“To your support group?” I ask, confused. I don’t know why I’m suddenly being tortured in this compromise.
“Nope,” Maggie says. “Not to support group. CF support groups are only online. You’re going bungee jumping with me.”
Bungee jumping. Hmm. My boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend wants me to jump off a bridge. Kind of ironic when you think about it. I look over at Ridge and grin. I’ve always wanted to bungee jump. He just shakes his head and smiles back at me, like he was just defeated.
“I’ve always wondered something,” Bridgette says, looking across the room at Maggie. Warren is in the living room retrieving Bridgette’s nail file. “Why don’t you just get a lung transplant? Won’t that cure the disease?”
I’ve wondered that, too, but haven’t brought it up to Ridge yet.
“It’s not that easy,” Warren says, handing Bridgette the nail file. “Cystic Fibrosis doesn’t just affect the lungs, so new lungs won’t cure someone of the disease completely.”
“Also, I’m not in that predicament yet,” Maggie says. “In order to get new lungs, you have to have a really grim prognosis, but without being too sick to receive a lung transplant. Luckily, I’m too healthy to be a candidate right now. It’s a tricky position to be in. New lungs would be nice, but I don’t really want to be in the position to be a candidate because it means my health would have to decline first. And a transplant could prolong someone’s life by a few years, but it could also cut it short. Way short. Not something I’m hoping for anytime soon, to be honest.”
“New advancements happen every day, though,” Warren adds. “Which is why we’re really only discussing the near future tonight, not a long-term plan. If we try to plan too far ahead, it might discourage other possibilities. Maggie doesn’t want to hinder our lives, and we don’t want to hinder hers, so right now, the best scenario is to just tackle things a few months at a time with the tools we have to tackle them.”
Ridge nods, but then responds to Warren. “Sometimes I feel like your brain is on a power reserve. It’s off most of the time, but the few times you do turn it on, it’s at high power.”
Warren smiles at him. “Why, thank you, Ridge.”
Maggie laughs. “I’m not sure that was a compliment, Warren.”
“Sure it was,” Warren says.
I think it was both an insult and a compliment, which makes me laugh.
We spend the next half hour eating the lasagna Maggie prepared and working out more compromises. Bridgette doesn’t say much, but she’s also not rude at all, which is a huge improvement from when we walked through the front door.
After we tell Maggie goodnight, Ridge grabs my hand and leads me to the back seat of the car. He forces Warren to drive home since he drove here, which is fine with me because I really want to share the back seat with Ridge on the ride home.
He reaches across the seat and slides his fingers through mine as we’re pulling out of Maggie’s driveway. He pulls out his phone and texts me one-handed.
Ridge: You’re like the Bridgette whisperer. I don’t know how you do it.
Sydney: She’s not that bad. I think she’s always so defensive because no one has ever really made any effort to break through that defensiveness.
Ridge: Exactly. It says something that you made the effort.
Sydney: So did Warren.
Ridge: Only because he wanted to sleep with her. I don’t think he ever expected to fall in love with her. That was a surprise to everyone. Especially him.
Sydney: You have unique friends. I like them.
Ridge: They’re your friends now, too.
He squeezes my hand after I read his text. Then he reaches over and unbuckles my seatbelt, pulling me closer to him. Once I’m in the middle of the backseat, he refastens the middle seatbelt around me, pulling me against him. “Better,” he says, wrapping his arm around me.
His thumb is grazing my shoulder, but his hand eventually makes its way down, just far enough so that he can trace the faded letters he wrote over my heart. He presses his mouth against my ear. “Mine,” he says quietly.
I smile and place my hand over his heart. “Mine,” I whisper.
Ridge presses his mouth to mine, and I smile through the whole kiss. I can’t help it. When he pulls back, he leans against the door, pulling me even closer. I lift my legs onto the seat and curl them under me as I snuggle against him.
This feels right. Finally. It used to feel so wrong, but nothing about us feels wrong anymore. I owe a lot of that to Maggie’s willingness to forgive and move forward and even accept me into her life after everything that happened.
