What makes you feel alive?
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
EVERYTHING HURT.
I couldn’t even distinguish what ached less and what burned more. My whole body was a knot of agony. There was an oxygen mask clasped over my face. I looked over to the nightstand beside my hospital bed and saw a little makeup mirror Mama must’ve left behind. Picking it up with the remainder of my energy, feeling its weight on my fingers, and checking my reflection through sleepy eyes…I looked yellow. Had my liver stopped working?
I wanted to cry, but I was too physically exhausted.
I wanted to scream, but it felt wrong to do something so vivid when I felt so lifeless.
And I wanted Dean, but he was not here.
He made the last few months the best of my life, so it was only fair that he contributed to the ending of it.
There was no one in the room, but I did hear muffled voices behind the door, in the hallway. I didn’t know how long they’d been there, but there was always someone with me. Tending to me. Whether it was Mama, Daddy, or Millie. No one spoke to me about moving back to Todos Santos, and for once in my life, I felt sad about that. Not because I wanted to move back, but because I knew they didn’t believe I would survive long enough to have the option.
Elle came for two visits, but it was difficult for her to make the trip from New York to the Hamptons, so she never stayed too long.
I waited. Impatiently. Tapping my fingers over my thighs on what was supposed to be a sigh, but no air came out of my lungs. Staring at the turned-off TV, I didn’t know how much time passed, but I did notice it was nighttime. Nights in the Hamptons were very different than in New York, I pondered as I stared out the window. Less pollution. More stars.
Where the hell are you, Earth, and are you doing okay?
It was annoying. To sit there and wait for someone to put me out of my misery and boredom. Sitting by myself did not make me feel good. In fact, it opened a door to that dark place inside my head. My anxiety attack returned in full swing. I mean—why not? My boyfriend was ignoring me, wherever the hell he was. I was clearly doing bad. The doctors said very little, and Dr. Hasting kept asking me to get some rest, as if I was planning to run a marathon this Christmas.
You are going to die.
Disappear. Suffocate, in a grave.
He will move on.
And find another girl.
He will move on.
And it won’t be you.
He will move on.
But it won’t hurt. Nothing will anymore. Because…you’ll be gone.
A sharp knock on the door stopped my thoughts from swirling in my head. The intensity of it suggested that whoever was behind the door had been trying to get my attention for long minutes. I knew it wasn’t my parents or Emilia, because they never knocked before they came in. I didn’t want to be filled with hope, but couldn’t help myself either.
“Yes?” I cleared my throat, biting my lip to suppress a cough. My eyes clung to the door, desperate, begging for it to be him.
The door opened.
And someone walked in.
It wasn’t him…but it was second best.
I didn’t say a word to Vicious as he maneuvered the vehicle through the rain on our way to the hospital. He parked, walked around, opened the door for me, grabbed me by the collar, and threw me against the nearest wall, growling in my face. That caught me off guard, and my mouth hung open.
“What the fuck, Cole? I thought you said you had this shit on lock. She is dying.”
“I know,” I hissed, pushing him away. The weight of my actions threatened to crush the remainder of my sanity. It clutched my lungs, preventing me from getting all the air she couldn’t breathe. “I fucking know, okay? I’m trying to make it right.”
“Stop drinking,” he barked, but there was no need for him to tell me that. I already knew my love affair with alcohol was over. It was over the minute Rosie told me she would take care of me. All I ever had since were relapses brought on by circumstances.
But no more relapses.
No more fucking up.
From now on,
I was going to be good. If there was someone to be good left after this was all over.
“So let me tell you what happens now, Ruckus,” Vicious spat my childhood nickname, his breath fanning my face as his hold on my collar tightened. I let him have his moment. I kicked his ass on a weekly basis when we were teenagers. I got it. I fucked up. Atonement was in order.
“I’m going to help you. One time. One, fucking time, and you’re not going to make me regret it. No. You are going to go up there, and you are going to apologize. To her, to her parents, to Millie. To the fucking nurses, the receptionist, and the guy who cleans the windows. To everyone. Because you. Fucked. Up. You fucked up so bad, and other people had to fly across the country to clean up your mess. Understood?”
