by Luana Ferraz
“You scared me,” I mumble into her chest.
“I know, I know,” she sighs, “but it was only a scare.”
I pull myself together enough to pull away and look at her. Her face is gaunt and colorless, her eyes are deep into dark circles, her hair is thinning out. She looks so much older than I remember. She looks so fragile.
“I’m sorry, granny,” I whisper as more tears threaten to spill out of my eyes.
“I know, I know,” she holds my face with her hands, “me too.”
“How are you?” I ask, drying my face on my sleeve.
“I’m fine, dearie,” she gives me a weak smile.
“You are in the hospital,” I argue.
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” she looks around, chuckling.
“What happened?” I ask, never letting go of her hands.
“I don’t know,” she shakes her head. “One minute I was walking back home, the other I was waking up here.”
“What did the doctors say?”
“Nothing yet,” she says, averting her eyes. I don’t believe her. “They still want me to do some tests.”
“Right,” I nod, deciding not to push her. I can interrogate Pete’s parents later, when I fulfill my promise.
“How are you, my darling?” she asks, patting my face. “You look so thin, are you eating well?”
I smile. Leave it to her to worry and reassure me while lying on a hospital bed. We chat for a while—about the tour, and Pete, and her busy life out here. She has friends and meetings and church obligations. She’s as active as she ever was, which eases my guilt. At least she’s not lonely, right?
Despite the fact we haven’t talked properly in a while, and that I was a bitch to her the last time we did, it seems no time has passed at all. I wonder why we take so long to appreciate these moments. Why does it take a tragedy to make us cut the crap and value what really matters? Why don’t I ever learn?
“Good morning,” a nurse enters the room rolling a cart. He smiles broadly when he sees me. “Oh, hey! You have a different visitor today!”
“Yes, this is my granddaughter,” she says, casually rolling her eyes to me. “Rebecca.”
“You didn’t tell me you had a granddaughter!” he says excitedly, but it hurts a little. He walks over to me and reaches out a hand. “Hi, Rebecca, I’m Patrick. I’ve been keeping an eye on grandma for you.”
“Just Becky, please,” I say as I take his hand. It’s really soft.
“Okay, just Becky,” he beams and I feel my face flush, “I’m going to ask you to wait here a moment while I take grandma to take some tests.”
“You don’t need to wait, hun,” she rushes to say. “You should go.”
“We will be a while, actually,” Patrick tells me.
“And I’ll probably just sleep for the rest of the day,” grandma says. Then, closer to her normal mood, she adds, “They’ve been mixing some heavy stuff into my saline, I tell you.”
Patrick chuckles with that. It makes me chuckle, too.
“I can stay. It’s not like I have anything else to do around here,” I say.
“No, petal, you go, you have your work—”
“I have a few days off,” I cut her off.
“You’re not planning to spend them here, are you?” She widens her eyes. “Darling, I’m fine!”
“I’m not gonna leave before I know what happened,” I tell her.
“We should have a concrete diagnosis tomorrow,” Patrick informs me.
“What’s the not concrete diagnosis so far?”
“There isn’t one,” he gives me that professional sympathetic smile.
“Can I talk to you outside?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says and turns around to leave.
“I’ll be back later,” I tell grandma. She opens a cheeky smile. “What?”
“It’s good to hear that.”
My heart catches in my throat and I just nod because, if I speak, I’m certain I’ll cry again.
I step outside and interrogate Patrick, but all he tells me is that it’s definitely something to do with her heart, although it wasn’t a heart attack. I thank him, give him my phone number and make him promise he’ll call me if anything changes. He agrees, although I’m not sure I can trust him, and then I walk away.
I almost run past Tyler in the waiting room, as I forgot he was here.
“How is she?” He jumps up when he sees me. It makes me smile.
“Seems fine,” I say.
“That’s good,” he nods, stuffing his hands into his jacket.
“Yeah, come on, let’s go,” I restart my sprint to the parking lot.
“Where are we going now?” he asks as he follows me.
“To see Pete’s parents.”
***
We enter the car and drive off in silence. I can sense Tyler’s restlessness and wonder what is on his mind. I get restless, too.
“Thank you,” I blurt out, not looking at him. I hope he knows how hard this is for me, because I’m not elaborating any further.
Through my peripheral vision, I see his head whip around from the window to look at me. He stays like that, in silence, for the longest time, which doesn’t help the feeling in my stomach.
I risk looking at him when we stop at a red light and he doesn’t seem bothered that I caught him staring.
“You’re making me nervous,” I confess, just to see his reaction. He looks away.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, to my surprise. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” I say mechanically, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel.
“I really want to know,” he says, which makes me turn back to him. “I know that when people ask that question they usually don’t expect an honest answer. But I want an honest answer. Don’t say you’re fine if you’re not.”
I just stare at him until the car behind us honks. The light has turned green. I have a hard time stepping on the pedal and getting the car moving.
My heart beats in my ears all the way to Pete’s parents’ store. The short journey is otherwise silent, since none of us speaks another word.
“Do they sell food here?” Tyler asks, as I park somewhere in the back. “I’m starving.”
