Page 11 of When We Were Young

No. Not here. Not with her. Please don’t let this happen around her. I glance down at my right hand and, sure enough, I’m pinching the skin of my opposite hand. For a few seconds, I can only watch myself doing it, not sure how to make it stop.

“Hey, Holden, are you okay? Did I say something to upset you?”

Her words pull me back from the anxiety-fueled reaction I’m tumbling toward, but it’s when she places her small hand over mine, preventing me from continuing to pinch myself, that I can stop.

Embarrassed, I hesitate for a moment, then look over at her.

“Sorry,” I whisper. “That just got me thinking about my dad, that’s all. He loved sugary stuff, never listened to his doctor about it.”

She stills for a few seconds.

“Did you say he loved, past tense?” she asks with caution in her voice.

Her words are so soft I’d struggle to hear them if I weren’t so focused on her.

“Yeah, my dad died two years ago, about five months before my brother Hayden and I started college.”

Her hand, which was covering mine, now wraps around it. “I’m really sorry.”

I tilt my head toward her and fix my gaze on her. I decide I never want to look away. There’s a stillness, a calm I’ve never felt before, as compassion, kindness, and something more that I can’t quite place, stare back at me. I like how it feels.

I swallow past the lump in my throat.

“Thank you. I appreciate it. He’s kind of the reason that I’m careful, though not perfect, with what I eat. He died of a massive heart attack while he was running, and he was only forty-eight, so...”

Her eyes turn glassy, and I’m afraid she’s about to cry.

I notice her biting her lip—and not for the first time.

She glances down at our joined hands, and hers lifts off mine. But I take my free hand and place it on top of hers, encasing it between my much larger ones.

“Just for a few more minutes?” I ask.

She says nothing but relaxes her hand. Then nods.

“Is your mom... okay?”

“Yeah, I guess so. She’s alive, if that’s what you mean. I don’t know if I would say okay because she’s been a mess since Dad died, but she’s healthy, at least physically. And she’s getting better almost every time I see her.”

We sit silent for a few minutes, then I ask, “How about your parents?”

She seems to understand I need to change the subject off of mine.

“Well, let’s see. They’re not together anymore. My dad left when I was fourteen. He left my sister and me with a lot of promises about how often we would see each other, but within a few months, he remarried and then hardly ever tried to see us.”

I wonder if she can hear the hurt in her voice as loudly as I can.

“That must have been really hard.”

It’s not just a platitude. I truly don’t understand what that would be like since both my parents made us feel loved and secure.

“My sister was eighteen and didn’t care. I missed him, though. At first, anyway. I guess that phrase, ‘new wife, new life,’ really is true.”

Anger surges through me.

“That sucks. I’m sorry he did that to you.”

She fixes her eyes on her pant leg and picks at the fabric.