Drop Everything Now (16 page)

I told him my mac and cheese story, and he smiled as he ate. “It’s nice that we’re finally living a little better. Don’t you think?”

I laughed. “If you call this better.” His face fell, and instantly I knew how he had heard that. I stumbled to explain, to take away that look in his eyes. “I mean, I hadn’t really planned on this for my life, you know? Dr. Sullivan says she thinks she can get me back on track right on time for my fellowship, but I don’t believe her.”

Bryan chewed silently, probably longer than he needed to. “What do you mean? You can’t go back yet?”

“I don’t know. Mom’s home, but I don’t think she’s ready for me to go.”

“She’s not ready for you to go, or you’re not ready to leave her?”

There it was. The question that had been hanging in the air all around me, that had been whispering to me from my heart ever since they released Mom from the hospital. Did she
really
need me?

“I don’t know. I just don’t feel right leaving her yet.” That answer was a cop-out, and I knew it. Still, it was the only one I felt brave enough to give. Today, at least.

Bryan held my gaze for a long moment, like he was deciding whether I most needed him to challenge me or support me. “I have to admit, I’m kind of glad. I’m not ready for you to go either.”

A smile crept over my face, and I scooted around to face him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, of course. Life has been different since you’ve been here, Andi. I like myself better when you’re around. Do you know what I did with my free time before I met you?”

I really hadn’t ever thought about it, even though he told me he hadn’t been screwing random girls, and I believed that. “No,” I said softly. My belly quivered in anticipation of his answer.

“I went to work. I came home. I slept. I took a continuing real estate license course here or there. I dealt with Chris every few months. I talked to my mom on the phone sometimes, but she lives, like, thirty minutes north and is always busy with work, so I never saw her too often. Sometimes Cara and Rob dragged me out with them, but they always ended up practically fucking on the table and I felt stupid. My life was shit before you got here is what I’m saying.”

“Well, then,” I said, trying to start my lungs breathing again. “I’m glad I’m here. If only for that reason. I mean, if you really hate working at the Kitten, if you have that real estate certification, why don’t you use it?”

He shrugged. “Simple. No money in it.”

“The market here is that bad, huh? Because I know back in Philly, the housing market was just starting to get better again. Lots of my friends went into realty and were doing pretty well.” Unlike every other time I’d said something that signified attraction or commitment, this one was fully intentional. The realization that I wanted him with me, even when I left Vegas, had hit me like a ton of bricks. I actually wanted it more than anything, more than I’d wanted almost anything else in my life.

Now he was smiling, looking at me with wonderment. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

I shrugged. “Why not? What are you doing here?”

He sighed and stared into his empty bowl. “Chris,” he said simply.

I wanted to tell him to ditch Chris and not to worry about his mom because she could handle herself, but I knew I would gut-punch anyone who said the same thing to me. It was none of my damn business, no matter how much I wanted him in my life for good.

I blew out a long breath. “Well, why don’t you show me what you were really doing with all your free time before you met me?”

He laughed. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” I said, “no guy spends all his time working and sleeping. So it had to be either Internet porn or something more noble.”

“Hmm,” he said, mock-stroking his chin. “I have to think about this. Will you see me as less of a guy if there wasn’t a little bit of Internet porn?”

I laughed. “There had to be a little bit. With the bedroom moves you’ve got, that’s a given.”

“What’s it gonna take to stop you talking like that? Because it’s making me crazy,” he said. The grind to his voice told me exactly how crazy I was making him, and while I liked it, I didn’t want to hurt him.

“You have to tell me. The truth.”

“Fine,” he said, leaning in and speaking in a whisper. “Two things: video games and books.”

I sat back and cocked my head, nodding appreciatively. “The books I could have guessed. The video games are a pleasant surprise.”

“Seriously? And seriously?”

“Yes. You’re smart. You read the classics, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “Well, sort of. Dickens and then some H.G. Wells and George Orwell.”

“Nice. And games. What do you have? And where do you have them?”

