by Kristie Cook
“Does this mean you have a computer? Email?” A new interest lit up his voice.
“Computer, sometimes. Email, no. And no, no Facebook or Twitterin’ for me. Enough people around here know my business better than I do, so why bother posting it? It’d take the fun out of hearing their gossip. Besides, I’m on my uncle’s computer at the office.”
“You’re at work?”
“Yep. So see, you aren’t the only one sort of not working right now. So what was it you said Mama has?”
He patiently went over her many illnesses and disorders with me, spelling each one out so I could write them down. He also gave me the names of the drug treatments he could give her and the government and social programs that could help with the costs. A knock at the office door interrupted us just as we’d moved on to other subjects, such as how much we both enjoyed dinner, and I glanced out the window at the figure illuminated by the floodlight, holding a plate of food in one hand and two beers in the other.
Oh, shit.
“Mason, I gotta go.”
“Is everything okay?”
I sighed. “I hope so. I mean, yeah, it’s fine. Just something with a friend.”
“Call me soon?”
Another knock on the door. My heart sank with guilt.
“When I can. I really gotta go.” And I pretty much hung up on him.
I rushed to the door and threw it open. “I’m so sorry, Ty!”
“Figured I’d find you here when I saw you pull up, but you never came over.” He held the plate toward me. “As promised, I brought you dinner.”
A grilled hamburger on a bun and potato salad filled the plate. He’d made the burger exactly as I liked it—no ketchup, mustard, and sweet pickle chips. It’d been several hours since filling myself to the gills with the heavenly steak and potato, but I had little desire to eat again. I’d already screwed up, though, and didn’t want to hurt Ty’s feelings, so I took the plate and a beer and motioned him to sit across the desk from me as I sat back down.
“How’d it go?” he asked. “You seem better than I thought you’d be. I was ’fraid you’d be half-drunk before you even got home.”
“It wasn’t as bad as I expected,” I admitted around a small bite of lukewarm burger I had in my mouth. I pulled on my beer to wash it down, then pushed the potato salad around my plate with the plastic fork he’d brought. The salad definitely came from Memaw’s, which meant it was homemade by Aunt Faye. I used to live on the stuff, to the point that I could barely stand it anymore. Even if I’d been starving, I wouldn’t have been able to stomach it. “It was … weird, ya know? I wanted to hate her, even tried to pick a couple of fights. But she’s so sick, Ty. I … I didn’t know what to think or feel anymore.”
I told him how bad she looked and how she’d fallen asleep in an instant and I’d thought she’d died right there and then. I told him about meeting with Dr. Hayes—leaving out the part about dinner or the sex-in-a-kiss—and explained as best as I could about Mama’s condition. I showed him the page of notes in front of me.
“You trust this doctor already?” Ty asked skeptically.
For some reason, maybe because I went on a date and kissed said doctor, the remark felt like a jab.
“He’s her doctor, so, yeah, I do. He seemed to really care about her.” The words came out harsher than I intended, and I didn’t tell him that I never actually saw him interact with Mama. In fact, I didn’t realize that until now. Mama and Sissy didn’t have any complaints at all about him—in fact, just the opposite—so surely he was good with her. He sounded completely caring and concerned when he talked to me, and he really wanted to help her get better with new treatments. “Why wouldn’t I trust him?”
Ty held his hands up. “Whoa, now. Settle them horses. I’m just sayin’ that maybe you should think about getting a second opinion. I mean, if ya’ll really want to see if her life can be saved, ya know?”
I relaxed, feeling silly about getting so protective over Dr. Hayes when Ty had no clue what my personal feelings were for Mason. He was trying to be the friend he’d promised to be.
“Sorry,” I said as I dropped my head into my hands and massaged my temples. “Feelin’ a little stressed out here.”
The sound of a chair scraping on the linoleum was followed by two footsteps and then warm hands on my shoulders. Ty squeezed and kneaded the tension away, massaging a path from my neck to the middle of my back. When he went lower, it felt a little too intimate for comfort. Especially after my time with Mason, as short as it was. I coughed and moved back in the chair so he couldn’t reach me anymore.
“Yeah, you’re probably right about that second opinion. But first, I need to see what I can find out about all these things she has.” I pushed the plate still covered with potato salad and more than half the burger to the side and pulled the keyboard in front of me. “Thanks for dinner. Sorry I wasn’t very hungry, though.”
Ty took the hint. He gave my shoulders a final squeeze and planted a kiss on the top of my head. “Don’t forget to get your beauty rest.”
I spun the office chair around. “Ty Daniels! What’s that supposed to mean?”
He laughed. “Nothing, boo. Just tryin’ to wake you up.” He leaned down and put his hands on the armrests of my chair, placing his face only inches from mine. I thought he might try for more than a kiss on the head, and I panicked at the thought. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d kissed two guys in one day, but I really wasn’t up for it now. Especially with Ty. “You’re always beautiful, sweetheart. But I’m worried about you. Do you ever sleep? Relax? Have fun?”
I blew out a sigh, and he must not have liked my hamburger breath, because he pushed away and straightened up.
