Chapter 42

“Astrid. Astrid. Pass me the soy sauce, or so help me—” Tom groans, reaching across our makeshift table (okay, it’s a blanket) on Papa’s hospital room floor.

He’s been trying to get the soy sauce from Astrid for at least two minutes.

“Millie,” he says, “help me.”

Millie raises an eyebrow. “No way, she’s scary. Do it yourself.”

Astrid grins a terrible grin.

I reach over and smack the back of her head and grab the packet from her hands. “You’re not even using it.”

“I was going to!” she protests.

“Well, not fast enough. You already had one packet, and Tom had none.” I hand the packet to Tom, take a bite of noodles, and look up at the sound of the door opening. My parents went for a walk just before we arrived with Chinese takeout. Or rather, Mom walked, and Dad got pushed around in the wheelchair.

Millie is up in two second flat, running at them in a flurry of flailing hands and arms. “Hi! We got you Chinese food, Mama. And Papa, you can have some of mine if you want.” She kisses his cheek and takes the wheelchair from my mom.

“Thanks, M&M, but I already ate before you got here.” Papa winks at me. “How’s my Baby Bee? And Tom, here with your sisters for a change.”

“And me,” Astrid mutters.

“And you, Superstar.” Papa has Millie roll him up to the bed, and Mama helps him get in, pulling the covers up to his chest. “Guess what? We have some news for you kids.”

That’s all it takes to get us up, away from our food and crowding around him. My dad takes my mom’s hand and looks at us. His blue eyes are round and happier than I’ve seen for a while. “They’re able to get me into surgery this weekend,” he says.

Instantly, we all freeze. It’s like we don’t know what emotion to feel, or how to respond.

Mom squeezes Dad’s fingers and smiles sadly. “The surgeon said that while he still can’t operate on my brain, he can do his best to remove as much of the other tumors as he can. Of course, that still leaves one or two problems, but we can’t be picky-choosey.”

I study my father, with his shaved head and thinning face and his breathing that takes more effort. (It’s like his lungs are weighted.) He smiles like there’s nothing wrong, like he can’t wait to get in and out of this surgery—like he has hope. But I don’t see it. I don’t feel it. The chances he will live are slim, and a surgery that doesn’t remove his biggest problem—the cancer on his brain—won’t help him. The doctors claim that surgery, the one he needs most, will likely end him quicker.

“That’s great, Dad,” Tom says finally, nodding solemnly, and the girls chime in with hugs and kisses. I only manage to squeeze his fingers, hoping he doesn’t notice that I’m hurting. It’s not about me right now—it’s about him and his future. I won’t be selfish, not now.

I sit back down at our makeshift table and set my bowl in my lap. In the last five minutes since I left my phone on the ground, I’ve missed a call from Levi. I take a few more bites of noodles before calling him back.

“Hi, Bee,” he answers, quietly.

I swallow hard. It’s been three days since we last saw each other, and a week since his birthday. We haven’t discussed the important things yet, but he calls me every day and asks me how I’m doing, and how is my dad, and how are my siblings and mom, and can he come over soon? The only problem with this is that I can never be too thankful—and I have nothing to give in return. I have no questions, no encouraging words for him. He says I support him, but I haven’t been to TCP in over a week. Three days ago when he kissed me goodbye, leaning against the side of my car, he looked more exhausted than I’ve ever seen him. And yet, there we were, saying goodbye, with me realizing it had taken several hours for me to notice him.

I never asked him how he was, how I could help.

It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t seem to mind. I mind.

“Hey,” I say in response, pushing away my food. “What’s up?”

“Just…interviews. I’m in between, wanted to check in.”

I nod, but then I realize he can’t see me. “Thanks,” I say. “How are the interviews?”

“Good so far, all things we can work with.” He clears his throat. “We miss you here, Bee.”

I have to choke back tears. (Come on, Levi, I think, but he doesn’t know how guilty I feel.) “I know,” I whisper. “I miss you guys, too.”

“But, of course, we understand,” he adds, and sighs. “Any news?”

I take a bite and chase it down with the last of my water. “He’s going in for surgery this weekend,” I say, trying out the words.

Levi hums tunelessly. “Is that…a good thing? A bad thing?”

“Not sure,” I say. “Hopefully good.”

“Hmm. Can I come see him this week?”

“You can always come see him.”

“Is that Levi?” my dad asks from behind me.

I turn around and smile my best. “Yeah.”

“Tell him I said hi.”

I relay the message. “I think he misses you,” I add, a little quieter.