“Save the bullshit, Oprah.” I pushed him away, striding inside the hospital. “I know exactly how bad I ruined things, and while I appreciate you being on my side, I know how to make this right.”
We passed by Millie, who was getting herbal tea from the Starbucks under the hospital. Vicious stopped and jerked his chin in her direction.
“Make peace with her.”
“We were never at war.” My eyes were sunken, tired. I didn’t have time for Millie. I was at the phase where I wanted to make things right, not dwell on the past.
“This is pointless, Dean. Rosie will never take you back without Millie’s blessing, anyway. So just do it.”
Reluctantly, I approached my high school girlfriend, who looked very pregnant and very pissed off, sitting at a table at Starbucks, sipping her tea. Vicious waited outside and pretended to mess with his phone. Asshole.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi,” she said.
We never talked anymore, Millie and I. There was no anger there, though. Just indifference. We made small talk when we spent Thanksgiving together, and I even helped her with the dishes, but we mainly stayed away from one another.
“Tell me something, Dean. Do you love my sister?” Her blue eyes searched mine. I sucked my anger in, refraining from losing my shit.
“She’s my whole fucking world,” I admitted.
“Then why did you let her down?”
“I was selfish.”
“My sister can’t be with a selfish man.”
“I will change.”
“What if you can’t change?”
“Vicious did,” I snapped. “Vicious changed, for you. Look, Millie, I like you. I do. Always have. But Rosie…Rosie is it. Whatever you think Vicious is capable of doing to be with you—I can do that, probably more, to be with Rosie. It was one little fuck-up. I learned my lesson.”
It was her turn to be thoughtful and blink away tears. “I’m scared,” she admitted, biting on her lips. “So scared.”
“Me, too,” I said.
We hugged. Hard and long. I counted the seconds, the seconds I was away from Rosie. But when Millie finally let me go, I knew it was with her blessing. I thumbed away a tear on her face.
“I really love her,” I said.
“I know.” She nodded and laugh-cried. “God, how were we even together?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Everyone wants a piece of me, I guess.”
She punched my arm.
“Show her that you love her, Dean.”
I was going to, even if it was the last thing I was going to do.
It was the eighth time I walked to her room since she was admitted into the hospital three days ago, hoping she was awake and her parents were feeling generous enough to let me see her. Machines were beeping lazily from the rooms along the long hallway. Nurses in blue uniforms hurried past me, their shoulders brushing mine as they flipped through their reports. Vicious was by my side. We rounded the corner. Four doors down from her room, I stopped. Vicious halted next to me.
“What?” he asked, his eyes were still hard on his phone.
“Tell me my hangover is messing with my vision.” I pointed at her door. He swiped his front teeth over his lip, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
“Darren,” I spat out. “Fucking Darren. Doctor Dickhead just walked into her room.”
There was a moment when so much adrenaline coursed through my veins, every nerve-end in my body sizzled. What was he doing there, and who gave him the courtesy call I never got? It couldn’t have been her. It couldn’t. Picking up my pace, I noticed Vicious following suit.
“What the fuck are you doing, man? Let it go.”
The fuck I will.
“Charlene!” I called out to her mother, who was at the other end of the hallway. Her head shot upward from the chewed foam cup she was staring into, and she got up from her seat. Her grave expression suggested that I was Lucifer himself, and at that moment, she wasn’t completely wrong. I’d had enough of this bullshit. I stopped a foot away from her and jerked my finger at the door.
“Her ex-boyfriend just walk in there?” I swear I was foaming from the mouth. “Did that just fucking happen?”
“Darren,” she supplied, her puffed eyes and swollen face somehow breaking into a timid smile. “Nice boy,” she articulated. Because apparently, I wasn’t.
“Who invited him?” I demanded.
“Paul.” Rosie’s dad. “Darren has always been there for her. It was only fair that we let him know.”
“I was always there for her,” I stressed, punching a wall and not feeling anything, not the pain, not the burn, nothing.
“Not when she needed you.” Charlene’s voice was too sad to be flustered by my spontaneous act of violence. “When she needed you, Dean, you disappeared.”
