“Keira told me to stop complaining about it when I called her earlier. I swear she’s begging for another week-long silent treatment.” The girl rolls her eyes. “She doesn’t get it. She gets to be a McIntyre, and they leave her alone because she’s gorgeous.”
The girl’s sister does have an easier time, but not because she’s prettier. She simply doesn’t give any credit to what people think about her. Eventually, people get tired of it and move on. His girl takes every hit to her armor until it shatters.
Besides, the two girls look like each other, and while it’s true that the older one may have softer features, the younger is more interesting. Her strong jaw, the sharp slope of her nose… He could look at her for hours and never get bored.
“She has nothing on you.”
She doesn’t say anything back, but he doesn’t miss the pink coloring in her cheeks.
Mist covers the boy’s bare feet, turning them into icicles. How can she stay in this cold only wearing a light sweater? He pulls his hoodie off and hands it to her. She doesn’t argue, which tells him just how cold she must have been.
“I could go for you tomorrow.” He has his baseball tournament in the morning, but he’d work around it.
“You can’t always be my hero, Eli Grant.”
“I can try.”
He wishes he could. Not just for the community service, but for everything. He can see how much she’s struggling every single day, even if she’ll try to mask it when they’re together, and he has no idea where to start to help. She hasn’t said it, but he can feel things at her place are getting worse. In the past weeks, when they went to the beach or hung out right here, he would sometimes speak and she wouldn’t answer, as if she was truly dissociating from herself.
She’s supposed to join his college next fall, but even if there’s nothing the boy would want more, he’s started to question whether it’s the right plan. What if staying close to the man who’s made her life a living hell is the worst thing that could happen to her?
Sometimes, he thinks of leaving it all behind and escaping with her. They could start again somewhere far away. But he’s eighteen, she’s still a minor, and this place is all they’ve ever known. It’s where his father’s food truck remains, where his siblings still go to high school, where he’s started his business degree. And after his dad’s heart attack last year, he can’t imagine ever moving away from him, especially after coming close to losing him.
The boy knows the girl should go away for college. Hewantsher to go. She deserves a life away from this bullshit.
But selfishly, he can’t imagine ever losing her. It’s why he hasn’t told her how he feels about her, after all.
“I’ll be fine,” the girl says as she stands, handing him the heating pad back. “I’m keeping the gummy worms, though.”
“They’re yours.” Everything he owns, he thinks, is hers. His heart most of all.
Chapter 17
The pain rams into me like a freight train.
Endometriosis has given me the full scope of what a bad period could feel like. It can range from being nauseous and having a hard time going through my day-to-day life, to full-on crying and begging someone to take me to the ER because something must be truly wrong this time. Since my surgeries, it’s been better, but today has got to be the worst one since. Every time I start to feel those mind-numbing cramps that turn me loopy, I forget how it could ever have been worse.
I woke up around 4:00 a.m. and the pain was so bad, I had to crawl to the bathroom to vomit. That was the first sign I was going to have what I call my ‘disappearing days’. Days when I just want to stop existing, just for the pain to cease. I don’t want to talk, to eat, to stand. Just disappear. The closest I can come to that is staying curled up in bed with a heating pad and try to fall back to sleep so I can spend the least amount of time awake. Fatigue drowns me, like my body is fighting a battle against itself. My bowels are in shambles, which is yet another unpretty part of this disease I discovered over time. The only silver lining with today is I didn’t have to push myself to get to work.
It must be close to 5:00 p.m. now, but I couldn’t say for sure. Thank God I wasn’t supposed to babysit tonight. After drifting off all morning, I got myself to stand and get to the living room, where I turned on the television, mindlessly rewatching the first season ofFleabagwhile zoning in and out. I wanted to have a background noise so I could at least try to distract myself. The weather outside is just as gloomy, with thick rivulets of rain sliding down the windows. The ocean is barely visible through the thick fog. I’m covered in Ruth’s dusty blankets, and I think I’d drink a hot tea if I had it on hand, but I don’t trust myself to get up. I feel almost buzzed.
I’m just about to drift off again when my phone buzzes. I consider letting it go to voicemail for a moment but then remember it might be about Zoe. If Eli needed help with her, I’d find whatever strength I could muster to help.
“Hello?” My voice sounds as groggy as I feel.
“Hey. It’s me,” Keira says. “I’m at the hardware store, and I was wondering how many more cardboard boxes we need to buy.”
“Hm.” I pretend to take a moment to think because really, there’s no way I can come up with a good answer today. “I’m not sure. What do you think?”
She pauses before asking, “Are you okay?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Okay,” she says, not sounding convinced. “Think fifty boxes is enough?”
“Sure.” I close one eye against the cramp that twists my insides. I may even release a little sound because Keira asks, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m good.” It’s not the first time this has happened, and it certainly won’t be the last. “I gotta go, though.” This conversation has to end quickly if I want to make it out alive. “Talk to you later.”
