My phone rings, startling us both enough that we break off, trying to catch our breath. I quickly pull out my phone. It’s 9:00 at night, and it’s my mom.
“Hello?” I say, trying to make my voice sound normal.
“Bee.” My mom’s voice is hushed, despite the fact that it sounds like she’s in a place full of loud people. “Bee, are you with your siblings?”
“Yeah,” I say, confused. “They’re downstairs—we’ve been painting.”
“Good, okay.” She takes a deep breath, and I’m almost positive I hear a hiccup. Like she’s been crying. “Will you…will you bring them to the hospital with you?”
“Mom.” I feel like everything slows—my heart beating, Levi’s arm as it slides around my waist, my lungs that don’t want to fill with air. “Mom, what happened?”
“Oh, Baby Bee. Just…”
“Mom, please tell me what happened.”
She sighs, a light sigh that masks a sob. “Honey, Papa’s started having seizures.”
Chapter 37
The drive to the hospital is the worst in my life. It is quiet and stuffy and Levi-less, Tom keeps fisting his hands around the steering wheel like he’s angry, and Millie is sniffling. Worst of all: Astrid has finally lost it.
“Astrid, please don’t cry,” I say, a little too quietly. “Astrid.”
She cries anyway. And it’s too damn hard to watch.
All the way there, I hold my phone in my hands, Levi’s name pulled up, an empty message waiting for me to fill it with words like I’m sorry and I love you or even just a heart. Anything. All I can finally manage is, Please can we talk again soon?
(He doesn’t reply.)
But the driving isn’t the worst of it. We have to wait in the lobby for forever because there was a mix-up and we don’t know where my dad’s room is. It’s us and a lot of quiet and upset people who go up and down the elevators and disappear into the hallway to our right and through the sliding glass door to our left.
My heart aches. While we stand there, huddled together, my brain whirrs and jumps like a broken clock. I keep returning to Levi and the way I left him, looking ragged on the steps of the house we made together, and the last words I spoke to him.
I’m sorry I haven’t been more, I said. I hear the words on replay, a promise I don’t know if I can keep. How stupid of me to say them only because they were what he wanted to hear.
As I tuck these thoughts away, I replace them with thoughts of Mama, and my sisters, and the way we will cry tonight. I think about the way Tom will try not to cry, but he’ll be shaky. I know there is something more, something Mama hasn’t told us. I do know it’s going to break me.
Mama comes down the elevator after we’ve stood there for nearly twenty minutes. She’s wearing a baggy sweatshirt over her pajamas, a plaid shirt-and-pants set. (Seeing something that has so much home to it in this cold, sad place makes my heart twist.) She starts to cry as soon as she sees us, huddled against the wall, and rushes across the busy foot traffic to get to us. She’s shorter than everyone in our family, even Millie, so she’s instantly lost in our embrace. She kisses Millie and Astrid, wiping away both of their tears, and takes my face in her hands and smiles a perfectly sad smile. “Baby Bee.”
I nod, lip quivering. “Mama.”
“You need to know something right now, okay?” she says, taking a deep breath. It’s shaky and teary and I hug her tighter. “Papa…isn’t getting better. His tumor is about the same size, but there are….others…now. One on his liver, one on his lung. There is a chance we can operate to remove the new tumors, but it won’t change the fact that it’s spread.”
I’m about to let go and cry—it’s been building up—but then I hear Millie’s quiet crying and I stop myself. I have to be brave for her, and for Astrid, who’s got her head buried in my shoulder. (I was right: Tom’s hands are shaking and his breathing is rapid.) I bite my lip and say nothing.
“He’s sleeping right now,” Mom continues. “We wanted you to come when he was awake, but he just couldn’t keep his eyes open. So come see him, give him kisses, and then you have to go back home.”
We nod and follow her into the elevator, where it’s finally quiet except for Millie’s muffled sobs. The floor my Papa is on is even worse; it’s as still as death (no pun intended). The nurses’ footsteps are like silk on marble—quiet nothingness. They float like ghosts or angels of death, and I want to sink into one of the waiting chairs and cry, cry until my tears are fresh out and I can face my Papa without feeling like someone’s just gutted me with a knife.
We enter his room on feet that pitter-patter loudly in the darkness. Papa lies on the bed, hooked up to machinery and an IV, his breathing shallow and broken. He looks skinnier than I remember, just from yesterday. So it can be one of two things: Either I haven’t been noticing his slow decline, or it’s a trick of the light.
I let Millie and Astrid go ahead of me, their blond heads looking pale and dull in the wan hospital light coming from the corner lamp Mama switches on. They sit on either side of him, fingers lightly touching his arm, his hands, his cheek. I stay back, my heart pounding, and lean into Tom as he wraps his arm around my shoulder.
“You okay, Beef?” he whispers.
“No.”
“Neither am I.”
I shudder. “I don’t understand. Look at him—I’ve never seen him look so small.” Now I’m crying good and hard, drawing deep breaths to try to keep myself stable. Tom tucks me into his arms and whispers something to me through my messy hair, and I’m pretty sure he’s telling me it will be okay.
But we both know that’s a lie.
