My chest tightens with hope, strange and alien. The feeling is a precarious thing, as if I’m afraid to believe in a happy ending. It’s possible her stroke was the best thing that could have happened.
Mom runs her fingers down the beige curtains in the window, and when she speaks, it’s slurred. “Pretty.”
I open a cannister on the counter. “They have all these teas for you to try. Peach honey? Peppermint? Do you want me to make you some?”
She points to a recliner. Eric nods and wheels her over, then eases her into it by basically picking her up and sitting her down.
I make the tea using the microwave while Eric unpacks the boxes. He picks something up and holds it up. “Who’s this nerd?”
I groan at a picture of me winning a medal for an art contest in fifth grade.
“Me.” I snatch it out of his hands while he hovers behind me.
“Nice mullet,” he murmurs.
I poke him in the side. “Our neighbor was in beauty school. Sherry. She’d come over and offer to cut my hair to practice. You think I would have learned after the mullet, but I wanted blonde highlights once and she begged to do them. My hair came out with one giant white streak. I don’t know how that even happens. Mom rushed to the drugstore and got a toner. It didn’t work and I looked like a skunk. Good thing it was before you met me.”
I reach up and brush a kiss over his cheek. We’ve been spending as much time together as we can these past few weeks. Between hockey and classes and my job, it’s not much, but we’re making it work.
He grins and takes the tea I made for him while I set Mom’s on the side table next to her, then pause as I realize the mistake. She can’t drink that. Adjusting to her needs will take some time. I rummage in the cabinets and find a tumbler with a lid and straw and pour it in.
Mom stares at the photo still in his hand. “Keep.”
I raise my brows. “You want me to keep it?”
She nudges her head at Eric.
“She wants me to keep it,” he drawls in a triumphant tone as he tucks the photo in his wallet.
I smile and turn on the TV to PBS, where Downton Abbey is on, and Mom nods her approval.
After the nurse comes in to help her with dinner, Eric and I say our goodbyes and step out into a cold wind. He tightens his arm around me and ushers me to the truck.
“You okay?” he asks as he opens my door and peers down at my face.
“It’s a nice place. She looks happy.”
He glances at me. “But…”
“I just hate leaving her. She doesn’t know anyone, and it’s all new, and she can’t even walk on her own. What will she do when she needs to get up and go to the bathroom? What if she gets sick?”
“She’ll get to know people. She has a buzzer if she needs help. There are nurses monitoring her.”
I sigh. “Thank you for helping us. I don’t know how I would have done all this, mentally, without you.”
He presses his forehead to mine. “Glad to do it. How did you get this scar?” He strokes the scar on my temple that my hair usually hides.
“You noticed, huh?”
“Hey, I dig scars.” He points out one on his chin, the bridge of his nose, and his jaw. “I’m a rough boy.”
“Eighth grade. I was in a knife fight with this girl, dodging and jumping around. But she was good. Really good. Out of nowhere, she darts at me and slices my temple open. It bled like a geyser.”
Eric whistles. “That’s pretty badass.”
“You know I’m kidding, right?”
“Totally, but I was a little turned on.”
I laugh, feeling girlish and silly, as I toy with the ends of his hair. “Truth, I was trying to impress my eighth-grade crush by doing a handstand. I got up for a few seconds, then crashed into the dugouts on the baseball field. It did bleed a lot.”
He brushes his lips over it, and I hear him breathe me in deeply.
A light-headed sensation washes over me, and I laugh nervously. Eric makes me nervous. Makes me aware of my skin. My bones.
“The crush didn’t even know I was alive. Meh, I’ve figured out to be myself now. If people like me, they will. If they don’t, then it wasn’t meant to be anyway. I shouldn’t have to impress anyone.”
A strange expression flits over his face. “My family lives to impress. Gotta keep up the appearance that everything is fine, even when it’s going to hell.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He picks up my wrist and presses a hot kiss there. “Let’s go home,” he says and shuts my door and gets in on the other side.