Chapter Twenty-Four

GEORGINA

 

 

“I’m ready to go home. I’m ready to face my results.”

They were my first words to Blake the next morning when he woke up to me running my fingers through his golden hair. He simply nodded, and we packed and were on a plane home by lunchtime.

For the whole flight, I couldn’t stop looking at the ring on my finger. It was more beautiful and inspiring than the azure sky and toy-town world out the window. I looked at it, amazed in knowing it was really there. That Blake knew everything, and hadn’t rejected me. That I had been brave enough to say yes, to admit my love, to accept being loved.

I still had fear. Lots of it. But I wasn’t going to run away anymore.

I held my hand in front of my face, admiring that bright stone. “Do you ever look at a cut gem, like a perfect diamond, and think of how much surrounding gem was cut away and turned into waste to make this shape?”

Blake smiled at my musings. “I don’t think I ever have.”

“I think it has to be done, those brutal cuts, that loss, to show the beauty within. To make it shine like that.”

He kissed my forehead and held my hand, and I knew that he understood me completely.

I placed my other palm over my breast and pressed softly, feeling that lump under the skin. I wanted to curse it, but I knew without it I wouldn’t have had all these amazing experiences. I wouldn’t have met Blake, or Kaley, or Priya.

Those silver linings could be so fucking ironic.

Without the lump, would Julie would still be alive? I held the weight of her death in my hands, and I held her in my heart. She wouldn’t have been at that intersection if not for me, but I didn’t make it rain. I didn’t drive the truck that crashed into us. I didn’t speed in that rain and lose control. When I broke down all the moving parts I could almost believe it wasn’t my fault she died. Life was so complex, a series of coincidences and luck, good decisions and bad decisions, and accidents and life-changing moments. Asking ‘What if?’ couldn’t change anything. We had to work with what we had. If that accident hadn’t happened, if Julie hadn’t died, I might never have told Dad about the lump, never got tested. I might have continued down that self-destructive path. Losing Julie was a tragedy, but I couldn’t change it and I couldn’t hate it because it was a part of my life.

I think I was starting to understand what Dad had meant about lemons now. I was learning to love the lemons, not just the lemonade.

Dad loved his fruit metaphors. He once said being a parent was like growing tomatoes. If you didn’t tie the plant to a support, it became a sprawling mess, its fruit spoiling in the dirt. But you couldn’t make the ties too tight, or they would break the fragile stems, and there would be no fruit at all.

Dad used to drive me nuts, always wanting to hang my art projects on the refrigerator, or telling every diner in his restaurant about his beautiful daughter. I had never stopped to wonder what it would have been like for me without his approval, without his sincere interest in me and the things I found fascinating, without his unblinking support and care throughout my treatment.

I remembered the time he had made me beetroot and ricotta sandwiches on warm focaccia bread at two a.m. because I had woken up sore, itchy from radiation burns, and with this incredible craving for beets and cheese.

He had always been there for me, not just my dad, but a good dad. The best.

I missed Mom, but it was an abstract emotion based on the feeling that a kid needed a mother. Dad had been everything I needed.

It was going to break his heart if I had cancer again. I didn’t want him to come to hear the results with me. But I had to let him. I had to give him the respect owed such a good father, and I had to let him father me.

As soon as we got home, I called the hospital to make an appointment for the next morning. Then I called Dad, and spent an hour on the phone with him.

Being home again warmed my heart. I loved the potted geraniums and peeling paint. I loved my gigantic unicorn and its little narwhal friend. I loved my freezer filled with leftovers from Dad’s restaurant. It was home. It was the place I lived, where my best friend had lived, where my new friends would live as long as they needed to. Coming home to Priya and Kaley felt right, telling them what was happening in my life felt right. Their excitement at my engagement news felt awesome, and when they insisted on coming to the hospital with us the next day as well, it felt right to let them.

Blake stayed with me in my room that night, and I realized we’d never shared my bed. I’d always run away to his place. It felt good welcoming him there, into my life, completely.