“Dude, I miss everyone—even Tom.” He laughs, but it sounds forced, not the Levi laugh that makes everything better. “Come see me tomorrow if you can. I’ve got one interview at four and then maybe we can get donuts or dinner?”

I frown. “I don’t think I can. I have the late shift tomorrow, so by the time I get done, it will be after dinner. Plus I have to go to the hospital in the evening.”

My dad says, “You don’t have to, Bee.”

I ignore him. “I’ll call you tomorrow night, though.”

“Sounds good.” He sighs, mumbling something under his breath as he moves around. I hear papers rustling and what sounds like someone knocking. “Hey, I think that’s my next interview. Call me, okay?”

“Okay.”

He hangs up, and I lock my phone and return to my cold dinner.

(He didn’t say he loves me.)

Tracy’s shop is in chaos, and it’s only one in the afternoon. My shift has just begun, with five hours left on the clock, and our flowery world is falling apart. (Just like everything else. Go figure.)

I check the clock for the billionth time since arriving an hour ago. One-oh-five. Great. It’s only been two minutes since I last checked, and it feels like an eternity.

“Beeeeeee,” Tracy sings from the back of the shop.

I drop the calculator and receipts I’m holding and bend to her will. “Yes, ma’am?”

She is frazzled, her hair tied back with a loose ribbon (probably from the ribbon rack). She nearly drops a bubble vase as she tries to carry three to the sink with one hand. “Oh, Bee,” she says again.

(Did I mention she’s crazy?)

“Yes?” I repeat, a little more hesitant.

“I think I’ve made a grave mistake.”

“What?” I ask drily. (The number of times she says this to me every week is innumerable. And it’s always grave.)

“You remember that funeral I had you book for this week?”

I squint. “Was it the Jameson funeral or the Carlos funeral?”

“Jameson.” She sighs. “Well. I forgot that Ludwig is out of the country this week and he won’t be back until Saturday. The funeral is Friday.”

“We…can’t take it?”

Tracy grunts, scrubbing away at the vase she nearly broke. “It has to be there at seven in the morning, my dear, and we all know what I’m doing at seven in the morning.”

I rub my forehead. “Right. Perusing the flower market.”

“And on top of that, I have a wedding on Saturday, which means I can’t miss the flower market because they have the dahlias I need or so help me God this bride will ruin me.”

She’s exhausting me just talking about it. “What do you want me to do?”

“Can you take it?” She looks up from the sink and smiles a fake, cheesy smile at me. “I’ll pay you overtime. And you’ll need someone else to help you because the order is huge. I’ll pay an army overtime to get this done.”

“I, erm…” I don’t know anyone who would possibly be able to help me except Levi. Fortunately for me, Tracy answers my next question before I have to (awkwardly) ask it.

“If it’s your boyfriend you need to bring, that’s fine with me. So long as you’re not…you know…with him on the job.”

I blush. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“Good. He’s hired.”

“Um. I’ll have to ask him, first.”

She waves me away, so I pull out my phone and text him. His response is almost immediate, but it’s a phone call instead. “What’s up early Friday morning?”

I sink back behind the counter and whisper, “Aren’t you at work?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay. I was missing you anyway.” The sounds of the shop around him are loud and metallic, a stark contrast to his soft tone.

“It’s work,” I say. “Tracy needs me to take an early delivery, but she said I’ll need help. She wants to pay you.”

“Nah. I’ll help for free, as long as I can hang out for an hour after and eat breakfast with you before you open shop.”

“That should be fine.” I rest my head back against the wall, closing my eyes. “Thanks, Levi.”

“Duh, you’re welcome.”

He sounds a bit more like himself today, which pushes me into a smile. “I love you,” I whisper.

“Who, me?”

This time, I full-out laugh. “Yeah, idiot. You.”

“Not to be mushy, but I love you more.” Somebody at the shop yells his name and laughs like he’s making a joke. Levi laughs, too, shouting something back that I can’t make out. “Sorry,” he says, chuckling. “Are we still on for a phone call tonight?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Call me when you leave the hospital. I won’t wait a moment longer.”

That night I sit on my bed, legs crossed and my phone to my ear, listening to Levi list off the new applicants he met today. There’s a single mom in her thirties who just lost her job but wants to send her son to a good college. Another cancer patient. A woman in her early thirties trying to find her biological father—a long and expensive task. “It’s like we’re expanding but we’re not ready yet, you know?” Levi says at the end, huffing as if he’s out of breath.

“Yeah. But what about the new place?”

“It’s almost ready. Almost. We’ve had to slow down a bit, but we’ll be ready for a soft opening in a week or so. I can’t wait for you to visit.”