“All in the cabinet underneath the TV,” he said, shaking his head with a smile. “Please, Andi Herrera, don’t tell me you play.”

“I do.” The truth was I’d been a gamer geek in high school. I’d been a total introvert, and playing the same game over and over because we hadn’t been able to afford another one had made me an expert.

I’d carried that appreciation for gamer guys into college. The only problem with guys who played video games in college was that they tended to be lazy, gross douchebags who seemed to
only
play video games.

I rummaged through the cabinet. “You know,” I said, “I don’t have much here to begin with, so you don’t know how big of a slob I am. But back home, my stuff is everywhere. I have like four games I play all the time:
Halo, Mass Effect, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed.
I’ve played them so many times it’s like my stress relief. I like the predictable. I like patterns. I like knowing what’s going to come next. But I’m also good at it,” I said, pulling out the controllers and tossing him one, “and that’s why I’m going to kick your ass.”

He laughed, starting to punch the buttons. “Oh, is that right?”

“That’s right,” I said.

I cleaned up our plates and bowls without a word. “I have a few hours before Mom’s done with therapy,” I said. “Bring it on.”

For the next ten minutes, we fell into a pattern of trash talk so comfortable that I wondered how we hadn’t spent more time together not having sex. Even I had to admit how ridiculous that was. Our schedules clashed so often, and in the few hours a week we had been able to grab together, we’d been so desperate to get into each other’s pants that there really was no other option.

“This is nice,” I said.

“Yeah, nice how I just totally toasted your ass,” Bryan said, throwing down his controller and tossing both arms up into the air. It must have been the look on my face that made him realize how serious I was. “You mean, just hanging out?”

I nodded.

“It really is,” he agreed.

We played quietly for a few more minutes before the game was done. “Wanna switch?” I asked, and he nodded.

“You said that you played games back home,” he said.

“Yeah?” I said, sliding a new disc into the player.

“I thought this was home. You’re from Vegas.”

“Oh, yeah, but Philly is home now. You know, I was there for three-and-a-half years. I figured out what I want to do with my life there.. It suits me.”

“So you really want to be there, huh?”

“There’s just something about it. I mean, besides my school and my job, it’s the city, the weather, the food. Everything.”

“Tell me about it,” he said when I sat back down and grabbed my controller again.

“Well, first of all, there are the cheesesteaks. Oh, man.” For the next half hour, I described all the food I loved in Philly, from cheesesteaks to Bassett’s Ice Cream to Morimoto’s sushi.

“So they actually put Cheez Whiz on perfectly good meat?” Bryan asked, shaking his head.

“Uh, yeah, they do. And it makes the good meat even better,” I said, shooting Bryan’s zombie in the head on his final life. “Aha!” I shouted, wiggling my butt and waving my arms around.“Now who’s the video game geek?”

“You know,” he said, clicking off the TV and motioning for me to cuddle up next to him, “I didn’t think it was possible for you to do anything sexier than—well—what you’ve been doing to me. But shooting me in the face in an explosion of black guts? That wins everything.”

“Mmm,” I said as I snuggled into him. “You’re right. Nothing sexier. I won’t kiss you,” I mumbled into his neck. “Even though I want to. How many days till you’re all better?”

“The doctor said a week. Maybe five days.”

“And this is day two?” I groaned.

He smiled. “Yeah, I’m counting too, baby.”

“It’s a damn good thing for me that it’s time for me to go see Mom. I’ll be back for dinner, okay?”

Bryan made a sound of slight protest but let me out of his bear hug so I could get my shoes back on, bring him some ibuprofen, and set him up with streaming movies. I pointed my finger at him. “Nothing too sexy,” I admonished.

“Okay,” he laughed. “Cartoons it is, doc.”

I blew him a kiss and wiggled my ass on the way out the door.

Chapter 20

Bryan
let me borrow the keys to his truck, and barreling down I-15 felt so damn good. Driving at all felt good. I’d taken SEPTA almost everywhere for the last three-and-a-half years and only had Mom’s dinky used sedan for my high school car. I rolled down the windows and breathed in the fresh air as it blew hard against my face. I didn’t know what it was about the last 24 hours, but something felt like it had changed. Something big.