“No time for such nonsense,” I said, even though I’d at least had an hour today of nothing but fun and could possibly be going to a concert in less than a week. For some reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to tell Ty about all of that. Well, I knew the reason—Ty himself. He was a fighter, and knowing he had competition would only make him push harder.
“Bex,” he said, and I craned my neck back to look up at his face. “I seen some things while I was gone. Stop taking life so seriously and enjoy it while you can. You never know when your last day is.” He tweaked my chin, kissed me on the head again and strode for the door. “I’m here if you need anything. I won’t leave you again.”
But then he did just that. Strode out the door and left me in the dark office. Of course, he’d only be a hundred yards away in the trailer where he grew up, lefty by his daddy who’d passed away right before Ty graduated high school. His mama had died in a car wreck when we were six, right before my mama took Sissy and me away. Poor Ty. Except for an aunt who’d moved north before he was even born and whom he barely knew, he was all alone. Maybe that’s why he’d come back for me—the only family he had. He’d left me to get away from it all, and maybe that’s what he’d needed to realize where his home still was. If only I could be for him what he wanted me to be. But I didn’t think anything could convince me that we were right for each other. That he was my soul mate. I just didn’t feel it anymore.
Now Dr. Mason Hayes? I dared to hope that maybe he was The One. After all, I’d never felt anything before like I did with him. As I made my way across the trailer park after a little Internet research, I tried to imagine a life with the sexy doctor. Being a doctor’s wife, with a big home and beautiful children and fancy cars and no jobs except volunteer work to help homeless kids. My imagination apparently wasn’t creative enough, though, because I couldn’t see it clearly. Not with me as part of the picture, with my pierced nose and tats and my poor, small-town upbringing.
Sadness washed over me, along with a heavy feeling of darkness. It had been a long, tough day with a whirlwind of emotions, but this feeling I had now was different. A deep sense of gloom th
at didn’t come from only one hard day, but from a lifetime of them, and the kind that never went away. Something felt seriously wrong. Elizabeth’s warning yesterday was getting to me, but she was the empath, not me. I couldn’t possibly be feeling what I was. I clasped my hand over the back of my neck where the hairs began to rise and looked up. There must have been no moon tonight because the sky was pitch black. So dark, I suddenly felt cold and shivered. Not until I was inside did I wonder why I couldn’t see the stars either. As I crashed into bed for a few hours of sleep before I had to open the diner, the last thing I saw was a nearly full moon shining through my curtains, high above the trees.
Where had it been just a few minutes ago?
* * *
“I think you’re downin’ more coffee than the customers,” Elizabeth said the next day as we wrapped up the breakfast rush and prepared for the lunch crowd at noon.
“I didn’t sleep a wink last night,” I said as I poured my fourth cup of the day.
“You felt it, too, didn’t you?” she asked. “Don’t have to be an empath to feel it anymore. Somethin’s going on in this town, and it’s only gonna get worse. I’m half fixin’ to pack up and get out while I can.”
My brow raised as I leaned against the counter and sipped my coffee. “It’s that bad?”
“It’s not good, baby girl. But the sick part of me wants to stick around and watch it go down.” She turned her full gaze on me. “You, though, oughta high-tail it outta here, hun. You already have more darkness in you than any one person should have, ’specially at your age.”
I rolled my eyes. She was always telling me that I needed help. She thought I’d been through way too much for someone to handle on her own. Sure, I screwed up sometimes, but for the most part, I thought I handled things just fine. I (usually) did the right thing and went to church every Sunday like a good, God-fearing Southern girl. Yeah, life had been crappy, but I was turning out all right, I thought. Any darkness she sensed in me was only temporary. Once I found me a good man—the one I knew was out there specifically for me—it would be gone. Not that I thought I, or any woman, needed a good man to be happy or that all my problems would miraculously disappear when I met The One. Far from it. But I held onto the belief that when you had true love, when you shared life and all its foulness with your soul mate, all those problems were a little easier to shoulder.
After meeting Mason yesterday, things were already looking brighter.
“So are you gonna tell me how it went yesterday or not?” Elizabeth asked. “There’s somethin’ different about you, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Can’t even tell if it’s good or bad, but it feels like both.”
“Mmmm …” I teased, pretending she’d get no more than that. She narrowed her eyes, so I spilled everything, from my time with Mama and how that went to my dinner with Mason.
“I’m not sure I like this doctor,” she said when I finished.
“You don’t even know him, so you can’t say that.”
“I know that he’s gotta be at least thirty, don’t he? To your twenty-one?”
I frowned. When I’d thought of him being older than me, I hadn’t really thought about the age difference. “He finished high school two years early, and he doesn’t look that old.”
“If he’s been through med school and everything it takes to be your mama’s doctor, he’s too old for my baby girl.”
I let out a harrumph. “I’m not your baby girl, and I’m not a baby at all. And age is only a thing if you make it a thing.”
“And if I meet him and don’t like him, I will be making it a thing,” she promised. Not that she really had much say, but at least she cared.
“So can I ask a huge favor and have next Monday’s dinner shift off? And Tuesday’s morning shift, too?”
