We work side by side for a half an hour, laughing, joking around and teasing each other just like we did as kids when we were eight, ten, even fifteen years old.
I start breathing normally, and she seems to get back to a more normal color, and I have to say a little bit of pink in the cheeks looks good on her.
I drink a slug of beer while on my break and she enjoys a diet coke.
“What is happening here? Alex, what are you doing behind the counter?” Rain says, as she comes rushing back. She’s being harsh with Alex.
“Rain, calm down, she was just giving me a hand…” I try to justify her action, because really, she’s doing very little, pouring a few beers that’s all, for goodness’ sake, I never would have asked her to do too much.
“Alex…” Rain’s look is hard and full of apprehension. Alex lowers her gaze, before taking off the apron and going around to the other side of the counter.
“You know that you can’t—”
“Don’t do this here,” she whispers and although the music is going, I can hear her words.
She forces a smile at me once again and goes away with Rain. I look at Liam for clarification but he remains in silence next to the bar counter and I search his eyes, trying to understand something, but his face is full of tension and there is a vein pulsing on his forehead that does not bode well.
He shakes his head and walks away quickly, avoiding looking at me. And that’s when Aaron comes in, taking off his cap and dripping with rain. He comes towards the bar counter and motions for me to follow him into the back room.
I am still confused and alarmed by all this silence and I follow him without adding anything until we reach the back room and Aaron closes the door behind us.
“There is no good way to tell you this, brother, and I don’t like being the one to do so, but you’ve done more for me and my sister than anyone else and now I want to be by your side, in this moment.” He takes a deep breath and rubs his eyes nervously.
I don’t say a thing, with my heart in my throat, ready to fall and hurt myself because I know that’s how it’s going to be.
“Things are not going well, Jason.”
Aaron uses my complete name and that’s how I know that we’re talking about something serious, painful and that will come down on me without pity.
I sit on a case of beer because I already know that my legs won’t hold out under the weight of my body and that the fall will be without warning, fast and unavoidable.
And Aaron tells me about Alex and what her real condition looks like in this moment. He explains about the reason why she’s come back here and the imminent operation with its risks. And with the certainty that I might lose her again now that I’ve found her, my vision goes cloudy and my stomach reacts violently. I kneel down and vomit. With my hands on the floor, I cry like a baby.
It’s not a discreet affair.
It’s not a repressed cry of anger.
It’s a desperate one, one that closes an entire life of suffering within it, but in my case, it shows the lacerating pain that makes my body tremble and the fear suffocate my heart as I come to understand I could lose the woman I love.
I crash onto the ground, held by Aaron’s arms that hold me like only a brother could, a brother who cries with you.
The pain strikes me and goes straight to my heart. My life crumbles before my eyes and I already know that no one will be able to pick up the fragments and put them back together.
—
ALEX
“You should not have done that, Rain! Not in front of him!”
I am so angry that I could almost slap her and that’s certainly not my way of reacting.
“Calm yourself…don’t get upset…”
“You shoulda thought of that before you opened your mouth!”
I’m shaking and I can feel my heart beat right in my temples. I can count the beats distinctly and know that they’re already too high.
“Sit down, I’ll bring you some tea and you can calm down.”
