I nod before tucking my chin, hiding the tears filling my eyes. “Well,” I say, my voice trembling. “Thanks for the help, y’all. I feel so much better.”
“Oh, Sissy, we love you, you know we do.” Melody pulls me in for a hug, crushing me into her abundant chest. “And you’re going to feel better soon, I just know it. We’ll help any way we can.”
“Yes, we will.” Aria throws her arms around us both, turning me into sister-hug sandwich filling.
I stiffen for a second—resentment at being blindsided by an “intervention” warring with the need to melt into my sisters’ arms—but I finally give in and wrap one arm around Melody’s waist and the other around Aria’s, pulling them close. We hug for a good five minutes, rocking back and forth in the fading light until Aria finally pulls away and says—
“I love you both dearly, but I’m hot as the devil’s nut sack. I can’t hug anymore.”
“Ew,” Melody says as she releases me. “That’s disgusting, Aria.”
“So is how sweaty I am under this white button-down.” Aria pulls at the front of her shirt. “Maybe we should let the servers wear short sleeves from now on.”
“No way,” I say, stepping in to slam the van’s back doors closed. “Short sleeve button-downs are tacky looking.”
“So are sweat patches,” Aria says. “And servers who smell more onion-y than the appetizers.”
“Mitch does get kind of stinky by the end of a shift,” Melody says thoughtfully, snatching the keys from my hand and heading for the driver’s seat while shouting, “I’m driving!”
“Shotgun!” I call, making Aria groan at being stuck in the middle for the ride back.
“But Mitch refuses to wear real deodorant,” I continue, letting Aria into the passenger’s side of the van and climbing in after. “He wears that hippy rock crystal stuff from the health food store. I think you two should give him an intervention.”
“I wouldn’t mind intervening in Mitch’s affairs,” Melody says, backing the van out of our space. “He’s kind of cute, don’t you think?”
“Gross, no.” Aria makes a gagging sound. “He’s about as big around as my right thigh.”
“So?” Melody asks. “You’re skinny, and we still like you.”
“Most of the time,” I add, earning a laugh from Melody and an elbow in the ribs from Aria.
I smile. It feels good to goof off with my sisters, to laugh on the way home as we talk about stupid stuff like Mitch’s armpits, the bleeding deer head cake our dad wants to celebrate the start of deer season this fall, and the garden war our nana is in with her neighbor to see who can grow the biggest watermelon before the fair later this summer.
I haven’t felt this angst-free in months. I’m not sure if the feeling is going to last, but I’m grateful for the reprieve from the misery that’s been my constant companion.
So grateful, that, for the first time in weeks, I make it through my shower and the rest of my pre-bedtime regimen without getting the slightest bit teary and fall asleep without a single Mason-flavored thought passing through my head.
And then I begin to dream, a bizarre barrage of anxiety dreams that put my usual stress-induced nightmares to shame.
Flying over an ocean of grape Jell-O in a glider made of tissue paper when it starts to rain Earl Grey tea that scalds me as I fall into the gelatinous ocean and drown?
Check.
Running through a field of flowers with tiny zombie faces and being bitten on my ankle right as I make it to the watermelon stage where Nana is dancing the jitterbug with a human-sized cockroach?
Check.
Shuffling down the street years and years from now, when I’m even older than Nana, and running into the old man Mason has become only for him to clutch his chest and fall to the ground, dying of a heart attack before I can tell him how much I still love him, or how sorry I am for wasting the lifetime we should have had together?
Check and check and…check.
I dream different versions of that same terrible dream at least three times. In every one, we lose our chance at love, and I live to regret it more than I’ve ever regretted anything.
When I finally wake up the next morning, I’m truly shaken.
It doesn’t take a consult with a professional dream analyst to know what my subconscious is trying to tell me. I may not know the symbolic significance of Jell-O oceans or Nana dancing with a cockroach, but I know I don’t want my last dream to become a reality.
In that moment—still lying in bed, tangled in the covers I’ve twisted into knots during my troubled sleep—I make a decision. I’m not going to ask Mom for the name of the counselor she talked to after Pop-pop died. Not yet.
First, I’m going to Atlanta.