It was on those days that a nurse would call me, and no matter what I was doing, I’d drop it all and head straight to the nursing home. Because it wasn’t until Lils saw me that her anger would dissipate. It was like my presence was a soothing balm over a harsh sunburn for her.
“Did you see the flowers that the nurses left you?” I asked, setting a cup of Jell-O down next to a beautiful yellow orchid.
Canaryyellow.
Eli would love those.
“Yes. Pretty,” she said, her voice low as she wheeled herself toward me. I bent down and gave her a hug. They must have just bathed her because she smelled like Dove soap, and her thinning white and gray hair appeared extra shiny. I handed her the Jell-O and a spoon. “And Mom?”
The question wasn’t a new one, but it still knocked the breath out of me every time she asked.
“She’s good,” I said through a tightening sensation in my throat. “I saw there’s a board game night coming up. Are you going to play?”
I wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible. Because how could I tell my already suffering sister that our mother died close to a year ago now? It would torture her on an endless loop. Even her psychiatrist warned me against breaking the news to her, saying that it could induce a possible psychotic break that would be very difficult to come back from.
So I lied. It felt like swallowing razor blades each time Ihad to say it. I felt guilty, but I knew that I’d do anything to protect whatever little peace my sister still had, and if that meant enduring this terrible feeling for her, then so be it. Thankfully, she was under the impression that our mother had recently visited her, and she understood that our mother used to travel all the time for work, so she hadn’t gotten upset about not seeing her, which gave me a tiny bit of relief.
“Yes, I’ll play. Monopoly.”
“Oh, that’s a fun one. Remember when we used to play that together?”
She gave a tiny nod and smiled. I wasn’t entirely sure if she was nodding to appease me or if she really did remember.
I chose to believe the latter.
I opened the bag I’d brought with me. “I got you a couple of new shirts. Like them?” I held up a light pink shirt with blue and purple flowers around the collar and sleeves. Her eyes lit up, and she reached out for the shirt. I gave it to her, and she held it against her chest.
Awesome, so that one was a success.
“How about this one?” I lifted up a blue and white striped shirt. Very French, a little bolder than her usual taste.
She scrunched up her nose and shook her head. Fair enough, I knew it was a stretch. I lifted up the last shirt I’d found in a vintage shop in Downtown. It was a shirt from Disney’sFantasia, circa the late nineties, with Mickey Mouse in his red wizard robe and blue wizard hat, holding his hand up and creating a trail of stairs.
She threw the pink shirt over her shoulder and yanked the Mickey Mouse one out of my hands. I knew that’d be awinner. My smile stretched from ear to ear seeing her this happy.
I hung out with her for a little longer. She showed me a small knit square she was slowly adding rows to, and I showed her a few photos I took over the weekend. She liked looking at photos with me. I think she just liked spending time with me, which I was lucky for. People with her illness completely lost themselves all the time. She might progress to that stage eventually, but for now, she was still my Lils.
Hell, she’d always be my Lils.
Chapter Seventeen
A Viral Moment
ELI
I’d been avoidingGabe like a cat avoiding a bubble bath.
It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, considering we were on the same hockey team, surrounded by the same friends, and working on the same schedule. It may have been Mission Gabe-possible, but I did my best not to get caught alone with him.
Which all went out the window when Hannah, our social media manager, decided we’d look cute paired up together for some videos today.
Funny thing was, I wasn’t avoiding him because of anything he had done (although leaving in the middle of the night after our first hookup wasn’t exactly ideal, I wasn’t going to judge if he had a solid reason), but it was because of how I couldn’t stop fucking thinking about him since. He wouldn’t get out of my head. I’d wake up thinking of him, have lunch thinking of him, work out thinking of him, jerk offespeciallythinking of him.
This obsession I was curating for him was dangerous. I could feel it down in my bones. And not mybone, which was where I felt something else far from “danger.”
“Okay,” Hannah said as she finished adjusting something on the mic pack she had me wearing. “You have your parts down, right?”
Dylan stuck a finger up. “I might need a refresher.”
