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Is he inviting me out for lunch?
Or dinner.
Or sex...because clearly Jacob didn’t like her lip gloss just because it suited her skin tone. She touched her fingers to her lips and then flinched when her mom waved from the window.
Leilani climbed out of the car and pocketed the note in her skirt, then headed inside.
“Hi, Mom.”
“What were you doing out there, Lani?” she asked, planting a kiss on her cheek.
“Thinking. Just work stuff,” Leilani replied. “How are you feeling?”
Her father was where she got her Hawaiian blood and nice olive skin. Her mom, however, was a white woman. Actually, these days, because of her liver failing, she was more yellow.
It was horrible to watch someone slowly fade away from this disease, especially when it was preventable. Even now.
She was angry at her mom for choosing the alcohol and not finding a way to get over the loss of her husband, Leilani’s dad, dying.
But what could she do? Tell a dying woman she was mad at her. Every single minute together counted at this point. And you can’t make someone do something they don’t want to do.
Clearly, staying alive to be with Leilani was not enough of a motivation.
Which hurt.
A lot.
She was scared. Soon she’d be alone in this world. Save for a scattering of friends.
“You have us,” Amy had told her last week. “Just think, you could move closer and be a babysitter for our little one.”
Great.
I’ll be a spinster nanny.
“Don’t think about work all your life. It’s way too short. Young people make their careers way too important these days,” her mom said, ignoring her question.
It wasn’t the first time she’d said such a thing and wouldn’t be the last. The irony of her lectures wasn’t lost on Leilani.
Life was short if you were dying and counting your days at forty-five. Maybe if she gave up the bottle and got clean, she would qualify for the transplant.
All it would take was for her to abstain for three months.
But she wouldn’t.
Her mom was hardly in a position to be telling Leilani how to live her life. Again, she zipped her lips and kept her thoughts to herself.
At any point now, her mom’s liver could completely fail. The doctors had talked them through it all and told them what to expect.
Waiting for anyone to die was hard, but when was it your mom? Well, Leilani woke up nearly every day in tears. Then put on a brave face the moment she left her bedroom to start the day.
Her outside face, she called it.
“I wasn’t really working. I just had to email myself a reminder. I wasn’t out there long,” Leilani replied defensively. “Let me go shower. Then I’ll make us dinner.”
Any excitement about Jacob had subsided the moment she saw the yellow tinge on her mom’s cheeks. It certainly did put things into perspective.
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