“Yeah. They have sandwiches, I guess.”
“Nice,” he says, unbuckling his seatbelt. He’s about to hop off when I interrupt him.
“I’m not,” I say. He takes his hand off the door handle. “The thing is… the thing is I’m not ever fine.”
He frowns, sitting back against his seat. He bites his bottom lip, thinking. I regret saying that, feeling extremely uncomfortable and awkward, but I really want to know what he’s going to say. That is, if he’s going to say anything at all.
“You don’t need to have an answer to that,” I say after a while.
“I do, though,” he says, finally looking at me again. I can tell he’s also uncomfortable, but he decides to go through with it, anyway. “This morning, when we were talking… weren’t you feeling okay?”
I feel my face heat up. “Yeah…” I confess, looking away. “Yeah, but it was just a moment.”
“But that’s all we have,” he argues. “Just… moments. One after another. Until the end of time.”
His cheesiness makes me smile. “Is that one of your lyrics?”
“No,” he chuckles, “but I might turn it into one now.”
“Moments would be a good song title,” I continue, making him look away and shake his head. I wait until he looks back at me to smile. He smiles back—the genuine one. I kind of feel better. But I don’t tell him that.
We exit the car and enter the store, and Tyler immediately wanders off in search of his snacks. I appreciate his discretion, but kinda wish he was with me when Pete’s parents find me looking for them.
“Oh my God, look at you!” Johanna holds me by the shoulders after giving me a tight hug. “I can’t believe Pete didn’t come with you.”
“He couldn’t. Actually, e
ven I couldn’t—I had to fight for them to let me come,” I explain.
“As usual,” Dan, his dad, chuckles. “Have you seen Eileen yet?”
“Yes, I’m coming from the hospital,” I say. They visibly tense up, bracing themselves for my next words. Gosh, I’m really a horrible person, aren’t I? “She seems fine, but I was hoping you guys could give me some details? Maybe Evie has some inside information.”
Evie is their eldest daughter, and works at the hospital. She’s not in the health department, but you know how small towns work—if she asks, she can find things out.
“In fact, she does,” Johanna says, clearly relieved with the topic. “It was her heart. Evie said Eileen was lucky to have been in public place where she got help right away.”
“The nurse said it wasn’t a heart attack,” I continue, shamelessly taking advantage of their good heart.
“It wasn’t, it was a… What was it, Dan?”
“Fibrillation,” Dan chimes in.
“That! They’re holding her up until they know what caused it and the best line of treatment,” Johanna resumes her report.
“How serious is that?” I ask, with a sudden urge to Google it.
“I don’t know, hen,” Johanna says with a sad sigh. “I could call Evie—”
“No, please!” I stop her as she takes her phone from her pocket. “I’ll go back and try to talk to her doctor.”
“Don’t worry dearie, everything will be fine.”
I just nod and let her hug me again. I miss it, as much as I hate to admit it. Johanna has treated me like one of her daughters since… well, since forever. I probably spent more time in her house with Pete, Evie and Avie than I did in my own. We were really like family. I just wish I could feel like family.
“Thank you,” I mumble when she lets me go, again hoping she knows what I mean.
“She loves you, you know?” she says out of nowhere. I feel my face burn slightly. “You have a lot of her in you.”
I know that’s true. I’m every bit as stubborn, headstrong, and determined as she is, if not more. Maybe that’s what ultimately irritates me about her—seeing myself.
“Excuse me,” Tyler’s voice startles me. I turn around to find his smiley face. “Where is the cashier?”
“Just follow me, I’ll help you.” Dan walks to the other side of the counter and Tyler follows him.
“I guess I’ll be going,” I say, suddenly not wanting to explain Tyler to them. “Talk to you later?”
“Sure, sure! It was so good to see you.” Johanna hugs me again. “Come by the house, I’ll make you dinner!”
“Maybe tomorrow?” I scrunch up my nose. I love her food, I just don’t think I have it in me to hang out with them today.
“Are you staying, then?” Dan shouts from behind the counter, surprised. “You must be really worried.”
“Dan!” Johanna gives him a reprehending look. But I know he didn’t mean anything by that, it’s just an observation. An accurate one. “I’ll cook that casserole that you like!” She claps her hands together.
“Thanks, Jo,” I smile, turning away and heading to the exit. “Bye, Dan!”
“Bye, hen! Help yourself with any snacks you want.” He winks.
I grab a few chocolate bars before leaving and walk to the car. I see Tyler walking back as soon as I close the door.
“It’s kind of unfair that you don’t have to pay for your stuff,” he complains as he enters.
“What?” I chuckle.
“Especially since I bought snacks for us both,” he continues.
“You did?” I reach for his bag to find a beer case, mints and two vegetarian sandwiches. I look at him again, intrigued.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
“How did you know I’m a vegetarian?” I ask, that strange feeling creeping up again.
“You must have mentioned it,” he shrugs. It doesn’t convince me. “What?”
“I feel like you know too much about me,” I say and he laughs.
“Knowing you’re a vegetarian is knowing too much?”
“You know what I mean,” I roll my eyes.
“Well…” he sighs, sitting sideways on his seat to face me. “Besides Tris and Todd, I have a fourth brother. Timothy.”
