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Without a word, he snatches the money up from where it fell to the ground, then stomps off.
Thank God.
I waste no time in stepping back so Landon can walk through my door. He’s probably as ready to sit down as I am.
He comes in, and as I shut the door behind him, I say, “Thank you.”
He trudges toward the couch, rubbing at one eye. “You’re welcome. Jesus, that guy…. You told him you’d go out with him?”
His tone is slightly accusatory, and I understand why.
“I was desperate for his help. That day—the day I saved you from choking, actually—was so stupid. Thing after thing after thing went wrong, and one of them was me killing my car battery because I left my headlights on the night before. He’s a mechanic and he was there when I got home with the new battery….” I sigh and cross my arms. “I didn’t want to do it because he’s a jerk, as you can see, but I had no choice. At least, I didn’t think I did. Then these past few days got so crazy—Rae has been sick and you…” I don’t know how to finish that thought, so I just keep going, “…and I realized I really, really didn’t want to go anywhere with him.” I suck on my teeth. “He didn’t take the news very well.”
“No, he didn’t.”
He kind of looks like he wants to say something else about the whole thing, but he leaves it at that.
Now that we’re alone, I can really study how…howwronghe looks. Drained, dulled, dismayed. He’s paler than usual, I think, and frowning like he has a headache, and what appears to be a bruise is forming on one side of his jaw. He somehow seems both tense and weakened. I can tell he has pushed frustrated hands through his hair several times.
He really is a mess, just as he said.
And I need—very badly, I realize—to help make it better.
I ask in a near-whisper, “What happened with Lolly?”
He swallows hard. Twice. Then he looks away from me. “She…uh…she….”
When he doesn’t come up with anything else to say, I walk to where he’s been standing by the couch. “Sit down.”
He does, and so do I. Then he puts his elbows on his knees and knots his fingers together except for his right thumb, with which he taps the star tattoo on his other wrist.
It takes him a full minute, it seems like, to speak again.
“I went to see her. When I got there, her nurses were leaving the room and I asked how she was doing. One of them said she was doing really well.” He rubs at the tattoo now. “Health-wise, doing great. Attitude-wise, doing great.Memory-wise, doing great. She was even quoting movies.”
I just nod, because that all sounds like good news, but it obviously got turned upside down somehow.
He stops talking again and begins to breathe deeply. Each breath in and out is slow and steady. Measured…focused.
I know that technique. He’s actively trying to stay calm.
He closes his eyes, and I notice his thumb has stopped moving and is now pressing hard against the tattoo.
Sympathy fills my chest.
“I walked in,” he says quietly, “and she was watching TV. I’d gotten her some flowers, so I held them out to her and said hello.”
Inhalation…exhalation….
I can practically see the memories playing in his mind.
Inhalation…exhalation….
“She started screaming. Like, seriously screaming—the kind of bloody-murder screaming you do when something is horribly wrong. And I thought it was the flowers, for some reason. I thought she didn’t like them.” His eyes drift open and fix unseeingly on his hands. “But it…wasme.”
I blink, not understanding.
Or maybe just not wanting to.