“I’m kicking him out.” I made my way to the door. Rosie was obviously awake if they let him in. There was a little square window on the door, but I knew better than to look. Did he hold her hand? Was she glad to see him? Was she going to kick me out? My head spun with possibilities.
Vicious clasped my arm, squeezing once. “Man.”
“Fuck. You.”
I stormed in. Darren was sloped in a chair by Rosie’s bed. She was awake. And she looked horrible. I’d never seen her like this. So…not herself. Her eyes were dim, dark circles framing her baby blues. Ten pounds skinnier, exhausted, and sad. It was then that I realized that Nina never broke my heart.
Rosie did, eleven years ago.
She did when she pushed me into her sister’s arms.
And she did now, in that hospital bed. Because if she was going to die—so was I.
“Leave,” I commanded, my eyes honing in on my girlfriend. My girlfriend.
Paul and Charlene barged in, yelling at me in decibels human ears weren’t meant to contain. I didn’t listen. I didn’t fucking care. I was going to give Darren a very good reason to stay in the hospital if he didn’t get the hell out.
“She wants me here,” Darren’s white-boy, Connecticut soft voice reported. God, I bet he never said ‘fuck’ and used the word ‘shit’ sporadically.
“Darren.” Rosie leaned forward to pat his hand, her lungs wheezing like a balloon that was losing air. “I’m so sorry my dad asked you to go through all this trouble. There’s a lot going on in my life right now. Please don’t take it the wrong way. I’m very grateful you made it here, but it’s time for you to go.”
Hearing her kicking him out soothed some of my rage away. I gulped thin hospital air and stepped deeper into the room.
Darren looked between Rosie and her dad. Paul shook his head, his lips pursed. Her mom rounded the bed and hugged her. Millie was probably resting somewhere in the hospital. Vicious and Rosie’s parents were about to join her so I could finally have a few fucking moments alone with my girlfriend.
“Fine,” Darren said, finally. “As you wish, Rosie-bug. If you need anything, you know where to find me.”
Confrontational silence hovered between us after Darren left the room. All eyes were on me.
“Everybody out,” I said.
“Even me?” Rosie quirked an eyebrow and tried to smile. And failed. Looking pained for even trying.
“No. I’m keeping you. No one else can handle your ass, anyway.”
“Why are we letting this happen?” Charlene LeBlanc threw her hands in the air. “He left her in the pouring rain, for goodness’ sake! He. Did. This.” She pointed at Rosie, her finger dancing. “Paul, do something.”
“Mama—” Rosie said.
“Sweetheart, I know, but—” Paul tried to pacify his wife.
“Jesus Christ, just shut the hell up.” Vicious slammed his palm against a bed stand, and everyone did shut up. Probably shocked that he would tell them to zip it. “I mean, really? Dean stood her up. Once. After chasing her ass for a long time. I’ve never seen a man endure so much bullshit when it comes to a girl before Dean Cole. Charlene, Paul, I love your daughter. A lot. I would die for her if I had to, but even I have to admit—I did terrible things to her. Things I thought I would never be able to overhaul. The fact that she agreed to marry me is a small miracle. The fact that she knows who I am and still chose to have a baby with me is an even bigger one. But Dean…Dean is not Vicious. Dean made a mistake, not a conscious decision to hurt her. And he deserves to be heard.” He twisted his head, pinning Rosie down with his stare. I stopped breathing, waiting for her to say something.
She coughed, wiggled in place to fix the pillows behind her back, then offered a faint nod.
“Mama, Daddy, I need to hear what he has to say.”
Rosie’s parents exchanged worried looks.
Charlene exhaled. “We’ll be outside.”
The door clicked shut. Our eyes met. She was not doing well, I knew. Now was the time to tell her I finally got it. Why she pushed me into her sister’s arms. Why she let us both suffer through this shit. Love makes you do crazy, irrational things. Love and death are connected by an invisible string. Pull too hard, and you’re gone. I couldn’t live without Rosie. It was, perhaps, the only thing that was clear to me at this point.
