Page 99 of A Really Bad Idea

We make love with our bodies tight.

We make love, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do anything but make love to this man for the rest of my life.

Christian stayed the night.

He held me, as he knew I needed, and left with the sunrise to get to the hospital. I stopped by the office and worked for a few hours before Thomas told me to head out early and see my mom.

He didn’t have to ask twice.

When I get to the hospital, she’s lying in bed with a thick tube inserted into her back, draining fluid from her lung into a box-like machine on the floor.

“Exciting day?” I ask, looking at the machine that is already measuring a liter of fluid.

“That was worse than childbirth, and I went through seventeen hours of labor with you,” she states, her usual glow gone. Whatever is going on inside her body is taking a toll on the outside.

“Remind me to get an epidural when I give birth.”

“You planning on having children anytime soon?” she says with a cocked brow.

“Let’s get you through this surgery first.” I place my bag on the window ledge and take a seat.

“Okay,” she says with a full breath. That is a major improvement from how she’s been sounding the last few days. “Get me my lip gloss.”

“No one here cares what you look like,” I state.

“I do. My hair is disgusting, and I stink because I haven’t taken a shower in two days. Now, get my bag and make me look like a human being.”

I laugh as I take her makeup bag out of the drawer and sit beside her on the bed. I glide her lip gloss on her mouth, and she rolls her lips. I’ve never done my mother’s makeup before. It almost feels like I’m dressing up a little girl on her way to a tea party. Next, I add mascara and hold up the mirror.

“I need blush,” she says, pulling a brush and palette from the bag and adding it herself, ducking her head so that she can see herself in the tiny blush mirror.

She hands me Velcro rollers, and I laugh at the absurdity as I place them on the top of her head.

With two pink rollers sticking to the top of her head, she asks me, “Did you do your father’s laundry?”

“Yes. I saw him in the lobby, buying the paper, so he said he’s going to my house to shower and change.”

“The man needs a decent night’s sleep,” she huffs, the makeup in her hands falling onto the bed.

I pick it up and place it in the makeup bag.

“Look at my chin. Do I have any whiskers?”

“Seriously?” I ask but don’t bother arguing.

Everyone needs control, and I suppose this is her way of controlling the situation. I take a pair of tweezers from the bag, and she lifts her chin up.

“Dad won’t relax until you’re home. Say what you want, but you wouldn’t be able to relax here if he wasn’t by your side.”

She sighs as I pluck a hair from her chin. “I know. I’m a lucky woman to call George Duvane my husband. Do you know he sang to me last night?”

I smile big as I put the tweezers away. “‘Sing Sweet Nightingale,’ I’m sure.”

“When you were little, you loved to watch Cinderella. When he heard that song, he whistled and hasn’t stopped for thirty years.”

My dad has always been romantic. I think that’s where I get my wistfulness from.

“We’re his Meadowlark and Nightingale.”