Wish Upon A Star
Page 20
“Would you sing me something, Jo?” Westley asks, after a long moment. “Anything. Whatever comes to mind.”
I nod, and it may look like I’m thinking, but I’m not. I don’t have to. I’m just deciding if I have the courage to do the piece.
For him, with him.
In this studio, being recorded.
I swallow hard. “I…there’s a song I’ve been working on.”
He sets his guitar down and pivots to look at me. “I’d love to hear it.”
I hesitate. “It’s…” I sigh. “I wrote it, and I’ve been working on putting music to it for…well, a long time. I wrote the words when my leukemia came back the last time, and I’ve been tinkering with the music ever since. I don’t know if it’s any good, but…”
He holds my gaze. “Jo.” It’s a scold.
I smile, laugh. “Okay, no apologies or explanations. Got it.” I swallow again. “I should warn you though, it’s…it’s not exactly a feel-good song.”
He nods. “Understood.”
I breathe in slowly, deeply. I have the lyrics on my phone, and I bring them up and set it where I can see it, just in case. I know them by heart, but I’ve never actually played the song for anyone, not even Bethy.
I’m not much of a songwriter, so the melody is simple. Slow, lower on the ukulele’s register. I was aiming for haunting and sad.
I play the melody through once, so my hands remember the movements. Read through the lyrics until they’re running through my head, matched with the melody.
“Here I am again
alone in this dark cold room
lights dimmed
head braced
it’s happening, it’s too soon
hold still, don’t be scared
try not to move
or we’ll have to start again
Start again
the cancer’s back again
don’t need the MRI
tell me the truth, don’t need to lie
I know it’s back again
Back again
Can the MRI see my soul
Can it see that I’m afraid
Can it see that I feel old
That I feel weak
Can it see my despair
When the pain is at its peak
Don’t need thirty minutes in a tube
Can’t move, barely breathing
Clank-clank-clank, Bang-bang-bang
Hammering my head
Banging on my heart
Don’t need thirty minutes in this room
To tell me what I already know
It’s back again
Back again
Just hold still
Don’t be scared
This won’t hurt a bit
It doesn’t hurt a bit
But it’s not the machine killing me
It’s me killing me
My blood and my bone
And I can feel it coming back again
I want off this merry-go-round
Please tell me I’ll be fine
Sure I’ll know you’re lying
But just this once
Lie to me
tell me I’ll be fine
I can see it, I’m not blind
It’s in me, I can feel it
But lie to me anyhow, I don’t mind
Lie to me
tell me you can heal it
lie to me
tell me I’ll be fine
I know it’s back again
But lie to me
Lie to me.”
The silence when I finish is fraught, thick, and tense.
Westley’s eyes are wet, and so are mine.
He stands up abruptly and goes into the mixing booth, stops the recording. He doesn’t come right back out, though.
When he does, he’s dry-eyed. “Jo, that was…” He shakes his head. “You’re amazing.”
“It’s rough. Still a work in progress.”
He shakes his head again. “No. It’s perfect as is.”
“What are you going to do with the recording?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t know yet. I need to think about it.”
“Thank you for this,” I say. “Playing music in a real studio…” I laugh. “You’re just making all my dreams come true, aren’t you?”
“As many as I can,” he says. “As many as I can.”
There’s a thick layer of subtext beneath that statement, but I’m not touching it with a ten-foot pole. I feel good. I feel connected to Westley, bonded by our shared love for music.
He holds my hand. “Thank you for sharing that with me, Jo. That last song especially was…it was special.”
If there was something meaningful between us before, this experience, playing music with him, has only intensified it.
Music has power. It can bring memories up with visceral, intense immediacy. Music can make the past feel new again. You feel that moment from years ago all over again. Singing with someone? Sharing the song with them, riding the high of the passion, the wild thrill of the music…there’s nothing like it.
Can I stay here and sing with you forever?
I don’t say it.
Maybe that’s a new song I’ll write, when I get a few minutes alone.
Round Two
Westley
After the session in the studio, I developed a plan to take Jolene out on a date. Something magical, something romantic. I even start working on the plans with Jen, booking a table and everything. My nascent plans are quickly derailed, however, by Jolene getting hit with an assault of agony worse than the last one.
I notice she seems quiet as we eat a dinner of cold cuts sandwiches and popcorn and watch a movie. And then she just wants to lie down on my lap for the end of the movie.
“Jo?” I touch her temple—she’s burning up. “Are you feeling sick?”
She nods. “Yeah.” A sudden, wracking sob. “I don’t want it, Wes. I want to feel good.”
My gut twists. “I’m so sorry, Jo. What can I do?”
“Carry me to bed? I…I don’t think I can walk.”
I gather her into my arms, cradle her close, and carry her to my—to our—bedroom.
She’s shivering. “Wes?” Her voice chatters, shakes. “I’m scared. This is bad. This is a bad one.”
“Should I call your parents? Or…or a doctor? Or something?”
She grunts a negative. “I think I need some medicine. It’s in my toiletries bag in my suitcase.”
