Gathered Up

by Annabeth Albert

  “None of us chose this life, Renee. None of us.” I reached into the deep pocket of my cargo pants and pulled out a folded sheet. I shouldn’t have grabbed it when I was skateboarding home but hadn’t been able to resist. “Look. I get it. You need more privacy. If we get enough money together, we could get something like this.”

  She stopped scrubbing at her eyes long enough to consider the flyer. It was for a rental house; still our neighborhood, but closer to the People’s Cup without being too far from the school for the kids. “Three bedrooms and…a partially finished basement.” She looked up at me with such hope that my hands shook on the paper.

  “Yeah. See, you could have the basement. Your own little apartment, kind of?”

  “Can I have a minifridge?”

  “Yeah, princess, you can have a minifridge.” I rubbed her head.

  “And I could help with the kids some, but mainly hang out there in my own space?”

  “Yeah.” I wanted that future for her so much it hurt. She deserved something of a normal teenage experience.

  “And Indigo could come over?”

  I sighed heavily. We’d had an exceedingly awkward chat about birth control two weeks earlier. I was losing this battle. She had a boyfriend, and no amount of my going all caveman brother was going to change that fact. “Indigo can visit. With rules. No overnights.”

  “Maybe.” She chewed her lower lip. “The whole basement would really be all mine? And I could decorate however I wanted?” Her creased face showed the strain of living with the princess-obsessed seven-year-olds.

  “Yes.” I squeezed her hand. “Promise me you won’t do something like telling your friends yes yet. Let me see if I can make this happen for us.”

  “Okay.” She squeezed back, but her cloudy eyes said she was still tempted by the idea of the group housing. And honestly, what eighteen-year-old wouldn’t be? My gut felt like an angry beaver was gnawing at it—like maybe my best effort wouldn’t be enough to keep us together.

  “I love you, Re-Re, you know that right?”

  “I know.” Her laugh was a girlish tinkle as she headed off to bed, a perfect counterbalance to my misery.

  I flipped my phone back on, finally. No messages. Not even the “sleep well, canim” that Ev had sent me every night for a month straight. Whatever. The ache in my stomach was just going to have to deal because I couldn’t afford to focus on someone who didn’t even want me.

  * * * *

  Here’s the thing about having small children depending on you: You get really good in a hurry at plodding through even the deepest of heartaches, still slapping peanut butter on sandwiches and packing overnight bags and working one last shift before leaving—because calling in heartbroken to life isn’t an option. So outwardly, I was the same—kissing the kids good-bye, accepting the good wishes of my coworkers and customers, and lecturing Renee about no overnight guests or parties—but inside I was a wreck. I missed Ev, but I didn’t want to be that guy and bombard him with texts, and I also knew he was having a superhard time even without our argument. It made my rib cage ache to think of our friendship being one more stressor in his life. Despite his obvious bias against bisexuals and his stubbornness, I still lo—liked the guy tremendously.

  But then he surprised me by texting when I was on the MAX on the way to PDX Airport.

  Godspeed on your flight. Go win.

  I immediately tried to call him, but it went right to voice mail. I settled for texting, I’ll call you Sunday night, okay?

  I wanted to believe this thing between us might be salvageable. I had to believe it.

  Because you love him. Oh, how I wanted that not to be true. I didn’t want to feel like I’d lost the best part of my day, the sun break in the monsoon that was currently my life. I didn’t want to need him this much, to care this much about his stupid prejudices.

  Once I was through security, I took my phone out again, trying to find any hidden subtext in his message.

  Buzz.

  Another text. My heart sped up. Maybe we could work this out—

  Oh, wait. The message was from Audrey of all people.

  So, so, so sad about your friend! :( :( All the ladies here at Knit Night are crying.

  I immediately called Audrey on the shop number, not wanting to risk her not picking up her cell. “People’s Cup,” she chirped.

  “What about my friend? What happened to Ev?” I demanded, no time for niceties.

  “Ev?” I could practically hear her bow-shaped mouth crease into a frown. “Not him. Mira. Violet said she’s in the hospital—has been there a few days now—and they say she’s going to…” Audrey lowered her voice like words could be contagious. “Die soon.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “Well, don’t let it depress you too much, okay? We’re all rooting for you to go win big.” She put a lot of deliberate chipper in her voice, like I was supposed to ignore the bombshell she’d dropped.

  Go win. I made some bland excuse to end the call with Audrey while she was still spitting out platitudes about doing People’s Cup proud. Go win. Just worry about your trip. Ev’s words rang in my ears.

  Oh, Ev, you beautiful bastard.

  He’d let me hang myself in a noose of my own insecurities. Maybe it wasn’t about my bisexuality—maybe it never had been, but he’d let me use that pretext rather than tell me the fucking truth. Mira was dying and he was all alone, and he’d lied to me to get me to go on this trip.

  Because he loved me. That was the only explanation. Right?

  “Flight 987 Service to Los Angeles will begin boarding shortly…” The loudspeaker crackled.

  I stuck a finger in my ear, dialed Ev. As I’d expected, it went straight to voice mail.

