“Hey, I liked that cassette player.”
“I’m being serious,” I said. “Get the Bronco. I know you want—”
“It doesn’t matter what I want.”
The words rushed out of him, his chest heaving a little as he stared at me.
After a long moment, he cursed and ran a hand back through his hair, his gaze falling to the concrete between us. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I just—”
“No, raise it,” I said, stepping into him. “Get mad. Get real. Tell me why you can’t buy the car you really want.”
“It’s ten-thousand dollars over my budget.”
“That’s a difference of like…” I did the quick math in my head. “A hundred and sixty bucks a month if you finance. And I bet you could offer cash and not have to finance at all. Come on. You can afford that.”
“Stop acting like you know me and my situation and what I can or can’t afford! Fuck, you’re pissing me off.”
“Good! You being angry is better than whatever apathetic emotion you’ve been trying to mask with all day. And you’re right. I don’t know you or the situation, so how about you fill me in. You had me in the therapy chair over my parents. How about—”
“My sister is sick.”
My mouth hung open where I’d been in the middle of being an asshole. It took me a solid minute before I shut it again.
“She has been for a long time,” he continued, taking his sunglasses off and hanging them from his shirt. The day had turned from pleasantly warm and sunny to cloudy with a chill in the air — much like this conversation. Braden’s warm, golden eyes landed on mine, and I felt like I was seeing through them for the first time. “She has AFM. Acute flaccid myelitis.”
There had been a soft breeze before, but the air felt too still now, like the world had stopped spinning with the words Braden had spoken.
It made sense. They’d stolen my breath, too.
“It hit her when she was eight. One day she had a fever, the next…” He shrugged a shoulder. “She woke up and couldn’t move most of her body.”
My chest tightened. “Fuck, Braden.”
He nodded, like he knew what I was saying without me even having to. “She can still move her arms and hands a little,” he continued. “Her feet and toes, too. But everything else… not really. She’s in a wheelchair or in bed most of the time. She has a trach and uses a ventilator to help her breathe sometimes.Mostly at night. She has a feeding tube for meals, uses a computer to talk.”
He paused there, swallowing once before looking away toward the row of cars behind me.
“My parents take care of her most of the day, but it’s… a lot. So I pay for a full-time nurse to help them out. I bought them a house with my signing bonus and cover the taxes. Medical stuff insurance doesn’t cover. Whatever they need, really.”
The way he said it was almost numb, like he’d compartmentalized it so well it was just another fact of life.
But I caught the way his jaw tightened when he finished. It was like he wanted to break, to soften, to say that it wasn’t fair and he wished things were different, but that he’d never allow himself to speak those words out loud. He hardened himself, instead. He acted like it was all fine.
“The bull on my arm is for her. She’s the taurus,” he said softly, and then smiled a little. “Super into all that astrology stuff, even though I think it’s all ridiculous.” He paused, swallowing. “She’s the only thing in my life that means enough to me to get permanently inked.”
I closed my eyes on a long exhale, recalling the clean lines of his tattoo and how I’d assumed it was for his own sign.
“That’s why the ten grand matters,” he said quietly, finally meeting my eyes again. “That’s why I have a budget.”
I let the silence linger between us for a long moment. Here I was complaining to him about my angel of a mom and dad who pay for practically everything, and he’s actually lived through real shit.
I felt like a fool.
I also felt desperate to do what he’d done for me — to lighten his load, even if just a little.
The dealership noise carried on around us — doors slamming, a salesman laughing somewhere across the lot, a carengine revving — but it felt like we were standing in the center of a bubble where none of it could reach.
“That’s… a lot to carry,” I said softly.
