by Lena Fox
Julie actually smiled when the movie finished, and I said I’d pull an all-nighter to get some work done afterwards. But when I closed my door on her and looked at the pile of work on my desk, I lost my motivation again. I’d been given extensions, but that just meant I had all of last week’s assignments and all of this week’s assignments to do. I couldn’t even find it in me to panic.
I was numb to all of it. I just drifted through the days, trying to make sense out of things that no sense could be made of. I sat in class and stared at complex concepts and even more complicated people, wondering if anyone had noticed my absence, and if they would notice the larger absence that was to come.
Blake called me about a hundred times. I couldn’t answer.
He stopped by looking for me twice. I hid. I couldn’t face him.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I hated it.
It meant I cared about him, and I didn’t want to. He was a hot, sweet, intelligent guy with a great future ahead of him. It was unfair of me to expect him to be there for a girl who was dying. What kind of life could we have together? A loved one dying from a terminal illness was only romantic in books and movies; in real life, it was messy and unbearable.
In stories, the heroine stayed strong, she was always beautiful, became more beautiful despite whatever disease was ravaging her body. I knew better than that. I had witnessed death all around me during my treatment. I’d witnessed my mother’s death. Cancer took life and beauty away and gave back nothing. Blake deserved better. If he cared at all for me too, then ending it here was for the best.
Dad had called, inviting me to dinner on Friday, saying we’d be doing that instead of our normal Sunday thing. That was strange enough, but then I pulled up at Dad’s house only to see Blake’s bike in the driveway, plus another car I didn’t recognize.
Oh god, do they know? Is this some kind of intervention?
I walked slowly into the house, ready to bolt if needed. Dad was sitting at the bar in the living room, drinking and laughing with Blake.
Dad put his tumbler of whiskey down on the counter. “There she is!”
He came across the room—a suspiciously immaculately clean room—looking joyful and slightly red in the cheeks. How long have the two of them been drinking?
Dad wrapped his arms around me. He seemed way too happy. What was going on?
“It’s so nice you invited Blake to dinner again,” he said.
I gave Blake a ‘What the hell?’ look over Dad’s shoulder.
With one more squeeze, Dad let go. “I’ve got someone I want you to meet as well.”
I was given no time to assault Blake with questions before a blond woman walked in from the dining room, and Dad stood beside her.
She was a bit younger than my dad, maybe late thirties. Her bleached hair hung in a clean sheet down her back, and her overly-whitened teeth flashed as she smiled and extended one very tanned hand and said, “It is so nice to finally meet you. Your dad has told me all about you. Aren’t you just so adorable?” She actually pinched my cheeks.
I stared at her. “Umm, hi?”
“I’m Louisa.” She said it like I was supposed to know exactly what that meant. “I’m dating your father.”
I gave Dad a steely look. I knew he’d been dating on and off since Mom died. Mostly off. But he always tried to keep it secret from me. I had no idea he was seeing anyone right now, let alone someone he now felt ready to introduce to his daughter. I felt utterly ambushed.
I’d probably brought this on myself. Maybe Dad had just been waiting for me to be the first person to bring someone home. Now it was an acceptable thing.
“Louisa. Of course. Dad has talked about you. A lot.” I could see from my Dad’s wince that he knew we would be talking a lot about her, very soon.
Louisa smiled even wider and put her hand on my shoulder, directing me into the dining room. An unnaturally clean dining room. Everything was unfamiliar.
“This is so lovely,” Louisa said. “It’s like a double date!”
“Blake and I aren’t dating,” I said.
“Oh, just friends. Gotcha.” Louisa winked a very obvious wink at me, like we were girlfriends already. “Blake?” Louisa let her eyes linger on him. “I didn’t catch your last name.”
He hesitated. “Rowell. Blake Rowell.”
Louisa’s eyes narrowed very slightly, then she laughed. “When you say it fast it sounds like Blake Growl!” She leaned back and whispered to me, not quietly enough, “And grrrrr indeed.”
Dad followed us, and when I glanced back at him I could see him alternating between giving anxious looks at me and making googly eyes at Louisa. This relationship was important to him, or she wouldn’t be here. This was the first partner he’d ever introduced me too, and Louisa was obviously trying hard to win me over, in her own way. I knew I had to try as well. For Dad. He’d need someone, after I was gone.
The table was already laid out with Dad’s finest plates and cutlery. Each setting was perfect, with folded napkins, multiple sets of knives and forks for each course, and a centerpiece of yellow roses and calla lilies. Louisa stood next to it and flourished her hands. She’d obviously been working hard. I wondered if she’d done the cleaning too, or just inspired it.
I tried to seem enthusiastic, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t the way we did family dinner. Sunday dinner was casual, just me and Dad and good food. It was Friday, anyway, but still. It was like she was already trying to create a new tradition. To take over.
Relax. She can’t replace Mom. She’s not trying to. You’re just worked up.
I sighed and put on a smile. “It looks beautiful, Louisa. Just perfect.”
She beamed and Dad beamed, and my smile grew more honest.
The oven timer beeped in the kitchen and Dad headed that way. Louisa hurried after him, insisting on helping.
