Days of You and Me (5 page)

“Okay. I’m sorry.” Leo sounded subdued. “I guess I’m guilty of being a shitty friend once again. Story of our lives, huh? I’ll try to do better.” He craned his neck, cracking it, and I could almost feel his tension. “Maybe I can come up some time. Not sure when, because we head into camp in a few weeks, but maybe when we play in Philly. Worst case, I’ll come see you at Christmas, I guess.”

I gazed at him steadier. “Leo, if you want to see Nate again, I suggest you come before Christmas. I don’t . . . I’m not sure how many good days he has left. Right now, he’s pretty comfortable most of the time, as long as he stays in bed or on the couch. But he’s sleeping a lot more. And his doctor told me that if he gets sick, things could go downhill fast.”

Leo’s mouth tightened into a straight line. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”

“He’s there now, at his parents’ house. You know, if you’re going to be here for a few days.” I took a deep breath. “If you let me know when you’re coming over, I could make sure I’m out. It might be easier for both of you if I’m not there.”

He nodded. “Weird, though, to think that the three of us—the Trio—are never going to be together again. Guess I never thought of that.”

“Everything changes.” It had been my mantra the last few years.

“Yeah.” He scrubbed his face once more with one hand. “Well, I sent Sarah up to pay for the buns, so I better go find her before she leaves my sorry ass here.” He paused. “We really are just friends, Quinn. She’s completely committed to her career, but she’s come down to hang with me a few times, and I spent a weekend with her in Georgetown. You’d like her friends.”

“Maybe.” I wasn’t ready to commit to that. “Speaking of friends, have you talked to Gia recently?”

“We text a few times a week, and I asked her to come over today for the picnic. I don’t know whether or not she will, but at least she’s invited. She told me she’s been interviewing and trying to find a place to live for next year.”

“I wish . . .” I stopped, because there wasn’t any use in wishing. Not at this point. “I hope you get to see her. She told me she was going to try to see Nate and me next week, if she works out this apartment she’s hoping to get.”

“How about Zelda and Tucker? Have you seen them?”

I shook my head. “Zelda’s spending some time in Lancaster with her family. She’ll probably visit us when she gets ready to move to the city next month. I don’t know about Tuck. I’m sure he’ll try to come by and see Nate as soon as he can. They really got to be close, rooming together the last four years.” I tilted my head. “Why did you ask about Zelda and Tucker together?”

“I thought they were a couple.” Leo lifted one shoulder. “Seemed that way at the . . . uh, the last time I saw them.”

“Hmm.” I didn’t have the emotional or mental energy to put much consideration into what might or might not be going on between my former roommate and Nate’s. “I thought they might be hooking up at one point when we were still in school, but strangely enough, Zelda’s pretty close-mouthed when it comes to stuff like this. I mean, things that really matter. She’ll give you the details on every guy she’s ever slept with, because none of them mean anything. But the one that might be real is the one she won’t talk about. I asked her about Tuck lots of times, and so did Gia. She’d never say anything other than that they had a complicated history.”

“Don’t we all.” Leo grunted. “Listen, I need to go, and you do, too. I’ll—I’ll call you or text you, and we’ll work out a time for me to see Nate. I promise, Mia. And you need to promise me that if you need anything, you’ll let me know. If you want someone to listen or whatever . . . I can do that.” He reached forward, touching my arm with just the tips of his fingers. “I can be your friend, Mia.”

I couldn’t say anything else, and as though he sensed that, Leo only offered me a tight smile before he walked away. I hunkered over the cart, waiting until the inevitable pain eased enough that I could move.

And then I proceeded up and down the aisles, tossing the items on Mark’s list into the basket before I paid for them and left the store.

I drove back to the Wellmans’ house in silence, alone.

Coming Your Way
by Beach Avenue

“D
id I ever tell you the story of our first Christmas together, after your mom and I were married?”

I frowned as my dad sat down at the other end of the sofa. We’d finished our makeshift Fourth of July picnic about half an hour before, and he’d been in the kitchen, helping my mom, Quinn and Carrie clean up. The red checkered picnic cloth was still spread over the coffee table; the idea of making my way outside to the backyard exhausted me, and no way in hell was I going to give in to my dad’s suggestion that he carry me there. I might have been dying by degrees, but I could still do my best not to look like a cripple in my wife’s eyes.

Yeah, I knew it was stupid and pigheaded of me. But since I was dying at the age of twenty-two, I figured I was owed a little latitude.

My father’s opening line was random, but he was shrewd and more often than not, came around to his topic by the backdoor, as my mom liked to say. So I decided to see where he was going with this.

“I don’t think so.”

He smiled. “We’d been married since February, and we were living in the same tiny one-bedroom apartment in Philadelphia that I’d moved into right after college. We’d made the decision to relocate to the suburbs and start a family, so that fall, we’d been over here, looking. We found this house right around Halloween, and they accepted our offer on Thanksgiving.”

This part I knew. I remembered my mother saying that she’d always loved how fun it was to decorate our house for the holidays, since they’d first seen it around that time of year.

