A Love Like the Sun

Chapter 47 Things That Have Gone Unsaid

The next day my mom has an emergency, but she’s quietly pacing her living room, biting the polish off her red nails with curlers in her hair. When I ask her what’s wrong for the third time since I rushed over here, she turns to me and says, “Pete just asked me on a date.”

For a second, the confusion on my face makes hers fall, but then I recount the details of time before my diagnosis and my stomach squeezes, something blooming there. “I knew that was the reason you’ve been smiling at your phone,” I say.

“I have not been smiling at all,” she responds, hand on her hip.

I can’t laugh like I probably should. “Are you sure you’re ready to date?” The question is unfair, and I know I sound like a child as soon as it leaves my lips, but I can’t take it back now.

Mom’s arm drops to her side. She tilts her head at me, a frown on her face. “I think…maybe I am. But is that okay with you?”

Suddenly, I am sixteen-year-old Laniah Leigh Thompson and my world is crashing down because the man who always helped me be brave cannot breathe and I will not ask my mother to keep the sky from falling on me because she’s already buried beneath it.

But when I sit on the arm of the couch and look up at her, I realize I’ve grown and so has she. I can’t even imagine what these weeks have done to her with the memories of my father being sick fresh in her mind because of my disease, and yet she has continuously stirred me from darkness with a light in her eyes. It would be selfish of me to express my fears that opening her heart again gives it room to break, and that if it breaks she might pull away from me like she did during the darkest hour of her life. I have to trust and love her and let her love and be loved however she decides to.

So I say, “I want you to seek joy in this world wherever you can. You don’t need my permission to date. But if he fails to keep you smiling, I can’t promise I won’t short him on rent.”

She snorts. And then, “What about your dad? Do you think it’d be okay with him?”

This is a question that feels easier to answer because if I know anything about Dennis Thompson, it’s that whatever brought Vanessa Thompson joy brought him even more of it.

So I stand, wrap her in a hug, say, “Grief is hard, and you did it for so long. And you’ll probably do it forever, but Daddy would want you to experience all that you have left to experience while you’re here. Because the love you had with him might be once in a lifetime, but there are other loves. And you’re allowed to care about something other than me and the shop.”

She nods against me, cries while she does. When she pulls back to catch her breath, I ask, “Are you going to tell him to bring you to fancy fine dining or mini golf?”

“I’m going to suggest church,” she jokes.

“See if grump is open to being your version of godly.” I laugh. “Smart move.”

“Or I was thinking we could try the movies,” she says, and I feel a pinch of pain remembering her and my father going to the drive-in theater on warm summer nights.

“Are you sure mini golf wouldn’t be fun? When it’s daylight and there are lots of children mucking up the grass nearby, and absolutely no kissing?”

She rolls her eyes. “Anyway, now that this is out in the open, are we going to keep ignoring your own happiness? I’ve been giving you space, Laniah. Listening to your orders, but enough is enough.” She claps her hands together, so I know she’s serious. “What’s really keeping you from Issac? I need more details because it’s not making much sense to me. You’ve finally stopped being certain that the worst-case scenarios are going to happen to you. Now you should be letting him love on you. Lord knows you need it.”

She’s waiting for an answer when I walk off into her kitchen to grab an apple. I don’t even like apples, but what else am I going to eat that’s low in sodium, has less potassium than a banana, and isn’t too many calories? Mom snatches the apple from me and starts to cut it.

I lean against the counter and sigh. “It’s simple. I don’t want to make his life complicated. It’s finally not complicated. After all he’s been through, he deserves easy. He deserves so much more than I might be able to give him in the future, or anyone for that matter. I still feel that, even if I’m trying to avoid thinking of the worst scenarios for my own future now.”

She inhales sharply, her shoulders fall. Seconds later, she puts down the knife and turns to me with tears in her eyes. “Oh, baby,” she says. “I hear it now.”

“Hear what?”

“Do you think you don’t deserve love anymore? Just because you’re sick?” She swallows, and my stomach twists before she says, “Do you think your dad didn’t deserve love anymore after he got sick?”

