He tosses me a heavy green ball, which slips through my grasp and lands on the ground with athunk. Picking it up, I walk forward to retrieve the pair rather than attempt to catch one again.
“Sorry, man, forgot baseball wasn’t your thing.”
“It’s not that.” I don’t correct him further because, if he’s somehow the one person here who doesn’t know yet, I’m not going to change that.
“No, yeah, your ma told us about his,” the girlfriend says to Anthony in a hushed whisper, “diagnosis, remember?”
Well, then. She knows something really personal about me, and I can’t even remember her name. It was somewhere in my brain before this whole MS shake-up, but I can’t recall it for the life of me.
“I’m sorry, I forgot your name,” I say apologetically.
“Clara,” she says with a smile, grabbing the yellow set for herself. “Have you been doing all right?”
I shrug, looking up at the sky. “There’s too much going on. But I guess I’m doing better.”
“Did you invite Ellie today?” Darius asks.
“Ooh, Ellie?” Anthony asks, tagging onto this line of questioning. “You two can’t possibly have been dating long enough to score a holiday ticket.”
Anthony tosses the small white ball about ten feet away to start the game. As we take turns getting our own close to that, I tell them what’s been going on.
“There’s more of a culture divide than I thought,” I explain. “And I thought it would all be fine because Ireallylike her. But with everything changing so much, I’m not sure how I fit into her life anymore.”
Thankfully, Clara understands the situation better than my cousins. “Has she told you any of this? Or is that just how you’re feeling?”
I shake my head. “She has to be thinking it, right?”
Darius tosses a ball that knocks Anthony’s away from the center. He smirks, then turns back to me, serious again. “Don’t get all in your head about it. She would’ve said something if she didn’t think it was going well.”
“But would she?” I wince, half-heartedly lobbing out my first ball. “She didn’t know what she was getting into when we started hanging out. What if the only thing stopping her from ending things is because she doesn’t want to seem like a jerk? I’m here, already getting tired from standing for half a round of bocce, and she’s going out to parties and having a great time without me.”
Being with Ellie didn’t use to feel like a risk, but trying to consider it all objectively, that’s all I see. Maybe I need some time to focus on myself and adjust to my new way of life.
“Everything comes back to trust,” Anthony says with a knowing look, like he’s about to drop some wisdom. “Do you trust that the treatment you’re starting will work? Do you trust you’ll be at peace with yourself even if it doesn’t?”
“I find therapy helps with big questions,” Clara says, wrapping an arm around Anthony. He nudges her to finally take her turn, which she does without letting go.
Darius starts the next round, and the rest of us quickly make our final throws because we’re being called in for the early dinner. The uncles all head inside. No surprise, Darius ends up winning.
“Like, whenever I end up going to college, what do I even study?” I say with a laugh, picking up the conversation where we left off. “Anyone here feel like taking over our grandfather’s very not-boring company that Dad wants to hand down to me? You could be the next king of plastics.”
“No way that’s what he calls himself,” Anthony says with a laugh.
“Nah, it’s something that E—” I stop myself before I say Ellie’s name.
“So you’re not that into plastic, who would’ve guessed,” Anthony says with a chuckle. “Well, I’d prefer to be nowhere nearby when you drop that bomb on Uncle Roberto.”
I shake my head slowly. “A lot to figure out. Alot.”
Especially when it comes to Ellie.
Chapter Forty-five
Ellie
I leave myphone in the bedroom as I help clean up after Thanksgiving dinner. It was a distraction to me all day, stealing my attention away from conversations with friends who were only doing their best to try to cheer me up. It can be difficult to multitask with a visual language, so by staring at my phone in anticipation, I was effectively choosing to not pay attention to the people right in front of me.
But they were patient with me, so as a thank-you, I volunteered to do the dishes. Thismountainof plates and bowls and spoons and forks and knives and pots and pans, and when did our kitchen get this stocked? My fingers prune in the sudsy water.
