“Just forgot,” he keeps saying to my mom. “You cut macadamia nuts out of our diet so long ago and always tell me what to order when we go out to eat. Iforgot.”
“You could’vedied,” my mother keeps sobbing. “I didn’t ask andyou could’ve died.”
“You didn’t know there were macadamias all over this island.”
“I told you three weeks ago I wasn’t booking a tour of the macadamia nut factory across the island because you were allergic!I filled out the allergy information form on the wedding RSVP.”
I flinch at that one.
Watching my dad go blue in the face while he gasped for breath and then passed out was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen in my life.
Terrifyingdoesn’t even begin to describe it.
Definitely shifts some perspective.
Makes me think about what matters. About what’s important. About hopes. Fears. Regrets.
And it reinforces how I want to live.
That’s why I’m leaving my parents in the hospital while I catch a ride back to the resort now that I know my dad’s stable and he’s going to be fine.
Theo’s not in our room.
He’s not baking cookies in the bistro kitchen. Smells like he has been though.
Eventually, a very loud sneeze erupts from the general vicinity of the ocean, and it leads me to finding him sitting on the beach.
And shoveling his face full of cookies.
“Got enough to share?” I ask as I sit down next to him.
He lifts the bag and sets it far on his other side, well out of my reach. “No eating. I might kill you.”
“Theo.”
“Everything I touch turns to shit, Laney. Go away. You deserve not shit.”
I ignore him, lift his arm, and settle under it. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I picked the fucking menu.”
So he heard through the grapevine that Dad’s allergic to macadamia nuts.
Awesome.
Figured he would. It’s why I kept texting himthis is not your fault.
To no response.
“Don’t even start withyou didn’t knowandthis isn’t your fault,” he grumbles.
“How aboutthis is the universe’s way of giving him a wake-up call that he’s just as mortal as the next person?Or maybethis is the universe’s way of reminding him to not be a judgmental ass?”
“You shouldn’t say things like that about your parents after they almost die. Believe me. That’s a road to regrets.”
I wrap my arms around him and hold him close.
He sighs heavily, like he’s letting out all of the tension, and then wraps his other arm around me too.
