Days Like This (6 page)

I KNEW CASS WAS coming. Hell,
I was the one who called her, but until she was standing there refusing to make
eye contact—it was hard to believe it was true. We’d barely said two words to
each other since we left her house. I didn’t really know what to say to her.
Well, I knew what to say to her, but I also knew I couldn’t. It wasn’t the time,
and I wasn’t an ass. She made herself pretty clear last time I saw her. God, I
wished she didn’t look so damn good. If she looked bad all this would be
easier.

And maybe I
wouldn’t want to kiss her so much.

God, I wanted
to kiss her.

I had to shake
that off. I had a girlfriend, and Cassie was here, but it didn’t change
anything. I opened the door to the guest room, and turned the light on for her.
In the light of the room, she was radiant. She’d always been beautiful, but today,
there was something else, a sadness that rarely defined her, but now it seemed
so engrained.

I knew right then
what I really wanted for her: I hoped that when she left she found the thing
that made her happy. That the sadness in her eyes was only the situation, and
not what she had become. I cared too much about her to see her swallowed in
sadness.

“This looks
nice,” Cassie said. “Very different.”

When I met her
gaze, I recognized a glimmer of the girl I used to love. What did she see in
this room? The brown and blue paint that used to cover it? The pictures of her
and me that used to plaster the walls? The Clash poster that hung on the closet
door? The basketball trophies? The first time we fumbled our way through sex
when we were sixteen on that very bed? We’d improved a lot since that first
time. The last time I made her yell my name over and over, and it always felt
awesome to be the one to make her come. I had everything I could ever want, and
all of it was her, especially in that last moment we had together. I felt like
a king as she called my name as I moved inside her, and I caught a glint of my
diamond on her finger. I’d thought in that moment that she’d be mine forever in
every way possible. That’d we have this for the rest of our lives. The memory
was as vivid as if it had been yesterday, even though it’d been months.

I cleared my
throat.
Stop thinking about that.
“A lot has changed.”

Cassie nodded,
and bit down on the side of her cheek. That used to bug me so much, because it
always meant she was uncomfortable. I didn’t like being the one she was
uncomfortable around. “Want some water or something?” I asked.

“No, thanks.”

I couldn’t
stop staring at her. Her hair was short now, shorter than ever, and darker too.
So dark it made her eyes a bright blue. She’d always worn it long, past her
shoulders, and I used to love the way it’d be a tangled mess after sex, and how
we’d lie in bed after and she’d twist it around her finger like she was nervous
to look at me.

Stop
staring at her, Tucker. Leave.

“I guess
you’re good then. Night.”

“Goodnight,”
she said. Her voice was low, and she bit the side of her cheek again. Part of
me wanted to ask her what was wrong, but I knew the answer. I knew it was me,
it was here, it was all the things she hated in one place. The sad part was I
used to be the one thing that made her happy. Or so I’d thought.

“Graham,” she
called. I inhaled and turned back to face her. Her hair was new, but she stood
in that room like she fit there. Even though the paint was different and we
were different and so much time had passed, she still belonged there. And it was
damn annoying because it was the one place she didn’t want to belong. “Thank
you.”

I waved her
off. “The room was all Mom.”

She shook her
head slightly. “For my mom. For being here to help. For the call.”

The only thing
I could think of to say was “someone had to do it” but I didn’t want to see her
face when I said it. So, I nodded and walked out the back door.

I WAS AFTER orange juice. It
was a few minutes past 7 a.m. and I was going to go into the kitchen, get the
juice, and get out. But Mom was already up and behind the stove. A stack of
pancakes was forming beside her, and I thought twice about going inside. If she
saw me, she would plan for me to stay, too. I couldn’t eat pancakes across from
Cass and my mom and pretend everything was normal when it wasn’t. Mom probably
wanted me to, especially since Dad left this morning for Japan, but I couldn’t.
I’d have to tell her the truth eventually, I guessed, about why we weren’t
together.

“Graham, you
can come inside,” she yelled out the window.

“I only need
orange juice,” I said, closing the door behind me.

Mom huffed.
“I’m making pancakes.”

“I see that.”

“Blackberry—those
were always Cassie’s favorite, remember?”

