I had laughed and pretended like I hadn’t been tempted to find a way that would let us swap lives. Because I was just as jealous of her as she was of me. I had seen her in the grocery store the week before that dinner. Her kids had been so cute, and anyone who’d looked at her with them could tell that her kids adored her. Her husband had been with them as well, and the way he had touched his hand to the small of her back the entire time they were moving throughout the store and that smug look on his face every time she glanced up at him had spoken volumes of how much he loved her.
I wanted that.
While my friends were psyched to go off to college, party for the next four years, and then start careers, all I really wanted was to start a family. I wanted to be a mom, a wife, and I ached to have those things with Gray. But that wasn’t ever going to happen, so I got good at lying and telling my friends or anyone else who bothered to ask that I was just as stoked to join a sorority at my first-choice college. I even had a five-year plan, which was what Alicia wanted me to have more than anything. Plans were good. They were safe.
But they weren’t the plans I wanted most.
AJ walked with me through the gym and outside to my car before speaking again. I could only imagine how upset Gray had been the last two days, and I felt guilty for not at least checking in with him to let him know how my first day of school had been.
“I get it, Kassa. Really, I do,” AJ told me in a quiet voice as we reached my car. He turned so we were facing each other and gave me a gentle smile. “Missing someone isn’t easy, and as close as you and that boy are, I can’t even imagine how hard it must be for you. But he’s a special case, and me and you, we’re the only ones who really understand that. Don’t push him too away too much, sweetheart. It might destroy him completely.”
I swallowed around the sudden knot that had filled my throat and blinked back the tears that threatened to blind me. “That wasn’t what I was doing, AJ. I swear it wasn’t. The last few days have just been crazy busy is all.”
His smile said he didn’t completely believe me, but he opened my car door and I got into the driver’s seat. “Just give him a call back, Kassa. Let him know you’re okay. But be prepared for him to be overbearing.”
I sighed and started the car. “I will. I promise. See you tomorrow?”
He nodded and shut the door for me but stayed where he was until I had backed up and pulled out of the parking lot into traffic. Then he went back into the gym.
Knowing that Gray would be too hard to focus on and drive at the same time, I waited until I got home before calling him. As I pulled into the garage, I was surprised to see Alicia’s SUV already there. That was the first time she had gotten home before me in weeks. I didn’t know if I should have been happy or concerned that she was home before midnight on a work night.
Concern won as I opened the back door, stepped into the kitchen, and find her leaning over the sink and vomiting. I dropped my gym bag and backpack to the floor beside the door and hurried over to help her. I poured her a glass of water and got a dish towel to wipe her face as she weakly lifted her head and gave me a grim smile.
“Thanks, honey,” she whispered in a voice rough from repeated vomiting. Her eyes were glazed with pain and discomfort, her face pale and beads of sweat clinging to her skin.
“What hurts?” I asked. There was a shake in my voice because seeing this woman sick terrified me.
She was the only parent I had ever known. I had only ever seen her sick a few times in the years she had been my mother, but they had been scary for both me and Jace because we couldn’t live without her. She was everything to us.
She touched trembling fingers to her head. “I have an awful migraine. But it’s nothing to worry about. Just stress from work, sweetheart. I’ll be okay by morning.”
“Do you have anything to take for it?”
“I have some over-the-counter migraine relief up in my bathroom.” She pushed away from the sink and started to move away from me.
I was watching so closely that I knew the second her knees started to buckle. I caught her around the waist before she could fall, thankful for the few added muscles I had acquired over the last few months so that I could help her upstairs to her room. I guided her to her bed and helped her sit. Then I hurried into the bathroom to find the medication she had mentioned.
When I came back to her, she was bent in half, her hands covering her eyes while she moaned in pain. Tears burned my eyes, but I held them back so she wouldn’t see them. Swallowing hard, I helped her lie down and then offered her the two of the gel tablets from the bottle. She swallowed them only to gag almost as soon as they were gone, but somehow, she was able to keep them down.
I set her
glass of water on the nightstand and then undressed her. I got her skirt off and then unbutton her top, but she waved me away when I would have helped her with her bra.
“I’ll just sleep like this, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Thanks for helping me. You go on to bed now. I’ll be okay.”
“But Alicia—” I started, wanting to stay with her in case she needed help in the middle of the night.
She shook her head only to grimace as the pain seemed to intensify. “Go, Kassa. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Biting my lip to keep from begging her to let me stay, I tucked the covers up around her and then turned the light off before shutting the door behind me. Blowing out a deep breath, I went back downstairs for my bags and to grab a yogurt. After taking everything up to my room, I tossed my gym bag toward the closet and put my backpack on my desk. Then I fell onto my bed with my yogurt.
As I took my first bite, my phone rang and I quickly lifted it, worried that it might have been Alicia. Seeing Gray’s picture on the screen, I had to fight a fresh flood of tears back, but this time, I wasn’t able to hold them in. I had been brave while taking care of Alicia, had been able to keep calm because she had needed me to be, but now, I didn’t have to be brave or calm.
“Hi,” I whispered in an emotionally choked voice.
There was a pause on his end, as if he could hear the tears in my voice and they bothered him. “Are you mad at me?”
I put my yogurt and the spoon on my side table and then turned onto my side, curling up into a ball as I closed my eyes, reliving everything that had just happened with Alicia. It was just a migraine, I tried to tell myself. Just a really horrible headache. She would be fine in the morning. She was okay. She was okay…