  Fuck. I shoved the phone in my pocket but hit a weirdly folded piece of paper. I pulled it out and saw it had my name in block printing. It was Morgan’s handwriting because the R was too tall and the D drooped. I unfolded it.

  “AR FAMLY SAYS GO WIN!” read the misspelled banner at the top, and below it were the five—no, six of us. She’d drawn Ev in, too, right next to me, holding my stick figure’s hand. Off to the side stood Renee, her crayon smile just as brittle as the real ones these days. She and the kids needed me to board that plane, go try to win, get that house on the flyer. We needed that money.

  But money wasn’t family. And Ev—he was family, even if he didn’t want to be. There would be other chances, other ways to make the money. I would find a way somehow. But there was only one chance to help Ev. And it didn’t matter if he didn’t want me—I knew what I was going to do, even as every logical cell in my body screamed for me to get in line for the plane.

  Chapter 13

  I haven’t posted all week. I am sorry, friends. I am not knitting right now.—Evren’s Yarnings

  I knew which hospital Mira would be in thanks to playing tour guide for Ev and finding him restaurants and parks in the area to spend time at while she had treatments. And the hospital was off the MAX train line, so it wasn’t that hard to get to from the airport, but it wasn’t logistics that had my chest pounding. I was, unfortunately, well acquainted with this particular ICU, part of the nightmare that was the aftermath of Mom and Greg’s accident. I wasn’t sure if Mira would be there or on the oncology floor, but confronting my own demons first seemed like a good idea, even if I had to take several deep breaths as I got off the elevator, familiar scents and sounds hitting me.

  Here. Right here was where I stood, holding a sobbing Renee after we got the bad news that there was no hope. Over there was the small room where we’d met with the organ donor coordinator. And over there was…

  Ev.

  He sat alone in a small waiting area tucked behind some ferns and out of sight of the elevator and main thoroughfare. I knew it well. It might as well have a sign over it saying “Cry Here” because it was that sort of place, w
ell stocked with tissues and a muted television no one watched. He hadn’t spotted me yet. Instead, his head was bowed forward, studying his phone with an expression that could only be described as utterly broken.

  Not wanting to startle him, I circled around, took the seat next to him, and waited for him to look up.

  “Brady! What are you doing here?” His eyes went wide as he registered my appearance. “You are not supposed to be here.”

  “Yeah, actually, I am.” I knew that all the way to my lug soles. This was where I needed to be.

  “There is nothing you can do here.” He spoke with brutal honesty. “No one can. There is only waiting.”

  “Then I’ll wait with you. As long as it takes. I’m here.”

  “She would not want you here. She would want you to go, win your contest, get the money for your family.” His words should have sliced me clean open, but I knew in my gut he was lying.

  “Liar,” I said gently. “She’d be sad I had to skip the contest, sure, but she’d want me here for you, Ev.”

  He didn’t reply, just stared at the medication ad on the television as if it held all the answers.

  “The real question, though, is what do you really want? No guilt over me missing the contest—can you let yourself admit you need…someone here?”

  Ev shook his head sadly. “I should be able to do this on my own. She took care of me so many years, just her and Hala Tanya. And look at me; I can’t even give her…the end she wanted. She’s not lucid right now, but she’d hate being here. I resisted the hospice when I knew she wanted to be home, and now she’s here. I thought it was just a cold and took her to the ER.…”

  “Hey.” I wrapped an arm around him. “You are not failing. You’ve done the best you can. And sometimes we all need someone to prop us up.”

  He gave me a pointed look, and I had to crack a smile. “Okay, okay, I suck at that, too. But you’ve shown me that it’s not so bad to ask for help now and again. You’ve taught me how nice it is to have someone to complain to at the end of the day.”

  “It is…hard for me to do the same.” Ev sagged in my arms. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, Brady. It really is. I had to leave the room for a bit…I just…”

  “I know.” I rubbed his shoulders. “I’ve been there. Renee couldn’t stay in the room more than a few seconds.”

  “I just wish there was something I could do besides just sit there and…wait. She signed all the advanced directive papers weeks ago, so there are no big decisions, but the waiting is horrible.”

  “Then we’ll sit there together. You don’t have to wait alone.”

  He glanced at his phone again, a pained expression crossing his face. “I tried calling my parents. She asked me to call in a rare moment of lucidity, and I thought they might want to know…Might want to come, even after…”

  “But they didn’t?”

  “They said they trusted me to handle it. And then they hung up. Not even a sympathetic word…”

  “Screw them. They don’t deserve either of you. And you don’t need them.” I thought of my own mother, so completely blasé about my bisexuality, and how she would have liked Ev. Would have loved how he was around the kids. My throat got tight.

  Ev sighed heavily. “I do not like her so alone. A woman like her deserves a family with her.”

  “She’s not alone. She has you. Ev, tell the truth: How many messages do you have from the Knit Night ladies wanting to know about Mira? You’re surrounded by love and you’re not really letting yourself feel it.”

  “Dozens.” He shrugged helplessly. “But I don’t know what to tell them.”

  “When you have an update for them, I’ll handle that.” Sending dozens of text messages and making phone calls was the least of what I was willing to do for Ev.

  “You’re not going to go to LA, are you?” Ev sighed.

