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“You’re just so far away,” her mom said with a heavy sigh. “I’d feel better if I could see you once a week.”
Mina’s head fell back against the couch. Her stomach was already starting to revolt against the number of chips she’d eaten, and the conversation wasn’t over. She’d have to hang up on her mom for the run to the bathroom, which would only worry her mother more.
Because everything Mina did worried her parents. And had, starting since she’d been the kid with an interest in Archie comics, rather than her brother. Obsessively reading Crime and Punishment while sporting black eyeliner that she’d applied with a trowel had only made her parents worry more.
They had never fully understood their young daughter. HIV had only given them something tangible to worry about.
Of course, knowing this didn’t help everything. Her mom’s comments still felt more like lack of faith than they did lack of understanding.
“I’m not moving back. You’re coming to visit over Thanksgiving. You can meet Levi. You’ll feel better. Especially because he’s nothing like Enrique.” He’s more like you, she realized. Solid. Hardworking. A doer, not a thinker. Except that he seemed to love that she was a thinker. He at least wanted her to keep talking about her thoughts, ideas. She would have anyway, with anyone she dated, but it was nice to be encouraged.
“Who’s Enrique?” said a raspy voice from the hallway.
Mina looked up. Levi was leaning heavily on the doorjamb. The flu didn’t seem to have had any effect on his ability to grow stubble. And his hair was a complete mess, each strand attempting to escape his head by a new path through the universe.
He looked adorable.
“I’ve got to go, Mom,” Mina said into the phone. “Tell Dad that I love him.”
“Do you really think your father and I don’t have faith in you?” her mom asked.
“Let’s talk about this over Thanksgiving,” she answered. “You’re coming, right? Email me your ticket information.”
“I don’t want you thinking that your dad and I don’t have faith in you from now until Thanksgiving.”
“Then stop questioning everything I do. Or start saying things like ‘that sounds like a good decision’ or ‘you really put a lot of thought into that and I’m sure you know best.’”
“But...” Her mom paused. Mina waited for her to say she was sorry or that they were proud of her and all she’d accomplished in her life or something.
Instead the “but” danced in Mina’s ear. Alone.
Levi made his unsteady way from the doorway to the couch.
“Mom, I really do have to go.”
“It’s not that your dad and I aren’t proud of you. It’s that we worry about you.”
Levi put a hand on her shoulder. Mina closed her eyes. “I know, Mom. And it would be easier if I were closer.” Doing something they understood.
He gave her shoulders a squeeze, his concern adding to a pile of irritation that he hadn’t caused and wasn’t really a part of. She was just sick to death of people worrying about her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MINA HUNG UP the phone and tossed it to the coffee table. Then she straightened her shoulders, put on as real a smile as she could manage and looked over at Levi. “How are you feeling?”
He opened his mouth, probably to say something, and coughed in response. She nodded and patted his knee. “I get it. I was there, too. Want some tea?”
He shook his head, still coughing. When he was finally able to wheeze out a couple of breaths, he asked, “Who’s Enrique?”
She patted his knee again, distracted.
They hadn’t talked much about their past relationships. Mina knew about his wife, and that they had gotten married pretty young, so she might be his only significant past relationship. He’d said that he hadn’t dated much since Kimmie’s death. But Levi hadn’t asked, and Mina hadn’t told, about her past boyfriends.
Plural.
Of the men she’d dated in the past, only Enrique compared for significance, not only length of relationship, but also depth of feeling.
“Enrique was a boyfriend,” she said. It wouldn’t be enough. Levi wasn’t so sick that he wouldn’t recognize the dodge.
