One Little Lie: a hate to love rom-com

by Whitney Barbetti

  She still hadn’t woken up, so I went to the nurse’s station to ask to see her doctor when she made rounds. I came this early in the morning not just to see Gram before work but to make sure I caught the team of doctors responsible for her care. The clock told me I had thirty minutes before I had to head out the door or I would be late for work, so I hoped that the doctor would speed it up so I didn’t piss off my asshole of a boss.

  When I returned to the room, Gram was awake but staring out the window with the blankest look in her eyes. It stopped me for a minute. I knew she was sick, of course I knew that. It was the reason I had come back to Idaho. But during the last few weeks before she’d been admitted, she had seemed like her normal self again. She had energy. She went on walks with Casey after she got out of school. She ate really well, constantly scribbling down her salt intakes. So when her doctor had admitted her after her last appointment, I was shocked.

  “Gram,” I said, grabbing the daisies off of the table and bringing them around so she could see them. “Yellow’s your favorite daisy, right?”

  Her eyes warmed, but not in the way I was used to, and she reached a hand out for one of the petals, running a shaking thumb over it and giving me a weak smile. “Hi, my boy.” It was what she always called me. Not Adam. I was her boy. Considering she raised me more than any other adult had, I was more hers than anyone else’s. “How’s Casey?”

  I dragged a chair close to the bed, wincing as it squeaked across the clean floor. “She’s good. Her appointment is today.” I tapped my teeth when she looked confused and she rubbed at her forehead.

  “That’s right. You have her insurance card?”

  Shit. I didn’t, I’d forgotten it. Which meant I would have to run back home before picking Casey up from school. Which meant I’d need to leave work earlier than planned. Shit, shit, shit. But I nodded and averted my eyes as I set the vase of daisies on the table once again. “All set. Don’t you worry about it. Just concentrate on getting the ol’ ticker behaving properly so we can break you out of here.” I rapped my knuckles on my chest.

  “Ah, yes.” But she didn’t smile. “I’m afraid that it might take more than just an expensive stay in this hospital bed, though.”

  I was about to ask her for more information when I saw a doctor I had spoken to the day before entering the room. Immediately, I stood up and motioned to speak with her in the hallway. “Back in a sec, Gram.”

  “Hey,” I said to the doctor when we were out of earshot. “Dr. Hathaway, right?”

  She nodded and crossed her arm over her chest, hugging the clipboard. “You’re Mrs. Oliver’s grandson.”

  “Yeah.” I frowned as I pointed a thumb back at Gram’s room. “She made it sound like she might not be out of here soon?”

  Dr. Hathaway blinked but otherwise betrayed no other expression. “Are you aware of your grandmother’s condition?”

  “She has heart problems. She has a defibrillator, right? She has been getting better. Getting outside and staying active. My little sister keeps her young.” I smiled, like I was trying to convince the doctor Gram was getting better.

  “Yes, she has a defibrillator, but hers protects her from death in the event of a cardiac arrest. It is not improving her symptoms, which is why she was admitted.” Dr. Hathaway put a hand on my shoulder and guided me down the hallway a bit further from Gram’s room. “Your grandmother’s ejection fraction last year was fifteen percent.” At my look of confusion, she continued. “When your heart beats, it’s pumping blood out into your body through your left and right ventricles of your heart. Those are the bottom two chambers of your heart. It takes more than just one contraction to pump all the blood out. The ejection fraction is the measurement we use to calculate the percentage of that blood flow out of those ventricles. We like to see above fifty percent. Hers was fifteen percent. It’s now ten percent.”

  This was where me being a shitty grandson came in, because I assumed her defibrillator was fixing her heart. “But she’s been getting better,” I said again, weaker this time.

  “I understand how confusing that can be. If your grandmother had cancer, we could expect to see a relatively predictable decline in her health. But your grandmother has been in heart failure for over a decade.”

