Reese
“What happened to you?” Eli pointed at the brace on my arm.
“I tripped on the stairs.” I kept my voice light and shrugged. “But the doctor said I’ll be good as new in a week or two.”
He looked to the doorway behind me expectantly, and I followed his gaze.
When the opening remained empty, I twisted back around, my eyebrows raised in silent question. “Are you waiting on somebody else?”
“I thought maybe you were bringing Laird with you today. You know, for our double date with Amelia.” His whole face drooped behind his thick glasses.
“Oh.” I’d forgotten all about it. I’d meant to coordinate a time with Laird, but then things kept snowballing this last week, and it slipped my mind. “I’m sorry, buddy. It’s my fault. I didn’t schedule a day with Laird.”
“I mentioned it to him too,” he said morosely, picking at the blanket over his legs. “He knew.”
“He had this big project…” I trailed off when Eli tightened his lips and looked away, out the window. I knew that feeling, like everyone in the outside world forgot about you while you were stuck in a hospital room for treatment. No excuse would ever make it okay.
“Let me see if one of the nurses are free. You know they’ll only let me take one of you with me down there.”
“Yeah. Whatever.” He pulled his iPad closer and started playing some game with a yellow octopus that I hadn’t seen before.
Lingering for a minute as I watched the beanie slip over his forehead, I felt a pang in my chest. Being a kid with cancer sucked. And I sucked for forgetting the one thing he’d been looking forward to for over a week now.
Martha, my favorite nurse, was working today, but she shook her head apologetically when I asked if she could spare someone to help me take Eli and Amelia down to Starbucks. “We’re short staffed today, I had two girls call in sick. Sorry, Reese, you know I have a soft spot for Eli, and I’d help you if I could.”
“I understand,” I assured her, hating that my last-ditch effort had failed.
But when I retraced my steps to Eli’s room, Laird was sitting in my spot next to his bed, pointing and laughing at something on the iPad.
I sucked in a breath, wondering if I could beat a hasty retreat before either one of them looked up and saw me. I could come back later, much later, after Laird was gone.
“Reese!” Eli’s excited squeal told me I was out of luck. “Look who’s here!”
“Yay!” If my cheer fell a little flat, Laird was the only one who noticed, his eyes dimming and his jaw tightening as he studied me where I stood propped against the doorway, rubbing the foamy hand sanitizer between my palms.
“Give me a second, and I’ll check to see if Amelia’s ready.”
But her room was empty, and the note on her whiteboard said she was scheduled for physical therapy right now.
My legs felt leaden as I re-entered Eli’s room with the bad news.
“She’s in PT, and I have to leave for biology lab before she gets back.” I grimaced as I relayed the bad news. “I could still take you down to get a cake pop if you wanted?”
“We both could go with you,” Laird offered, but his words seemed forced.
Eli, picking up on Laird’s tone, swiveled his head between us. “What’s up with you two? You’re acting weird.”
“Nothing,” I muttered.
“Adult stuff.”
Eli scrunched his face up. “Like, mushy things? I thought you were going to peacock her, man? What happened? Do you not know how to use your damn feathers right?”
My hand flew to my mouth to cover my shock, and I eyed Laird across the room, trying to hide how much I wanted to hear his answer.
He tugged on his shirt collar as if it was suddenly too tight and shifted in the chair. A hint of color tinted the angle of his cheekbones. “Eli, I hate to be the one to break it to you,” Laird’s voice was strained, but his eyes were on me, not Eli, as he spoke, “but sometimes peacocking doesn’t fix things. Sometimes peacocking gets in the way of the other things you should be doing, like having a hard conversation about shitty stuff before it’s too damn late to repair the damage. Even if the peacocking was amazing. Even if it was the best peacocking you’ve ever done.”
Dear sweet miraculous Jesus who never peacocked in His holy life.
Why were we talking about this in front of a kid? My face burned even as my nipples turned hard at his words. Thankfully, my hoodie hid the evidence from underage eyes, although Laird smirked faintly when I shifted my stance, rubbing my thighs together in the process.
The peacocking was amazing. The best peacocking he’d ever done. Yeah, I’d agree with him on that.
But peacocking had never been the issue. The problem was, at the most basic level, we hadn’t trusted each other.
He didn’t tell me about Garrett, and, if I was being fair, I kept Marco’s harassment a secret from him too.
Our foundation was cracked, and no amount of peacocking, no matter how spectacular the feathers, could fix it.
Eli looked at me suspiciously. “He’s talking about kissing, right? He’s saying that you’re a good kisser?”
“She was the best, buddy.”
“You weren’t bad yourself,” I admitted grudgingly.
This was beyond inappropriate. “Eli…” I paused, not sure what exactly I planned to say. “I’m sorry. Sometimes adulting sucks and there just aren’t any good answers. Sometimes, you gotta play it safe.”
He screwed up his face in concentration, lifting his chin in the air as if the answers were somewhere between the rows of fluorescent lights. “But sometimes playing it safe is bullshit.” Eli said the words like a judge delivering a verdict. “It’s like cancer. Sometimes, you have to kill all the cells, the good ones and the bad ones, and start over again from scratch. And that’s the part that hurts the worst, the time when you just want to fucking give up because of all the pain, but you can’t. You have to be strong because you know once you’re on the other side, it’ll be even better than it was before. And you can be happy again. And… and peacock and stuff.”
“Oh, Eli.” My voice broke, and I swiped at my face to bat away a tear. “Sometimes it’s just not that simple.”
I couldn’t look at Laird, couldn’t let him see how much I wanted us to give Eli’s advice a try.
He’s just a kid. He doesn’t know how complicated this shit is.
“Whatever. Y’all can handle your drama on your own time. This is about me right now.”
I giggled despite myself at Eli’s ego, and sniffled.
“I heard the doctors talking to mom the other day. I think I’m getting discharged soon.”
“That’s great!” Laird’s voice sounded like gravel over sandpaper, and he cleared his throat. “Do you know when?”
“Next week maybe? I don’t know, but I promised Amelia a date. And I can’t do that once I get home, so y’all need to figure your shit out. Whatever issues you’ve got, they’re cockblocking my peacocking, if you get my drift.”
I barely held back my laugh.
“You’ll get your date, Eli,” Laird said.
“Promise,” I added.