I find the pill bottle in question and bring her one, with a glass of water. She’s weak enough and shaky enough that I hold her upright and help her drink.
Her eyes are narrow, squinting with pain. “I’m sorry, Wes.”
“Don’t be sorry. Tell me what else I can do.”
“The pill is going to knock me out. Just…stay with me until it does. Please?”
“Like I’d leave your side.”
“It’s too soon,” she mutters. “Too soon. I need more time…please.” I don’t think she’s talking to me.
Fuck.
“If I’m not feeling better in a day or two, call my parents.”
“I should call them now.”
“Then we won’t be alone when I feel better.”
“We’ll figure that out then.”
“I want to make love to you, Wes.”
“I know. Me too.” My whole being burns with emotional agony. Helplessness. Anger that this is happening to her.
“This isn’t…it.” Her eyes open to slits of green. “It’s not it. Not the end. Not yet.” She finds my hand. “I promise. I won’t go, Wes. Not until we make love, at least once.”
“Just…rest, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”
“I want to say it,” she murmurs. Again, this part doesn’t seem addressed to me, necessarily. “It’s true, and I want to say it. But I’m not going to. Not yet. But it’s true.”
Somehow, I know exactly what she’s refusing to say.
A moan escapes her lips, a rag
ged groan of pain.
“Do you believe in love, Westley?” Her eyes open, suddenly. Fix on mine.
I nod. “Yeah, I do.”
“How do you know when it’s love?”
I shake my head and shrug. “I don’t know, Jo. I’ve never been in love before.”
“You haven’t?”
“No.” I brush a thumb over her cheekbone. Her skin is on fire. “Not until you.”
A smile curves her lips. She doesn’t say anything else. An occasional whimper rises from her.
She’s the same, the next day. She refuses another pill, though. “Call them,” she whispers.
Her dad’s number rings twice, and he answers it. “Hello?”
“Hi, this is Wes.”
He hesitates. “Wes, hi.” A clearing of his throat. “If you’re calling instead of her…”
“She’s…it’s pretty bad. She felt pretty crappy a couple days ago, on the way here. This is…worse.”
“Has she taken a pill?”
“Yes.”
“Crap. That’s not good. She hates those things.”
“When it first hit, yesterday evening. Just the one, so far. She told me to call you.”
“Is she feverish?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll book a flight.” He sighs, a sad, ragged sound. “How are you?”
“Um, I mean…I don’t know. It’s…I can’t do anything, and it’s…it’s hard. Really hard.” I rub my face. “But I…I’m here for her. No matter what.”
“Westley, my friend, no matter what is gonna get tested, big time. And sooner than I think any of us are ready for.”
“I know.”
“You don’t, though. Not really.”
“I know enough to know I don’t know, but I’m not…I’m not a flake, Mr. Park. I’m here for her. For you guys.” I clear my throat. “Don’t book a flight. I’ll get you one. I have an extra bedroom.”
“Um, I think…I don’t…I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“I’ll text you the flight info. I can get you a private flight way faster than you could book on your own. Trust me on this.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a hotel ten minutes from me, if you don’t want to stay with…with us.”
“Thank you.” A pause. “When it’s…um, time—” his voice breaks, recovers, “…her best friend and grandmother will need to be close, too.”
“Of course.” I clear my throat. “She said this isn’t…that. She won’t let it.”
“She’s stubborn like that.”
“So I’m discovering.”
“Thanks for calling.”
“Yeah, of course.”
Next, I call Jen.
“Hey, Wes,” she says, by way of greeting. “Martin and I were planning on coming over around six this evening. I’ll bring carryout with me. Sound good?”
“Actually, no. Jolene is, uh, sick.” I let that word sit in the silence a moment. “I need a private flight chartered for her family as soon as possible. Include her best friend Bethany and Bethany’s guardian, Macy, and Jolene’s grandmother. Best solution for accommodations would be a house for them all in this neighborhood, as close to mine as possible. I don’t care what any of this costs.” I pause again. “Next, when Jolene feels better, I’m going to need a real showstopper of a date planned out. The most magical, the most romantic evening possible. A private table somewhere incredible, candles, roses, music, a limo home.”
“Wes…”
“What?”
“We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t. I’m not leaving her side until she’s back on her feet. Not for anything. Not for the president or the pope, not for anyone or anything. Consequences be damned.”
“But, Wes—”
“Nope,” I cut in. “I don’t play the boss card with you very often, Jen, but I am, now—no. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not doing interviews. I’m not doing choreo. I’m not blocking. I’m not rehearsing lines, or table reading. I’m not available.”
A sigh. “Got it—I got it.”
“Keep Martin away from me. I love the man, he’s great at what he does and I appreciate him, but if he tries to badger me on this I’m gonna snap.”
“Understood.” A pause. “This…date. Have anything in mind?”
“Dinner, but not, like, the inedible fancy bullshit. Good, simple food. A bottle of wine. Roses. Somewhere private. Maybe, like, a classical music trio or something. She’ll need a fancy gown and shoes. Someone to do her makeup—she may not want to wear makeup because she doesn’t, usually, but I want her to have the option.”
