CHAPTER 20
“Come on,” Jess said under her breath as she paced the community center foyer. She’d left her table to come out and call Ethan again to find out what his ETA was.
She’d been texting and calling him for over an hour but hadn’t heard back from him. The thought had crossed her mind that he might be doing it because she hadn’t returned his calls or texts last night, but that was only for a few minutes when she knew he was headed her way. There was no way he’d do that to her like this.
She hadn’t seen him since he left her house in the wee hours of the morning. After taking the best shower of her life and collapsing into bed together, she’d fallen asleep during one of the best talks of her life. The next thing she knew, she woke up to find him getting dressed. He’d been called into work at six a.m. Something about a missing person from witness protection.
Throughout the day he’d been texting her updates, but she hadn’t heard anything since he messaged her several hours ago telling her it was done and he’d be able to make the performance.
Since then, it had been radio silence. He’d said he was about an hour away, and she knew that he had to stop by his house, shower, change, and then pick up Daisy, it still seemed like he should’ve been here by now.
The door opened and she fully expected to see Ethan walk in but it was the other man in her life. Well, besides Elvis Pawsley, of course.
Her dad hadn’t come with her and her mom because he’d insisted on finishing working on her parents’ air conditioning unit because if he knew something needed to be fixed, he couldn’t leave it unfixed. But, he’d promised that he’d be there in time for the dance, and he was. Jess hugged her dad, suddenly feeling more nervous that he’d arrived and Ethan still hadn’t.
“Wow! You look incredible, baby girl.”
“Thanks.”
Jess had gone to painstaking lengths to find an exact replica of the pink Hilary Rosenfeld dress that Jennifer Grey wore in the movie. Everything from the side zipper, to the twisted straps, to the lace band with beading around the waist, to the lightweight taffeta skirt with charmeuse overlay. She figured that she’d never get another moment like this so go big or go home.
“Are you ready for your big dance?” Her dad’s voice interrupted the worried thoughts that raced through her mind.
“Yep.”
If Ethan shows up. There was still another hour until they were scheduled to go on, but he was cutting it close.
“Are you nervous?”
“Yep.”
And not just because her dance partner was a no show.
When you stare down the Grim Reaper it sort of puts things in perspective. Usually, Jess didn’t sweat the small stuff. And, to the great dismay of her overprotective father, it actually made her more daring in life.
When she’d decided to test out her brand new ticker by zip-lining five hundred feet in the air, she hadn’t had a moment’s hesitation. When she’d become a business owner and signed a five-year lease, she hadn’t blinked an eye. But thinking about what was ahead of her in the next hour was making her more nervous than a cat at a rocking chair convention. Her pre-show jitters were off the charts.
And Ethan being MIA was making it worse.
Her dad either missed her affirmative response or ignored it. His hazel eyes grew misty and he wiped his finger and thumb beneath his glasses. “I’m so proud of you, sweetie.”
It didn’t surprise her that he was getting emotional. Her dad was even more sentimental than her mom. He was a man’s man who liked fishing, could fix anything, and had never missed one of his precious Bears’ football games, but he also liked romantic comedies and got choked up at chic flicks.
“You haven’t even seen me dance yet.” She tried to lighten the mood. And also take the expectations down a notch or two.
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about you. You amaze me. The odds you’ve beat. When I think back to all the times I saw you in the hospital, I would’ve never imagined I’d be about to see you competing in a talent show, or running your own business, or doing all the amazing things you do.”
Before her aha-moment of personal growth last week, this conversation would’ve made her feel…claustrophobic. That was the best way to describe it. When your entire life is lived under a microscope-including what you eat, drink, and your restroom activities, just to keep you alive, it makes an independent person want to rebel against that kind of attention. So, when people fussed over Jess it used to make her uncomfortable and want to rebel against it.
But now she understood a fraction, though a very small fraction, of what it felt like to worry over someone else. When she felt responsible for Ali’s health and well-being for just a couple of hours, it gave her an entirely new perspective. She didn’t know how her parents did it.