I take a startled breath, the urge to argue with her rising in my throat. “Of course he did. But you were already with him and…” The words die in my mouth while watching my mom’s bottom lip tremble. What am I saying? My dad deserved the world and many more years of love.

She tilts her head, stares at me awhile. “Laniah, have you been feeling sorry for me?”

When the question comes, it peels away the layer of protection I’ve padded over my heart. I’ve never had to answer the raw, deep, and painful questions because she’s never asked them. And because before loving and losing Issac, I never had to face the feelings full on myself.

“You don’t know how hard it was watching you struggling to provide for our family and take care of him too,” I admit. “We had help from palliative care, but you were so tired. He got sicker and sicker, and I watched you suffer with sadness each day. Then…” I close my eyes, tears slipping from them and running hot down my cheeks. “Then when he died, you dropped into the depths of despair. For months, you wouldn’t eat, hardly spoke. Sometimes I wondered if I lost both of my parents. You to a broken heart. I remember thinking I never wanted to love the way you loved Dad. Not if it had the power to kill parts of me. I don’t even know when you started smiling again or why…I just know how horrible it felt when you weren’t.”

My mom doesn’t say a word, she just envelopes me in her warmth. We cry together in her kitchen until there’s nothing left but silent sobs between us. Finally, she pulls back and cups my face.

“I’m so sorry for not handling my grief better. For making you feel alone.”

“You handled it the best you could,” I say. “And I wasn’t alone. I had Issac.”

She nods. “You still do.”

“I know,” I tell her. “He really loves me.”

“He does. And you shouldn’t think spending the rest of your life alone is a solution.”

“Mom…”

“No,” she says, holding my face a little tighter. “Do you want to know when I started smiling again? It wasn’t because of another man or even because of how much I love the shop. It was when I realized your dad’s love was all around me still. Each time I heard a guitar strumming a song, or when tulips would rebloom in the spring, or any time I looked at you. You’re right, the grief doesn’t go away because it’s really just the extension of our love, and he loved me until the end of his life. I’ll love him until the end of mine. I don’t regret a second. And I’d do it all over again to feel an ounce of our happiness, even knowing we’d have a hard road ahead.” She kisses my forehead then lets me go. “Issac won’t regret it, no matter what your life might look like in ten or twenty years.”

I turn away from her, push around the apples on the plate. “We don’t know that.”

“You’re right. Loving someone, regardless of illness, requires taking chances.”

“I’m not sure I can. Not with his heart. Not with mine.”

“Then I’m afraid you’ll be the one living with regret.”

I’m barely through my front door when my phone rings. It’s a FaceTime from Issac, two days earlier than we scheduled. I slide out of my shoes, slam my door, stare at the phone while it’s still ringing. I’m sweating. He was supposed to give me time to gather myself. I should be sipping on lemon water and sitting on my front porch, ready for him with random questions that aren’t about us to pass the time before drawing up the courage to tell him my news. But when I answer the call, my throat is sandpaper dry, my hair is in a sloppy ponytail, I’m wearing days-old sweats and a graphic tee with a stain from who knows what. Issac looks perfect as per usual.

Except he isn’t smiling. In fact, he doesn’t seem happy to see me at all.

“Hi,” I say, nervous that he’s changed his mind and normalcy feels far away, but he couldn’t wait forty-eight hours to tell me.

“You have…” He takes a shallow breath, and every organ in my body alerts me to what’s coming. “You’ve been diagnosed with kidney disease, and you didn’t tell me? I had to hear it from Vanessa. How could you keep something like this from me? Why?”

Did my mom even send Pete a text after I left or did she call Issac straightaway?

“Listen…,” I start to say, but trail off in search of words.

“I’m listening.” He stands from where he’s seated. I can see the pool in the background. The light from the moon casting shadows across his skin. And even in this tense, screwed-up moment, I think about how much I’ve missed his face. I remember our desire for each other being too big to contain in that pool. I ache for him to touch my fingertips while we float.

