“Of course.”
***
“So how do you think your brother is doing?” I asked Tori when we finally had our food.
“Good now that Nate’s awake. I was really worried about him there for a while.” We made ourselves comfortable at one of the small round tables. “I wanted to tell you thank you for making him promise to get some sleep the other night. I know that’s the only reason he actually stayed home. He was turning into a walking zombie and my mom or I could hardly say two words to him without him lashing out at us.”
“Yeah, I could tell he was getting pretty worn down.” I took a bite of my salad. “How are you doing?”
“Better. It still freaks me out to think that could have been Brent. It even freaks me out to think about Nate lying there in the ditch, but I think it’s slowly started to fade away and that whole night is starting to feel more like a dream, ya know?” I could see Tori’s eyes staring at me as I was zoning out.
“Are you okay?” she asked. I saw the concerned look in her eyes. I didn’t realize that mine were filled with tears. I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked up at the ceiling in an attempt to make the water in the rims of my eyes disappear.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.” She scooted her chair closer to me and gave me a hug. “Tell me what’s wrong.” I was relieved I was able to make the tears disappear.
“I don’t really know. I guess I just feel kind of…guilty?”
“Guilty? Why do you feel guilty? Nothing that happened that night had anything to do with you.”
“I didn’t tell anyone, but when he woke up that night, one of the first things he said to me was that he was sorry. He had just been through all that and almost lost his life and the first thing he wants to tell me is he is sorry.”
“Sorry about what?”
I proceeded to tell her what was said and what had happened that day at the restaurant. Then I told her about the fight with my parents after telling them I wasn’t going to school. She just stared at me. So much had happened that I had forgotten to tell her anything about what was going on in my life. But that didn’t seem important to me anymore. None of it did. All of my problems seemed so little compared to someone almost losing their life.
“I…I don’t understand it, Tori. I don’t understand how one person can come into my life and change everything. The weird thing is that he’s encouraged me to finally have that life I’ve always wanted but have always been to afraid to go after. But…” I paused and looked down at my food.
“But?”
“But I want him to be a part of it. Do I sound crazy? I do, don’t I?”
“Yes.” I looked up at her and she smiled at me. “I’m totally kidding with you! No, you don’t sound crazy and I’m like super excited right now!”
“What? Why?”
“Because! You and Nate would be the perfect together!” Just as she said it, I saw Brent behind her. He turned around and left the room. “I’ve told you this before and I’ll tell you again and again. You need to go after him! Especially after all that’s happened, it just goes to show you life is too short.” She looked over her shoulder. “What are you looking at?”
“Brent was just in here, then he turned around and left. He looked kind of upset. Maybe something happened to Nate? Should we go find him?”
“Um…” Tori’s tone suddenly changed and I could see that she was feeling a little uneasy. “Why don’t you finish eating and I’ll meet you upstairs in the waiting room.” Before I could even say anything she was out of her chair and heading out the door the same way Brent had.
Chapter 16
When I walked back into Nate’s room there were two nurses helping him into a wheelchair.
“Oh, sorry.” I turned around to walk back out the door. “I can come back.”
“It’s okay, Summer.” I stopped and turned back to Nate. He was now in the wheelchair and one of the nurses was draping a blanket over his lap. “You’re here just in time. They’re helping me break out of here.” My eyes widened. He couldn’t be serious!—of course he wasn’t. “I’m just kidding! You need to lighten up.” He laughed and my shoulders started to relax again. “They’re going to let me get out of here for a little bit. Now that you’re here, maybe you can push me around?”
I looked at one of the nurses. “Would that be okay?”
“Of course!” Her eyes gleamed at me. She must really love her job. Her flawless skin and high energy led me to believe she couldn’t be much older than me. “If you go up a floor, there’s a garden you can wander through. Try and be back in fifteen minutes though, the doctor will be here to check on him.” I nodded and situated myself behind the wheelchair. I pushed him into the hallway and went to the nearest open elevator.
“I’m so happy to be out of that room!” He pushed the button with the number four on it, that would take us one floor up.
“I bet.” I smiled at him, even though I was standing behind him and I knew he couldn’t see me. When we got to the fourth floor we wandered around until we found our way to the garden. Nate pushed the large silver button on the wall and the glass doors slid open. “This is pretty cool,” I said as I pushed him outside.
“Yeah. I guess someone donated money for this because their grandma was here for a few months and they wanted to do something to help her feel better.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“Yeah, it is.” I watched Nate admire the flowers as we passed by them.
“What would make you feel better?” I asked.
“A beer.” We both laughed.
“Really though, if there’s anything you need, just let me know.”
“Thanks.” I noticed his smile had dropped. “Honestly, the only thing I need right now is to feel my legs again.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how else to respond. I wanted to know more about what he could feel and couldn’t feel but I wasn’t about to ask him. I wasn’t sure if that would be rude or crossing a line or something. There was one question I really wanted to ask, but there was no way I was ever going to. I couldn’t help that it crossed my mind. Especially because my mind had wandered there a few times before, when his legs were working.