I immediately turned on Blake, who had been cowering behind the others. Now we were alone in the room, he backed against a wall, holding up his hands defensively. “Please don’t kill me.”
I hissed, “This is stalker behavior. You realize that, right?”
“I was just worried about you, that’s all. And I wanted to apologize for being a massive prick. You didn’t reply to my calls, or answer your door, so I just stopped by to ask your dad if you were okay. He kind of assumed I was here for dinner, and I wasn’t going to turn down one of your dad’s meals.”
I half smiled. No one could turn down one of Dad’s meals. “I don’t want you to worry about me.”
“Yeah. You’ve made that clear. But it turns out I do anyway.”
The bottom fell out of my heart.
Blake stroked a finger down my cheek, looking far too concerned. “What is it you do want?”
You. All of you, up and down, inside and out. For every day I have left.
But that was selfish, too selfish. “I just want to finish my list.”
Blake’s hand dropped away. His voice sounded flat. “Made any more progress, since I haven’t heard from you?”
“No. I just needed … some time. What about you? Do you still want to help me with it? It’s meant to be fun. I want it to be fun for you too. Just fun. Nothing more. And I know which one you’re looking forward to. It sounds like fun, right?”
Blake hesitated a moment, but then his lips pulled to the side. “I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t been on my mind.”
“Do you want to try tonight?” I asked. “You can help me pick up a girl, and then … I don’t know. I guess we see what happens?”
Blake put his hand on his chest and said earnestly, “If you let me be part of what happens, even if I’m just sitting in the corner, I will be immensely appreciative. I’ll try my best not to giggle like an excited schoolboy and ruin it.”
I raised my eyebrows, not sure if he was joking. I dropped my voice to a whisper, worried about Dad overhearing. “You really want to watch me and another woman … make love?”
“Bloody hell, Georg
ie.” Blake bent toward me as if I’d punched him in the belly. “Dinner with your dad and his new girlfriend, and I’m not going to be able to stand up all night.”
I blushed as Blake hobbled over into a chair and crossed his legs.
Dad and Louisa came back in, bringing plate after plate of food. They had cooked without me, but I didn’t mind. An early dinner meant Blake and I could get away earlier too, and I was starting to get interested in my list again. Just seeing how Blake reacted to the idea of me and another woman turned me on. Made life spark up inside me again.
Dinner was a bit of a circus. Dad kept staring at Louisa, and trying to tell me every one of her many wonderful attributes. Blake stuffed about ten pieces of salmon covered in butter and dill sauce into his gut, and somehow still managed to have room for triple-cooked potatoes, half a dozen homemade sourdough bread rolls, and a huge helping of the creamy chocolate mousse my dad used to make just for me.
Louisa was nice enough but she kept asking Blake weird questions. Blake was too busy eating to notice that they were weird, or the way she would narrow her eyes a little right before she asked. It made me uncomfortable.
Dad had questions, too. Luckily, it was easier to answer questions about my classes now that I was actually going to them again. He backed off me in a hurry after he figured that out and he pretty much left Blake alone too, except for the occasional admiring glance when Blake managed to snarf down yet another serving of food.
As Dad started clearing the table, I excused myself to the bathroom to clean up. I’d come dressed for a meal with Dad, not ready to pick up another woman. I wore a black, loose-fitting blouse with lace edges, belted around my waist with leggings beneath. I pulled the belt in as tight as possible over my just-fed belly to make my curves pop, and let my hair out, ruffling it with my fingers. I had some makeup in the car I could put on before we hit the bar, and overall, I didn’t feel too frumpy. With Blake by my side, I felt confident.
I was about to leave the bathroom when the door I’d left ajar swung open.
“Hello there.” Louisa leaned against the doorframe. “I was hoping we would get a chance to talk privately. A little bit of girl time.”
“Sure, I guess. What did you want to talk about?”
She clapped her hands happily and the heavy gold rings across her fingers clacked against each other. She shuffled closer, propping herself up on the vanity basin beside me. “Just a bit of girly gossip! Won’t it be fun to talk about boys together?”
“Except by boys, you mean my father.” I grinned wryly.
She chuckled. “I suppose that could be awkward, couldn’t it? I’ll try not to tell you how dreamy I find him then.”
I chuckled back, warming to her. But then those narrowed, fox-like eyes came back. “Blake seems like a nice guy.”
“He is. But we are just friends,” I said.
“Do you know much about him?”
“Not really,” I admitted. I hadn’t even known his last name until today. “But I’ve only just met him, and we’re really just friends.”
Louisa waved her hand at me like the words “just friends” did not exist to her. “What I mean is, do you know who he is?”
I frowned, unsure where this was going. “He’s just … Blake.”
“Oh, honey! You really don’t know?” Louisa shuffled along the vanity, even closer, clearly excited by something. “I suppose he was never really that famous. Just famous, you know, by association. But even I followed his Instasnap account for a while before it all ended.”
Famous? “What all ended? Associated with who?”
“That’s Seyvia’s husband. I mean, they were young, but they had that high school sweetheart angle the press loved, and he was one of Sey-Sey’s back-up dancers, so he was always right by her side in the news.”
