“I love you, Marisa.”
She kissed my chest and her smile widened. “I love you too.” She said it like any other time the words had passed her lips.
I could let it pass. I could let it pass by like saying hi or bye to a friend, but I needed her to know. Tucking the hair behind her ear, I rubbed my thumb along the underside of her chin and held her gaze.
“Love you, love you. I love you, Marisa.”
She stiffened, staring back at me like this wasn’t inevitable. Like it wasn’t impossible not to.
“And I have all kinds of plans for us once I get back from Chicago and once I’m drafted. Plans that include you.”
Her lips parted, but no words came out. Instead, she burrowed deeper against my side and hugged herself tight to me.
All the ideas about what happened after graduation had been mine. She’d been focused on right now. But I needed her to know we weren’t over after graduation. What if her plans with me ended when we walked across that stage?
25
Marisa
LJ had been weird all day before he left. He’d professed his love for me, not we’ve-known-each-other love, but the kind that reached deep down into me and touched a scary place where future plans were made and expectations were set.
This was the no-man’s land I’d tried to stay away from all my life. The land mines set there had a way of blowing up huge. I’d wanted to tell him how much I loved him too, how I couldn’t wait for us to go through with all the crazy plans he kept throwing out there, but the words stalled in my throat.
We still needed to go slowly, and his life would be changing in ways he couldn’t imagine in the next three months. It was better to leave some things left unsaid, some protections still in place. It was better to have an escape hatch.
The whole day before he left, he was quiet. He’d talked to his mom early in the morning and had gone out for a walk. He didn’t even make fun of the sandwiches I’d made us for lunch. And he’d gone to bed early, which made sense.
His flight for Chicago had left at 5am, along with Berk, Keyton, Ron, and other guys from the team. But there hadn’t been any stolen kisses, touches, or even looks all day.
Worry wound deeper in my stomach. This whole time I’d been preparing myself for the end, but I wasn’t ready yet. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready. And it scared me. Shook me to my core how hard it would be to leave him or worse, watch him walk away.
The mid-day phone call while I’d been studying for finals hadn’t helped soothe my anxiety. A drive across the bridge sent my body into shoulder-tight, hands-clenched, lock-jaw stress mode. I parked in the hospital lot, breathing deeply before psyching myself up to go inside.
The pungent smell of antiseptic was miles away from the curation room in the museum. This wasn’t just clean. It was ‘pour a bucket of bleach on top of everything and scrub it down’ clean.
A stocky nurse who looked like she hadn’t left the hospital in days worked efficiently, looking up the information for my mom. “Your mom has been transferred to one of the clinic rooms. They should be finished with her brace. It was a clean break, so no surgery is needed. Room five down that hall.” She pointed behind her.
“Thank you.” It had taken two calls from the hospital to get me here. Part of me had been expecting the worst when I picked up. The worst part was, I didn’t know if I was relieved or not when they said she’d fallen and broken her leg.
Outside her room, I psyched myself up to go inside. I took deep breaths, but not so deep that the cleaning products burned my nose. Armor up. After almost two months without hearing from her, I had to remember and anticipate exactly how she’d needle her way under my skin.
It was already thinner than normal.
“My daughter will be here soon. Could you be a dear and see if the doctor might prescribe me some more meds before she gets here.”
“Ma’am—”
“Mom, I’m here.”
This gave the nurse enough time to escape to the door. “The doctor will be here with your discharge orders in a few minutes.”
She sat on the hospital bed looking like she’d been on her way to a night on the town. Or maybe she’d been coming home. “It’s about time you got here. I’ve been waiting forever.”
“What happened?”
“Stupid Eddie had to go home and see his wife, so I was home all by myself. I tried to get my hands on the spices in the cabinet by the stove.”
Spices—aka, the booze stash.
“I slipped and here I am.” Her hands shot out in a voila to her leg in the brace.
For a long time, I’d waited for a phone call to say she’d had an accident, hooked up with the wrong guy and ended up hurt, or done something else to end her run of luck when it came to booze and guys. Getting out of the hospital with nothing more than a bum leg was a minor miracle.
“Let’s get you home. Do you have food?”
“Of course, I have food.”
“Edible food?”
“You were always such a picky eater.”
Water off a duck’s back.
An orderly showed up with a wheel chair.
Despite all her grumbling and complaining, we got her into the chair. Her twenty-pound purse sat on her lap.
I picked up the rest of her things in the room and shoved them into her bag. “Ready to go?”
“Why are you rushing me? You have somewhere better to be?”
Anywhere. Literally anywhere.
I shouldn’t have come. When the hospital said I’d been listed as my mom’s emergency contact, I should’ve told them they had the wrong number.
Instead, whatever remnants of daughterly obligations existed in me were tapped into by the censure in the hospital worker’s voice when I’d asked about other ways she could get home.
My goal was simple. In and out.
“I’ve got to study. Midterms are coming up. LJ’s in Chicago for the combine today and I need to get home by three to watch it.”
“You barely stop by for Christmas, don’t even give me a call for New Year’s and now you’re rushing me out of the hospital.”
I’d avoided her almost all of winter break and hadn’t gotten even the hint that she wanted me to show up beyond a slurred call at 11pm on New Year’s Eve. I guess that boyfriend of hers with the kids wasn’t around anymore. Good for him.
I stopped by the nurse’s station for instructions on what to do next.
“The discharge papers are almost ready. You can wheel her out to the front of the hospital, pick up her prescriptions and then get your car and pick her up.”
“Does she need them?” Mixing alcohol and pills was never a good idea. “Some of her other medication…”
The nurse flipped through her chart. “She didn’t mention anything, but the prescription is for extra strength ibuprofen. The risk of interactions would be minimal, but I can double check, if you give me the names.”
“No, that’s fine. We’ll be okay.” Relief that she hadn’t been proscribed something stronger pushed some of the worries away. If she stepped up her addiction to real pills, the next call I got might not be so innocuous.