I laugh. “Do you plan on doing anything else on the list other than bungee jump?”
She shakes her head. “It’s really hard for me to travel. I’ve tried it a couple of times and never made it very far. I have too much medical equipment. Too many medications to worry about. It’s really not all that fun for me, but I didn’t realize it when I wrote the list.”
I hate that for her. I almost want to alter a couple of these just so she can mark more of them out. “How far are you able to travel without it being an inconvenience?”
She shrugs. “Day trips are cool. And I could probably go somewhere for a couple of nights, but there’s nowhere around here I haven’t already been. Why?”
“One sec.” I stand up and walk to the living room and grab a pen and spiral notebook off the table. I walk it back to Maggie’s room, feeling Ridge and Warren watching me the whole time. I turn around and smile at them before walking back to Maggie’s bed. I place her bucket list on the spiral notebook. “I think with a little modification, these are all doable.”
Maggie lifts up onto her elbow, curious as to what I’m doing. “What kind of modification?”
I scroll down the list. I stop on Carlsbad Caverns. “What interests you about Carlsbad? The bats or the caves?”
“The caves,” she says. “I’ve seen the bat flights here in Austin a dozen times.”
“Okay,” I say, drawing an open parenthesis next to Carlsbad Caverns on the list. “You could go to the Inner Space Cavern in Georgetown. Probably not nearly as cool as Carlsbad, but it’s definitely a cave.”
Maggie stares at the list for a moment. I’m not sure if she thinks I’m crossing a line by writing on her bucket list. I almost hand her back the list and apologize, but she leans over and points at the Eiffel Tower. “There’s a mock Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas.”
I smile when she says that, because it means we’re on the same page. I write “Eiffel tower in Paris, Texas” next to number nine.
I scroll the list again with the pen and then pause at number three. See the Northern Lights. “Have you ever heard of the Marfa lights in West Texas?”
Maggie shakes her head.
“Doubt it’s even remotely the same, but I’ve heard you can camp out there and watch them.”
“Interesting,” Maggie says. “Write it down.” I write Marfa lights in parentheses next to Northern Lights. She points to number four. Eat Spaghetti in Italy. “Isn’t there a town somewhere in Texas called Italy?”
“Yeah, but it’s really small. Not even sure they’d have an Italian restaurant, but it’s close to Corsicana, so you could get spaghetti to go and take it to a park in Italy.”
Maggie laughs. “That sounds really pathetic, but definitely doable.”
“What else?” I ask, scrolling the list. She’s already apparently driven a racecar and had a one-night stand, which we’ve successfully avoided discussing. The only thing left that we haven’t modified is Vegas. I point to it with the pen. “There are casinos right outside of Paris, TX. Technically, you could just go there after visiting the fake Eiffel Tower. And maybe you should”—I scratch out two of the zeros—“only lose fifty dollars instead of five grand.”
“There are casinos in Oklahoma?” she asks.
“Huge ones.”
Maggie pulls the list from me and looks it over. She smiles while she reads it, then pulls the notebook and pen from my hands. She places the list on top of the notebook. At the top of the list, it reads, “Things I want to do. Maybe one of these days…”
Maggie scratches out part of the title so that the list reads, “Things I want to do. Maybe Now.”
I was scolded today.
It’s the first time I’ve seen my doctor since she walked out of my hospital room—right before I bailed. The first half of my appointment today was spent apologizing to her and promising to take things more seriously from now on. The second half of my appointment was spent with different specialists. When you have Cystic Fibrosis, your team comes to you in one central location, as it’s not safe to sit in the different waiting rooms for each specialist. It’s one of the things I love about my doctor that I didn’t get the full benefits of while living in San Antonio. I really do feel like my health will be easier to maintain now that I’m back in Austin. I just have to quit letting my frustration over this illness win out over my will. Which is hard, because I’m very easily frustrated.