“Our lease on the apartment was supposed to end December 15
th
, but we couldn’t close on this house until the end of January. So me being the financial wizard I am . . .” He quirked an eyebrow at me and smiled wryly. “I thought we could move out of the apartment in December, and since we were going to spend Christmas with my parents anyway, we’d just go early and stay with them until the end of January, when we could get into the new house.”

“Hmmm.” I tried not to smile, but the corners of my mouth tipped up anyway. I thought of my dad’s parents and my mom, their sometimes-uneasy relationship even now, and tried to picture what it would have been like when my mother and father were newlyweds.

“Yeah,
hmmmm
is a pretty accurate description of how things went. By Christmas Eve, your mom was a mess, my own mother was barely speaking to me and the entire family was in turmoil.” Dad shook his head. “The day after Christmas, Mom and I moved into a hotel and lived there until we closed on this house. My genius financial idea cost us a hell of a lot of money.”

“But Mom was happy.” I rubbed a sore spot on my leg. “So it was all worth it.”

“Totally.” He grinned. “After I sulked for about a day, I decided to just call it our second honeymoon. I’ll spare you the nitty gritty details, but let’s just say . . . if you’d hung in a little longer and weren’t born so dang early, you’d have come about nine months after that little unplanned vacation.”

“Thanks for that information, Dad.” I grimaced. “What’s the moral of this trip down memory lane?”

He sighed. “Quinn’s miserable, Nate. She’s exhausted and tense and on edge. Your mother . . . God love her, son, and you know I do, but she’s spent twenty-two—well, nearly twenty-three years now keeping you alive. It’s not easy for her to just hand the reins over to Quinn, and it’s not fair to expect Quinn to jump into her shoes.”

I shifted a little bit. “But I don’t want Mom to take care of me. I want just a little bit of normal, okay? Just . . . something the way it’s supposed to be. I just want Quinn and me to be a couple for as long as we can. If we could move somewhere and be on our own, I’d do it. But Mom would freak out. I thought being here would be a decent compromise.”

“You’re not wrong about your mother. And Nate, you and I have always been straight with each other, right? As much as you want to have what you call a normal life with Quinn for as long as you can, we have to take your mother’s feelings into consideration here. And if I’m being honest, mine, too. Neither of us wants to lose any time with you. We also know that we’re familiar with your medical needs in a way that Quinn isn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to your mom and me for you to move away from us and deny us these days with you, and it wouldn’t be fair to expect Quinn to jump in as an expert in your medications and other needs.”

“So what do you suggest?” I sagged back into the couch. “Are you saying I should send Quinn away? Or just let Mom run over her all the time? You saw what happened earlier. They were at each other’s throats. I love Mom, but you taught me that a man’s responsibility is to his wife, right?”

My father smiled. “I did. Our situation is a little different, though, than when we used to have our talks about marriage.”

“You always assumed those discussions were hypothetical, didn’t you?” I let my eyes drift shut. “Guess I fooled you.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He sounded sad. “But I did have an idea, and I ran it by Carrie this afternoon.”

“Were you thinking of Quinn and me moving in with her?” Carrie’s house was certainly big enough for us, but since it was two stories, with the bedrooms upstairs, I’d never considered us living there.

“That was my first idea, yes, but I decided pretty quickly that it wouldn’t work. At least, not her house here in Eatonboro. But you two seemed to make out well down at the shore. I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t go back down there. Quinn would be more comfortable in a house that’s familiar, for sure, and her bedroom is fairly spacious—I’m sure we could fit in the hospital bed even with her bed.”

“But what about Mom? And you?” I didn’t see how this was going to solve that problem.

“Mom could move down, too. It would be good for her, actually. And I’ll commute on the weekends. I can even probably cut down my work week a little, stay until Monday nights.”

“What about my doctors?” Being too far from the medical professionals had been one of my mom’s concerns about me being in Ocean City even for the week after our wedding.

“I haven’t checked with Dr. Randall yet, of course, but I have a hunch that he’ll be okay with this.” He shrugged. “Maybe that’s the upside of the fact that there’s not much they can do for you anymore.”

I stared at the seam on the edge of the cushion. “The last time I saw him, he said that eventually we’d have to talk about hospice. He told me it’ll be the kindest thing I can do for you and Mom, and for Quinn. Can we do that down there?”

For a long few moments, my father didn’t answer. When he did speak, his voice was heavy. “We can. Of course, nothing says you have to stay down there . . . that long. If you felt that you wanted to move back to this house later on, we could arrange for transport, even if you couldn’t handle the car trip by then.”

I’d thought that I’d long ago come to grips with impending death. It had been perched on my shoulder for so many years that we should’ve been old friends. Still, talking in such definite terms gave me a little sense of panic, as if there wasn’t going to be enough time.

“I think I’d rather stay down there. The beach . . . it’s peaceful, and it’s Quinn’s happy place. It would be a good spot to die, I think.” Silence hung between us for a few moments before I spoke again. “You said you talked to Carrie. Was she okay with all this?”

“Yeah.” Dad cleared his throat. “She’s been worried about Quinn, and I think she was relieved that I suggested this move.” With one more long exhale, he stood up. “I’ll tell your mom and Quinn our plans, and we’ll aim to get you set up down there this week. How does that sound?”

“Perfect.” I nodded. “Thanks, Dad. For everything.”