I’d never
forget. Cass stayed over once when I was seventeen, and my parents were in New
York City visiting my brother, Timothy; we woke up to a batch of blackberry
pancakes and my parents sitting at the table. “I made your favorite, Cassie,” Mom
had said. Cassie had on my clothes and hair all over the place. A whole weekend
of teenage drinking and sex will do that. I thought for sure they would say
something else, and I already had three escape routes planned in my head, but
they didn’t. Instead, Cassie’d said, “Thank you,” and we all ate breakfast like
it was the most normal thing in the world. Later, I’d heard all about having
her over here, and using protection, and pregnancy—the whole thing.

“I remember,
Mom,” I said. She laughed a little, but didn’t turn around. I grabbed the
orange juice out of the fridge. “I can’t stay though.”

“Why not?”

“Have to go to
the site.”

“I thought
they finished up the day of the fire?”

Crap. “About
that fire—Cassie doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know
what?”

I took a sip
of the juice but Mom stared me down. “That it was me who saved Mrs. H. I told
her Mrs. Pearson called 911.”

Mom put her
hand on her hip, looked at me like I was insane, and held her spatula in the
air with the other hand. “You lied to her?”

“I didn’t want
her to know it was me,” I said, sitting down.

Mom shook her
head. She wouldn’t understand why, not if I didn’t tell her the truth. The
skillet sizzled as she flipped the pancake over. “This is a small town, Graham—you
can’t expect to keep something like that a secret. They wrote an article about
it, for goodness sake.”

“She won’t
read the paper, Ma. I don’t want her to know—promise me you won’t say anything.
And that Dad won’t say anything if she’s here when he comes back.”

“What if Joyce
does? Or Sheila? Or Dr. Lambert?”

I shook my
head. “Don’t worry about them. Please promise me.”

“Whatever
for?” She snapped around to me, and I lowered my forehead against the table. I
didn’t want to explain all this right now. “Graham, you’ve got to give me more
than that. Tell me why you’re lying—and why you want me to lie—to the girl who
used to be a permanent fixture in this house and is now sleeping in the guest
room after disappearing for almost a year without a single peep. You’re keeping
something from me.”

“It’s
complicated.”

Mom grew
quiet. “You two didn’t get into some sort of trouble before she left did you?
You were safe?”

“God, Mom,” I
said, moving from the table. “It’s a little too late now for that kind of
quest—”

“Answer me,
Michael Graham Tucker.”

 “Yes, ma’am,
we were safe! This has nothing to do with that. I would rather you didn’t tell
her.”

The door
creaked open from across the hall, and we both stopped talking. Cassie appeared
in the doorway, and Mom smiled as big as she could. I turned away and pretended
to pour myself some orange juice, even though my glass was full. I hoped she
didn’t hear any of that.

“Morning,
honey. Want some coffee?”

Cassie smiled
back. “Morning, Mrs. Tucker. That would be great.”

“I’m making
breakfast,” Mom said. “Get yourself cleaned up and it should be ready.”

“Thank you,”
Cassie said. I didn’t turn around until I heard the door click into place.

Mom leaned
against the counter so I could see her face. “So complicated that you don’t
even want to look at her?”

I nodded.
“Promise me.”

“Fine,” she
said. She stepped back to the stove, but I knew this conversation was far from
over. “At least take a couple pancakes with you before you go.”

I kissed her
cheek and bolted out the door before she could change her mind.

I’D ALWAYS HOPED I would
never have to re-enter the doors of St. Joseph’s Memorial Hospital. It was a
silly thing to dream, because there I was. Again. None of it had changed. Not
the paint or the noise or the smell that really had no smell at all.

Evidence
that life moved on // was everywhere but here // written in the stars // on
your face // in my heart

“There’s our
girl,” Sheila said as she wrapped me into a hug and pulled me from my thoughts.
“Graham said yesterday you would be here.”

“Graham was
here?”

“He came every
day.” Every day? She pushed me away and studied me up and down. “Look at you!
College must be good for you!”

I smiled.
“Sometimes. Can you let Dr. Lambert know I’m here?”

“Can do. You
want to see your mom? She’s okay today, but I think you’ll be a good fix.”

