Chapter 22
“Do you and Ace play naughty nurse and bad patient?”
Stephanie heard her sister’s voice before she opened her eyes. When she did she saw that Simone was in a chair beside her.
“Oh good. You’re awake,” her sister exclaimed happily. “How are you feeling? Ace said that he thought you were doing a little better today.”
Ace hadn’t left Stephanie’s side in the past two days. He’d waited on her hand and foot. She’d tried to tell him she was feeling better yesterday, but she was coming to find out that he was as stubborn as she was.
“Where is Ace?”
“He went to see Scott.” Her sister held out her hand which had two pills in it. “He said that you need to take these.”
“He did what?!” Stephanie used her elbows to sit up.
Simone glanced at her hand and then back at her sister. “He said you needed to take th—”
“Not the pills.” Stephanie waved away her sister’s hand. “You said he went to see Scott.”
“Oh that, yeah.” Simone put the pills on the nightstand. “I guess they called earlier. He called me to come and sit with you while he went to Brookside.”
“Why didn’t you go to Brookside?” Stephanie knew that her sister didn’t like visiting the facility, but in a situation like this she would’ve thought she would step up.
“I told him I would,” Stephanie lifted her hands in mock-surrender. “He said he wanted to go. That he wanted to read Harry Potter or something. Anyway, it’s better this way because I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
Here it comes. She’d been waiting for this talk. The school’s-just-not-for-me talk. The one where Simone argues that she really tried but she just can’t do it.
Stephanie was feeling better, in fact, waking up just now she actually felt human again. A human that needed to take a shower badly, but a human all the same. But, just the thought of having to go round and round with her sister about getting a degree made her want to bury herself under the covers and not come out for another three days.
She could claim to be feeling too sick to have the conversation, but that would only be delaying the inevitable. Plus, she knew better than most that if Simone didn’t want to talk about something, there was no prying it out of her, but if she did, there was no shutting her up.
“What’s up?” Stephanie took a drink of water, wetting her dry throat for the conversation she faced. She knew she was going to need to do a lot of talking.
Instead of her sister eagerly jumping into a power point presentation of the reasons she didn’t need a college degree, she sat quietly looking down at her hands and biting the side of her mouth. Her sister’s odd behavior made Stephanie’s stomach churn like it was making homemade ice cream.
Simone had always been a jump first ask questions later kind of girl. Her motto had been it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. She attacked life fearlessly, it was something Stephanie had always admired about her little sister. Simone lived life to the fullest and unapologetically. So to see her looking so uncertain was unsettling to say the least.
“Simone, it’s okay. You can talk to me about anything,” Stephanie encouraged her.
“I know,” Simone snapped before wincing and shaking her head. “Sorry.”
Sorry?
Oh shit.Icy fear ran through Stephanie’s veins. Something was wrong. Really wrong if her sister was apologizing.
“Shimmy,” she used a nickname she hadn’t called her little sister since she was ten. It originated because Scott couldn’t pronounce Simmy, which was what their mom had called her. “What’s wrong? Are you sick? Pregnant?”
“What?” Simone’s face scrunched up like she’d just bit into a lemon. “No, I’m not sick and I’m definitely not pregnant.”
It was funny to hear that there was more horror in Simone’s voice when she said pregnant than sick.
Stephanie’s shoulders dropped and she leaned back against the pillows, “Oh okay, good.”
Her sister’s face lit up and a small smile crossed it. “Although I did go on my second date, or callback, with a guy that might just be my leading man. I met him at the coffee shop in the quad. He’s amazing. He’s tall and so hot. He plays basketball and is a civil engineering major. And Misty’s system works because if it wasn’t for that I would’ve for sure wasted a good six months with this loser that I met last month. But, because of Misty, I cut that guy off after the third date, or screen test. And because of that, I was studying at The Grind House instead of hanging out with Loser-man.”
“That’s great!” Stephanie was genuinely happy for her sister. And not just because the guy she was dating seemed to have his shit together. She was happy for her sister because her sister looked happy. Not surface happy, but really happy. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Oh no,” Simone waved her hand dismissively. “I digressed.”