  “Yeah, but she’s been on medication and she does everything her doctors tell her—”

  She placed a hand on my shoulder, interrupting me. “She’ll have swings that will make you believe she’s doing better but ultimately her heart is weakening and is pumping less blood. She will not get better.” Her hand dropped and her expression turned concerned. “You do understand, right?”

  “Are you saying that she’s dying?”

  “Well,” she swallowed and the concern reached her eyes. “Not today. But she is approaching the end stages of heart failure. You need to prepare yourself for that.” She pointed her head toward the hospital room. “We’ve already informed your grandmother. She took it quite calmly. Now is the time to talk about what’s next.”

  The news was like a hard rock in my throat. “What’s next? Like a funeral?”

  “I’m not saying that you need to worry about that right now. But we have reached the limit of what we can do for Mrs. Oliver at this point.”

  “How long does she have?”

  “That’s not something I can say. Typically, with a fifteen percent ejection fraction, one could have six months or less to live. But I have seen patients live two or more years.”

  “But you said her ejection fraction is now ten percent.”

  She nodded and I could finally see the wear behind her eyes in what she was telling me. “I had a patient who was alcoholic and overweight, who went from fifteen percent to forty-five percent after he quit alcohol and began exercising. Your grandmother is not an alcoholic, nor is she overweight. If she’s doing everything her doctor has been having her do and is still declining…”

  “Then it’s not good,” I finished for her.

  “No. It’s not.” She touched my shoulder again, but lighter than before. “I am so sorry. I know how hard this can be.” She let out a sigh. “You will want to talk about this with your grandmother and any other living relatives. Many patients elect to have their defibrillator deactivated when they are in the end stages. The shock can prove to be traumatizing when the benefit is so small. If you wish, I can help facilitate the conversation to ensure your grandmother’s wishes are understood and respected, and to allow you to vocalize your feelings.” She squeezed lightly before letting go. “Either way, we are not in the end stages yet. But preparing for it will eliminate any burden either of you feel later on.”

  What was I supposed to say to that? I had come back to Idaho on the assumption that Gram was just having the occasional problems, not that this might be it for her. For all of us. So, I just nodded and Dr. Hathaway re-entered Gram’s room with an enthusiastic “Good morning!”

  5

  Hollis

  They changed the terms of the trust fund.

  As I was recovering from the shock, Tori finally waltzed into the kitchen. “I guess it’s a good thing Adam’s back in town, right?”

  Three sets of eyes swung to her, but my heart was hammering furiously in my chest. I couldn’t speak. Adam.

  “Adam?” My mom turned to me. “Who is Adam?”

  “The guy who wants to be exclusive with our favorite little bean here.” Tori joined me at the island, looping an arm around my waist, but I was trying to catch up with what she was saying.

  Adam? She’d just told my parents the name of my fake-suitor, and had chosen Adam Oliver, of all people?

  “Wait, he wants to be exclusive with Hollis?”

  My knees were limp noodles. Were it not for Tori’s arm around my waist, I knew I’d crumple into a heap. But were it not for the lies she was spilling, I wouldn’t feel as weak as I did.

  “Oh yes,” Tori said with wide eyes and a nod. “But Hollis is just such a good student, Mr. and Mrs. Vinke. So focused. Having h
im traveling all the time for work enabled her to focus.”

  I couldn’t quite fathom what was happening. Tori had just sold me out to my parents, who now dangled the one thing I had been hoping for, for years, over my head like a carrot I couldn’t—wouldn’t—reach. But my parents’ gazes on me were curious, searching. I gave them a smile I didn’t really feel and placed my hand over Tori’s, squeezing. Out of warning or fear, I wasn’t entirely sure. “Tor,” I said, but she blazed on.

  “But now he’s back in town. I’m sure you’ll meet him soon.”

  And with that promise, Tori had sealed my fate.