Instead of humoring her dad, like she usually did, she spoke to him with complete sincerity. “I think you’re the amazing one. You and mom. I honestly don’t know how you guys dealt with all the things you dealt with when I was growing up, and even when I was an adult. I can’t imagine what having a child as sick as I was must’ve been like for you. You must’ve felt so helpless.”
“Ehhh,” Her dad waved away her praises, just like he always did, unless they were compliments about his fishing prowess. “We did what any parent would do.”
“Not any parent.” Jess distinctly remembered kids that were left in the hospital alone, and not because both of their parents worked or they had single parents. She recalled a day that the girl in the bed beside her had suffered a horrible reaction to a new protocol she’d started and when they finally got ahold of one of her parents, her mom came in with shopping bags saying that she hadn’t wanted to leave the mall because of the Labor Day sales. She wasn’t about to jog her dad’s memory about that woman because he’d been so furious that Jess’s mom had sent him out of the room to cool down. “But even if that were the case, it still doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t appreciate all the sacrifices, sleepless nights, cancelled plans, and basically putting your lives on hold for me.”
The tears were back and his lips tightened. “I would do it all again.”
“I know, Dad.” She pulled him into a hug. “Thank you.”
“There you are.” She heard her mom’s voice behind her and Jess thought she must be talking about her dad.
But when her dad separated from their hug, she saw that it wasn’t him her mom was looking at. Her mom was looking right at her and the moment Jess saw the expression on her face she knew something was wrong. Very wrong.
“What? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s a four.” Her mom used the how-bad-is-it system that they’d devised for whenever one of them would want to talk about something. “Talks” in their house had generally involved bad news or critical life or death situations so their brains had started jumping to that expectation when someone wanted to talk, and many times it would turn out they were just discussing what was for dinner or if anyone wanted to watch a movie.
So, one was a simple, what-do-you-want-for-dinner type level and five was basically someone was dying or dead.
Her mom had said four. That was still pretty bad. Jess emotionally braced herself.
Her mom used her calm, everything-is-going-to-be okay-but-this-is-serious tone. “I just spoke to Daisy, she tried you first but when you didn’t answer she called my cell. There’s been an incident. Ethan was injured and they’re taking him to the hospital.”
“Oh, okay…” Jess was slightly relieved, remembering that he’d been shot the week before and been fine enough to show up for dance rehearsal. “But he’s okay, right?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. Daisy sounded pretty upset. She’s on her way to the hospital now. She got a ride with Doris.”
Jess nodded as the information she’d just been told swam in her head. “I’ve gotta go. I need to go…”
“I’ll drive,” her dad said as he was already pulling the keys from his pocket.
Her mom lifted her arm that had two purses hanging off of it. “I’ve got your purse, let’s go.”
Jess felt numb as she and her parents walked out to the car. Her dad was in full I’ve-got-a-mission mode, walking with purpose toward their SUV. Her mom was in support mode, walking beside Jess with quiet assurance.
The hospital was over an hour away, but thankfully, her parents didn’t try to talk to her. They just let her be in her thoughts and she appreciated it.
She texted Ali, who responded that she and Kade were right behind them.
Jess looked out the window at the trees passing by and she reminded herself that she and Ethan weren’t actually a couple, but whenever she did a small voice in the back of her head—that sounded a lot like Ali—would tell her that they were something. They might not be together, officially, but they were damn sure involved.
“Did she say what happened?” Jess heard herself ask her mom, even though she already knew the answer.
“No. I don’t think they gave her any information other than there was an incident, he was being transported to Grace Memorial, and that she should come.”
“They told her she should come?” Jess could hear the panic in her voice.
She knew that her mom had said that Daisy was going to the hospital but hearing that they told her she should come was a whole different ball game.
Her mom turned and looked at her in the back seat, her facial expression and tone calm and soothing. She nodded. “Yeah. They did, sweetie.”
Jess bit her lower lip as she turned her head and looked out the window again. She’d wasted so many years acting like she didn’t like him, masking what she felt for him with irritation, using the fact that she thought he’d “betrayed” her as an emotional crutch to justify her keeping him at arm’s length. And now she’d finally admitted, to herself at least, how she felt about him, what she wanted, and how incredible they could be together and it might be too late.