If only I could put my finger on what it was.

I pulled into the parking lot at Mom and Mike’s house and sighed, trying to fix my windswept hair as I climbed the stairs, taking every other one.

“Come in!” Mom’s voice called when I knocked on the door, and if I didn’t know better, I would have sworn it sounded different. Lighter, maybe. More nuanced. I counted the days on my fingers and realized that, with all the shit that had gone on, I hadn’t actually talked to Mom in almost four days. This was a change.

I ducked into the house, automatically looking for Mike in his usual spot, perched on a kitchen bar stool reading the newspaper. But instead, he sat behind an open paper on the couch, while Mom watched the soap opera she’d always loved.

“Andrea,” she said, smiling. “I’m catching up on
Sunsets and Sand Dunes
. Mike left the DVR settings the same while I was in the hospital, so I have seven weeks to catch up on.”

I laughed. “Yeah, seven weeks plus six years.” Mom had always worked four twelve-hour days a week, leaving the rest of her time free to catch up on household stuff and watching her soaps. Since the DVR became mainstream, it had been easier for her to catch up in the wee hours of the morning while she wound down from a shift or at other odd times of the day.

“Six years was easy enough to fix.” Mike’s mouth twitched up in a half-smile. “She refused to throw away those old soap magazines, so I hauled them out.”

“Hey, don’t diminish your role in this!” she said, smiling. “Mike’s been filling me in on some of the things I missed, too.” She shook her head. “Plastic surgery is such a miracle. Look, Anneliese looks even younger than I remember her.”

I laughed and bent down to kiss Mom’s head. “That’s true. It’s good to see you happy, Mamá.”

“What about you? How’s that job going? And school?”

“I’ll catch you up on me as soon as I catch up on you,” I smiled. “I’m going to talk to Carol.”

Carol was in the bedroom, changing Mom’s sheets. I smiled as I walked in, and she stretched out an arm to give me a hug.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked as she kissed me on the cheek.

“Oh, I’m just feeling a little out of it. I’m starting a new study at the hospital. I love being at a research hospital—great opportunities to add to my resume—but sometimes it’s hard to keep up with them all.”

“What’s this one?”

“Addiction research. Twenty-five- to twenty-eight-year-olds who have progressive addiction. You know, porn addiction leading to sex addiction or mild drugs to harder ones. There’s a theory about their brain development, and one of our PhD students is trying a new course of treatment in addition to the typical rehab. Fully state funded, too, so it’s free for participants. I get a nice bump in pay for the hours I’m there taking vitals and hooking up sensors for the testing, but the addition to my schedule is exhausting.” She looked up at me as I crossed to the other side of the bed to start pulling cases over pillows. “How are
you
? You look tired.”

“Oh, yeah. Just…a lot going on.”

She looked at me like she wanted to ask me more but was holding herself back. “Did you see your mom in there?”

I nodded. “She looks good. Looking better every day.”

“Mmm,” Carol said, snapping a flat sheet over the bed and letting it fall down in a perfect wrinkle-free surface. “I’d say she looks ninety-five percent better, wouldn’t you?”

“Not really. She still didn’t remember you, did she?”

“Not like she used to know me, no, but she’s getting to know me again. Becoming one of my best friends again. We even had coffee two nights ago.”

“You didn’t tell me that.” Not that it made a difference. Having coffee with someone didn’t mean you were doing okay. I would know.

Carol shrugged. “I didn’t think it mattered, but now, I kind of think it does.”

“What do you mean?”

“In every picture your mom showed me of you at school, you looked happy. She told me how much you loved your job. She was so proud that you were following in her footsteps in the medical field. And now you’re stuck here being a cocktail waitress? It’s not good, Andrea.”

“Well, I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do,” I said. “And she would do it for me.”

“Well…” Carol started.

“Speaking of Mom, I’m going to go talk with her. She doing well medically?”

Carol closed her eyes and nodded. “Yep. Better every day.”