I get home, kiss Millie and Astrid goodnight, and lock my door behind me. I kick off my shoes and slide beneath my covers and close my eyes. But while my body is exhausted, my mind is wide awake. I’m imagining the events of today, again and again and again, Levi and painting and fighting and my Papa hooked up to machines like he’s dying.
He is dying, I remind myself, and the tears come again.
I almost text Levi to beg him to come over or just talk to me on the phone, distract me from my fears. But there are three things that stop me.
First: the memory of his expression, the look of utter disappointment on his face when I wouldn’t tell him my name, when I didn’t have a reason. When I let fear get the best of me.
Second: He still hasn’t replied to my text.
Third: The last time I got news about my papa, I was in Malibu with Levi. I remember the weightless feeling I had that night when I kissed him for the first time—it’s the exact same feeling I had when I kissed him tonight for the hundredth time. I also remember what it felt like, afterward, to be told my father was in the hospital because he’s dying.
Both times, this happened. The guilt is beginning to plague me. Should I have been here, with my family? What am I missing out on by doing everything with Levi? These could be my papa’s last days, and I’m off having a good time with my boyfriend.
I shudder, because I don’t want to think about Levi, because thinking about him means thinking about our fight (oh-God-we-had-our-first-fight-and-it-was-terrible) and my guilt and everything I haven’t done right.
I shudder a second time because I know what I need to do now.
I dig through my purse for my phone, barely finding it in the dark, and wipe my eyes free of tears as I unlock it.
There she is: her number, her name. Her picture. I waste no time in pressing on it, but my heart still skips several beats inside my chest.
“Hello?” she answers, after so many rings I thought she’d never pick up. Of course, I’ve woken her from her sleep—it’s three in the morning there. But she’s answered, and she’s here, and that’s all that matters.
“Gretchen,” I say, barely managing to keep the crying under control. “I have some
thing I need to tell you.”
Chapter 38
I’m a mess. An absolute, unprecedented mess.
Gretchen tells me I’m not as I text her throughout the next day, but the facts still stand: I’ve cried seventeen times in the last twelve hours; I’ve only eaten gummy bears from the candy bowl at work all day; I dropped a vase in front of a customer; and I charged Velma Hastings, our most frequent and esteemed customer, three times for her arrangement.
But, while all of that is terrible, I keep coming back to one thing: Gretchen forgave me.
That’s all that matters, I tell myself gently, sweeping up the glass shards at my feet. She forgave me and she loves me, I think, popping another gummy bear into my mouth. She cried with me on the phone and ate ice cream with me…virtually, I continue to rant to myself, and start crying again.
Eighteen times. Yep, I’ve been counting.
After work, I head back to the old TCP office. It’s weird—I haven’t been back since we first visited the new house. It looks the same because we still have two months left on the lease and this is where Levi has his interviews, but I feel like it should be empty and barren.
The back room is packed full of volunteers when I step inside, so loud that I almost put my hands over my ears. Albert and Missy are shouting at each other about some movie that he loved, and she hated, and Elle is laughing, and the twins are whispering in the corner. And Levi—Levi is at the desk in the back, signing some papers, shaking his head. Laughing.
He finally replied to my text earlier this morning, with an Of course we can talk and I love you and Can’t wait to see you tomorrow. So I’m not mad at him, except I can’t quite get over his laughter in the midst of everything.
I’m still reeling from yesterday’s fight, from the news—and from my conversation with Gretchen late last night. In the grand scheme of things, I know Levi and Gretchen love me. But I can’t help but think that the world is fragmenting around me (or maybe I’m fragmenting from within), while Levi has enough joy and comfort to laugh.
Elle notices me by the door and distracts me from my thoughts by poking me in the arm. Then she wraps me in a hug. “You all right?”
I nod, breaking my stare. “Yeah. I’ll be okay.” (I hate that I sound weepy.)
“We’re here for you,” she whispers, swallowing hard.
“Thanks,” I whisper back. Then, “Hi, Levi.”
He sees me and stands, almost tripping over his chair trying to get to me, consequently making me smile for the first time all day. He huffs, but he still looks happy. “It’s not my fault my legs are so long.”
I can’t talk, so instead I just dive into his welcoming arms because they’re there and they’re open and I love him.
“Hey, is everything okay?” Levi looks down at me, his eyebrows furrowed with worry.
“No,” I whisper.
He grabs my hand and we escape the stuffy room into the hall. (Albert and Missy are loud.) “Do you have news?” he asks when the noises are muffled.
I nod, burying my head in his chest. “The cancer spread,” is all I say, but obviously that’s enough.
Levi’s arms tighten around me, locking me in. I can’t breathe, but for a minute I don’t want to—and then I’m crying, my sobs leaving me gasping. Levi waits patiently, doing all the things a good boyfriend should do, like stroking my hair and rubbing his thumb on my arm and leaving kisses along my hair line. Eventually, he tilts my head back so he can see my face, which I’m sure looks horribly unattractive. (See also: red, blotchy, tear-streaked, puffy.) He runs the pads of his thumbs over my cheeks to wipe away the tears, one at a time. Then over my lips, red from my teeth, which worry away at my mouth constantly.
