“I’m so sorry, Evan. Do you think maybe your dad wants a relationship with you now, though? Like finding out he’s going to be a father again has made him realize what he’s lost.”
“I doubt it. He’ll probably get sick of these kids eventually too.”
“He might be trying in some weird way though, right?” Paige is looking for a silver lining here that doesn’t exist.
“My dad’s a dick. That’s all I know.”
After I say that, she quiets down. Maybe she’s tired too and doesn’t want to argue the point. She doesn’t make any effort to leave me though, and we remain sitting side by side, easing back against the couch and watching Netflix. I’m not sure either of us are really paying attention to the movie playing.
When the credits roll, Paige gets up, and I reach for her, making contact with her skin, my fingers grazing the exposed flesh just below the hem of her tank and above the waist of her shorts. I swear that she blushes, and I feel a sudden yearning for her. I stand up, wanting to wrap my arms around her and kiss her. But not wanting to be rebuffed or get into another disagreement, I plant a chaste kiss on her forehead.
“Thanks, Paige,” I say, then turn and head toward my room… alone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PAIGE
I’m just getting ready for work when my phone rings.
Mom.
“Hey, Mom,” I say, always trying to sound bright and cheerful when she calls so that she doesn’t worry about me.
“Paige?”
“Yeah… I’m here.”
“Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry to call you with this, but your Grandma is in the hospital, and it’s not good.”
My heart falls at the sudden onslaught of information, and I get a tight feeling in my stomach. “What’s wrong with her?”
Mom pauses. “Pneumonia.” It’s the same thing that threatened to take my dad’s life multiple times before it finally did, long before his time.
“I’m coming home,” I say, not even sure how much I have in my bank account exactly, but I want to be there not just for Grandma Gertrude but for Mom.
She at first tells me no, that it’s too far, that Grandma knows how much I love her, but I just won’t feel right staying here. She finally acquiesces and agrees it might be a good thing. I tell her I’ll book a flight and text her the info, and then I hang up and burst into tears.
I do my best to muffle my cries in the bathroom, but not good enough, because there’s a soft tapping at the door followed with, “You okay, Paige?”
I’ve totally messed up my mascara, so there’s no sense in lying as I open the door up to Evan. “It’s my Grandma. She’s in the hospital with pneumonia… and it’s… it’s bad.”
He’s standing there shirtless and in his pajama bottoms with a empathetic look in his eyes. He steps closer and pulls me toward him. “Man, I’m sorry, Paige. Is it not looking good for her?”
I shake my head. “I’m flying home to see her as soon as I can.”
Evan is rubbing my back with his hand as I lean against his bare skin. I fully accept the comfort he’s offering me.
“I’ll go with you,” he says. “I’ll get tickets for both of us.”
“No.” I mumble. “I don’t want to drag you back home. I can do this on my own.”
“I’m offering because I want to,” he says. “I’m offering to be there for you.”
“You have your own stuff going on… with your dad.” It’s a reminder that I’d offered to be there for him too, but he’d needed to face his dad alone, and I should do the same. “It’s beyond nice of you though,” I add, sniffling and lifting my head up from his chest. “But I’m going to be okay, and you’ve already done so much. Besides, don’t you have some huge test tomorrow?”
“I can blow it off,” he says quite seriously, almost like that’s exactly what he’d like to do.
“I bet you’d love to,” I say with a tearful laugh. “But really, I’ll be fine.”
“If you think I’ll do something if I see Garrett, I promise you I won’t… I’ll behave myself.”
That hadn’t even crossed my mind until now. I’m not sure that Garrett even knows about my grandma, and I’m not sure I want to drag him away from school either.
“It’s not that,” I say. “Honestly, they only let so many people into hospital rooms, and you’d probably be stuck out in some waiting area most of the time drinking stale coffee just to keep your eyes open.”
“Well, when you put it that way.” He smiles and lays his hands softly on my hips. “At least let me take you to the airport.”
I shake my head. “That’s another four hours of driving for you—I’ll figure something else out,” even though I have no idea what that something else will be.
“Please, let me do at least that,” he says, and this time I know he won’t take no for an answer.
I look deep into his eyes, wanting to be sure that he really doesn’t mind, and the gaze he sends back to me is genuine.
“Okay,” I say, grateful.
EVAN
“I always liked your grandma,” I say. We’re an hour outside Well’s Creek, and we’ve been talking about our childhoods the entire time. “She was just so calm, even when I shaved a chunk of hair off her cat with that old electric razor we found.”
“Lucille!” Paige laughs. “Grandma didn’t even yell at us, I guess because we were only trying to make Lucille look prettier, right?”
“Maybe you were,” I say with a smile, “but I just wanted to see what a cat would look like without hair.”
“Poor Lucille,” Paige says with a dramatic flair. “And here I thought I was just doing her a favor.”
“What ever happened to her?” I ask.
“Lucille? She’s still alive.”
“Seriously? She must be like a hundred and fifty in cat years.”