Just as I was about to leave the room, she said, “I’m going back to my normal life, Andi. I haven’t pulled extra shifts to spend the day with your mom in a long time. You should go back to yours, too. She’ll always need you, but she needs to know you’re okay in order for her to feel good. She knows what you’re giving up to be here with her.”

“You told her?”

“She had to find out sometime. Dr. Ernest even cleared it.”

Instantly, my heart started racing, and my whole body went hot. “You told her I’m at Drexel?” I’d dropped in the mention of some classes here and there to prepare her for the time when she’d find out I lived all the way across the country, but I didn’t think that time was now. I didn’t think she was ready.

Most of all, I knew I wasn’t ready. I just didn’t want think about why.

I went back to the living room and slumped down in the armchair beside Mom, trying to shake my bad mood. She paused the DVR and put a hand over mine. “So, querida. Tell me things.”

I tried to think of something safe. “I sort of have a boyfriend.”

“Ah, that’s what you’ve been doing these hours I haven’t seen you.”

Guilt tightened my chest. “Well, no, mostly I’ve been working, but I see him once in a while.” I cringed inwardly thinking of all the times I could have been with Mom that I had been with Bryan instead.

“You’re being silly. You never had a boyfriend in high school. This makes me happy.” She paused and waggled her eyebrows, a hilarious expression that I hadn’t seen since the accident. The relief of seeing a little bit of the old Mom brought tears to my eyes.

“I’d be happier if I could meet him,” she added.

I laughed. “It’s pretty new. But sometime soon.”

She nodded, smiling. “And your classes?”

“Going okay. I’m going to have to take one more semester than I thought maybe.” At that thought, that hard realization, my face fell. I scrolled through my phone. Week nine was the last week I could come back to those two classes and pass with a D, my professors had said. The Tuesday of week nine, to be exact. I grabbed for my phone, scrolling through the calendar and doing some calculations. This was the beginning of week eight.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

I had six days to get back to Philly and stay there for the next two months, or I wouldn’t pass those classes. I wouldn’t graduate, and I wouldn’t be able to start my fellowship.

I looked to the side and muttered “shit” one more time for good measure, blinking hard to hold back the inevitable flood of tears. How had I let time get away from me? Did it even matter? I was here doing what I had to do. That was what I always did.

I just never thought it would ruin my life so much.

“What’s wrong, Andi?” Mom said, her face twisted. I knew she was feeling my pain, and that made me feel even worse.

Then I figured, what the hell? There was nothing I could do now. I’d just tell Mom, and she’d comfort me and tell me I could start again next year. Which, of course, I could. This wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t.

“Well, Mamá, Carol says she told you I go to school in Philadelphia.”

She took in a deep breath and pressed her lips into a hard line, nodding. “She did. And it makes perfect sense. You never liked it here. You always loved the idea of going out to the East Coast.”

She was right. As a teenager, I had papered my room with posters of New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia, obsessed with the history and old buildings and culture that was so very different from the one in Vegas.

“So that means you’re taking a very long leave from your classes, then, hmm?”

“Yeah, and I’m running into some trouble. Not trouble trouble, but I’ll have to retake some of them.”

“But…you’re twenty-two,” she said, her eyebrows furrowing.

“Yes.”

“That means you’re a senior. A graduating senior.”

“Yes, Mamá,” I said softly. “But I’ll work it out. Don’t worry. What I care about,” I said before she was able to interrupt again, “is how you’re feeling.”

“I’m doing well.” She glanced over at Mike. “It’s good to be home. I see what he’s been saying about how much I used to like him. He’s very good company.” She smiled softly, and Mike’s mouth twitched up a bit before he went back to reading.

Yeah, she was so not ready for me to leave. It was clear that Mike was still a stranger. What if they got in a fight or she forgot something that he thought she remembered? Would she freak out? She didn’t really remember Carol either.

No, Mom was not ready for me to leave. Not at all.

But even as I thought it, a little voice in my head told me how ridiculous I was being. Mom was fine, doing as well as anyone could expect. I just hadn’t been able to—or hadn’t
wanted
to—see it until now.

