It rings again. Teresa’s name on the screen.
“Answer it,” I say, though every part of me wants to throw the phone out the window.
She grabs it, breathing hard. “Hello? Yes, this is... what? When?”
Her face changes completely. All the heat, all the want, drains away in an instant.
“Okay. Okay, I’ll—yes. First flight. Thank you.”
She hangs up. Stares at the phone like it might tell her something different if she looks long enough.
“Mom’s fever spiked to 104. She’s... they think maybe days, not weeks.”
All the heat from moments before evaporates.
“I can’t—I need to—” She’s shaking, trying to pull up airline apps with trembling fingers.
“Hey.” I take the phone from her hands gently. “We fly back tomorrow morning. Team flight’s at eight.”
“I need to go now.”
“There are no flights until 6 AM anyway. I already checked when I couldn’t sleep.”
“You checkedflights home?”
“I check a lot of things when I can’t sleep.”
She looks at me, tears starting to fall. “I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“I’m not ready for her to die.”
“No one ever is.”
She collapses against me then, sobbing in a way that feels like it’s been building for weeks. Maybe months. I move us so we’re lying on the bed, her curled into my chest, and just hold her while she breaks apart.
Her whole body shakes with it. Deep, wrenching sobs that sound like they’re tearing her apart from the inside. I hold her tighter, one hand on the back of her head, the other rubbing circles on her back, and don’t say anything because there’s nothing to say that would make this better.
“I still haven’t seen the whole tattoo,” she says eventually, voice wrecked from crying, in a broken attempt at humor.
“Still want to?”
“Maybe when my mom’s not actively dying and you’re not holding me while I sob.”
“So Tuesday?”
She actually laughs, weak but real. “You’re an idiot.”
“Been established.”
We lie there in silence. Her breathing gradually steadies, syncing with mine. Her hand rests over my heart, and I wonder if she can feel how fast it’s beating. From earlier, from her touching me. From this moment now.
“Roman?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you stay? Just until I fall asleep?”