“What?” I gasp, mainly because I wasn’t expecting this spontaneous sharing, not because of the actual information.
“He’s twelve, the fans call him Bonus T-Hack,” he rolls his eyes at this, but I chuckle. “My zodiac sign is Scorpio. My favorite color is red. I’m a natural blond, despite what it may look like.”
“That’s hard to believe,” I joke, glancing at his incredibly light hair.
“I know. But it’s true, look at my roots.” He lowers his head, pushing his hair in different directions, and I laugh. “I drink too much, but rarely get drunk. I hate our first single. My favorite song I’ve ever written is one no one has ever heard.”
“Really? The one you were singing this morning?” I ask and his eyes widen. He didn’t expect me to have heard it, apparently.
“Yes,” he nods. “Well, one person, now.”
“I liked it,” I say and he smiles, embarrassed.
“Are we even now?”
I just look at him for a moment, taking it all in. It is a lot of information, but nothing really special. Nothing personal. Just facts that I could probably find out about online. I still feel uneasy. I still feel like he knows more. I still feel like he can see through me.
“Do you know what my favorite color is?” I ask.
“Purple,” he answers with certainty, glancing at my hair.
“Nope. It’s green,” I correct him and he smiles.
“Do I have to tell you one more thing now?” he jokes.
“There’s something specific I want to know,” I say and watch as his smile disappears. “Why me? Why us, why Pete and I?”
“What do you mean?” he frowns.
“I mean, we’re not in the same genre. We’re not at the same level. We don’t even have a name.”
“So?” he asks, seemingly still confused.
“So why? What made you choose us?” I finally ask, something that has been consuming me more than it probably should.
“Your talent,” he shrugs.
“Right,” I snort, rolling my eyes.
“It’s true!”
“We’re not the only talented group out there. And I’m sure your label had a long list of suggestions for you.”
“They did.”
“So?” I insist. I know we’re talented, and I know we’re good enough to be openers of a relatively big band like The Hacks. What I want to know is what made someone like Tyler pick us. What did he see in us? In me?
“You’re passionate,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “You feel what you do so much that it made me feel, too, through a low-quality video on the Internet. Do you know how hard it is to find nowadays? Someone that cares about the craft and not about the by-product of it?”
“Fame?” I ask tentatively.
“Exactly,” he nods. “You don’t seem to care about it.”
“I don’t,” I admit. When I think about ‘making it’, I think of me and Pete on stage of a sold-out concert at the O2. I don’t picture the money, or the magazine covers, or the paparazzi pictures. I picture the crowd singing along to something I wrote. It’s that connection I crave, that makes everything worthwhile for me.
“There you go.”
“It’s all about the music,” I nod slowly.
“Well,” he gives me a curious look. He bites his lip, looking away, thinking. “It starts with the music.”
“And where does it end?” I frown.
“I don’t know,” he chuckles, looking back at me. “Yet.”
“Okay,” I take a deep breath, nodding again. “We’re even.”
“Thank God,” he laughs. “Can we eat now?”
“Yeah, we can eat now.”
***
We go back
to the hospital and, sure enough, Eileen is sound asleep. Patrick tells me he’s certain she’ll be out for the rest of the afternoon and that I should come back the next day to catch the doctor who’s taking care of her case. I leave a little note by her bed, informing I’ll be there in the morning and giving her my phone number. I’m not sure she still has it.
After that, I end up driving around town and showing Tyler random tourist points. I also show him the school I went to, and the music store where I got my first job—making things uneven again. We don’t talk much, but it isn’t a problem. I don’t feel the weight of the awkward silence, on the contrary, it’s quite pleasant. When we’re not quiet, Tyler is the one that does most of the talking. He drinks all of the beer since I’m the one driving and that seems to loosen his tongue a little bit.
He tells me about his siblings, about the start of his band, about why he hates Wendy so much. He tells funny stories of past tours and asks to hear mine. We bicker over ‘real music’ and he surprises me with his knowledge of punk classics.
We stay on the surface for a change, and it’s nice. It’s easy. It makes me forget about time and place. It makes me almost feel like a person. I don’t know if Tyler knew that, but I was really needing to chill. I’m not sure I knew that myself until I realized we’d spent hours doing nothing and talking nonsense.
“Jesus, I’m freezing,” I complain when we arrive back at the house.
“Me too.” Tyler is hugging himself.
“Do you want to take a shower?” I offer, as it’s what I’m about to do. His eyebrows shoot up and I realize what the question sounds like. At least to him, the prick.
“Sure,” he answers simply, even though the dirty joke is palpable in the air.
He gets his stuff from the car and I show him grandma’s bathroom upstairs. I hand him a towel and turn around to go back to my room when he stops me.
“Wait, are you not joining me?” he asks with a serious face. I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it to himself. Smart-ass.
“You wish.” I roll my eyes and he smirks.
I go into my room with a smile on my face, not thinking much of it. I undress and get into the shower. And then it hits me. We’re not friends. We’re not even acquaintances. We’re strangers, he’s technically my boss, and here we are, making sex jokes at each other.