“She sleeps in a ball in the corner of Grandma’s bedroom. Mom changes her litter and feeds her. I think she’s twenty-four now, but she’s practically invisible. She won’t leave Grandma’s room even if the door is wide open.”
“You think she’s still scared I’ll show up in the living room with an electric razor?” I can’t help it—another smile tugs at my lips, more about my easy conversation with Paige and less about Lucille the cat.
“I think Lucille has forgiven you, Evan.” She offers me a smile, and I’m glad that maybe, just for a while, she’s not thinking of how sick her grandma might be.
“You know, I think I’m the one guy in the world who didn’t have a pet growing up.”
“You had horses,” Paige reminds me. She used to get so jealous of this fact, but those horses weren’t pets.
“Those were my mom’s horses. She’d get all panicked if McKenzie or me would get near them. She’d say she was afraid they’d kick us or something, but I’m pretty sure she just didn’t want us to do something that might make them look less perfect.”
“Like what? What could you or McKenzie do to make a horse look less majestic?”
I shrug and smile. “Like take an electric razor and shave its hair off?”
“Dork.” She hits me lightly on the arm and then says, “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“For hitting you.”
“Oh, man, Paige. I told you I forgave you.” She’s got to let that go.
“But they always say a woman should never trust a man who hits her and then says he’s sorry.”
“There’s a big difference between a guy putting a fist to a woman and a woman slapping a guy’s cheek.” I don’t get why Paige is so conflicted over this.
“Is there?”
“Let’s talk about something else, Paige. I mean, I’m glad you’re sorry and all, but can we just bury this now?”
She nods, and then we’re silent for a while. I’m imagining her thoughts are returning to her grandmother because of the glistening I notice in her eyes. And then she gets all nervous and starts going on about people we went to high school with
and wondering out loud how they’re doing as summer is coming to a close.
She mentions Mike, Ben and Beth, all of whom I’m up to date on. Paige isn’t much for social networking, but I guess I’m just more curious, and I fill her in on what I know. I’m not sure she’s really listening—again, I think her mind is elsewhere.
And then, out of the blue it seems, she says, “Have you heard from Lexi?”
I sigh but decide to answer truthfully. “Beth has given me a couple of updates on her, but that’s it. I haven’t talked to her directly.”
“Oh,” she says, and I can’t tell if she’s satisfied with my response or not.
I don’t say anything else about Lexi, and she doesn’t ask. She falls back into a period of silence, and then I notice she’s got a serious death grip on her purse.
“You okay, Paige?”
“Hmm? Oh… sorry—just nerves.”
“I can still come with you,” I offer. “Sometimes it’s less scary to fly with someone next to you.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Is it about Garrett? Have you decided to see him?” Now I’m the one with a death grip on something, my steering wheel.
“Maybe. If I see him at all.”
The green-eyed monster makes himself known as I clench my teeth and try to keep from imagining Garrett at Paige’s side and the things I’m sure he’d like to do to her.
“I wish you had my dad,” she says, somersaulting into a completely different topic. “He would have really loved you.”
I let a breath out, glad to be moving past any discussion of Garrett. “That would make us brother and sister,” I say, relaxing my jaw into a grin. “We couldn’t ever… you know?”
She chuckles at that. “I’m being serious. I just know that your dad isn’t all you’d like him to be, and my dad was everything to me. It just sucks how things work out.”
“You can’t make everything perfect, Paige. I know you’d like to, but you just can’t.”
“I know,” she says.
“You’re flying Alaska, right?” Our drive is over too soon, and I wish I was going with her.
“Yep,” she says as I pull up toward the departures drop-off.
“It’s not as busy as usual. Hopefully you’ll get through security fast.”
“Yeah.”
I stop the car, get out and grab her carry-on from the back before jogging up to her door and opening it before she even has the chance to pull open the handle. Goodbyes suck, and I’m torn between making this quick or making it last.
She helps make that decision when she steps up to me, wraps her arms around my neck and rests her chin on my shoulder, saying, “Thank you so much, Evan. I really do love you.”
She loves me. I know she’s telling me this as a friend, perhaps a really complicated one, but it still makes me want to hold her tighter, and I do. There are so many things jumbling through my head right now, but for whatever reason a pang of guilt moves to the forefront.
I’ve lied to Paige to get her here, to North Carolina, to Well’s Creek. While my sperm donor is generally a pitiful father, he came through for me where Paige is concerned, concocting a scholarship that is actually just him funding four years of college for the girl I’m in love with from his own inflated bank account. It’s not like she hasn’t earned it, but I doubt she’d be okay with the deception if she knew.
And now that she’s leaving, I’m suddenly worried about her trip, praying the plane won’t crash or that she won’t get into an accident on her way from the airport. If anything remotely bad happens, it will be my fault for dragging her here when I could have just sold my damn car and gotten her into WSU where she’d have been less than two hours away from home.
I tighten my grip on her, not wanting to let her go. When the time comes that I have to, I look her in her gorgeous blue eyes and kiss her softly on the lips, sending a current of electricity through me I won’t soon forget.
When our lips part, I know she’s not mad. She doesn’t say anything though, just takes hold of her carry-on and walks away, turning to wave at me before she goes through the sliding glass doors.
