When I get to my room, I’m still a bit panicky and emotionally raw from what just happened and the conversation I skillfully sidestepped that I know is still coming. I strip down to my underwear, leaving my scrubs in a heap, and as I crawl under the covers, I text Griffin with an address. He responds with an emoji of a flower. I smile, turn my phone off, and replay that parking lot kiss in my head until I drift off.
12
Sadie
Itoss Dixie’s pale pink shirt on her bed and grab a black one with sheer sleeves and a V-neck that’s a little deeper than I’m comfortable with. I hold it up to my frame and hesitate. Dixie eyes me from the bed in the corner, stretched out like a cat on top of the pile of colorful throw pillows she insists on covering the bed with.
“Since when are you into shirts like this?” I ask.
“Since always,” Dixie replies with a smile as she pulls all her wheat blond hair into a high ponytail and wraps it with the elastic from her wrist. A piece escapes and hangs down the back of her neck, but she doesn’t seem to care. “I just never wore stuff like that to work…and I was always working, so you never saw it. Try it on. It’s hella flattering.”
Despite my initial judgment, I slip it over my head. I stare at my reflection. She’s right. It’s hot. The neckline shows just enough cleavage but not too much, the material is soft and clingy and cuts in at the waist just right. And the jet black color makes my blue eyes icy and bright and my blond hair look more luminous.
“This one it is,” I announce and turn from the mirror to face Dixie. I smooth my hands down my dark jeans. “It’s good, right?”
“It’s gorgeous,” Dixie replies, and I feel instantly more at ease. My sisters and I made a pact long ago not to blow smoke up each other’s asses. If she says it looks good, it definitely does. “So do you want to borrow some condoms too?”
I freeze. “First of all, it’s not borrowing unless you want them back.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Okay. Revising that statement. Do you want tohavesome condoms?”
“I have some in my purse. I bought them on the way over,” I admit. She grins and actually claps her hands excitedly like her older sister potentially getting laid is some kind of extraordinary feat, like a Super Bowl touchdown. I should be annoyed, but she’s kind of right. “I’m not saying it’s definitely going to happen.”
“But you want it to,” Dixie adds, still smiling, and she pulls herself to a sitting position. “And that’s good. That’s great, actually. You deserve some fun.”
I nod. “I just…don’t want to make this a big deal. We’ll just see what happens. But we’re both consenting adults, and I think we’re both willing and able, so…”
I shrug and Dixie nods emphatically, making more hair fall from her ponytail. “I’m so glad he didn’t turn out to be a married, cheating dick. I would have had to death-stare him every time I saw him at a Thunder game, and that would’ve been exhausting.”
I grab my purse off the sofa and take my lipstick out of it. “Speaking of the Thunder, you haven’t told anyone I’m going on this date with the goalie coach, have you? And by anyone I mean Jude or Eli?”
She shakes her head. “You told me not to, but Mom and Dad might spill it.”
“They don’t know who the date is with,” I say and pause to apply my lipstick. “Which is also why I’m having him pick me up here. I don’t want them to meet him or anything.”
“Why did you tell them at all?”
“Because they were about to try and discuss a feeding tube,” I reply, and Dixie’s whole face sinks into darkness. “He choked. Again. And we needed to Heimlich him. He’s fine so don’t freak out. But next steps are in his thoughts now more than ever.”
“What are we going to do?” Dixie lets out a heavy breath and keeps talking before I can answer her. “Sadie, you’re a nurse. He’ll listen to you. You have to convince him to get a tube.”
Why did I bring this up right now? My father wants me to be the buffer, that’s why. And I have to talk about this gradually, so they aren’t overwhelmed when the time comes. But I realize this isn’t putting me in the best head space for a date.
“The next step after that will be a respirator,” I murmur softly, as if it will somehow lessen the painful impact of that realization. Dixie and I stare at each other, our expressions mirroring each other’s despair. “He won’t do that. And I don’t want him to.”
“But then…he’ll die,” Dixie argues and pauses. I see her inner battle, and I feel it too, like it’s a jagged knife entering my heart, tearing it in two, because it is. We both want him here as long as possible, by any measure, but we both also don’t want him suffering, unable to move or breath or talk, with no quality of life. “That’s a long way off. Right?”
“It’s not going to happen tomorrow,” I reply, hoping the vagueness of that answer will give her some relief.
There’s a knock at the door, and the lock turns, and it’s cracked open slightly. “Everyone decent?”
Eli has learned, in the time he’s been living with my sister, that it’s not a good idea to burst into their apartment. Winnie and I are often here, borrowing clothes and half naked. “Come on in!”
His giant frame fills the entry. He gives me a friendly smile as he pulls down the hood to his jacket. Everything is wet, and I realize it must be raining. “Shit. I didn’t bring an umbrella.”
“You can borrow one of mine.” Dixie walks over to her giant closet, the only storage space in their minuscule studio, and disappears inside. “Give me a second.”
Eli hangs his jacket on a hook by the door and toes out of his shoes. He walks into the kitchen and pulls a Gatorade out of the fridge. “You look hot, Sadie. Girls’ night with Winnie?”