“It’s so weird to have a limb that’s been attached to your body your whole life still be there, but you can’t feel it and you don’t know how to control it. I think I can, but it’s like my brain doesn’t know what it needs to do in order to move my foot or toes.”
“That would be weird. Can you not feel your legs at all?” I wasn’t going to ask but since he was opening up about it, I figured maybe he wanted someone to talk to. I pushed Nate over to a bench in the corner and sat down so I could face him.
“I can feel my thighs, but I lose feeling right before my knees. I can feel that the rest of my leg is there, but if someone touches it, I can’t feel anything. The doctor said I’m doing better than they expected, and that the feeling and mobility may come back over time, but I’m going to have to do a lot of physical therapy.” I just nodded my head. I wasn’t sure what else to say to him. “Summer, I’m really sorry about the other day.”
“Nate, we don’t have to talk about that right now.”
“No, we do. Summer, I almost lost my life and you know what was running through my mind when I was lying in that ditch? You. You and all the mean things I had just said to you. I was preparing myself to die and the only regret I had was the fact that I had been such an asshole to you. Not once but twice. I should’ve ran after you that night at the pizza place and I shouldn’t have even said the things I did at the taco place. I’m sorry, Summer.” He had me speechless yet again, so I just nodded and looked into my lap. There was so much I wanted to tell him but right now didn’t seem like the time or place to do so. All I was worried about was making sure he got better.
I felt Nate’s hand reach up and rest on my face. His thumb brushed my cheek. I looked up and had to smile when my eyes met his. You could see the light in
his eyes like he was a child. He pulled me in and the next thing I knew, his warm lips were on mine. This wasn’t what I was expecting at all but I wasn’t about to stop it, either. I brought my hand up and rested it on the back of his neck. I felt his tongue trace the inside of my lips. That tingling feeling I had the first time we kissed hit me all over again. I was immediately back on that high. I didn’t even know it, but that’s the feeling I was longing for this whole time. Slowly he pulled back to catch a break and our foreheads leaned against each other.
“That was what I was dreaming of the whole time I was out.”
I giggled. “You were not!”
“Okay, maybe not. But I should’ve been.”
Chapter 17
When we got back to Nate’s room, Tori was sitting in the chair next to his bed reading a magazine.
“Finally! Where’d you guys go?” she asked when we came in the door.
“We went up to that little garden thing upstairs. Where’s Brent?” Nate asked.
“He went home to take a nap.” Tori looked over at me. “He said he wasn’t feeling good.” I knew immediately she was lying.
“How was your walk?” One of the nurses from before came over and stood next to Nate.
“Great.” He looked at me and smiled. I looked down at the ground when I felt my cheeks warming up.
“That’s good because the doctors going to be in here any minute and he’s going to be torturing you for a little bit.”
“Great. I’ll really be ready for a nap after that.”
“Good.” The nurse smiled at Tori and I. “This is probably going to be something you girls won’t want to stick around for.”
“We were leaving soon, anyway,” Tori said and picked up her purse. She went over and patted Nate on the shoulder. “You’re sure a trooper.”
He smiled at her. “I always have been.” He looked over at me. “You bringing me dinner tonight?”
“I can,” I answered. I knew it sounded awkward. I wasn’t aware of the fact that we were going to be so open about this whole thing.
“Cool. I’ll text you when I get up.” He winked at me. I don’t know how he does it but even in a hospital gown he manages to make himself look sexy. I’m glad that I got my previous question answered on the roof. From the knees up was all in working order. I looked over at Tori as if she could read my thoughts or something. She was oblivious, as usual.
***
“We have to talk,” Tori said as soon as we got outside the hospital. I knew something was up. She hardly said two words to me the whole way out.
“Okay, what’s up?” She scanned the sidewalk and stopped her eyes on a blue bench a few feet away from us. She grabbed my hand and pulled me towards it. “What’s going on? You’re starting to freak me out.”
“My brother likes you, Summer.”
“Well, I’d hope so.”
“No. I mean he like really likes you. Like I think he might be in love with you.” Wait…what? Did I just hear her right? In love with me? How is this even possible? She knew I wasn’t going to be saying anything anytime soon so she must have decided she better explain. “Remember when you saw him storm out of the cafeteria today?” I nodded. “Well, when I went after him he was being really weird, he kept trying to tell me nothing was wrong, but I hounded on him until he finally cracked. He told me that he felt like you and him had been getting really close since Nate’s accident and he was thinking of maybe seeing if you wanted to…go out? I guess?” Now I was really confused.
“He thinks we were getting close? How?”
“I don’t know. He said you were being super nice to him, bringing him food and texting him all the time.”