“So, like, some Bachelor-type stuff.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“The reality show?”
“I don’t watch reality TV. Or any TV at all, to be honest.”
A sighing laugh. “Oh, well, whatever. Regardless, I’ll handle it.”
“Thank you, Jen.”
“Is there anything else you need?”
I swallow hard. “You know anyone who can perform miracles?”
“My cousin goes to church. I can have her pray?” A tense silence. “I’m worried how this is going to shake out for you, Wes.”
“Me too. But I’m not thinking about that. I’ll deal with that if and when the time comes.”
“You know we’re here for you.”
“I know. And I’m grateful for you both.”
Midnight going into day three of sickness.
She took another pill a few hours ago. The fever broke, finally, so that feels like improvement.
My doorbell rings. I drag myself off the couch and to the front door—I’m not expecting her family until tomorrow; they arrived in LA not long ago, but Jolene is sleeping and they decided to let her rest.
I pull the door open. “Dinah?”
My sister could pass for my twin, despite being five years older. Same blond hair, though hers is long and usually back in a French braid, same brown eyes, same facial structure. She has a strong, lean, athletic build from the waist up, and before the accident she was a multisport varsity collegiate athlete—all-state track, all-state soccer, and state champion field hockey team captain. Then, the accident. It only slowed her down for a few months, though, and then she picked herself up out of the emotional dumps and rebuilt her life. Now, she spends as much time in the gym working out and training clients as she does in the art studio.
She has a six-pack of beer in one hand and a paper bag in the other, smells of burger and fries emanating from the bag. “Hey, bro-ski.” She regards me with pursed lips and a frown. “Wow, you really look like shit.”
I huff a laugh, and back up to let her in; I wouldn’t tell her this, but another reason I chose this house in particular was that there are no steps anywhere in the house, so she can roll from front door to back door with ease, only a few thresholds to bump over.
“Hey, Di.”
She follows me into the living room, sets the six-pack and carryout on the coffee table, and then tosses her purse onto the couch. With practiced, graceful ease, she transfers herself from her wheelchair to the couch, adjusts her legs, and then points at the beer. “Grab me one, would you, Wes?”
I crack one open for her and one for myself—the last thing I feel like doing is drinking, but a beer with my sister is kind of our thing. She shows up randomly with beer and food, and we talk about deep things.
I take a sip and then divvy out the food, burgers and fries from a local drive-through. Garbage food, but I’ve neglected to eat for quite a while, and Jolene would want me to.
It just feels wrong.
“So.” Dinah washes a handful of fries down with a swig of beer. “Why do you look like a sad sack of shit?”
I make a pressing down motion with a flattened hand. “Keep your voice down, please.”
She blinks at me. “You live alone. You don’t even have a cat.”
I sigh, take a seat beside her and attack the food—now that I taste a
nd smell it, I realize how hungry I am. “You’re not going to believe the story I have to tell you.”
“You have a girlfriend?”
“Well, that’s not wrong. But it’s not even close to the whole story.”
“You eloped?”
I sip beer, and lean back, wiping my fingers on a napkin. “I honestly don’t even know where to start.”
Dinah frowns at me. She hears the complex layers of emotions in my voice—no one knows me as well as she does. I intentionally avoided discussing any of this with her because if anyone could have talked me out of doing what I did, it was her and I wasn’t about to allow that. This is the right thing for me, and I know it. She wants what’s best for me, but she’s also really protective and can be rather…aggressive about it, if she thinks I’m doing something stupid.
We have a complicated relationship, to say the least.
“Wes, talk to me.” She eyes me. “You’re worrying me. What did you do?”
So, I tell her the story. The TikTok, how it affected me. The spur of the moment decision to go meet her. How I felt when I met her, and how every moment since with her has only taken my feelings for her deeper and deeper. And oh yeah, she’s dying of leukemia as we speak.
When I’m done relating the events of the past week and a half—which is weird to think about, that it’s only been ten days since I first saw her video; it feels like a lifetime has passed—Dinah is quiet for a very long time.
“Wow.” She hands me her beer to set down. “That’s…a lot.”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes to my bedroom door, closed. “She’s in there, right now, sleeping?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re determined to see this through?” Her gaze is unrelenting, assessing, seeing through me as no one else can.
I nod. “I am. All the way.”
“Why, Wes?”
I shrug. “I…I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself that. I don’t know, Di. Something about her just…belongs with me. To me. I don’t know to even put it. I wouldn’t have picked this situation for myself, Dinah. Who would? It’s so crazy. Zero to…I’d say sixty, but that’s not it. It’s gone from zero to a thousand, like, instantly. My emotions, our relationship, her emotions, the reality of…the situation.”
“Wes, it’s bonkers. You literally just met this girl and you’re acting like…like you’re married, like she’s the love of your life. I’m not questioning how you feel in this moment, Wes, I’m not, but—”