So much has changed in the past year. The day I turned twenty-two, I thought it was going to be the worst year of my life. But little did I know, a boy on a balcony with his guitar would change all of that.
Now I’m here in his arms, unable and unwilling to wipe the smile off my face because his heart is mine.
MINE.
It’s really hard to tell Warren everything he’s doing wrong when my hands are full with the mattress we’re carrying upstairs and his headphones on. I’d really hate to see him try to maneuver a boat or back up a trailer if he can’t even walk forward up the damn stairs while pushing a mattress.
I also don’t understand why we’re even moving Maggie’s mattress upstairs. Her apartment will be ready in four days, and there’s a couch, plus Brennan’s bed is empty. But I’m not arguing, because if she’s going to be in my apartment, I’d rather her be in the farthest bedroom from mine just so this will feel less awkward, even though I’ll be staying the night at Sydney’s this week.
Warren stops three steps from the top to take a break. He leans his arm on the railing and pulls his headphones off. “This is the only thing we’re moving, right? Everything else stays in the U-Haul?”
I nod and sign for him to pick up the mattress again. He rolls his eyes and readjusts his grip, pushing it toward me.
Maggie’s new apartment is on the other side of the complex. Close to Sydney’s old apartment, actually. Maggie has tried to back out several times and find somewhere else to stay because she’s worried it’ll be too much, living so close. But this will honestly be better for everyone. She gets sick so often, and for the past year I’ve had to spend a huge chunk of my nights in San Antonio. Even if she’s only a few miles away, her being in another complex would require me or Warren to stay overnights when she’s sick because she gets so weak, she can’t even get out of bed.
With her being in the same complex, it’ll make everything easier. I won’t have to spend uncomfortable nights in the same apartment as her, but she’ll be close enough that Warren or I can run over there and check on her every hour. I honestly think that’s why Sydney was so agreeable to it. She’s seen Maggie during the sicker times, and Sydney knows when Maggie’s down for the count, even a glass of water is impossible for her to get on her own. Not to mention her medications, making sure she’s doing her breathing treatments while she’s weak and recovering from an illness, ensuring her sugar levels are good every few hours. If she weren’t in the same complex, her care would require a car to get to her, and leaving her alone wouldn’t be possible. But being in the same complex, it actually requires less of my time and less of my presence and, in the end, will make Maggie feel more independent. Which is what she wants.
We’re leaving everything else in the U-Haul because one of Warren’s co-workers also works part time for the company who is renting it to us. They’re allowing us to keep it for the week for just nineteen dollars a day, so it’ll remain full of Maggie’s stuff and parked in the parking lot until she moves into her place.
Maggie is still down at the U-Haul, gat
hering what she’ll need to get her through the next four days. Sydney went to pick Bridgette up from work. Warren and I finally get the mattress into the bedroom and plop it flat on the floor. Warren is breathing heavily with his hands on his hips. He looks over at me. “Why aren’t you out of breath?”
“We went up a flight of stairs. Once. And I work out.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. In my room. Every day.”
He glares at me like my admitting that I work out daily is some type of betrayal. He stares back down at the mattress. “Is this weird?”
I look down at Maggie’s mattress, finally inside the same apartment as me. I used to hate that she would never agree to move in with me, and now she kind of is for a few days, and not a single part of me wants it to happen the way that I used to. That’s weird for me. For all these years, I assumed Maggie and I would end up living in this apartment together and that we’d eventually be married. I never imagined my life taking the turn it did, but now I couldn’t imagine it any differently.
So, yes. To answer Warren’s question, it is weird, so I nod. But it’s only weird because it all seems to be working out. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Whether that’s Maggie’s or Bridgette’s or Warren’s shoe, I don’t know. But I highly doubt it’ll be Sydney’s. She’s handled this better than anyone, and she has the most reasons not to.
“What if Sydney and Bridgette lived together and they decided to move some dude in that they had both dated in the past? Do you think we’d be cool with it?”
I shrug. “Guess it depends on the situation.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Warren signs. “You’d be pissed. You’d hate it. You’d act like a whiny little bitch, just like I would, and then we’d all break up.”