By maybe, she means OHHELLFUCKYES.
Chapter 26: Ben
“Hey, Jack,” I said, shutting the Jeep door behind me. “Thanks again for watching the puppies.”
He jogged down the porch steps to greet me. “No problem. I’m sure they’ll be happy to spend some time with their older cousins.”
I heard a bark and turned to see Fred and Sam’s faces appear and disappear in one of the front windows as they jumped up and down trying to look outside.
“Is Ella here?” I asked, unable to keep the hope from my voice. Her truck wasn’t in the driveway, but he could have picked her up, or she could have gotten dropped off for some reason. Over a month and a half had gone by since she’d walked out my door, and the thought of her sitting in Jack’s living room right now made me want to sprint past the man and rush inside.
Jack shook his head. “She’s down in Boston for a few days, staying with Megan and Stacey.”
My brief flash of hope was drowned by a tidal wave of disappointment. “Oh. How’s she doing?”
“The truth?” Jack asked.
I nodded, stomach knotting.
Jack sighed. “I haven’t seen her this torn up since the year both her grandfather and Renee passed.”
I took a deep breath and held it, counting to ten. I did this a lot lately. Both Brian and Christina – my new behavioral therapist – had recommended I start employing this exercise more often. We’d dropped my dosage down last week, and feelings were becoming sharper again, and at times, more painful. These ten seconds gave me a chance to pause and adjust to whichever emotion I struggled with. Hearing that Ella was so upset felt sharp enough to cut. Ten seconds weren’t nearly enough.
“So, where are you off to?” Jack asked.
I latched onto the subject change like a lifeline. “D.C. There’s a doctor down there that might have found a way to treat CTE. Or at least pause the degenerative process of it. Our foundation and a few other organizations are going to fund the next phase of trials, and I’m offering myself up as a guinea pig.”
He frowned. “It safe?”
“Pretty safe,” I said. “The medications don’t interact negatively with the ones I’m already on, and they have minimal side effects, considering the fact that they’re leukemia drugs.”
“Just be careful,” Jack said. “Renee ended up on the extreme reaction side of one of her cancer medications, and we almost lost her before she even had a chance to fight.”
“I will,” I told him.
He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I really hope it all works out for you, Ben. Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ll be back, Friday?” he asked, releasing me.
I nodded.
“So will Ella,” he said. A small smile played over his lips.
“Thanks for letting me know,” I told him, even though I wasn’t quite sure if I was grateful for this knowledge or not. It made me want to do something about it, and though today definitely highlighted how much I wanted to see her, I had no idea if she was ready to see me. And if she was, would it only be so that she could tell me it was over?
Is it over?
That thought had been fucking killing me the past two weeks.
I turned away from Jack and opened the rear door of the Jeep. Boots and Doodle were big enough now that they could jump down from it on their own. They were growing so quickly, both in size and in personality. Boots was Trouble with a capital T. He constantly got into things he shouldn’t. I was beginning to suspect that Doodle had been egging him on somehow, because whenever I caught Boots in the act, his brother was always nearby, sitting innocently aside with a look on his little face like, “I didn’t do anything, Dad. Boots did it.”
“Make sure your trash can is bungeed to something,” I warned Jack.
He laughed. “Boots still knocking yours over?”
“Every chance he gets. He doesn’t even eat anything out of it. I think he just likes to see garbage spilled all over the kitchen floor.”
