“You think she’s going to be pissed when she shows up?” I ask with a slight chuckle, imagining how fucking cute she looks when she’s angry, her pretty face all pinched and her delicate hands resting on her hips.
“I mean, I don’t think she’s going to be running into your arms in slow motion, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Rachael rolls her eyes. “But all we need is for her to come on and hear you out. Cooper’s prepared to lock the door if I say the magic word and Calla’s going to hide her car keys if it comes to that.”
Shaking my head, I smirk. I know she’s just trying to lighten the mood and take the edge off a bit, but all I keep thinking about is the way she looked at me the other morning at the restaurant and the way that everything I said at the hospital seemed to go in one ear and out the other, like she wasn’t even listening.
If she doesn’t want to hear me out, if she’s so convinced I quit talking to her on purpose, then I can’t change that.
But it won’t stop me from trying.
“Mom, she’s here!” Rachael’s son shouts from the front window.
“Okay, okay. I heard you. Now take your sisters and go back to your room for a bit,” she says, brushing her fingers through his wavy blond hair. “And only come out if you hear me shout the magic word.”
Cooper nods and takes his sisters by their little hands, leading them down a hallway. It’s only now, in the stifling quiet, that I realize my heart’s beating like a kick drum in my chest and my palms are sweating up a storm.
I’ve never been so fucking nervous in my life, but I swallow it down. I stuff it down where I can’t see it or feel it or hear it anymore, because I have to get her back. I have to prove to her that I care about her more than I’ve ever cared about anyone in my life, and I can’t do that if I’m a bumbling mess bracing myself for the worst.
The doorbell chimes and Rachael strides across the room. Maritza’s shadow moves on the other side of the opaque glass door.
“Don’t hate me,” Rachael says when she answers.
“Where’s Coop?” Maritza asks, stepping in. “And why would I hate you? You had an emergency.”
Her eyes scan the empty house until they land on me and her smile fades like it was never there at all.
“What is this …?” she asks, pointing to me. “Why is he here?”
“You two need to talk,” Rachael says, placing her hand on the small of Maritza’s back and all but shoving her toward me. “I think you should hear him out, Ritz.”
She stands before me, eyes searching mine and feet frozen. Her lips part, as if she’s about to say something, but then she stops.
Rachael glances at the two of us before drawing in a deep breath. “All right. I’ll be out back with the kids if you need me for any reason, babe.”
As soon as we’re alone, Maritza folds her arms across her chest, eyes narrowing, and I pat the seat beside me on the sofa.
“I’m fine standing, but thank you,” she says.
I roll my eyes, patting the seat a little harder. She still won’t budge.
“Fine,” I say. “Suit yourself.”
“So?” she asks, eyes traveling to the cardboard box beside me. “What did you need to say so badly that you had to involve my best friend and force her to lie to me?”
I lift a palm. “Nobody forced anybody to do anything. This was all her idea, actually. Having you come here.”
She lifts her brows, fighting a smirk. “Fair enough. I can believe that.”
Placing the box in my lap, I reach in and retrieve the first item: a photo from earlier this year from Madame Tussaud’s, where she’s standing next to Miley Cyrus’ wax likeness, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth.
“Why did you print this?” she asks, examining the singed edges.
“I took it with me over there.”
“You had this printed before you left?” she asks.
“CVS one-hour photo.”
“Why’s it burnt?”
“It was on my right side, resting in an interior pocket, when the first explosion happened,” I say. “Fire and shrapnel mostly hit my left side. I’m convinced you were my lucky charm that day.”
Her mouth turns up at one side, though every other part of her is still trying to pretend she’s still angry with me; her intense stare, her rigid posture and crossed arms.
“I kept it with me from hospital to hospital while I recovered.” I drink her in, studying the way her features soften, like she doesn’t want to hate me anymore. “Made all the nurses hang it up in my room each time they moved me.”
Maritza steps closer, finally taking a seat next to me. Drawing in a long breath, she rests her eyes in mine.
“I had no idea you were hurt.” Her voice is softer now.
Lips pressed flat, I reach for the top button of my shirt and begin to unfasten it, then the next and the next. When I’m finished, I pull the left side down my arm and show her the burned, scarred mess of skin that trails all along my left side and stops at the base of my shoulder.
“Does it hurt?” she asks.
I nod. “It hurt like hell at first. They had me in a coma for a couple of weeks after it first happened. When I woke up, I was in so much pain I’d pray every night for God to just let me die, but I think it was the drugs talking. Doctors said had the burns traveled to the other half of my torso, I wouldn’t be here today.”
I don’t even touch on the fact that I almost lost a leg from the hip down. That’ll be a story for another day.
Her chest rises and falls slowly and she studies the marks that cover my flesh.
“I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to write you letters,” I say. “I lost your address. I didn’t have your number memorized. There was no way for me to reach you, Maritza, and the idea of you thinking I’d written you off fucking killed me.”
Maritza’s eyes flick to the floor, focusing on the hardwood beneath our feet. “There were so many times I had this feeling … this gut feeling that something happened to you and that that was why I hadn’t heard from you. I believed that for so long. And then when I met your brother, he said you weren’t hurt and that you’d been home for a while.”
“Of course he did. That’s what he does—he lies.”
She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry. If you had any idea what a rollercoaster these last six months have been for me … all the nights I stayed up worrying about you, wondering where you went and what happened …”
I slip my shirt back over my arm before taking her hands between mine. “I can only imagine. And I hate that I put you through that.”
“When I got back, Ma had left the guest room exactly the way it was when I’d left,” I tell her, “and I found these sitting on the nightstand.”
Reaching into the box, I retrieve a couple of small items.
“The receipt from our sushi lunch where I accidentally Back-to-the-Future’d your future children,” I say. She chuckles, taking the thin slip of paper from my hands. “And the ticket stub from the tar pits, where I kissed you in front of a woolly mammoth.”
“Why’d you hold on to these?” she asks.