“Yeah, he’s cool,” I said, standing up and bending down to squeeze her shoulders and kiss her cheek. “How are you feeling?” I asked Mike.

“The walking cast feels good finally,” he said. “Even though the itching is starting to kill me.”

I nodded knowingly. I’d seen kids whose flaking skin inside their casts had driven them nuts. “If you get one of those slap bracelets,” I said, “you can straighten it out and give it a good scratch. But not too much or you’ll damage the skin.”

“Damn, that’s a good idea. I’ve been using a ruler, and it hurts like hell.”

“See, I told you that was a horrible idea,” Mom said, laughing. “I bet you’re all scratched up under there.”

I shook my head. I had to admit this felt a lot like the Mom and Mike I had left. “Okay, I’m going to leave you two before I do any more damage.”

“Let me walk you out,” Mike said, jumping to his feet. “I don’t like the look of some of the kids I’ve seen wandering around out there.”

I gave him a funny look. I hadn’t seen anyone out there when I’d come in, but he had already hobbled most of the way to the door.

When we were out on the balcony, Mike let the door shut gently behind us. “It’s rough that you won’t pass those classes,” he said, leaning against the railing.

“There are worse things,” I said. The truth was, I couldn’t think of many worse things, but he didn’t need to know that, especially because there was nothing he could do. I had to give the guy that—he was doing the best he could.

“Listen, Andrea. I do appreciate you being here. And I know your mom appreciates it, too.”

I raised my eyebrow, feeling myself go on the defensive. “But?”

“But I think if you want to go back to school—or if you need to because clearly that’s the case—it’s okay if you do.”

“But she still doesn’t even remember you!” Even as I said it, I knew it was exactly the same argument I’d made to Carol, and I knew that he’d counter it in exactly the same way.

Mike shrugged and blushed a little. “I know she freaked out the first few times we told her who I was. It was partly because it’s scary to be told you’re married to a guy you don’t recognize and partly because she was in pain and confused in general. But these last few weeks have been phenomenal. We’re getting to be friends. She’ll never remember the way things were, but I think we’ll be able to form a new relationship eventually. Think we’ve already started.”

“But you don’t know… I mean…” I couldn’t come up with anything intelligent to say, but the look on his face said it all. He was completely confident in every word.

He
did
know.

He took a deep breath. “I believe in this relationship, Andi. I know we’ve never been close, you and I, but when I met your mom, I just knew. I knew that, no matter what, we were meant to be together. Something like a car accident and amnesia can’t change that. We fell in love once, and we can do it again.”

I scoffed—a gesture which obviously hurt Mike’s feelings—but inside, I felt a shift. Like, somehow, these past few months and my experience with Bryan and the trouble with my classes and what I’d seen in their house today added up to him being right.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying go back home. She loves you more than anything in this world. You two talked on the phone every day when you were in school there, and you can still do that. You can video chat, you can watch her soaps together—anything you want. I’ll help. But I know one more thing for sure: If you’re miserable, she’ll never get better.”

Without warning, a sob hiccupped through my belly. Why the hell was this guy I barely knew so right about my life? It was infuriating. “I’ll call tonight, okay?”

“Andrea, don’t leave like this. Just think about it. Okay?”

The same goddamn thing Carol had said to me. I nodded because I knew if I said a word I’d start to cry. I also knew how childish I was being. My entire existence for the last two months had been defined by this sacrifice I’d been making for mom, and Mike had just told me that I really didn’t have to be making it.

Suddenly realizing that Mom didn’t need me as much as I thought she did was its own special kind of devastating.

Everything in me wanted to run away, to find comfort somewhere. And I knew exactly where I wanted to find it.

I pulled out of the parking lot and barreled back down the highway in Bryan’s huge truck, thanking God and everything holy that it was only a ten-minute drive from Mom and Mike’s place to the extended-stay hotel. Eventually my gasping breaths and trying to hold down hiccups didn’t work anymore, and the tears started to roll down my cheeks.