And then she’s gone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
PAIGE
Spokane, Washington — August
For most of the flight, I’d wished one thing: That I’d accepted Evan’s offer to accompany me home. I’d taken care of everything else with work and school and letting Natalie know before I’d left, but with Evan, it still felt like there was something I’d forgotten to do, something left unsaid.
The kiss had only amplified that sense, making me feel as though we couldn’t just leave it at that, that the kiss demanded further introspection. And yet even the idea of that conversation gave me a headache and a twist to my gut. By the time I’d landed in Spokane, I’d shaken it off and diverted my focus to the reason I’d made this trip home in the first place.
For two days, Grandma has been in a sort of coma. She opens her eyes from time to time, but I don’t think she really sees us. She’s on the strongest antibiotics, and the nurses and doctors in the ICU say it could go either way, that it’s really up to Grandma.
Having lost my dad so young, I’ve grown up with the knowledge that people die and that you can’t keep them from dying just because you don’t want them to. But Grandma is in her late sixties, which still seems young to me, and even though she’s in her room a lot, she seems to enjoy her life, watching TV, knitting, and coaxing Lucille up on her bed once in a while. When I think about last summer when Grandma and I watched the entire series of Party of Five in her room, one episode every day, I start to cry. We had talked about getting through at least season one of Gilmore Girls on winter break, and I wonder if we’ll ever do it.
“This isn’t so different than what happened with your dad,” Mom says as we’re sitting in an alcove in Grandma’s room, looking out the window at downtown Spokane.
“Yeah,” I say, even though my memories surrounding my dad’s last hospitalization are fairly murky.
“Claire and Kate were still so young, and really you were too. Do you know that your dad was hospitalized a dozen times in just four years?”
I shake my head.
“We tried to keep things normal for you girls most of the time. I didn’t want to bring you to the hospital if we thought he was going to pull through, but that last time…” Mom gets a tear in her eye and I pull her body toward mine.
“I just knew,” she says. “That pneumonia was a wallop of a one, and he was dealing with other stuff too. They’d clear one thing up, and then the other thing would come back again. He’d been through so much, and his body had been ravaged. We had so many plans.”
“Mom, I’m so sorry.” We both start to cry because it’s still that painful. Mom has never remarried, though she did date a fellow high school teacher for a year or so before he moved to Salt Lake City. I imagine we’d both be back in Seattle if Dad was still alive. I might never have met Evan or Garrett.
“He loved you girls so much,” she says. “He was such a good provider, a good father. Even your grandma came around!”
“What?” I pull back a bit and grab a tissue from a well-placed tissue box. “Grandma didn’t like Dad?”
Mom smiles. “Not at first. I met him freshman year at U-dub, and I brought him home with me that Thanksgiving. He didn’t know to wait for the prayer before digging in, and he started talking politics halfway through dinner, politics my father didn’t share.” Mom chuckles. “I can still see his face when I kept nudging him, trying to make him rethink his choice of conversation. And then after dinner, he went out for a smoke, and your Grandma looked at me and said, ‘Miranda, I don’t like that boy. He smokes and asked if we had anything harder than beer, and I swear he’s a socialist!’
“I busted out laughing so hard and told her those were the reasons I liked him. By Christmas break, he had both Mom and Dad wrapped around his fingers. Even if they didn’t agree with everything he did or sa
id, they could see how genuine he was and how much he loved me.”
Mom is crying again, and I join her. It can’t be helped. Losing Dad has left a void in our lives, and yet when Mom tells me stories about him, it’s like he’s still right here with us.
“Why isn’t Oprah on TV?”
Mom and I both pop our heads up at the same time. The voice is somewhat ragged and quiet, but it clearly belongs to Grandma. As Mom and I turn our eyes toward the bed, I expect to see her flailing around, speaking nonsense in some kind of dream/wake state. But, like a miracle, Grandma has pulled herself up into a sitting position and is using her call light like it’s a remote control.
We both scurry up.
“Mom!” My mom says. “You’re awake!”
Grandma looks at both of us quizzically. “Well, sure I’m awake. But Oprah isn’t on TV.”
“She hasn’t been for a few years,” I say with a smile, “except on cable.”
“Oh, is that right?” Grandma asks. She still looks confused. “What about Dr. Phil?”
“I’m sure we can find him,” Mom laughs and turns the TV on.
Grandma is officially out of the woods. All of her vital signs have significantly improved. And the morning after she “woke up,” she’s even better, and Mom tells me I should start looking for a flight back to Charlotte. All of my protesting that she needs me more here falls on deaf ears. She says I need to get back to school and that she’ll look forward to seeing me on winter break when everyone is healthy—fingers crossed.
I start looking around for flights on my phone when I finally decide I better contact Garrett. I didn’t even let him know Grandma was sick or that I was flying out to Spokane, but I just kept telling myself that I shouldn’t distract him from football camp and that I’d wait until I knew if Grandma was going to get better or worse before I finally got a hold of him. At this point, a text probably won’t suffice.
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