Clad only in a pair of black boxer briefs and socks, Preston tosses a pair of jeans into the laundry hamper and turns to me, a devilish grin on his lips. “No, baby. I gave you a gift this morning.”
I roll my eyes and try not to laugh because it’ll only encourage him, but he’s so damn proud of his joke, I can’t help it. Preston lowers himself to the bed and lifts one foot and then the other, peeling off his socks, then throws them in the direction of the hamper. They don’t make it.
“It wasn’t the last gift I bought you.”
In my bra and panties, I sit next to Preston and tap him on the leg. “What are you talking about?”
“I was working back then. Socking away money. And uh…” Preston leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, fingers on both hands intertwined. “I had already put a down payment on it. After we broke up, I was so sure you’d get over it, and we’d be back together soon, so I kept making payments. Except I had no one to give it to.”
“You had no one to give what?”
Preston sighs, then pushes himself up from the bed and shuffles to a wooden box that sits on his dresser and stores his watches, tie clips and cufflinks in crushed velvet. He pulls open the drawer underneath the main storage case and pries a box from the compartment. Without opening it, he walks back and offers it to me in the palm of his hand.
Speechless, I stare up at him. This is not how I thought this would happen.
“It’s not what you think it is.”
He offers the box to me again. I whisper a slight sigh of relief and grab the box. Inside is a sterling silver thick cable bangle. Two stones join the cables together, one in shimmering green peridot—Preston’s birthstone. The other in sparkling sapphire. Mine.
“It’s cheesy now,” he says, plopping down next to me again. “But back then, I was proud of myself. I was going to let that ride as a promise to propose.”
I stare at the bracelet, a trinket frozen in time; never worn, never given, secreted away in a box for so long. “You never… wanted to give it to anyone?”
His laughter sticks in his throat. “Yeah, babe. I knew tons of girls born in April that I was in love with and wanted to wear this David Yurman bracelet that you said you liked.”
I chuckle, spinning the thick cable between two fingers. “It wasn’t cheap back then. You had to pay this off.” I glance up at him to find him staring, his expression wistful. “Why didn’t you sell it? Or… cancel the order? Or something?”
“I didn’t want anyone else to have it.”
“Even though —”
“Even though we broke up. Even if we never got back together, I wanted to buy it for you.”
I can’t think of a single word to say to measure up to that sweet declaration, so I don’t say anything. Instead, I hand him the bracelet and hold out my hand.
Preston laughs. “This thing might turn your wrist green.”
“Then it’ll turn my wrist green. It can be your promise to propose.”
“Angie, I…” He stops protesting and slips the bracelet over my hand. “Well. There.”
“There,” I repeat, my hand still aloft. “So romantic. Is that what you were going to say when you gave it to me?”
“‘Course not. I had a whole meaningful speech planned. But then we had that fight at Homecoming.”
“Forget the fight, Preston.” I cup his face and turn his gaze toward me. “If we never broke up, what would you have said?”
Gently, he pulls away from my grasp and stands. “Can we table this? I’m beat, and we have both families to see tomorrow, so I’m going to hit the showers. You in or out?”
“In. Unless you want to be alone.”
He looks back at me before heading into the bathroom. His regular, playful expression, sparkling eyes, and ready smile are all back. “Get in her
e, woman.”
Happily, I strip the last articles of clothing from my body before following him into the bathroom.
I’m confused, but it’s not the right time to push. Preston always has a reason for doing something.
Or not doing something.
There’s a method to his madness. I have to figure out what that is.
38
It’s too quiet.
The absence of sound, neither the TV or the radio or light snoring or the tap of fingers on a mobile phone touch screen niggles at me enough to drag me from the depths of slumber.
I sit up, inhaling a deep breath as I do, sliding my scarf from my head as I come to. A glance at the other side of the bed tells me Preston is not sprawled spread eagle on his side of the California King. From the floor below come muted sounds of conversation that at first, I mistake for the TV until I hear the front door close, a car door slamming, and an engine revving as it drives away.
I throw the covers back, intending to find out what Preston is up to on Christmas morning. But then the bedroom door opens, and Preston saunters in. His jeans are slung low on his hips and his favorite t-shirt, a ten year old A Tribe Called Quest concert tee hangs just above the band. He’s unshaven, and his hair, which wasn’t secured in a cap overnight, is unkempt—the cowlick at the crown of his head that he works hard to conceal sticks straight up.
He’s still fuckable, though. And if I weren’t so confused, I’d pull him to the bed and wish him a Merry Christmas, my way.
“Oh good. You’re up.” Preston claps his hands together , then heads to the bathroom. He comes back out wielding a brush to fix his wild hair. “We need to get a move on, Evangeline. Got stuff to do.”
This announcement does nothing to move me from the bed. “What stuff? We have brunch at your parent’s place and dinner at mine. We planned so we didn’t have to be anywhere early.”
“That’s not all we’re doing today. Get up.”