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“I did,” I replied.
I made sure my tone wasn’t mean, per se, but it was definitely guarded. I wanted to make sure this man knew what he was getting into if he wanted to be my friend. In any case, I didn’t know if my heart or my schedule could handle friendship.
“Come, sit,” he said, gesturing to the bench he’d been sitting on. “I want you to see this.”
I sat next to him on the bench but gave him the same amount of space I’d give a friend. Maybe someone who was more of an acquaintance.
“We should talk about Jasmine—”
“No,” he said. “For now, we’ll just breathe.”
I stared out at the water, wondering if he was insane. Every time I had seen him, he wanted torelaxinstead of searching for an answer.
“She’s getting worse by the day—”
“Breathe, Stevie.”
“Adrian,” I said, sitting straight up and staring at him. “She is going todieif we don’t do something, and you never want to find an answer!”
“Can’t you ever sit still?” Adrian asked, and I could hear the smallest amount of annoyance in his voice.
“Not when there’s a little girl dying!” I hissed.
“There are little girls, little boys, babies, and other people who don’t deserve it dying all over the world.”
I gritted my teeth and stared away from Adrian, down the pathway where the occasional person walked. I felt him shuffle closer, but I couldn’t unclench my jaw, tell him about Jasmine’s worries. I wasn’t breathing right. I was holding my breath and breathing out too quickly. That hadn’t happened since I was in high school. I tapped my fingers on my side, letting myself fall into the motion and be re-centered.
“I have an answer, Stevie, and frankly, it scares me shitless. I don’t know if she’ll survive to see a new heart—I don’t even know if she’ll survive the procedure, but I have to try.”
“You care,” I stated.
“Of course, I care,” he responded, hurt in his eyes. “How could I not? I’m not trying to stop you from caring, but if you carry every patient with you like this, it will ruin you. I don’t want to see you ruined.”
I could read how much he cared in his eyes. Like a wall coming down, I saw all the fear that I felt in my own heart, and it warmed me to the man beside me. I closed the rest of the distance between us, and we sat, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh.
“What did you want to show me?” I asked in a low tone.
“My quiet place,” he muttered and nodded out at the water.
The city didn’t stop living behind us, but staring out at the water, he was right, things were quieter. A boat puttered into the marina and docked, causing ripples across the glass surface. I thought about how it would feel, to jump in the water and feel it gliding over my skin. It could wash me away, turn me into something separate from all these worries, just another facet of briny water in the bay.
Without thinking, I took Adrian’s hand and held it tight. I wished I could bottle up the calm that the marina gave me and carry it with me everywhere. I knew that Adrian had an answer, and even if he hadn’t enlightened me yet, I was sure I would learn soon. Adrian’s hand was warm and dry in mine, and we stared out at the water together, giving in to a rare moment of calm among the chaos that was my life now.
Chapter Eight
Adrian
She took my hand, and it was like a safety blanket.
Of course, I couldn’t tell the girl beside me everything that was happening. I couldn’t tell her that my heart was pounding out of my chest simply from her proximity. I couldn’t tell her that the title of “friends” killed me because I wanted more but knew it could never happen. For a moment, her walls were down and that was important.
I wished they could stay down but knew they wouldn’t. Instead, I memorized the feeling of her hand in mine, how she looked calmer as she stared out over the water. I’d have to tell her everything the next day: what I was going to do to try and keep Jasmine alive, how I was taking a chance. I reminded myself that in a couple of months, she would switch to someone else’s service, and I would have no reason to see her. I hoped she would still see me anyway. It was a victory to me that she had even come out to the park. I had half expected her to throw away my note and number.
A shrill ringing cut the silence between the two of us, and Stevie jerked away from me like she’d been electrocuted. She jumped off the bench and stalked behind me, pulling her phone out. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but I thought I saw her blushing.
“Mom? Are you okay?” Stevie asked, answering the phone.
I tried not to listen in, to only stare out at the water, but I caught snippets of conversation. It was all standard day-to-day stuff. Stevie asked about “the boys” and laughed at something her mother said. The conversation wasn’t long, but I could hear the love in her voice. She mentioned that she was out with me, as friends, and my heart jerked a little.
