Some of his teeth showed through a warm, genuine smile. “She’s the best friend I’ve ever had. Not that I’ve had many. It was me, her, and my mom against the world for the longest time.”
“What about now?”
“Hm?”
“You said for the longest time. Why not now?”
“Oh.” His nose and eyebrows scrunched together. “My mom is dead. So it’s just Willow and me.”
“I’m sorry you lost her.”
Shoving his now-empty plate away, he rubbed a hand over his stomach. “It was for the best. Dying was the easiest thing she’d ever had to do.”
My eyebrows shot up at the morbidity of his statement. He said it with pure conviction as if he truly believed that deep in his heart. “How did she pass? If I can ask.”
His responding laugh had me jolting. My knee hit the underside of the table, almost knocking my glass over. He hunched over, covering his mouth with his hand.
“Sorry,” Crew mumbled behind his palm. “It’s been a long time since someone’s asked me that. The last person I told was one of Mom’s old coworkers from the gas station. When I told her, she turned her face up and said, ‘Well, that’s certainly not what I was expectin’,’and then told me that everything happens for a reason.” He made a show ofmocking the woman he was talking about, his voice a squeaky pitch with a thick, Southern accent.
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what I could say. I let Crew take his time, hoping he’d take my silence as an invitation to continue.
He cleared his throat, sitting back in his seat, appearing to have collected himself. “Lung cancer. The real quick, terrible kind nobody prepares you for.”
“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.” The moment I said it, something flashed across Crew’s face. Something agonizing I knew he wouldn’t tell me about.
He grabbed our dishes, strolling towards the kitchen sink. “Sure,” he spoke, his back turned to me. “I loved my mom. Her life was hard, and I sure as shit didn’t make it any easier. We did our best to make it through. I always knew she’d die young, but no one expected her smoking to be what did her in. I also thought I had a bit more time to be an adult with her. Never thought I’d turn eighteen and immediately have a funeral to attend.”
The sadness in his voice almost broke me. I wanted to pull him into my arms and absorb every ounce of pain from him while I whispered that everything would be okay.
But I couldn’t, so I came up behind him while he busied himself with the plates. “Let’s sit on the sofa. The dishes can wait.”
He slowly lowered the plate, nodding before wiping his hands and following me into the living room. We mirrored our position from the night before, facing each other as we sank into the cushions like we were part of them. Though I wouldn’t admit it out loud in fear of him running, I’d missed Crew’s touch, and having our knees touching was mildly calming the need.
“She drank a lot and had some shitty boyfriends. That’s why everyone back home was so surprised. They assumed it’d be her liver or a man that got her.”
I frowned. “Did they hurt her?”
“I think so. She’d never admit it to me, though.”
“Did they hurt you?”
He shook his head. “Nah, none of ’em paid me much attention. They’d fight with Mom a lot, tons of yelling, but the moment they asmuch as looked at me wrong, Mom would kick ’em to the curb. She tried to protect me as much as possible.”
Relief settled in my gut, a warm, calm fuel to the fire usually brewing there. “Good.” I sighed. “That’s good.”
“She was the best mom I could’ve asked for. I tried to keep things pretty stress-free for her, but I inherited her stubbornness.” The smile he gave was broken, and I could tell it wasn’t genuine. “She didn’t tell me she was sick until it was too late. I knew she wasn’t doing so hot, but I didn’t think it was cancer, for Christ’s sake. When she told me she wasn’t getting treatment, I got it. She was ready. She’d fought long enough.”
I placed a comforting hand on his leg, wishing I could pull him into me and squeeze him tight. If I did, I knew time would stop for us. The clocks would keep ticking, but I’d force the universe around us to come to a screeching halt and let me fucking hold him until I couldn’t anymore.
Fuck, I’d grow old and die with him in my arms, only to curse God for cutting me off short.
“What are your parents like?” Crew broke the admittedly awkward silence.
I wasn’t sure how much to tell him. Whatever I said would either be too much or too little, and I wasn’t sure which way to go. “I haven’t spoken to them in years. My dad was an addict, and my mom was the opposite of yours. She was willing to let me go in favor of him, so that was that.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” I chuckled. “My childhood was messy, to say the least.”
