A Place Without You
She sits up, letting her sheet fall from her chest. I tell my dick no when it decides to perk up again.
“I want to meet your sister.”
“No. You don’t.”
“Why? Are you embarrassed of me?”
“Duh,” I say in my best teenage-girl voice.
Henna throws a pillow at me. “Your dad loves me. I’ll bake up something extra special for him.” She winks.
I roll my eyes, tying my shoes.
“And I’ll pop in for a visit in say …” She glances at the nonexistent watch on her wrist. “An hour?”
“Hmm … shoot. That’s not a good time. Maybe another day or year or like … never.”
“Bodhi Kaden Malone!” Naked love of my life leaps from the bed, giving my dick unnecessary hope again. Penile insatiability is a real thing with Henna in my life.
“I confessed to my dad how much I love you. I arranged dinner because I said he needs to get used to you being in my life. But now you’re freezing me out of yours.” She plants her hands on her naked hips.
I toss her a blanket from the bottom of her messy bed. “Cover up because I have to go.”
She throws it aside. “I’m not covering up with a blanket. I’m going to get dressed and come to your house.”
God! My fiery little redhead knows how to torture me.
“It’s not personal, Henna. And when my sister leaves, you can hang out with my dad all you want. But I’m serious … my sister will see how much I love you, and she will do everything in her power to strip you from my life because she thrives on my misery.”
“She wants you scarred and guilted. And the greatest power she has over you is that you let her do it. You let everyone make you feel guilty.”
I don’t need this right now.
“You’re right. I’m going to rectify that right now by not letting you make me feel guilty for not inviting you to my house to meet my sister.”
After getting no further than putting on her bra and panties, she sits on the edge of the bed. “It’s the Coachella curse. We’re Henna and Bodhi there. We’re amazing. The world doesn’t matter when we’re in the middle of a desert, surrounded by music. But as soon as we get home, I’m your dirty little secret.”
On a loud exhale, I squat down in front of her, resting my hands on her hips. “This is my life, Henna. And I want you in my life and not as my dirty little secret, but the fact remains that my life is not like your life. I can’t take off on a private jet on a whim. I can’t pretend that my father is not my responsibility. My sister didn’t get wasted, high, and completely shitfaced. She wasn’t the one who landed on my father at the bottom of a marble staircase. And I get it … I should forgive myself, but it won’t change my father’s condition. It won’t change my responsibilities.”
“So, I’ll just never meet your sister? That’s going to be our life?”
I shrug. “She rarely visits.”
“Bodhi …” Henna shakes her head, pressing her palms to my cheeks. “She can’t take me away from you. Not her. Not your boss. Not anyone.”
“I know.” I kiss her quickly and stand.
“So I’ll head that way after I get something made for your dad?”
“Yep.” I walk out of her room and down the hall. “After school tomorrow would be perfect.”
“Bodhi!”
I keep my ass moving. Everything she said is true, but I’m still not ready to let Henna meet my sister. My Henna high is too good. Bella will kill that high, then she will chip away at Henna’s love for me.
“Love you!” I call just before shutting the front door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Henna
I bake cookies, the good kind that I haven’t had in years. After putting them in a basket like I’m Little Red Riding Hood, I take them to Bodhi’s house.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” Duke ties the chestnut horse to a post and ambles toward me as I make my way down the long drive.
“Hey. How are you?” I keep walking as he joins me.
“Mighty fine and yourself?”
“Never been better.” I toss him my best smile.
“Ya been baking?”
“Sure have. I’d offer you one, but I think you should wait until you’re done with work. They’re the relaxing kind of cookies.”
“Ah, I see. Barrett will love you.”
“I hope so.”
Because I sure do love his son.
“He’s not doing well.”
My steps falter. “The cancer?”
“Yeah. They want to do more chemo. Barrett says no, but Bodhi insists he keep fighting.”
I nod slowly. “And what about Bella? What does she want?”