“I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want you to pity me. I—”

“Pity you?” His laugh is sharp, laced with pain. “Are you serious? I love you. No matter what is going on between us. And it’d be different if you decided you needed time to yourself after finding out, but your mom told me you were purposely keeping it from me because—”

“The reasons don’t matter,” I rush to say.

“They do.” He runs a hand down his mouth, then steadies the camera so he’s looking directly at me. “Oh, Laniah Thompson, I think they do.” His big brown eyes lock me in place, even though I want to look away. “Tell me that you ended things with me because you didn’t think I could handle loving you with this. Be honest.”

I open my mouth, close it, but I can’t stop looking at him.

“Please answer me. I want to hear it from your mouth. I need to hear it from you.”

One breath. Two. “I kept it from you because I can’t be responsible for how much your life might change if you decided to be with me,” I say.

And even though he’d already heard it from my mom, he looks stunned. “Wow. Just…wow.”

We fall into a silence so dense, it’s hard to breathe. Some nights I wake up short of breath just like this.

Why does love have to hurt?

“I’m sorry for keeping it from you,” I say.

“A couple of weeks ago I asked you not to hide your health issues from me and you said you’d try not to. We were in my kitchen, and you said—”

“I’m sorry,” I cut in, frustrated, sad, ill prepared. “What else do you want from me?”

“Laniah, will you look at me?” He sighs. I meet his gaze and watch his features soften, his voice does too. “Before the news, were you going to tell me you want to be with me?”

“I was,” I whisper, the confession feeling necessary but unsafe for his ears.

He closes his eyes, says, “My silly heart.”

“I told you it wasn’t silly,” I say. “But, Issac…I can’t be with you. And not just for your sake. For mine too. How do you think I’ll feel if…no, when I start getting sicker…what if I need a transplant down the line or dialysis three days a week? What if I don’t want kids because of this but you do? What if we find out that I’ll die young? How do you think I’ll feel knowing I could’ve saved you from a life with me?”

I watch him sit back down; he covers his face with his hand. Is he crying? “God, Laniah. How could you say that? You’re hurting me right now. Did you want me to stop loving you because of this? Hearts don’t work like that. And regardless, it’s my decision to make.”

“But I need to take the decision out of your hands,” I say desperately, needing to hold on to my logical decision no matter the reassurances Dr. Baldwin has given me, no matter what my mom said about love, because the alternative is too scary. There’s too much unknown in my future. It feels like being alone is the bravest thing I can do for both of us. “I love you, Issac. But I need you to be okay with us being friends.”

“What if…” Issac’s voice cracks and cuts into my defense. “I can’t only be your friend?”

“You promised,” I say.

“That’s not fair,” he replies.

I breathe out. Then with whatever sense I have left, “So be it, but you should announce our breakup to the media tomorrow and take as much time as you need from me. I’ll be waiting, as your friend.”

“The media? Really? We’re going to do this now?”

“That’s what our planned FaceTime was supposed to be for.”

He’s annoyed. Pissed. If there weren’t so many miles between us, his pain would suffocate me. My chest is already tight enough. “What do you want me to tell them?”

“Anything,” I say, softer now. I’m hurting him and I hate myself for it, but it’s hard to make things better if I can’t figure out what’s wrong and what’s right. “I trust you, Issac. Please trust me. When we hang up, maybe you’ll realize I’m right.”

“And maybe you’ll realize how happy we could be,” Issac says. “That your sickness doesn’t define you. And it shouldn’t define our relationship. Your mom told me some of the things you said. And all I could think about is how, while you were only witnessing the hurt and pain between your parents over the years, I was getting to watch two people with a love so strong even the doctors couldn’t predict how long they’d get to have it.” The admission makes memories flicker at the back of my mind, but I’m not ready to reach for any of them. And before I can respond, Issac ends the call.

The silence in the room gives way to hearing my mom’s words in my head again.

I’d do it all over again to feel an ounce of our happiness.

And the flickering ignites into a full glow.