I remember, suddenly, that once (it seems like too long ago) I was daydreaming about touching his lips, and here we are now, tangled up in each other, full of sorrow.
“Ugh, my crying face is gross,” I say, and try to hide my face.
“Did you know,” Levi begins, voice quiet, “that my dad used to tell my mom that she looked ugly when she cried?” He places a kiss on my cheek, close to the corner of my mouth. “After sixteen years of marriage, he just couldn’t bear to see that he’d made her cry, time and time again, so he insulted her.” Another kiss, on my chin. “I know we haven’t been married for sixteen years, or, um, any years at all, but I can’t imagine…can’t imagine saying that.” He shakes his head. “You’re so beautiful, all the time.”
“Even right now?” I whisper.
“Even right now.”
“Wow. I must be hot stuff.”
Levi makes a face. “Are you mocking me?”
“No, shush,” I say, and kiss him. (And then I open my mouth so I can kiss him better.)
“I should get back in there,” he says after a minute, when I’m on my toes and all I want is to keep kissing him.
“Party pooper,” I say.
He laughs, wiping away one stray tear. “I love you, and I love your dad, and I’m so, so sorry, Bee.”
Those are the words I needed to hear. I thank him silently, squeezing his hand too tight. Now that I’m feeling better, I almost want to bring up what happened yesterday, our fight, the way he looked at me as if I had disappointed him beyond belief. But today, all that has been stripped away; there is no trace of anger or disappointment or fear left between us. Today, I want to forget what happened.
All of yesterday can go to hell.
I kiss him one more time and take his hand as we head back inside. (I do my best to leave my doubts behind.)
We walk straight into a war zone. Albert and Missy are still arguing, but this time, quite bewilderingly, they’re on the same side. This time, they’ve banded against Elle.
“Give that to me,” she gasps, and rushes at the two of them. They’re holding and shaking and tossing around the backpack she lugs everywhere. Elle’s pissed.
“Why?” they tease, holding it up between them.
“Don’t you dare open that,” Elle gasps, and lunges
Albert swings it out of her reach and, swift as the glitter-throwing ninja he is, unzips the backpack and dumps it upside down. Elle’s eyes go wide and her cheeks burn red as about twenty books fall out at their feet.
And they’re not just any books—they’re hot-and-heavy romance novels. Plastered with mostly naked Highlanders and women draped in sheets, bearing long-winded titles like How To Rescue A Rake From A Marriage of Convenience, and coming in all shapes and sizes, they lie at Elle’s feet in a furious state of disarray.
Of course, that’s when the glitter rains down on Elle and her books. “Those covers are rude,” Albert states.
Levi’s laugh fills the empty space around me like a warm blanket, and I start to feel comfortable here again.
Elle stands up with three books stacked in her arms, nose in the air. “I won’t apologize for my taste in literature.”
“Literature!” I gasp, feigning horror, and pull up a second chair behind Levi’s desk.
Elle’s expression turns from embarrassment to relief in a split second. “Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t wanted to pick up one of these bad boys.”
“No, not personally,” I say, and a truly happy laugh escapes me.
“Look,” Elle exclaims, opening one of the books to a page just after the middle of the book. The title is To Steal A Demon’s Love. I’m pretty sure the woman on the cover could never actually pretzel herself around a man like that unless she was Elastigirl, but I’m also pretty sure Mr. Beefy-Cover-Model is not Elastigirl’s type.
Elle begins reading from her selected scene. I roll my eyes and try to find something to do, while Levi just stands there next to me, grimacing. Albert has his fingers in his ears, muttering to himself. Missy, on the other hand, looks completely enraptured.
After a few minutes, Levi s
its in the swivel chair beside me and says, “Well, that was unexpected.”
I shake my head in equal disbelief. “I didn’t even know she was a reader!”
He whimpers. “If I hear one more thing about glistening chests, heavy breathing, and clenching of any kind, I will die.”
The amount of disgust on his face makes me laugh, a truly happy laugh, my first in what feels like years. “Don’t listen to her, then. Talk to me.”
He shudders, stacking some applications. “Want to help with these?”
I nod eagerly. “Distract me.”
“Obviously I’ve been doing that from Day One,” he says.
I attempt to laugh at this because he’s joking, but it’s actually the truth. I see him, in my mind’s eye, like it was yesterday: standing by the car, head ducked under the hood, hair gloriously untamed. And later, he believed I was staring at his clothes, when I was really staring at his face.
I poke the side of his neck to get him to look at me, but of course, now I’m exactly what I asked to be: distracted. I run my finger up to his jaw, my thumb slipping over the curve of his ear, tracing his sharp cheek bone to his nose—and that’s when I realize he’s looking at me. His expression makes me shiver, because while I see the adoration that’s always there, I see hunger as well, and I realize how I’ve been touching him and what it’s done to both of us.
“What are you doing?” he whispers, as if to remind me that we’re surrounded by people. His ears are a little red, but my cheeks are fully aflame.
“I was…not…doing anything,” I say, unconvincingly. “You were distracting me.”
“Oh, great way to shift the blame.”
“I asked you to distract me.”
“Bee.”
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