“Marilyn’s my nurse,” Mel explains to me, and I nod like it’s normal that she’s telling me this. Like it’s normal that she’s telling me anything or acting thrilled about the lies spewing out of Luke’s mouth. I have no idea what is happening.
“I ... have to get to work,” I say, seeing my quickest exit out of this conversation.
“Oh, right, I forgot about that,” Luke says, and scratches his head. My bullshit radar is so broken at this point that I wonder for a semi-second when the hell I told him anything about my having to work. When I realize that I didn’t, a cloud of anger temporarily overtakes my confusion.
“Well, give me a hug before you go,” Mel says, and I step forward, out of Luke’s embrace and into Mel’s.
“I love you,” Mel whispers in my ear. “Always have, always will.”
Which is the exact moment that I realize she doesn’t know.
How?
How does she not know? After all these months?
“I love you, too,” I manage to choke out over the tears forming again.
She squeezes me tight, her patented Mel hug, and then I step back and leave the room.
Luke tells his mother he’ll be right back, and he follows after, his hand on the small of my back. My head is spinning as we walk all the way down the hall, confusion quickly turning into a wave of hot red anger.
As soon as I’m certain we’re out of Mel’s earshot, I turn on him, shrugging his hand off my back. “What the hell was that?”
He looks over his shoulder and signals for me to keep walking until we’re in the living room. Once we’re there, he grabs a half-finished bottle of water from the table and takes a swig.
“Why did you do that?” I ask again, and his look of total disinterest makes my blood boil even more. “You told me she wanted to see me.”
“She did,” he says.
“Bullshit! She didn’t even know I was coming. You lied to me!” My voice is escalating by the minute.
“Calm the fuck down,” he says, finally looking less impassive.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” I spit back, and for a second, it’s a standoff. I can’t believe Luke and I are speaking this way to each other. Me and Ro, maybe. But never Luke and me.
“She’s sick.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“It made her happy.”
“So you just made up a lie? Because it made her happy?”
“Yeah, I did,” he says. “And you know what, it’s more than you’ve ever done. Where the fuck have you been? All this year, where the fuck were you?”
I step back at his words, my voice quiet. “I thought she didn’t want me here.”
“She was fucking ecstatic to see you just now, so no, that doesn’t work,” Luke says. “Try again.”
“I thoughtyoudidn’t want me here.”
He runs a hand through his hair, but he doesn’t deny it. “This isn’t about me.”
“I’m not lying to her,” I say after a long moment. “You want to make her happy? Fine. But leave me out of it.”
“Jessi, she’s sick.” His voice is quiet, and he’s not looking at me.
“I know she is!” I say, exasperated.
