“They need a minute?” Callan asks, his voice kind of high. “The way, like, you and Landy used to need a minute when you’d fight?”
“Just come with me.” Angie takes each of my siblings by the arm and leads them out of the room.
“I’m sorry about so much,” Grady says quietly when we’re alone. “And I guess I need to add outing us in front of your siblings to that list of things. I’m sorry for that too.”
“You can’t pull someone out of a closet they were never in,” I reply coolly. “I haven’t told my siblings I’m bi yet because it hasn’t come up, but I wasn’t actually hiding it. That’s you.”
“I think I’m done hiding it,” Grady replies. His voice is a bundle of nervous cracks, but he’s standing at the foot of my bed, eyes soft, shoulders back, defiantly. He’s terrified but confident. I wish I could crawl inside his head and help ease the worry I see etched between his eyebrows, but I know I can’t. Grady has to battle his own demons.
“I really don’t think you should be skipping the game,” I reply. “Above all else, you’re a professional athlete.”
“Guys skip games when their wife gives birth or a family member gets sick,” Grady replies. “Why can’t I be there for my… for the person I care about?”
“You told that to Coach Larue?” I can’t believe it.
“Yeah. I have to have a meeting with him when we find out you’re okay,” he explains and shoves his hands into the kangaroo pouch on his hoodie.
“Grady… I may not be okay.” I haven’t admitted that fear to anyone.
“Tell me what happened.” He moves to sit on the edge of the bottom of my hospital bed. I lean into the pillows and explain Lola showing up and the vertigo, which caused instant vomiting. I explain to him that, despite the symptoms being gone, the doctor ordered a CT scan. And then I tell him, when you Google causes of vertigo other than crystals in the ear canal, brain cancer is one of those causes.
“They thought Nash’s leg thing last season was cancer, and it wasn’t,” Grady says, like that one case is the benchmark for all cases.
“Nash didn’t just have leukemia.”
“You were cured.”
“I went into remission,” I correct. “We tend not to use the word cured until five years without recurrence. I’m not there yet.”
“Well, that’s dumb. Cured is a much cooler word than remission,” Grady grumbles, and I actually crack a smile. He notices it, and it causes his face to explode into a smile, too.
“I’m still hurt,” I say softly.
“Does it help that I regret wholeheartedly the way I’ve been handling… well, just about everything since we started?” he asks meekly. His hand lands on my calf. “I’ve been a fucking idiot.”
“You totally have,” I agree. “But right now I have too many emotions swirling inside me to deal with the ones associated with you.”
“Okay, let’s table that and just concentrate on figuring out how to confirm you’re still cured.”
“Remission.”
“Potato potahto.” He winks at me. Fuck, this guy, he makes it impossible not to love him.
Holy shit… I love him.
Chapter 37
Grady
Two and a half hours later, I sit in the one chair in this overly white, bleak room, both my knees bouncing uncontrollably. Callan is leaning against the wall, staring out the window, and chewing on his fingernail like it’s a chicken wing. Angie is sitting on the bed, wringing her hands. Lola is staring at her phone, her shoulders so tense they’re basically touching her earlobes.
“Okay, Mom says they finally got an Uber and are on their way from the airport,” Lola announces as she looks up from her phone. She gives me side eye before turning to her brother. “Should we go downstairs and meet them?’
“Probably. I can’t stand waiting here.” Callan sighs.
“I’ll text you the second he’s back,” Angie promises them.
Callan shoots me one last glance, far less stern than his sister’s, and then he pulls his tall frame off the wall and walks out of the room with Lola. Angie exhales once they’re gone from sight. “You know, for a vegan hippie Doula, she’s kind of judgy.”
