I want to strangle him with the stupid gown tie at the back of his neck. But I also want to laugh, cry, and throw up. Maybe write I WILL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN across his forehead with the little red stars Sofia used to draw on her instruction board in the ICU room.
She pinches the bridge of her nose like she’s praying for strength.
“Ay, Nene. You could have broken your ribs.”
“But I didn’t,” he says proudly, raising his shirt to expose the scratches next to his healing skin. “I switched sides to avoid my road rash.”
She mutters in Spanish, like she did when we first met on her floor in this very same hospital.
“You could have died.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You totaled his bike, Nene!”
“Mas doesn’t care. We’re twins and need twin bikes. I wrecked mine, so we have to get new ones anyway.”
“Emilio.”
He looks at me. Looks straight into me in that way he sometimes does when all the crazy drops out of him for half a second, and he becomes the person who loves the hardest in any room.
“You two make sense. We make sense. We need you, and you need us. Don’t you see it? It’s clear as day, or maybe it’s so bright to me because I saw God when I hit the pavement. He told me I was right to do this. But you were both too scared to fix it. And somebody had to do something. So, I did something.”
“By crashing a motorcycle,” I deadpan, gripping the edge of the bed for the fear that’s now leaving me exhausted.
“I didn’t mean to crash it. I meant to ride heroically to my angel, beg her to come back, and then we’d all hug and cry and forgive each other. The mailbox came outta nowhere.”
Sofia glares. “Mailboxes do not come out of nowhere, Nene.”
“It MOVED! Like I saw it and I avoided it, but then it came out and bit me. See the slivers in my hand.”
He raises his hand and sure as shit, it’s covered in so many red and painful-looking bits of wood, it looks like he’s covered in pepper. She gasps and holds his hand closer to her face to inspect it. I step back, not wanting to see any more.
“Dios mio. What did you do?”
And right there in all this craziness, with my idiot twin splayed across another hospital bed and Sofia worried about him, I realize Emilio’s right. Not about the mailbox. Not about his lack of genius plan, but the heart of it.
We do make sense.
And when she looks at me, I don’t see space. I see warmth and annoyed humor.
“Did you show the nurse already?”
“Nah, why would I do that? My hand already hurts. She’s going to make it worse with her needle.” Em melts under her care. She could pick each one out, and he’d still howl and bitch the whole time. But he’d love that she’s the one taking care of him. She exchanges glances with me, knowing what needs to be done.
“I’ll go tell the nurse,” I say with a big sigh, which she nods at. I slip behind the curtain into the hallway to look for her.
“How’s our son? Does he miss me?” Em asks softly. I wait to see if she’ll answer. To see if she’s ready to commit to his nonsense.
“Yes, Nene,” She’s patronizing him, but I don’t think he cares. “He wants to know when he can swim with his stepdad in the pool.”
My heart squeezes, knowing she didn’t have to say that. Didn’t have to give him or me hope. But she does anyway because she means it.
“Knew it, Sof.”
CHAPTER 24
SOFIA
