Meant to Be Mine

by Lisa Marie Perry

  Vitals checked and finally updated that this morning’s labs had come through but the ECG reading wasn’t yet finalized, Sofia watched the nurse hum with dissatisfaction at the information derived from the BP monitor.

  With a digital chart in hand, the stout woman dragged over the visitor’s chair. “Dr. Engles will be on-site in the morning. In the meantime, as Dr. Cochran informed you last night, we’re going to need to administer a different BP drug, since your numbers are still up there. We’ll get you a blocker that won’t conflict with your current drug therapies.” She clicked her tongue. “Yeah, we really don’t want to aggravate this creatinine level.”

  “Creatinine? What is it—Let me see the report.”

  The nurse’s gray eyebrows rose. “Dr. Cochran’s making his rounds. He can interpret the data for you—”

  “Creatinine levels are used for kidney function eval. I know already.” This wasn’t her first rodeo. It wasn’t her first go-round with renal dysfunction. It was her first confrontation with it when she had everything in front of her…so much to lose. “I only want to know the severity of…May I see it—the report?”

  “God,” the nurse whispered. Empathy bled through her professional composure. “I’ll print a copy. Dr. Cochran will be here. Give him a chance to dissect this. I…I’m sorry, Sofia.”

  She could do nothing but breathe until the nurse delivered the lab report. Alone at a moment when she needed someone’s arms around her, she found abnormalities in the glomerular filtration rate from her blood draw and the amount of protein in her urine sample.

  Had disease been developing bit by bit for months? Her most recent follow-up hadn’t revealed anything alarming. This, the report in her hand, was alarming.

  “I’ll fight you, too,” she whispered to the letters and numbers and symbols that tried to break her. “I can be a bitch, and I’m going to fight like one until I beat you.”

  *

  There never seemed to be anything distracting on TV when Sofia was in the hospital. By midafternoon she’d grown exhausted of stalking Food Network programs, had eaten a bland lunch that wasn’t nearly as appetizing as what she’d watched chefs prepare on the screen, and was still wearing a patient gown. She wasn’t motivated to change into any of the clothes Joss had brought.

  She’d almost dialed Burke too many times to remember. She wanted him here. She wanted to explain her prognosis, to gently let him know that there were unknowns and variables in play and nowhere was it written in stone that suggestions of early-stage kidney disease meant he’d lose her tomorrow.

  She wanted to make him understand that a mild cardiac event and renal complications didn’t mean she no longer had the right to live and love.

  I love him and he’s not here.

  Until, finally, he was. Shuffling into the room, he had the body language of one guiltily sneaking into a place he didn’t belong. “Sofia?”

  She unclipped the monitor and dragged her IV pole as she ran to him. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve got to quit apologizing.”

  “Excuse me,” the afternoon-shift nurse said from the doorway, “but the patient needs to be in bed with that monitor on her finger.”

  Burke reattached her monitor and they sat side by side on the bed. “I drove halfway here four or five times today. Kept telling myself to stay out of your way. But I was going goddamn crazy without you. It’s selfish and I know that. But…it’s you, Sofia. You.”

  “It’s okay.” Because, my God, I love you.

  “I tried not to miss you and need you.” His voice shook. “I was spinning out. That’s not all right.”

  “I’m here,” she said, consoling him so she could take a break from consoling herself. The report rested in her purse; the Eaves Community docs had a preliminary plan and it was too soon to drop more into his lap. “My BP’s in a normal range now and the IV fluids will rehydrate me nicely.”

  “Stress,” he said quietly. “That’s what brought this on?”

  “Community seems to think so. My cardiologist comes in tomorrow, but so far the plan is to adjust my meds. The drug combo can be tricky, pairing the immunosuppressants and the antivirals.”

  Tell him the rest…

  “The panic attacks, now heart palpitations and high blood pressure and dehydration,” Burke listed. “I didn’t want this for you, Sofia. It’s too much hitting you all at once—losing your aunt Luz and starting a whole new life here. Taking me and all my shit on? I would rather walk away than screw with your health.”

