And then I felt like shit.
“Megan?” Marlo said gently, shaking me out of the calendar dancing before my eyes.
“Sorry. It was just about a year ago. A year ago this coming week, actually,” I said. “On the fifteenth.”
“Okay,” Marlo said. It looked like she was about to move on to Logan, but something in the way I sat back in my chair had her gaze returning to me. “Would you like to add more?”
The words shockingly spilled out of me, as if I’d been bottling them up, though I knew I hadn’t. I’d walked into this meeting room with no thoughts prepared at all. “I said I was a freshman, and that’s true. But I actually started at Bribury last year and then got word about my mom and went back home to Nebraska. I had planned to come back, after the funeral, but then my younger siblings were still adjusting, and my dad was kind of a mess, and I’d already missed over a month of classes, so I stayed home for the year.”
Logan’s hand next to me clenched, and I hoped what I’d said hadn’t triggered something about his own journey. He stopped looking at me, and I risked a glance at him. He was staring at his feet, and his brow was furrowed, like he was just now figuring something out.
He had been devastatingly hot the other night, when he was in fun party/possible hookup mode. But seeing him in a more sedated and thoughtful state, the hotness factor ratcheted up by a thousand.
Was it wrong to think he was majorly sexy in this setting?
Maybe. But he definitely was.
Marlo nodded at my verbal spill, which I thought was over, but she made no move to shift her attention onto Logan, and I found myself continuing. “So, I don’t even know if I should be in this study. If you want people”—I waved my hand toward Paige and Bailey—“who are… I don’t know…fresherin their grief? But it was a bargaining chip to use with my father to come back this year, so…”
“A few things there to address,” Marlo said. “First, a year is still… I won’t use your term offresh, but for the purposes of this study, it easily falls in the parameters. Second, oftentimes mourning is harder in the second year, for many reasons. And we’ll get into that as the semester unfolds.”
Harderin the second year?Shit.
“And lastly, Megan brings up a point I’d like to ask you all about. You all signed up for this study. And I’m assuming motivation was mixed with wanting the credits and also wanting help with your own grief. But can I ask for a show of hands on who of you are in this study for a reason like Megan? In that you’re placating someone, or it was a condition of some sort?”
My hand went up—I’d already outed myself anyway. Slowly, Logan raised his hand, only bending it at the elbow still resting on his chair, not high in the air. The guy closest to Marlo raised his, as did Paige. “I wouldn’t say condition, but strongly encouraged,” she said. Then she looked at me with understanding. “By my parents.”
We did a weird nod at each other over well-meaning, but probably a bit meddling, parents. Or parent, in my case. Singular. A bond we felt but did not want to have.
Logan’s hand up led Marlo to move from me and onto him. “And you? Give us the same details, but if you’d be willing to share why you’re here, that’d be great.”
I actually heard him swallow. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who should keep my water bottle close during this class.
“I’m Logan. Sophomore. Accounting major, or will be. Probably. Still working that out,” he said. There were some soft noises of “I hear that” camaraderie.
“And who did you lose, Logan?” Marlo asked.
“My older brother died over the summer. He had leukemia when we were kids. And we thought he’d beaten it. Hehadbeaten it.”
Marlo waited. We all waited. We obviously knew how the story ended, but it needed to be said.
“And then it came back,” he said softly. I wondered if Marlo and the others on that side of our small configuration could even hear him, he was so quiet.
“It came back,” Marlo echoed a little louder.
Logan nodded and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his thighs and dangling his hands between his spread legs. “Yeah. Last fall. He played hockey here too, but had to leave to get treatment. We’re from Minnesota, so he went home because we’re not too far from the Mayo Clinic.”
“But the treatment didn’t work this time,” Marlo said, and Logan only shook his head, not looking up. “If I remember correctly, the recurrence rate of some forms of leukemia is somewhere around…”
“Fifteen to twenty percent for ALL, which is what he had,” Logan finished while Marlo nodded. “Seemed like good odds at the time. But no.”
“And, Logan, you raised your hand when I asked about being encouraged to take this class, do—”
Logan’s snort interrupted Marlo. “Sorry. Yeah.Encouragedisn’t exactly what I’d call it. A stipulation by my coach. Take this class, or some other counseling-type thing, or sit on the bench this season.”
“And so you’re here.”
A shrug, and then he sat back up and looked at Marlo. “At least I get credits for this option.”