I want to see it, but I have no idea when I can muster up the time or energy to drive over, plaster on a smile, take a tour, and talk to people—not when every evening is devoted to hospital visits and sleeping off what has now become a recurring headache. (I don’t tell Levi this.) “I can’t wait to see it. I bet it’s amazing.”

“Yeah, but only because of all the work we put into it together.”

I hear the sound of his keys jangling and his car starting. “Where are you going?” I ask.

“Home. I worked late tonight.”

“You been working a lot of late nights lately?” I ask, remembering his drowsy eyes.

“Yeah, but it’s going to stop soon. Just have to finish up with this load of applications I got behind on.”

“I’m sorry,” I say immediately.

I can just see him rolling his eyes. “Why are you sorry?”

“I haven’t been there.” I scoot down so my legs are under my covers and I turn, facing the wall, phone pressed to my ear.

“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t just apologize for something as stupid as that.”

“Levi…”

“No, come on, Bee. You’ve been a little preoccupied. You think I can’t understand that?”

“It doesn’t change the fact that I’m sorry about it. I want to be there and I can’t.”

The road around him goes quiet for a second, like he’s at a stoplight. “Maybe you need to get a different perspective on everything, Bee.”

“What do you mean?”

He pauses, his car turning off, the door shutting behind him. It sounds like he’s walking up the path to his house as he says, “Hey, can you hold on one second?”

“Sure.”

There’s the sound of him knocking on his door (I wonder briefly why he doesn’t use his keys) and it swinging open and shutting behind him. Except…at the same moment, my own front door opens and shuts. And then there are his footsteps in the hallway outside my door, and his gentle knock, nudging it open a few inches. “Everyone decent?” he asks, and then lets himself in.

I hang up, turn, and set my phone on the nightstand. A second later he’s there, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me in for a kiss. It’s slow and warm and exactly the love I need, but also a distraction I don’t need.

“Bad, bad,” I say, with one last kiss, and pull back. “Very dangerous,” I whisper, my hand hovering between our mouths.

He kisses my fingers instead. “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist the opportunity.”

“Who let you in?”

“Millie.”

“That brat is going to die.”

“What?” he asks. “Don’t want to see me?”

“I do—I do want to see you.” I run my finger along the contours of his jawline and stare at his mouth a little too long. “Okay, I saw you, now you have to leave.”

“Oh, no. Not like that.” He stands and nudges me over, then rolls onto his stomach next to me, arms under his head, facing me. “This is nice, actually. Great mattress.”

“Levi. You could get so busted.”

“For doing literally nothing?”

I shrug, and I can’t resist rolling into him a little bit more. My arm stretches across his back and my hand fiddles with the side of his shirt. “Levi.”

“Yes?”

“What did you mean about a different perspective?”

He makes an O with his mouth. “Oh, right. Yeah—I mean that you need to let people do things for you sometimes.”

I bite my nails, looking at him closely. “I don’t want people to do things for me when I can’t do anything in return.”

“That’s not what we’re about.”

“But it’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair.” He shrugs. “We move on.”

I don’t think I can. I close my eyes briefly. “Why did you ask if I loved you, then?”

I know it’s not fair to ask this, but I want to bring my point home. He questioned it then, which means he has even more of a right to question it now.

“Are you still hung up over that?” he asks, eyes wandering my face, searching for the answer. “That was weeks ago and I apologized.”

“I know you did. But it was the principle of it,” I say, using his own words against him. “I already felt like I was doing nothing.” I draw my eyebrows together. “That solidified everything I was worried about. I can’t be here for you and my dad. I just can’t.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I need to, in order for this to work.”

He must understand the gravity of what I’ve just said, what I’m implying, because he doesn’t respond right away. Instead, he moves to his side and captures my face in his hands, using a thumb on my chin to make me look at him. (I am caught; I have nowhere else to turn.) His eyebrows are raised a fraction and his hair flops over my pillow and I just want to tell him it will be okay.

Instead, I let him speak. “You aren’t just a summer fling, you know? You’re not a one-summer girlfriend who I’ll forget in a month.”

I close my eyes.

“You have to know that, Bee.”

I nod. “Yes,” I whisper, voice cracked.

With my eyes closed, his kiss is unexpected, but I sink into it without question. His lips are slow and tender and I want to cry because I love him so much and we’re breaking apart and I can’t fix it.

I’m so sorry, Levi.

“I love you,” he whispers, kissing the top of my lips one more time, and then my nose, and then my forehead as he tucks me against him.

“I love you most,” I say.

With those words, I prepare for the moment when I will walk away so he doesn’t have to.