I’ve been gone most of the day, but when I pull back up to the apartment, I’m surprised to see Ridge’s car here. He’s been staying at Sydney’s the majority of the week. Today is Friday, and I was supposed to move tomorrow, but it’s been pushed back to Sunday. I’m sure Ridge will be happy to have his own bed again.
Or not. I doubt he’s all that upset about spending so much time at Sydney’s.
When I open the living room door, they’re both on the couch. Ridge is holding a book in front of him, his feet propped up on the coffee table. Sydney is leaning against him, looking at the words on the pages as he reads aloud.
Ridge is reading. Out loud.
I stare at them for a moment. He struggles with a word, and Sydney makes him look at her as she sounds it out for him. She’s helping him pronounce the words out loud. It’s such an intimate moment, I want to be anywhere else when I close the door and gain Sydney’s attention. She looks up and then sits up straight, putting a little distance between herself and Ridge. I notice. So does he, because he stops reading and follows Sydney’s gaze until he sees me.
“Hey.” I smile and set my purse on the bar.
“Hi,” Sydney says. “How was the appointment?”
I shrug. “Overall, it was good. But I spent most of it being scolded.” I grab a water out of the refrigerator and then head toward the bedroom I’m staying in. “I deserved it, though.” I walk to my room and close the door. I fall down onto the bed because it’s the only thing in here. There isn’t even a dresser or a TV or a chair. Just me and a bed and a living room I feel slightly uncomfortable in.
Not because Ridge is in there with Sydney. I honestly don’t mind seeing them together. The only thing that bothers me about it is that seeing them together reminds me of Jake, and I feel a sting of jealousy that it’s not me and Jake cuddled together on a couch somewhere. I feel like Ridge and Sydney fit together in a way that’s similar to how Jake and I fit together. Or could have fit together.
It’s interesting to me, looking back, just how wrong Ridge and I were for each other. And it isn’t at all because anything is necessarily wrong with us as individuals. We just didn’t bring out the best sides of each other. Not like Sydney does with him. I mean, he’s sitting on a couch, reading to her. And he’s doing it because it’s his way of perfecting his speaking voice. That’s not a side of him I ever brought out. Or even encouraged. We’ve had conversations in the past about why he doesn’t verbalize, but he always just shrugged it off and said he didn’t like doing it. I never asked for a deeper explanation than that.
I remember the day I was in the hospital and found all the messages between him and Sydney. I didn’t read them all in that moment because I honestly didn’t want to. I
was hurt and a little blindsided. But once I made it home, I read every word. More than once. And the conversation that hurt me the most was when Ridge explained to Sydney where the band Sounds Of Cedar got its name.
The reason it hurt so much is because I realized, in all the years we’d been dating, I’d never once asked Ridge where the band name came from. And because of that, I’d never known exactly how much he’d done for Brennan when they were younger.
There was a lot I read that I once wished I’d never read between the two of them. Between all the iMessages and Facebook messages, I sat there for hours reading. But reading all of it also made something very clear to me: There was so much more to Ridge than I was aware of. There were things he shared with Sydney over a short period of knowing her that he never once shared with me over a six-year stretch. And that wasn’t because Ridge was hiding anything from me about himself or his past, or lying in any way. There were just things about both of us we never dug deep enough to figure out. It occurred to me that maybe we didn’t share those things because they were sacred to us. And you only share the really sacred stuff with the people who reach you on that deep of a level.
I didn’t reach Ridge on the level that Sydney did. And Ridge didn’t reach me.
I ultimately decided to end our relationship because of their connection. Not because they had formed it…but because Ridge and I never had.
People are supposed to bring out the best in each other. I didn’t bring out the best in Ridge. He didn’t bring out the best in me. But seeing Sydney on the couch with him just now, helping him… She brings out the best in him.
I noticed how she pulled away from him a little when she realized I was in the room with them. It bothers me that she felt she needed to do that. I want her to know that their physical affection is not something they should feel obligated to hide on my account. I actually, in a weird way, like seeing how much they like each other. It gives me even more reassurance that I made the right choice by not allowing Ridge to use my illness as a reason to stay with me.