  “It’s a simple fix.” A cheap lie. A coward’s escape. “New prescription. Fluids. Naps.”

  “That’s all? You sure?”

  She nodded. “It’s just maintenance. Community’s going to keep me for three days for observation, and then I’m back to scandalizing Eaves again. Back in your arms again.” She could look at him right now and clearly picture him sitting in front of her with his gray eyes fastened on hers and then his tongue sliding—

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “I need to be doing something. Helping somehow. What if I kept Tish for the next few days?”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Yeah. She can ride shotgun in the pickup, hang out on the boat. Think she’d be good with running a mile at dawn? ’Cause sometimes I do that to loosen up before chores.”

  Tish, all fur and muscle and beauty, running at full speed as the morning opened. “She’d love it.”

  She found his hand resting on his thigh and wove her fingers through his. Once they’d been able to hold hands and wrap themselves around each other and it hadn’t meant the beginning and end of the world. But they weren’t a couple of teenagers in rip-kneed jeans hanging out at gas station convenience stores or beach bonfires. He raised her hand and kissed her knuckles hard. “I care about you, Sofia. From the beginning I cared.”

  Except when he and his friends had vilified her in school. But the past didn’t sting anymore. She stroked his hand with her thumb. “Do you still sketch?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I left it behind in rehab. It was something to piss away the time. The sketches were half-finished and ended up thrown out anyway.”

  “When was the last time you finished one?”

  “Before we fought. Before you left.” He went still, then, “Why’d that happen? That last day—why’d we have to be that way?”

  To answer him, she’d have to let herself remember. Painful it might be, but if she wouldn’t tell him about the lab results tucked into her purse, she owed him this. Hurt him with either the past or the present.

  She chose the past.

  Sofia knew she was an hour late and Burke’s dad would be home soon.

  Burke wasn’t allowed to have girls in the house, and that included her, but what was one more rule to break for each other?

  Whatever dinner he’d cooked would be cold. She hoped it’d make him mad at her. Then it wouldn’t hurt so badly to cut him out of her life.

  Burke was eighteen and had a crappy car that ran if you worked the engine just right. He said he’d visit her after she and Dad moved to New York. She needed to make sure he’d be so mad that he wouldn’t think about her again.

  Sofia came in through the back door and the Wolfs’ house smelled good, like pizza or something.

  “Hey.” Burke put down the cordless phone in the kitchen and crossed his lanky arms. A purple bruise that resembled a meaty handprint peeked out from beneath his baggy goth band shirt. “Where you been? I was about to call Luz.”

  “Yeah, smart! Call her and tell her I’m late sneaking to a guy’s house.”

  “Luz doesn’t care that we hang out.”

  “My dad doesn’t like it.”

  “Tell him to fuck off sometime. He wasn’t controlling you when he was in jail.” He pointed to the spotless table in the spotless kitchen in the spotless house. “Take a seat. I’m gonna have to warm the sauce up some and b
oil more spaghetti. It got cold. Or I can toss all this and make us sandwiches.”

  “Won’t you get in trouble if your dad sees me here?” She didn’t want to think about Burke getting lectured or grounded when she was already aiming to do so much harm.

  “I’ll tell him you came over for homework or something. Maybe I’ll survive. Maybe not.”

  “What?”

  “It was a joke.”

  Sofia didn’t sit down. One big, deep breath, then she did what she had to do. “I wasn’t even going to come here, but I thought you should know that when Dad and I move, we’re starting over. So don’t come to New York to visit me.” And because she started to feel really shitty and guilty, she hefted the stock pot of marinara sauce off the stove to take it to the garbage disposal. Yeah, it’d grown cold.

  “Why don’t you want me to visit?”

  “When I move, I don’t want to be friends with a stoner. Okay?”

  Burke reached for the pot. “Give me that. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Sofia tugged. She wouldn’t let go. “Screw you.”

