It might not seem like the best way to spend my time. Well, not the most productive, anyway, but I was working on memories with the one person who meant more to me than anyone else.
When it came down to it, I would rather have memories in my mind than money in the bank when she was gone, and this was how I got those memories.
And this made it worth it.
Nothing could take away the time I had with my mom. Nothing.
Not even cancer or death itself.
THREE
Trevor
Saturday morning foundme in bed past when I usually sleep in for the evening, and someone knocked relentlessly on the front door.
It wasn’t unheard of for me to let whoever was at the door knock and ignore them until they left. Sure, it wasn’t the most mature way of dealing with things, but it worked well enough. So far, everyone I’d ignored had taken the hint and just left, sometimes calling me later, sometimes letting me know later that they had been there earlier but no one seemed to be home.
But, whoever was here right now wasn’t taking the hint in the sense that he wasn’t leaving, nor was he showing any signs of letting up any time soon. In fact, I was getting the impression whoever it was knew for a fact I was in there, and he was doing his best to get me out of bed.
I tried to ignore them for a few more moments, but I was getting agitated with the continual knocking. I figured whoever it was needed me to go out there and yell at them before they would take the hint and fuck off. It was Saturday, and I wasn’t in the mood to listen to anyone telling me about their religious beliefs or how to save money doing anything I was doing.
I wanted to sleep in.
I honestly didn’t give a damn if the person didn’t understand that I was up until all the late hours at night to the wee hours in the morning. It drove me crazy to think anyone thought it was ever okay to beat down the door of someone’s house at any time during the day, and if they were going to be selfish enough to do it on a Saturday morning, I was more than happy to be the one to lay down the law of the land on them.
It didn’t bother me to be the asshole this early in the morning, especially if it meant I was able to go back to bed.
But, I didn’t have any such luck.
“Good morning, sunshine!” Nick beamed when I threw open the door. He had fishing gear in both hands, and the look on his face told me he was well aware he had just woken me up, and he wasn’t at all sorry about it.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” he teased.
“Shit, yes I did,” I replied, running my hand over the top of my head. I ran my fingers through my hair and shook my head. I hadn’t realized today was the day we’d agreed to go fishing, and I was surprised Nick was here. I remembered agreeing just a few weeks ago that we would take one of our days off and spend it out on the river, but I hadn’t realized that much time had passed already.
I thought it was next week.
“Come on, it won’t take me long to get ready,” I told him over my shoulder as I let him into the house.
“You can come out and say it,” Nick continued to tease me as he stepped into my living room. “You just didn’t want to hang out with me. It’s fine. I don’t hang out with a lot of people for a reason.”
“You don’t like anyone?” I asked, teasing him in return.
“I don’t like being stood up,” he called out. “If I don’t ever make plans to hang out with anyone, they aren’t able to bail on me.”
I shook my head. Nick was one of the most popular people in our ward of the hospital. He always had some story about what he was doing with his weekend. Not to mention the women he managed to pull, too. It wasn’t that I was jealous per se, but I had to admit, I wanted to settle down with someone.
But I didn’t have time to get out there and put in the work to drawing anyone.
The fact that I was at the hospital most of the time meant that I had little time to even go out on a date if I wanted to. Not to mention the few times I did go out on dates, I didn’t often call back right away, so the women would move on before I had a chance to tell them that I really liked them.
Sure, I would give it a couple weeks, and I never blamed them for moving on with their lives, though I felt sorry for myself. Nick, for his own part, was one of those people who just managed to juggle everything in his life with ease. He never seemed to be overwhelmed, and he always had time to go out on that first date.
The fact that he was still single told me that he had the same trouble with finding someone to settle with, too. That is, if it was even his end goal. There was a part of me that thought he didn’t seem to really need to have a woman in his life, and though they were often around, I couldn’t blame him for that.
I got ready to spend the day out on the river, glad Nick had already gone to the store. He had coffee and breakfast in his truck. I didn’t even have to ask to know that. All I had to do was throw on a shirt and some pants before dragging my razor over my face. I wasn’t going to get dressed up by any means, but there were a few things I liked to do with my day that made me feel put together and ready to head out.
So I did.