“Wait a minute. I was being nice because his friend had just been in a horrible accident. I brought him food because he stayed here hours on end and I knew he wasn’t eating. And the only reason I was texting him was to give him updates on Nate when I was staying here with him.”
“So you’re not in to my brother?”
“No, not at all.” I was still in shock that he had taken the things I’d done for him as me hitting on him.
“Okay, that’s what I thought. I figured you would tell me if you did.”
“So he overheard us talking about Nate and now he’s mad at me?”
“I guess. I think he feels like you led him on or something.” This was the last thing I wanted. Now that I knew Nate was going to be letting people know about us I didn’t want it to cause problems between him and Brent. Brent was like a brother to him and his family was like Nate’s family, since he didn’t have one of his own. The last thing I wanted to do was tear this family apart.
“I have to talk to him.”
“I don’t know if right now is the best time. He was in a really bad mood when he left.”
“Nate and I kissed today!” I blurted out.
Tori stared at me, wide-eyed. “I knew it!” she yelled.
“I think that we’re going to sort of make things official and I have to tell your brother before he comes back to see Nate. Nate’s already being really obvious about the whole thing and he doesn’t need the stress of possibly losing his best friend right now.”
“Okay, you’re right.”
“Should I ask him to grab dinner or something?”
“Dinner? Really? That would totally throw him over the edge.”
“Okay, what then? I don’t want to do something that would give him the wrong impression again.”
“Why don’t you just come back to my house? I’ll call and tell him we’re grabbing a pizza and not to leave until he eats something. Sound good?”
I nodded my head. “That seems casual enough.” Tori pulled out her phone and started tapping on her screen as we walked to my car. I was hoping this whole thing would eventually blow over but it looked like I’m going to have to face it head on. Seems like that’s how I’m doing a lot of things these days.
Chapter 18
When we turned down the driveway to Tori’s house my stomach immediately felt nauseous. This could either go good or really, really, bad. And if it went bad it could screw up a lot of things. Not just my relationship with Tori’s family, but Nate’s relationship with them, too. If worst came to worst, I was just going to take the blame for everything and then at least Nate would still have them.
We walked into the house and I followed Tori as she bee-lined it for the kitchen.
“Mom? Dad?” she yelled as she set the hot pizzas down on the counter.
“We’re in the living room!” her mom called.
“We brought home dinner if you guys are hungry! Where’s Brent?”
“Downstairs,” her dad answered as he came around the corner. He had on jeans and a black tee shirt. I never got why ranchers always wore jeans. I swear I’ve never seen Todd in a pair of shorts, like, ever. “Hey, Summer, how have you been?”
“Good. How about you?” He grabbed a few pieces of pizza out of the box and tossed them onto a paper plate.
“Can’t complain.” He shrugged.
“We’re going to take our things downstairs and let Brent know we’re here.” I was hoping that maybe he would come up on his own and then I would have an excuse not to talk to him, but no such luck. I followed Tori down the stairs and across the room to Brent’s bedroom door. She knocked.
“Yeah?” I heard him ask on the other side. Tori pushed the door open so only she could see inside.
“Pizza’s here.” I could hear the springs of his bed creak as he got up. Tori backed up and he came out of the room. He stopped the second he saw me.
“Hey…” I gave him a slight smile.
“Hey,” was all he said before walking towards the stairs.
“You think maybe we could talk?” I asked. He turned around and immediately looked at Tori. He knew that she must’ve told me something. If he would’ve looked at me like that I would’ve flinched, but Tori was used to it and didn’t move a muscle.
“I’ll be upstairs.” She tos
sed her purse on the couch and walked up the stairs. We waited for the door to close before we made our way to the couches. I wiped my hands on my shorts before I sat down. They were clammy and sweaty.
“I don’t really know where to start here, so, I guess I’ll just begin by saying I’m sorry if I made you feel like…I like you or something. I mean I do like you! I just don’t like you, like, to date. You know?”
“Summer, we really don’t have to do this. I get it.”
“I just want you to know that I do like you and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me in the past. You’ve always stood up for me and been protective of me like you are with Tori. You’re like the brother I’ve never had.”
“I saw you and Nate kiss.” This completely caught me off guard. Out of everything I was preparing myself for, that was not one of them.
“What?”
“I saw you and Nate kissing in the garden.”
“Oh,” I said quietly,
“Look, I was mad at first when I heard you and Tori talking about him in the cafeteria. I guess not so much mad—I was just confused. But after I talked to Tori she kind of put things in perspective for me and made me realize I was probably just tired and confusing your niceness for something more.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Brent. I would’ve told you sooner but we didn’t really know what this whole thing was, if it was even anything. The accident and that kiss just sort of validated things for us.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me. You’re a great girl, Summer, and Nate needs someone like you in his life. All the other girls he’s been with are bad news and they’ve been toxic for him. I really think you could be good for him.”
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