  “You know what, Sofia? Screw you.” And Burke let the pot go, sending her stumbling back with lukewarm sauce sloshing over her.

  “The floor!” he growled. “The goddamn floor’s a mess.”

  The floor was what he cared about when she stood covered in spaghetti sauce?

  Burke whirled on her, tears in his beautiful gray eyes. “Get out of here, Sofia.”

  “No problem. You stay out of my life. I don’t want to see you ever again.” She pushed a hand into her pocket. It’d hurt to give him up when he was her best friend and she loved him. “Here. Take the iPod back. I don’t want it.”

  “Keep it. Now get the hell out.”

  Sofia couldn’t help it; she rested her head against him, then poked her nose into his shirt. Plaid flannel rolled to the elbows, and it held his scent. “I was on a transplant waiting list. It didn’t look good. I thought it’d hurt less for you if we weren’t friends when I died.”

  He laughed, and it was a rough, dark sound. “It didn’t hurt less, Sofia.”

  I love you.

  “I loved your drawings,” she said, editing her thought.

  “The drawings were shit.”

  “They were angry—” Demons. Fanged, dagger-clawed creatures. Death. “But they were yours. I always thought you were trying to say something with those sketches. And I thought you were morbid.”

  “Had a reason to be.”

  “Under all of that, you were a good guy, Burke.” When he didn’t say anything, she held him and let him hold her, and for the first time since her great-aunt’s funeral, Sofia caught a glimpse of her old friend.

  Turning his face toward hers, she kissed the man he’d become.

  CHAPTER 18

  The next time Burke got the idea to chastise someone for living in a fantasy, he’d start with himself. Part of him warned that what he had brewing with Sofia wasn’t real. But there were plenty of people crawling over one another to reinforce that warning.

  The night she was discharged from Community, he’d cooked dinner on his boat and taken her out on the water. It’d almost felt like absolution for the last time he attempted to fix her a meal, but in a bigger sense those hours were more about the here and now. Yesterday, before they took off to Salisbury for a country-and-western bar, they’d filled his truck and inside the gas station convenience store she’d lost a dozen quarters at the claw machine before charming him into giving it a shot. He’d hit his mark, grabbing a plush lobster that had to be more than thirty years old.

  They didn’t call it dating. They didn’t utter the word relationship. They just were.

  Burke and a few others stood back under the hot sun as Abram’s electrical guys wove wiring through the studs in the new framing. Sawdust dotted his sunglasses and he grabbed his work gloves from his back pocket to wipe the lenses.

  “It’s taking shape. Hannah finally believes it’s going to happen,” Abram said with pride, swinging up a Coors. “But I don’t know what I’m going to do to stop her from sneaking out here to look around. It’s dangerous.”

  “She’s excited,” Burke commented, recalling how Abram’s wife and her melon-shaped belly stalked the yard. She’d even been wearing a hard hat. Where she’d gotten one was beyond him. Goggles and work gloves were the extent of the men’s protective gear. “Shouldn’t she be busy? The picnic’s tomorrow.”

  Hot Dish was catering Eaves’s Fourth of July celebration and Burke knew that unless Hannah was in active labor, she’d be hands-on cooking at the restaurant tonight and on-site at Bellini Beach tomorrow.

  “She is—working too hard, in my opinion, but every time I broach the subject she wants to bite my head off. She’s on her feet too much. They’re more swollen than they ought to be, and now she won’t let me rub them because every time I start we end up having sex.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t need to know that.”

  Abram chuckled, then looked around to see who was in earshot. “Your girl Sofia’s partly to blame. She sold Hannah a pregnancy flick.”

  Burke tucked his gloves into his pocket. “What, you didn’t already have one in your garage stash?”

  “Very funny.” Abram lightly jabbed him on the shoulder. “So, I can’t help but point out you didn’t object when I called Sofia your girl.”

  “I’d call bullshit on him if he did,” said McGuinty, approaching with his arms folded. He’d shown up late today, having helped old Niall run a pet adoption event at the animal shelter. “One of the shelter volunteers works the graveyard shift at the hospital. The folks at the bank are talking about it, too. That’s all I oughtta say.”

