Page 21 of 32 Days in May

User. Vampire.

I bat his hand away. “Yeah-fucking-right.”

Marco and I go our separate ways with all the balls in my court. Except I know he’s meandering back to the bay-side of the island, to a magazine-spread-ready home with a bathroom in the garage and a panoramic view of the sunset.

Meanwhile, I bike back to the modest, wood-shingled beach shack my siblings and I will squabble over for decades, once it’s passed down to us. The fact that Marco wants to date me? It’s more than opposites attract. It’s farce—it’s sketch comedy. It’s Stuart Little getting adopted by humans.

The Fabiola beach apartment is just three bedrooms at the end of a short, dark hallway attached to a kitchen with a skylight, a sitting area, and double doors that lead to the balcony. Everything is Tuscan-inspired and dated with flesh-toned walls and an overstuffed brocade couch. Years of moisture have caused the linoleum cabinets to peel and buckle. My dad has patched the same leak around the edge of the skylight every year since he bought this place.

But it’s ours. It’s so very us.

A photo of my parents has been secured to the front of the fridge for as long as I’ve been lucid enough to remember coming to Evergreen. My mom is sitting in my dad’s lap in a white plastic chair. My dad’s mustache is pitch black and enormous; my mom’s honey curls are teased into an updo. Tiny orange numbers in the corner read: 08/15/1986. They’re two teenagers, some place in Southern Italy, thinking about what they might have to do to make their dreams come true. They don’t know that one day they will have a regular home and a beach home. They can’t even imagine what it’s like to have enough money to not spend their nights awake, worrying.

Sometimes, when I’m in the mood to wallow, I stare at this photo and think about how deeply I’ve let them down over the last year, how badly I’ve disrupted their first year of retirement.

I get home, drop my bags, and make a beeline for the fridge, and as I’m preparing to eat strawberries right from the container in the blue-green glow, I catch their eyes.

My dad never smiles, but in this picture he’s grinning, one hand tight on my mother’s waist, the other on his knee. The way my mother tells it, they’ve only ever loved each other. The biggest decision most people make—whether or not to give their heart away—and they got it right on their first try.

There’s a knock at the front door, then it creaks open and Allie pops her head in. She catches me staring at the fridge, in the dark. Embarrassing.

“Soph and I are gonna go out for a drink. Wanna join, babe? Talk about your date?” She has a crisp Midwestern accent and the sweetest way of handling vowels.

“Um,” I say and my voice cracks. Because I haven’t spoken a single word out loud since I said goodbye to Marco. I clear my throat. “No thanks. Not tonight.”

She flashes me a gentle smile. “Not feeling good?”

I nod. “I should probably get some rest so tomorrow I’m in better shape.”

She says goodbye and pulls the door shut.

Once again, I’m alone.

I text Marco: We date until May 31st and then that’s it

Marco: We said a month.

Nadia: May 31st and you’re done

Marco: You’re being difficult.

Then, he writes: Might be my second favorite thing about you

I frown at my phone. What’s number one?

He writes back almost immediately. Your smile

Saturday, May 6

I wake up, roll over, and add to my things i never knew before lupus list:

disease is isolating. prepare to be alone. or get really good at lying.

“You’re still coming tonight, right?” Allie asks.

We’re bagging green beans on the front porch while a mid-spring shower cleans the pollen off our cars. It’s a hot, sweet rain that smells like wet sand and sulfur, wafting heavy off the bay at our backs. We live on the skinniest part of Evergreen, only two blocks from the bay and the beach in either direction. Locals love to remind us that we’ll be the first part of the island to go. But we know they’re just jealous.

It’s quiet down here, far away from the boardwalk and motels and bridges in and out of town. A bird sings through the storm. Today, my mind is tired, but my body is hanging in there. Lupus has brought me an acute awareness of the way my various parts work—or don’t work, really—together to make me a full human. The world is heavy around me, just like the muggy air, and I feel as if I’m moving through an odd but familiar dream. Before I knew I had lupus, I always thought I just had déjà vu. Now, I know that my mind, leaden with brain fog, was saving itself the energy of processing, leaving me in a stop-motion dream state.