  “What were you thinking?” I hissed at her once we were safely tucked away in the guest room two full floors from my parents. I tossed the clothes I had hung in the closet into an open suitcase on the bed when I wasn’t pacing. “Adam? Adam Oliver?” I pushed my hands into my hair and pressed against my scalp, hoping the blood would drain out of my face and into my extremities. My limbs felt weightless still, fluttery and weak.

  “I was thinking that your parents were about to rip away the one thing you’ve been looking forward to for four fucking years, Hollis. You are welcome.” She bowed and grabbed the backpack she’d packed, tossing it onto the bed beside my suitcase.

  “You can’t really think I’m going to thank you for that,” I said, seething. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Despite my Mediterranean coloring, my cheeks were still a furious shade of red. From embarrassment, from shock—I didn’t know. But I did know that I was pissed off at Tori. So very, very pissed. I couldn’t even see reason behind what she was saying.

  “You could’ve denied it,” she said with a shrug, dropping to the bed with a bounce. “But you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t know how to act! I couldn’t believe you were throwing me under the bus, in front of them. What was I supposed to say? ‘Tori is lying. There’s no one, never has been’? I mean, how do you think they’d take that?”

  “Hey, you started the lie, not me. I just…” she twirled her hand in the air, causing her thin gold bracelets to fall to her elbow, “embellished. A bit.”

  “A bit.” I punched a pair of jeans into the suitcase, but the movement did nothing to satisfy the rage still simmering beneath my skin. “You didn’t have to name him.”

  “Well, I did. And, for the record, I didn’t say Adam Oliver. You deduced that all on your own. You could’ve found some guy named Adam and paid him to play the part.”

  I couldn’t believe her. She was my best friend. Rationally, I knew she always had my back. And, maybe if I stepped back to examine the situation more thoroughly than I had, I could see her motive wasn’t malicious. But, again, she was my best friend. And she’d practically sold me out.

  “I’m…” I pressed my lips together hard enough to cause my eyes to sting. “I’m so angry with you, Tori.”

  Tori sat straight up and blinked. “Whoa.”

  I didn’t dignify that with a question. I knew why she was surprised. It was rare for me to speak my true feelings with anyone, even Tori. I might elude to it, I might throw tantrums like the epic one I was right then. But rarely did I actually articulate angry feelings into words. It was one of the things Tori pushed me to try, to tell someone when they were taking advantage of me, to speak up when I felt a grade was unfair—yes, I was that student. “Bitching to me about your teacher’s lazy grading isn’t going to help you,” Tori always reminded me whenever I launched into a vent session. Well, I had taken her advice and gone direct to the source of my frustration this time: her.

  Silence fell over us and my nerves calmed as I folded the last of my shirts, placing them into the suitcase with more care than I had shown my jeans.

  “Hollis.”

  My eyes stung and I refused to look at her. I didn’t know why I was embarrassed that I had told her how I felt. I don’t know why being honest about my feelings was the hardest thing for me to do sometimes. But still, it was. So I just neatly packed my tank tops and spread my hands across them, making each ripple smooth.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, scooting closer to my suitcase so that I couldn’t help but look at her. “That was a real shitty thing to do.” Her hand found my arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll go back downstairs and explain it. I can talk my way into a mess as easily as I can talk my way back out of it, trust me.”

  She didn’t have to tell me that. Many times in high school, she’d proved just how good she was at talking her way out of a failing grade. That’s probably why she was as successful in school as she was. I looked her over, saw the sincerity in her eyes. She was sincere, I knew. Though we had similar backgrounds and parental expectations, in many ways we were completely different personalities. I studied my ass off, she didn’t. I didn’t have a backbone when it came to my parents, she did. I had been single my entire college career, she hadn’t. I couldn’t express myself in a way that didn’t make me self-conscious, but she could. I knew that in her heart of hearts, she was trying to help. But she’d talked me into a corner that I couldn’t see a way out of.

  “I’m still pissed at you,” I told her, but I felt a million times calmer than I had when I had stomped up the stairs with her minutes before. “I have to figure my way out of this.”