  The bank? Managing money didn’t keep them occupied enough?

  Abram’s mouth dipped at the corners. “Hannah let me know she was laid up at Community. We visited her. Y’all wouldn’t believe the way those two dragged me to the nursery and then ignored me as soon as they started oohing and ahhing over the babies.” He looked from his brother to Burke. “So is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. It was a reaction to stress and her medication,” Burke said tightly, watching the electrical crew stomp across the scaffolds.

  “Glad to hear it. Now what’s the rest of the story?”

  “Burke brought her to the ER,” McGuinty said. “The way the folks at the bank told it, he and Sofia were both missing vital articles of clothing. Damn vital.”

  “Yeah, I was with her.” He glared at his friends through dark lenses. “I don’t owe you another word. Abram, you’re my sponsor, not my pastor. McGuinty, back off.”

  “Calm down,” McGuinty barked, and silence waved over the yard, broken only by the faint spray of the sprinkler system. “She’s a vortex. That’s what you need to remember.”

  She was his salvation. She’d loved him, even when she had sliced into him with brutal words the last time they were together at his father’s house. “McGuinty, I swear to God—”

  “While you’re constructing that pedestal to put her on, take one friggin’ minute to remember what happened the last time she cut you to the quick. Abram remembers. I remember. Grandpa does, too.” McGuinty shook his head. “Grandma cried when we brought you home beaten and half out of your mind.”

  “That was a long time ago. I apologized to Amy for letting her see me like that.”

  “It’s not about the fucking apology! Damn, it, Burke”—McGuinty grabbed his collar—“stop acting like a dick and listen to me.”

  Burke pushed him off and stalked him into the mudroom. “There’s a line. Don’t cross it.”

  “Christ, listen to yourself. You’re deaf to any proof that she can cost you everything you set up for yourself. Sofia’s sexy and funny and she can be sweet—yeah, I get that. But she blindsided you once. You cut off Courtney Abernathy, were trying to get sober, were doing it all for Sofia. Then what?”

  “I backslid. It wasn’t on her.”

  “Backslid? Man, you got stoned a
nd somebody beat your ass. Grandpa loaded Abram and me up to get you, because Deacon said fuck it and you had nowhere to stay.”

  The order of events was off—the beating had happened first, then he’d sloppily filled his system to assuage the pain—but what good would it do to correct McGuinty when the past couldn’t be changed and he was bent on proving a point?

  “You were confused, depressed, and it took a farmhouse full of people to get you right. The whole time you kept saying Sofia, again and again, like you had no control of your mind. It can happen again. Doesn’t matter one fucking iota how long you’ve been sober. It can all snap in a moment.”

  McGuinty Slattery was one of the roughest sons of bitches ever made, but he wasn’t a liar.

  Burke scratched his skin through his shirt. The sweat darkening the collar made him itch. Or maybe it was the pinprick of doubt that told him Sofia was as much a threat to his health as he was to hers. “It was a bad fight. She’d told me she was taking off with her father and not looking back. I couldn’t figure out what’d made her snap, aside from Finnegan being forced to uproot her. He couldn’t find work after he was collared.”

  Finnegan Mercer had been arrested for stealing money from Cape Foods when Sofia was sixteen. His months-long sentence for burglary and theft had imploded whatever stability she thought she had. It had rocked this sleepy town awake, that an upstanding bank manager and loving father could be revealed as a common bastard.

  Burke and Sofia had become friends when her father was in lockup and she’d come to live with Luz. Even after Finnegan’s release, she’d remained with Luz for a year, and she and Burke couldn’t be pried apart until she walked out of his life to make one for herself in New York.

  “Finnegan was responsible for his own shit. Just as you’re responsible for yours,” McGuinty said. “Sofia can’t protect your sobriety. The freedom to get out of this place when you need to is probably what’s holding you together, so make damn sure you know why you’re risking what’s important.”