He doesn’t say the “for now” but it hangs unspoken in the air. My hands scrabble for the door handle, and I stumble out of the car, running.
Away from Luke.
Why would I ever want to run away from Luke? I don’t have an answer. Nothing makes sense. Nothing makes any fucking sense. Except for running.
So, I run.
And he doesn’t follow.
The sweet hospital stench has my stomach roiling again, bringing all of my most painful memories to the surface.
Mom. Eyes closed forever. Breathing machine. Death’s rattle.
But I push that aside, burying it the fuck down—deep down—which is extra fucking hard when I’m met with a similar scene. Dad’s hanging onto life, tubes and wires everywhere, brutal bruises all over his face, his eye swollen shut. There’s an empty chair by his bedside, an abandoned blanket curled in a U-shape on the seat.
I reach for the rock I need, but he’s not there. I made him stay in the car. He’s not supposed to listen to me. Especially when I don’t know up or down. Fuck. I don’t want to need him.
But I do.
Before I can head over to Dad, retching sounds come from the small bathroom within Dad’s private room. There’s a flush, then water running, then the click of a lock. East steps out, or at least whatever’s left of the man whose Gram profile I creeped on when I found out he’s the man my dad was forking.
Forking because I refuse to use the words “fucking” and “my dad” in the same sentence.
His eyes are hollow, the darkness setting in underneath. And it’s all sharper on him, because of his knife-edge features. His hair’s wrecked, sticking up every which way like he’s run his fingers through it too many times. He’s wearing a rumpled white button-up shirt, half open, splattered with blood, and a navy blazer that looks a few sizes too big for him with the sleeves rolled up.
East looks likehewas run over by a car.
“Hi,” he croaks. “He’s … he’s just out from surgery.” He blinks, fat tears fall, and he sniffles. For a second, he looks so much younger than I know he is—about two years older than I am—and it kinda kills me to see him like this.
“Will he be okay?” My voice scratches out, almost as beaten as his is. I hope the prognosis is better than he looks right now. I’ve seen better squished tomatoes.
East shakes his head. “He … he …”
I get an armful of Easton, his spindly model-man arms wrap around me.Yech, he smells like fucking motor oil and smoke, but then I get the faintest hint of Dad’s cologne.
“Were you in the car with him, East?”
He nods into my chest.
“How the fuck are you fine?” I leave off the “and he’s not” because I can’t say it.He will be fine. He will be fine. He’ll be fucking fine.
“I don’t … I d-on’t know, but I wish it were me instead. Iwishit were m-me,” he sobs, in a voice so broken that his insides must be shattered.
It tears at my already frayed nerves.
L-Luke.
If it were Luke, I’d wish it were me instead. I’d wish I could swap places.
That clawing, cloying sensation returns, the one I had I the car, and it all unravels. That unnamable feeling, the confusion. I’d be East if this happened to Luke, experiencing what it must be like to be buried alive. But I panicked, making a last-ditch attempt to cut loose and run. As if emotional distance could keep me away from Luke.
Spoiler—it can’t. It’s too late for me. If anything happened to Luke, I’d toss myself into the fire with him.
I’m not okay enough to be East’s rock. As soon as East the koala bear detaches from me, I’m telling Luke to get his ass in here. But for now, I can’t help myself. Someone needs me. So, I pull it together for a minute.
“Hey now. Would Dad, er, Shae, I guess, want you to talk like that?”
“No. He’d be pretty pissed at me.”