I nodded, but
no. I didn’t want to see my mom. What would I say after eleven months? “Sorry I
abandoned you but I couldn’t handle it anymore. I’m like the man who swore to
love you and then left you. Left us.”

MOM RESTED IN the poor excuse
for the rec room in this old floral armchair. I froze at the end of the
hallway, trying to find the nerve to move toward her. She looked fragile and
pale under the harsh lighting. Her hair was long again, a dusty shade of dark brown,
instead of the purple streaks she had the last time I saw her. She dyed it on
one of her bad days—the same day that Graham proposed to me. I went to talk to
her and dye was all over her clothes; she must have spilled it before she broke
down on the floor. That day was bad. I had to pretend that I wasn’t Cassie. I
was someone else, and I’d told her Cassie was asleep, so she didn’t freak out; I
had to listen when she cried for me to bring my father back to her, to help her
keep him.

Mom turned, and
I watched as her face changed from boredom to happiness as she saw me. The
smile spread across her face, bringing out the lines around her eyes. Mom was
out of her chair before I could blink. She flung herself into my arms and
squeezed. Even in the staleness of the hospital, I could smell the faint scent
of honey soap, and with her arms wrapped around me, I was like a kid again with
a mom who wasn’t sick. A kid who scraped her knee or got a bee-sting and had a
mom to cling to. Before I became the one she clung to instead. I almost didn’t
want her to let go.

“Cassidee,”
she whispered in my ear. “You’re really here? I’m not dreaming.”

I swallowed. “Not
a dream.”

She ran her hand
across my face. “You hair is short, and dark.”

“You like it?”

Mom dragged me
toward a seat on the other side of the room, telling some of the other patients
that I was her daughter, and lowered us both down onto a couch. “I love it! I
think this is the style you’ve been missing all your life,” she said. She
seemed happy to see me. This was more than the meds and more than a pretty day
and more than being gone for so long. This was genuine. She started rambling
about how she should do her hair the same way, and I grabbed her arm.

“You’re okay
now?”

She waved me
off. “Of course I am. You didn’t have to leave school for me. You should be
there. I’m sure you have a lot of classes.”

I shook my
head. “It’s fine. I’m almost done. I’ll finish everything from home. I’m here
now.”

Mom nodded.
“Good. Can we go home? I’m ready for some real food.”

“I have to
meet Dr. Lambert. It’s up to her when you can go.”

Mom squeezed
my hand, and I patted the top of hers with my other one. Mom nearly burned the
house down and now she acted like I held the key to all her happiness. Once
again her life was wrapped up in mine, and I wondered what else me leaving did
to her. I wondered what it’d done to Graham.

DR. LAMBERT FOCUSED her stern
gaze on me. “You’re sure that you are up for this?”

I nodded.
“I’ve been dealing with her bipolar disorder all my life.”

“I’m aware.
I’m also aware of our last conversation nearly a year ago,” she said, looking
at me over a pair of glasses. The last time I was in her office I’d been
worried that I was bipolar. I’d felt like I’d been slipping, like I’d lost some
of my own sensibility. She said it was anxiety. She’d said that sometimes, when
people are dealing with someone who’s sick, they feel like they have those same
qualities, and that I should do something for myself. I said I had to stay—for
Mom and for Graham—and she helped me see I was wrong. Then he proposed, and Mom
had an episode, and I left.

“You left
school to be here?” she asked.

I shifted in
the chair. It was strange talking to her behind a desk. “I only have finals.
They arranged for me to do them remotely. I can help out here and then go back
to school or whatever I need to do.”

She didn’t seem
to believe me. I didn’t even know if I believed me. I didn’t even know what I
needed to do or wanted to do.

“What are you
pursuing in school?” Dr. Lambert asked.

I didn’t have
an answer. Something, nothing, no idea. I didn’t want to get into all of that
with Dr. Lambert. I wanted to get Mom and go. “I’m undeclared. When can we go?”

“Come back
tomorrow, and I’ll draw up the papers. Graham will need to come in, since he
admitted her. We’ll call him,” she said. I nodded. “She has to be here twice a
week for a session with me. She has to take her meds. If she doesn’t commit to
helping herself, then we’ll have to re-evaluate.”

“Thanks,” I
said. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.