  “Nope.” I squeezed his hand. I had so much I wanted to say to him and things we needed to work out, but right now, the only thing that mattered was being here for him.

  “If…” Ev struggled to speak. “If she wakes up enough to ask…do I tell her that the family did not even care?”

  “You lie,” I said with utmost tenderness. “And is that why you’re out here? Not knowing what to say?”

  “No…maybe,” he muttered, kicking at the speckled carpet. “You are right to lie to her about my parents. But…I do not know how to say good-bye.”

  “So don’t.” I stood up, reaching for his hands. “Let’s just go sit with her while she sleeps, and you can tell me about when you came to live with her and Hala Tanya. I want to know how you learned to knit.”

  “I can do that,” he said shakily.

  And so we went into the little room where Mira lay, and we sat side by side in hard plastic chairs that were in no way designed for this sort of vigil. Ten years ago, I’d been fourteen when my only living grandmother passed away from cancer at home with hospice, and my mother had sat with her on the last days, calling me in to say good-bye. That had been a slow, mysterious, almost peaceful thing. With my mother, things had been both rushed, in some ways a blurry nightmare, but also a slow, carefully scripted final dance with the organ transplant team waiting. There was neither a rush nor a script here. We sat, Ev holding her hand, me holding Ev’s hand, and Ev told stories and she slept fitfully, breathing getting shallower all the time. I laughed at the right places, asked questions, held his hand, and wished like heck there was any way to avoid this.

  Something changed—the air in the room, a hitch in her breathing, an errant beep from a monitor—I couldn’t have said what, but suddenly I knew.

  “Ev.” I squeezed his hand hard. “Ev. Tell her now.”

  “Is it now?” He looked at me with wide eyes.

  “Soon.” I nodded, a certainty born out not by the monitors but by the chill at the base of my neck.

  “Hala Mira…” He moved so that he could kiss her hand, then her papery forehead. His voice broke before he lapsed into Turkish as the peaks on the monitor grew shallower and shallower. At a certain point, a nurse came into the room, then another, and Ev stopped speaking, and then it was just me holding him in the hallway, him trying so hard not to cry, me not trying at all to keep it in, tears running down my cheeks.

  “I told her…” Ev tried to speak, then trailed off.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

  “I told her she was the mother of my soul, but I do not think she heard.”

  “She knew.”

  “And I told her I’d do it…I’d keep the shop for her.”

  “Oh, Ev…” My eyes got all itchy again. “That’s a huge promise.”

  “It’s one I was ready to make.”

  “She wouldn’t fault you if you changed—”

  “I would,” he said, firmer now. “I can do this, Brady. I need to do this.”

  “I love you.” It was the exact wrong time to make such a declaration, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer in the face of his tremendous courage.

  Ev’s darkening face told me he wasn’t crazy about the timing either, but he lightly sidestepped the issue. “Mira loved you a lot, too. And the children.”

  “I mean I love you, Ev. Not Mira—although I really did love her, too, but not like I love you. And I’m proud of you.”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. We’re going to make us work, okay?” I stroked his arms. That was all that mattered right now, that he knew I wasn’t angry about his well-meaning lies and that we were going to figure out how to be together. “Let’s get you home, get you some food and sleep.”

  “No food.” He rubbed his stomach, which had to be roiling.

  “We’ll see about that.” I kept up the slow, steady strokes on his arms. “Now give me your keys and le
t’s get you home.”

  After Ev handled the necessary paperwork, I trundled him off to the car, awash in emotion for him. It didn’t even matter if he couldn’t fully return my feelings. What mattered was how good it felt that he was letting me in, even a little, letting me help.

  It was well after two a.m. by the time we got back to Ev’s place. It was eerily quiet, the air stale and oppressive, like it hadn’t circulated in days. Like most of the buildings in the neighborhood, Ev’s didn’t have air conditioning, so I set about opening windows even as Ev stood there, not moving beyond the hallway. It rattled me worse than any skateboard fall to see tall, strong Ev so gutted. I tried to wrap my arms around him, but he shoved me away.

  “Not now, aşkim. I can’t.” His voice was ragged and his hands were clenched, as if he were working double hard not to cry in front of me.

  “Shower,” I said in the same firm tone he used with me. I steered him toward the large white tile bathroom off the hall, starting the water for him while he stripped.

  Ev was the cook, not me, but after I pushed him in the shower, I found a carton of chicken broth and heated up a mug of it and made Ev a toasted English muffin with butter. I remembered how Ev added parsley to just about everything, so I chopped a bit and sprinkled it over the broth. I brought both to his room to wait for him to come out of the shower, but I found him facedown in the bed, towel askew, covers not even pulled back, snoring softly. Not about to disturb him, I pulled the extra blanket he kept at the foot of the bed up around him and returned the food to the kitchen.

  I was too wired to either eat or sleep myself. I pulled my phone out, dreading the call I had to make. I’d already called the families that were looking after Jonas and the twins from the hospital, letting them know I was in town and occupied with a crisis but that I’d pick up the kids tomorrow. They’d been nothing but understanding, but I wasn’t sure whether to expect that same compassion from Renee.