Elizabeth looked up from the ketchup bottles she was filling. “You never ask for a day off.”
“I know.”
She squinted at me. “What for?”
“I’m goin’ to see Mama again. See how the new meds work out for her.” I sucked my bottom lip, then added very quietly, “And going to a concert with Mason.”
“I don’t like it. Mark my words, girl. But who am I to stop you?”
I tried not to jump with glee. “Well, you are my boss. You could stop me.”
“But I’m not goin’ to. I’ll just hope that he either makes you very happy and that helps lighten this cloud over us, or that you’ll realize quickly he’s an asshole preying on girls way too young for him.”
When she put it like that, I had to wonder about Mason. How could someone with his brains, his wit and charm, and his looks be single? And why wouldn’t he want to be with someone closer to his age and status? Our differences—age, income class, education, upbringing, everything—were painfully obvious. But then I thought of our chemistry. And that’s something you have no control over.
“I’m pretty sure he hadn’t been standing behind the Coke machine, waiting for some young chick to come along so he could take advantage of her. If that’s all he was after, he would have been all over Sissy long ago.”
“That’s the only reason I haven’t decided to make you work triple shifts for the next three weeks until you forget about him.”
I threw my arms around her, making her spill ketchup. “Thanks, Liz’beth. I owe you.”
“Nah, you don’t. You deserve some time off.”
“Can I use the phone to make a few calls?”
She pulled her cell phone out of her shirt, where she kept it in her bra, and handed it to me. “Use this one.”
I wrapped my hand around the warm metal and glass and headed outside and around back for some privacy. I called Sissy first.
“Dr. Hayes gave me some information that I looked up,” I said once she was able to step out of Mama’s room. “Is there a reason Mama hasn’t started on the meds so maybe she can get a transplant?”
“Yeah, there is. Have you seen the cost?”
“Yeah. It’s insane, but—”
“She doesn’t want you to have that burden, Bex. She doesn’t want us drownin’ in her medical bills if it don’t work and she dies.”
“Seriously? She’s dying anyway.”
“Yeah, well, at a lot cheaper cost.”
“Sissy, we can’t let her die if that’s the only reason.”
The other end went silent for a moment. “I didn’t think you’d see it that way.”
Ouch. But I totally deserved that and couldn’t blame her for saying it. “I’m tryin’ to forgive her. I’m certainly not gonna let her die over what she did to us.”
“Well, what do you want me to do, Bex? Even if I stopped taking care of her and got a job, no way could we afford it.”
“Dr. Hayes told me about some government and other programs that could help. If we get the paperwork started, he doesn’t have to wait to begin the treatment, and we don’t pay anything right away.”
“And you really think she can get approved with her history?”
“He said he’d help us.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he did,” Sissy muttered, and the bitterness came loud and clear.
“What is it with you? Mama says you’re smitten with him, but I’d almost think you don’t like him.”
“Oh, I like him all right. The question is why do you have to? Every single guy, Bex. Do you have to have them all?”
“What?”
“Why can’t you just be with Ty and give me a chance for once?”
My breath caught. “Oh. Ma. Gosh. You’re more than smitten with Mason, aren’t you?”
“Mason?” Her voice came out in a whispery shriek. I imagined her standing in the hospital corridor trying not to make a scene while the jealousy flooded her. “You met him once and you’re on a first-name basis?”
> “Sorry. Dr. Hayes.” I couldn’t tell her about dinner last night. Not in the frame of mind she was obviously in. She might be pissed off enough to rat him out to his bosses. She was my sister, and I was dying to tell her everything, but that would have to wait. “Sissy, he’s way too old for you.”
“But not for you?”
“You’re practically jail bait to him.”
“You’re only eighteen months older than me. Not much of a difference when the gap’s that big.”
“Think about it, hun. At your age, that’s a big difference. I’m of legal age in every way. You can’t even go to a club.”
She huffed out a breath. “Well, I hope you and Mason are happy together.”
“Sissy, don’t be that way.”
“I’ll stop being this way when you stop taking every guy I ever had a thing for.”
“Maybe instead of being mad at me, you should look at yourself and figure out why they don’t have a thing for you.”
Sissy gasped. “Bethany!”
I pressed my fingers to my temple, feeling the heavy pressure returning. “In this case, I mean your age.”
“Whatever,” she snapped. “I’m sick of fighting with you over guys. Maybe some day you’ll finally settle down so everyone else has a chance.”
And that was her real reason for her wanting me to take Ty back. She didn’t care if we’d be happy together.
“Let’s just talk about Mama. I’m gonna call Dr. Hayes and get the paperwork going. Mama needs to start the meds.”
“I’ll tell her,” she said. “No guarantees she’ll do it, though.”
“Talk her into it. Force her if you have to.”
“Only you can do that and only if you can prove she can’t make her own decisions.”
Oh, yeah. “Why did she do that? Why not give you that authority?”
Sissy sighed. “Because she thought you’d be more objective. That you would listen to her wishes and not try to keep her alive on machines and all because you didn’t wanna let her go. She didn’t think I could make that same decision.”