“That girl is hard to read. She don’t come around but a couple times a year. And for a few days, she fusses over Barrett then leaves. I can’t say for sure if her distance is because she doesn’t care enough to be here more or if she can’t emotionally handle it. Seeing your dad fight cancer from a wheelchair has to be hard. Bodhi is a saint.”
If only he felt like one.
“Well, I’m going to see if I can get the Malone family high so they all chill for a bit.”
Duke barks a hearty laugh. “I like you.”
“I like you too, Duke. See ya later.” I give him a parting smile as he heads back toward the barn, and I continue to the house.
There’s a gray car parked next to Alice. I assume it’s Bella’s rental car.
Raised voices leak through the partially closed door like this old house is bleeding. I rest my hand on the screen door handle, trying to hear what’s being said, but I can’t make it out.
“Those for me?”
I jump back. Barrett opens the door the rest of the way and wheels out onto the porch.
“You scared me. I wasn’t eavesdropping.”
“You were.” He takes the basket from me.
“Okay. I was.” My nose wrinkles as I slide my hands into the arms of my sweatshirt and sit in the chair next to him.
“Henna, right?”
I nod. Damn it’s chilly this evening.
“Haven’t seen you in a long time. Bodhi said you were exploring indefinitely. He used to show me the postcards … then it stopped.” Barrett’s vacant eyes give me a sluggish inspection as he takes a shaky bite of a cookie, slumped into his chair slightly to the right like his spine won’t let his fragile body remain upright any longer. It’s sad because he also looks like he’s lost half his body mass. His thick blond-gray hair is gone, and so is the easy smile he used to share with me. In two years, he’s aged a decade, maybe more.
“Yes. I traveled the world exploring.”
“Atta girl. You said you were going to do that. I’m proud of you, kid. Did you learn anything along the way?”
“Hmm … you’d think so. Right?” I chuckle. “Nothing too scholarly. But I met a lot of genuinely amazing people, and in some small way they all imparted a bit of knowledge onto me. But more than anything, it gave me a greater appreciation for my home and the people in my own life like …”
Bodhi. Just say it!
“Me?” Barrett winks.
I giggle. “Exactly.”
He tries to straighten a bit, causing a grimace to wrinkle his face.
“Need help?” I take the basket of cookies from his lap and stand to help him.
He shakes me off. “I’m good in a dying-of-cancer-crippled-old-man sort of way.”
Bodhi told me his dad is fifty-six. That’s not old. But he didn’t tell me about the chemo and Barrett not wanting to go through it again.
“What kind of cancer?”
“Hell if I know anymore. Started with my liver. I think it’s working on attaching itself to every organ in my body and eating me alive.”
“Maybe they’ll find a cure.”
He grunts, looking out at the horse barn while taking another bite of his cookie. “Sure.”
I’ve got nothing. There’s no grand response to cancer is eating me alive.
“Whose car is parked by Bodhi’s?”
“Bella’s. My daughter. She’s leaving in the morning to go home to Kentucky. Bodhi goes to this big music thing every spring—well I make him go because I get tired of his grumpy ass. But … he loves it. I can tell every time he gets home. He’s a different kid. Usually Duke and Etta old-man-sit me, but Bella’s no longer training horses full-time, so she came.” He nods toward the house. “That’s what you were eavesdropping on—my grown-ass kids fighting. I’m used to the occasional bickering, but today I’m certain they were trying to tear each other’s throats out.”
“Fighting over the TV remote?”
Barrett flips me a grin. “I like you, young lady. Maybe I could adopt you and get rid of those two in there. We could get deliriously high every day. And one day … when I don’t wake up, you can just bury me in the pasture and smoke a joint in my memory.” He winks. “Deal?”
What can I say? There was a day when the idea of getting deliriously high until life ended appealed to me like it does to Barrett. I was recovering. He’s not recovering. He’s slipping away, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.