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34
EMMA
All the emotions I’d been carrying with me for the past few days rushed out of me in a river of tears.
“Are you okay?” Jackson asked, looking alarmed, and I wiped my eyes, wishing I wasn’t in such a public place.
“Yeah,” I said between sobs. “I’m just so… grateful.”
Tears poured out of me again and I hid behind my napkin, hoping I wasn’t alarming everyone else in the restaurant. Imagining how happy Helen would be when she looked in the mirror and saw her body looking intact again was overwhelmingly wonderful, and it made me feel momentarily better about everything else.
Even here, at this fancy restaurant, I hadn’t been able to stop glancing out the window and at the other patrons looking for Nathan. I’d tried to do it discreetly, but I knew Adrian in particular had noticed. But Xavier’s news was so incredible, and the nipple he’d tattooed looked so real, that I wasn’t on guard for the first time since the beach.
“Helen’s going to love that,” I gushed, ideas already piling up in my head for how we might organize the day. Even if Helen couldn’t get tattooed herself, I was sure she’d love to be there. “And we can collect donations and donate the money to cancer research.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Xavier said, his green eyes twinkling as he smiled.
“I’m on board,” Jackson said.
“Me too,” Adrian added.
“Good,” Xavier said, and focused his green eyes on mine as he squeezed my hand. “All that’s left to do is organize it. Given that you know more about breast cancer than any of us, how would you like to take on that role?”
“I’d love to,” I said. I’d never organized anything like that before, but my mind raced with ideas: donation boxes like the ones I’d seen at the medical center, advertisements through social media and local newspapers, and pamphlets that we could deliver to local businesses.
The ideas kept coming as we finished dinner and traveled home. We could sell drinks and snacks, with the proceeds going to charity. Of course, the people being tattooed would want privacy, so they’d be tattooed behind the curtains, but there was no reason why we couldn’t turn it into a party for anyone who was waiting.
I wished my mom could have been here to see this, I realized. She would have been so proud.
Back in my room at the apartment, I pulled out a pen and paper and scrawled all my ideas down before I could forget them. I knew not all of them would be realistic — inviting the local radio station here to play music and promote the event might not lead to anything — but I knew I needed to try.
I also knew that as much as I wanted to do all the work myself, I couldn’t do it alone. Cora had arranged countless fundraisers for the hospital, so if anyone knew how to make these ideas happen, it was her.
She answered on the second ring.
“What’s up?” she asked, in a playfully impatient tone as I heard the laugh track from a television show in the background. “You’re interrupting a very important rerun ofFriends.”
“I was wondering if you could help me,” I said. “We’re organizing a day where we’ll tattoo nipples on breast cancer survivors for free, but I’ve never done anything like this before.”
Cora clicked her tongue, and I heard her pause the episode.
“Sure, I can give you some tips. What do you need?”
“It’d be great if you could come over,” I said. “Help me make a plan?”
“Deal,” she said. “Send me the deets, and I’ll pop over tomorrow and see what I can add. The most important thing you’ll need to do is get the word out there, and I can help you with that.”
I got back to work as soon as I hung up the phone, not wanting to lose my momentum. I wrote a full three pages before I finally ran out of creative energy, and when I read over my list, I knew I’d made a solid start.
There was a soft knock on the door and I absent-mindedly said, “Come in.”
It was Xavier.
“I just wanted to see how you’re going,” he said as he leaned his meaty forearm against the doorframe. “Are you feeling better?”
“Much,” I said, and held up my notes. “This was exactly what I needed. Thank you so much.”
I knew how he was going to react as I stood up and walked over to him — every time I’d kissed him so far, he’d pulled away, and I expected him to do that again. But to my surprise, this time, when I lifted myself on my tiptoes and let my lips meet his, he didn’t move.