Husband? I leaned into the vanity basin, feeling faint.
Let us live forever,
Or let us die together,
Without you, what is life for?
The song lyrics floated through my head. That teen pop-star that died young of an overdose or something not long after the song hit the charts … Seyvia.
“Blake doesn’t dance,” was all I could say.
“Oh, it’s him all right. You don’t forget a face like his. I don’t know what he’s been doing since the tragedy, or how he ended up here with you.” Louisa popped her hands over her mouth. “Oh, dear, I didn’t mean it like that.”
I just shook my head, trying to absorb the information. I couldn’t even hate her for the slip-up. Of course, that was what any sane person would think. Why would someone like him be with someone like me? No wonder he was worried. No wonder he was trying to work out what my deal was. He’d already lost someone. He was probably trying to work out what risk I was to him.
If Louisa was right at all. Maybe she wasn’t. It had to be at least three years since Seyvia had died. What was Louisa, anyway? Some kind of partners-of-dead-pop-stars expert? She probably had the wrong person.
But if she wasn’t wrong?
Tears jumped into my eyes.
Louisa made a small whining noise. “Oh, darlin’, I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean it that way. I was just trying …”
I walked out of the bathroom. I had to find Blake. To what? Confront him? I couldn’t be that much of a hypocrite.
If we both had our secrets, so be it.
But I still had to find him. To look him in the eye and see if I could identify the loss in there, the empty, unhealing wound a loved one carved there when they left us. To see his pain and decide if I could cause something similar in him again.
I found him out in the backyard, staring up at the tree in the middle of the lawn. Mom’s tree.
Each step toward him felt as if I was held back by the weight of a ship’s anchor.
The sky hung over our heads in softened shades of blue streaked through with pink and coral, ever darkening. Somehow, it made the purple flowers blanketing Mom’s tree glow brighter.
“It’s beautiful,” Blake said when I reached his side. “I’m not sure I’ve seen a tree like this before.”
“It’s a lasiandra,” I said. I looked at the tree too. “Dad and I planted it just after Mom passed away. In her memory.”
I could sense Blake turn and look at me. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I was such a coward.
His voice came quietly. “Isn’t that painful? Having such a big reminder of her, right here in the middle of the yard?”
I took in a shaking breath. “Yes. And no. It’s almost as though I put a lot of my memories of Mom into this tree. It was so small when we planted it. I could ignore it if I needed to—just turn away and not see it when it was too hard. But each year it gets bigger, more visible, as each year I’m more willing to remember, more able to remember without as much pain. And now, her presence will never fade away for us. She’s here, growing stronger in this tree and our hearts forever.”
Blake turned away to study the tree again. I took the opportunity to dab at the tears that threatened to spill.
The sky had shifted again, darkening into royal purples that matched the lasiandra, slashed through with neon orange as though set alight.
It was so beautiful it nearly broke my heart. I had been so sure before of my list, so sure it was what I needed and all I needed to feel alive for the time I had left. That sky, though? That never-ending stretch of color-washed space was enough to make me think that maybe there was something else, something that I might be missing out on.
The twinkle of the evening star appeared on the horizon.
“Starlight, star bright …” I said, unsure what I would wish for that night. I couldn’t bring myself to believe miracles happened. I’d seen too much death and suffering for that.
I would wish for something simple. That Blake would forgive me, and find happiness and healing after my list was done and I was gone.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to head out to a club right now,” Blake said. His
comment caught me off guard, and I looked right at him. His bright blue eyes seemed to peer right into my soul.
“I thought you were looking forward to this?” I teased.
“Boy, am I. But I couldn’t stop eating for the sex life of me. Testament to your dad’s cooking I suppose.” He rubbed his stomach as he looked up at the fading sunset. “I am so full I’m sloshing.”
I smiled, happy to be let off the hook. After tonight’s revelations, I wasn’t in the mood either. I needed time to find out if those revelations were true. Time to decide what they meant. “I guess this is good night then.”
“Doesn’t have to be. We could just hang out.” Blake wrapped his hand in mine, dragging me toward the side gate. “Come on, let’s go for a ride.”
Chapter Seventeen
Georgina
Blake’s body heat warmed my chest and arms. The air was cool and smelled of fresh-cut grass as we passed under tall oak trees, cruising slowly through the streets of my childhood.
That park was where Bobby Vaughn had kissed me when I was twelve, and when he kissed me again under the trees in the vacant lot behind it, I decided he was the boy I would marry. My best friend, Christy Roberts, used to live in the blue and white cottage on the left. She’d had a sleepover when we were fifteen and we had played spin the bottle with her older brother and his friends. One time the bottle pointed to her when I spun it, and after we kissed, half the boys in the room asked to go to the upcoming school dance with me. I was already going with Bobby, but I’d never felt so happy, so wanted.
Then, three days after that, my whole world changed. Then I wasn’t the cute girl who kissed her friend at a sleepover. I was the girl with cancer.
Bobby went to the school dance with Christy. In his defense, he said that Christy was so upset about my diagnosis, and he was just helping make her happy by taking her to the dance. And I couldn’t make it, since I was in the hospital that night, after all. What a hero.