  “Look. Your dad said revocable trust. Which means he can amend it and change the terms. Again.” She laid her hands out. “Convince Adam to be your boyfriend for a little while. Maybe they’ll change their tune. Parents think they know what’s best for their kids until they’re facing it.”

  I gave what she said some consideration. My initial thought was that they’d never change the terms of the trust now. But then again, I never would have guessed they’d do it this time. “I just need to work this out in my head. Before they come up for the season.”

  “Let me help.’’

  At my really? look she stood and placed her hands on my shoulders. “We’ll figure this out. I mean, I’m sure Adam would do you a solid and pretend, at least until you had a ‘breakup’ that looked believable.”

  “Adam? Do me a solid?” If I found any humor in this situation, this was where I would’ve laughed. But I couldn’t laugh. Adam hated me.

  “Okay fine, maybe he’ll do me a solid.” But her maybe was flimsy at best. “I’ll talk to Keane. Maybe he still has a crush on me.”

  “I think you killed your chances with Keane in high school.” Though Adam hated me, his best friend Keane did not. Partly because he was so close to my roommate, Navy. And also because I had never done anything to him. Truth be told, I had never done anything to Adam either—but in his case that was precisely the problem.

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  I rubbed my temples. “No, don’t. Let me sort this out. I’ll figure a way through this, I just need time.”

  “Don’t tell me, you’re going to make a chart.”

  “Don’t mock my charts,” I said defensively. “I’ve found many solutions by charting out an issue.”

  “Yeah, I know, you big nerd.” To some, being called a nerd might be offensive but I actually took pride in it. I worked my ass off and my grades were proof. Those didn’t come easily to me, they required a lot of prep, studying, and extra credit when I could get it.

  “Hey, we’re not all born with big brains and bigger mouths,” I said with a raised eyebrow. “Ready to get out of here?”

  She nodded and we left my parents’ party without having a long, unnecessary goodbye.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay the weekend?” Tori asked me, after we’d stayed the night at her parents’ cabin.

  “I’m sure.” I looked at the dark, foreboding cabin that was nestled in the tall evergreen trees like they’d given birth to it, like they protected it still. “Navy is waiting on me.”

  “Ugh, Navy,” she said with thinly veiled jealousy. She was always making those comments, revealing to me just how unsettled she was about me moving in with my other best friend. For Tori, I was her
ride or die—the only person to put up with her. Her words, not mine. She may have had a tough exterior, but deep beneath the layers of steel was a warm, soft heart, prone to hurt.

  “Hey, you’re my oldest friend,” I reminded her, slinging my arm over her shoulders. “And if we went to the same college, I would’ve moved in with you in a heartbeat.” It was true, but I also knew that moving in with Tori wouldn’t bode well for my whole, get out of my shell persona. Tori didn’t understand that deep-seated need to change. But I didn’t see it as changing who I was, but changing how I saw others, how to approach people with more compassion. “I have to finish moving in stuff this weekend. What are you going to do in this place all weekend?”

  “I’m going to live up to its reputation as Madame Tori’s Pleasure House, of course.” She did a regal bow and smirked. “Entertain some gentlemen callers while my roommates are gone.”

  “Roommates,” I said. “You mean your parents.”

  “Semantics.” She plunked down on the stone steps that ascended to the large front porch. “In reality, I’ll probably binge all the Netflix romcoms my little heart can take.”

  “Romcoms.” I wrinkled my nose. “You? Has someone kidnapped my best friend and replaced her love for true crime documentary with a newfound love for, as she has so eloquently put it in the past, ‘dumpster entertainment’?”

  “Oh, I’m your best friend? I thought little miss heart eyes was.”

  I sighed. Not this again. “Come on, you know that I have different best friends.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but you’re not moving in with me. You’re moving in with her.” The way she said ‘her’ made her sound like a jealous mistress talking about a wife.