I plopped on her bed, sitting by her thighs, grabbed her hand, and placed it over my heart.
Sorry didn’t cut it. I had to go big. I had to go all the fucking way this time.
“You turned my life upside down, and I’ll never be the same,” I said, feeling my words were a living thing. I not only said them, I felt them.
She smiled, shrugged. Looking like her old/young self for a second. Other than that yellow hue on her skin.
“It’s not my fault you fell in love with a dying girl.”
“It’s not my fault you made it fucking impossible not to.”
“Where were you?” Her voice died in her throat. Did she mean the day she waited for me in the Hamptons or during her hospital stay?
“I was right here, Baby LeBlanc. The whole time. The minute I found out where you were I all but flew here. They wouldn’t let me see you, so I stayed at the place I rented for us. And drank. And felt sorry for myself. And kept the loser asshole torch burning pretty bright, thanks for asking.”
She snorted. “Friday?”
I let out a sigh, scratching at my stubble.
“Dean? How was your meeting with your father?”
The words poured out of me like a broken floodgate. I told my fading girlfriend exactly what happened, not sparing a detail. She shed a few silent tears, clutching my face in her ice-cold hands, but I’d never felt warmer in my entire life. I kissed her lips and said sorry, again and again and again.
“I’m sorry.” My lips slid to her forehead. “Fuck, Rosie, I am so, so sorry,” Cheek. “I can’t tell you what it does to me, seeing you like this, knowing that it was me who caused it.” Tip of the nose. “It can’t end like this. It can’t.” Lips again.
She pulled me into a hug, and I felt her hot tears streaming down my neck.
“I’m kind of hoping it will end like this. You made me happy. Very happy. But…you deserve everything. Wife, kids, a white picket fence.”
“And I’ll have all of it. With you.”
“You know that can’t happen with me.”
“Then it can’t happen with anyone. There won’t be a next Rosie. And there won’t be another story like ours. This is it, Rose LeBlanc. And this is us. If there is no you, then there is no me.”
“You know, I always hated Romeo and Juliet. The play. The movie. The very idea. It was tragic, all right. Tragically stupid. I mean, they were what? Thirteen? Sixteen? What a waste of life, to kill yourself because your family wouldn’t let you get hitched. But Romeo and Juliet were right. I was the stupid asshole. Look what happened to me. I met my true love at the age of eighteen and spent the next eleven years killing myself slowly while I grieved for you. Then you came back, and I still thought it was just a fascination. But now that I know…” I pulled away so I could look at her face. She was fading. I saw it. Her lungs hadn’t been functioning well. Her doctors said the infection had spread to the rest of her organs. She was burning with fever. Despite her frequent trips to the hospital, this time it was different.
And all of this could have been prevented if I wasn’t an alcoholic bastard.
I pressed my cheek into her palm, kissing her wrist. “Now that I know that it can only ever be you, you’re going to get better for me so Earth won’t explode. Can you do that, Sirius? I promise not to leave this room until you get out. Not even for a shower. Not even to get you your chocolate chip cookies. I’ll get someone to drive all the way to New York and bring them for you.”
“I love you.” Rosie’s tears curtained her vision. Her shaky fingers found my lips when they wanted to touch my cheeks, but once her fingertips swiped across my mouth, I realized that I was shedding a few tears, too. I couldn’t remember the last time I cried. I was definitely not the sobbing type. In fact, it was probably around the time Nina dumped my ass at Walmart when I cried the last time. But I did now, because the woman I loved more than life itself was losing a battle I personally sent her into.
“I love you, Baby LeBlanc,” I said. “So fucking much. You taught me how to love. How well did I do?”
She smiled, a tear rolling down her cheek. “A-plus,” she whispered. “You aced it. Can you promise me something?”
“Anything.”
“Live.”
“Not without you.”
“And have kids. Lots of them. They’re fun.”
“Rosie…”
“I’m not afraid. I got what I wanted from this life. You.”
“Rosie.”
“I love you, Earth. You were good to me.”
“Rose!”
Her eyes closed, the door opened, the sound on her monitor went off, and my heart disintegrated.
Piece.
By piece.
By piece.