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“Fine,” I bit out. “I’ll try to make it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It could be three or four in the morning. These meetings can drag.” Boy, could they. We always took our sweet-ass time when we locked the door to the world outside. And convincing Vicious to do something he didn’t want to do? Yeah, we’d be lucky to leave there before January.
“We’ll stay up all night if need be.” Dad took Mom’s hand in his, his cheekbones flexing.
“Any way we can go back to eating and talking about Dean’s future babies?” Keeley squirmed in her chair. “Rosie looks fifty shades of pale, and I’m kinda scared.”
“Are you okay?” I twisted my head, checking my girlfriend out. She didn’t look okay. She looked like she was going to faint. Rosie nodded, just barely. I took her hand in mine, and this time she let me, which wasn’t a good sign if you knew Rosie.
She was supposed to be pissed off with me.
“Inhaler, please.” Her voice was barely a hiss.
I rushed to her bag. I knew by then her inhalers were hooked into the front pockets and grabbed both of them before returning to the table.
Everyone’s silence grated on my nerves as Rosie sipped water after she used her blue inhaler. I shook with rage. What the fuck did my parents think they were doing? They had all the time in the world to tackle the Nina subject, and they decided this brunch was the perfect opportunity?
Fuck them.
Fuck that.
And fuck me, for forgetting to give her a heads-up. I forgot to tell her about us cornering Vicious, but even if I hadn’t, what good would it have done? Rosie was going to run to her sister and warn her off. It only would have made things messier.
“Well…this was fun,” Rosie muttered, her smile weak when we stood by the door. I helped her into her coat, feeling like the biggest douchebag on planet Earth. Which was ironic, because that was what she called me. Earth. What she hadn’t realized was that I really was our goddamn planet. Because when I was going to explode, a lot of fucking people were going to get hurt in the process.
My sisters and mom still waved at us when I opened the door and helped her into the Jeep. Her eyes were droopy, her body slack. I always brushed aside Rosie’s illness, but it was there, looming in the shadows, waiting for the perfect chance to grab at her throat.
I needed to come to terms with that but couldn’t. Every time I saw her using an inhaler—including today—I got so fucking mad, the need to punch a wall took over me. Nebulizers, pills, nasal sprays. My apartment was full of them now. I had Dr. Hasting on my speed dial, her physiotherapist’s address, and knew the exact times and days she went for appointments and what to do when she started pounding her chest and hissing like a snake. I knew that the average lifespan of a cystic fibrosis sufferer was thirty-seven. I knew all of the male diagnoses with CF were infertile, and many of the women had difficulties having children.
And I didn’t want to know any of these things.
Because she wasn’t a fucking illness.
She was a person I made plans with. And those plans exceeded the ten years she statistically had left.
I started the car but didn’t release the E-brake. Staring out to the neatest tree-lined street in the world, where my family resided, melancholy trickled into my heart.
What the fuck are you doing, asshole?
“You have a secret. Big one,” Rosie whispered, looking out her window.
Rosie and I didn’t get off on the best foot in our relationship. I wanted her to get used to us before she knew I was actually a we.
Her whole package may have been explosive, but mine was messy. Very.
“So do you,” I said. She offered me a startled glance. No denial there.
“Yeah,” she said. “We already suck at this relationship thingy.”
“Are you kidding?” I chuckled. “We’re fucking killing it. It’s a bump. A little dog ear in our book of awesome.”
“In my reality, every bump can have crucial consequences,” Rosie reminded me.
“And in our reality,” I countered, “I will always be here to make sure we smooth things over.”
We drove in circles for a while, just like we did our first night together in Todos Santos. I took her to all the places we visited before we had sex for the first time. To our old school, the marina, Liberty Park, and then, finally—to that bench. People were calling us, our phones buzzing and vibrating in our pockets. My father, mother, Rosie’s parents, Vicious and Millie. So when I parked on the hill overlooking the basketball court, I threw both phones into the glove compartment and shut it before we headed to our seat. Nervous didn’t quite capture the chaos that brewed within me. I was going to place my secret in her hand. A secret no one was supposed to know but my immediate family. And I was going to bare my weaknesses before her.
