17. Ray
Ray
“ H ey there, Stingray.” Mom’s smile lit the room as I stepped in, a vase of flowers clutched between my arm and my chest.
I nearly dropped it.
“You… you remember calling me that?” I asked, watching for any signs of the woman she was before the dementia set in.
She’d been in the hospital for nearly a week.
They’d insisted she stayed in case she had any adverse reactions to the new medication, and I’d been dropping by every day. She’d been asleep each time.
“Of course I do,” she laughed. “Are those for me?” She eyed the flowers, her brows wiggling like they used to whenever I’d give her a poorly wrapped present on Christmas morning.
“Yeah. I… I thought you’d be asleep,” I explained while I walked up to her bedside, plopping the vase down on the little table beside her bed. I dropped into the chair I’d almost considered a second home for the last seven days. “How are you feeling?”
“Good, honey. Really good.” She tapped the side of her head. “Got my ducks in a row today, I think.”
I chuckled as the realization settled in. She was more my mom than she had been in years, and considering I never thought I’d see this side of her again… it was strange, to say the least. “I’m so glad the new medicine is helping. It’s nice to see you like this.”
Her gray hair sat limply around her shoulders, a little bit of natural oils weighing it down from lack of washing. I’d need to tell the nurses to make sure she got a shower today. “It’s nice to feel like this,” she sighed. “How are you, Stingray? What have I missed out on lately?”
I couldn’t help but smile at her saying it again. She hadn’t called me that since I was a kid, and I wanted to record it and play it on a loop on all of her bad days. “I’m, uh, I’m okay. Life can be hard at times. But it’s not horrible.”
“Good job? Any men in your life?” Mom leaned forward, her thin and fragile frame somehow taking up the room. I didn’t know what she did and didn’t remember from the last year, whether any of it had stayed in her mind or gone in one ear and out the other.
“Good job, yes. No men,” I laughed. “Just one annoying boss who keeps coming on to me.”
She nodded as she reached out her hand, motioning for me to take it.
“Are you happy?” she asked, all glee and happiness fading to the background, being overrun with serious mom energy.
“I know taking care of me isn’t easy. I don’t want you to have to do that for me, sweetheart.
I want you to live your life. I want you to be happy. ”
Am I happy? The question pinged around in my mind.
“I’ve got security. I’ve got the makings of a happy life,” I replied, and it wasn’t a lie.
I did have those things. But I wasn’t entirely what I would call happy.
Happy was a hard thing to be when there were still things I wanted that felt out of reach, when I had a sick mother to care for, when I couldn’t necessarily live the way I wanted to even if she wanted me to. “I’m happy enough, Mom.”
It was as truthful as I could be. Mom didn’t need to know how much I longed for actual human connection.
She didn’t need to know how much I desperately wanted a relationship now after the glimmer I’d gotten from Wade, how much I needed it in my life.
It wasn’t in the cards for me, at least not for a while.
Not with her health, and not with my lack of time.
But I could pretend with Wade. I could pretend for another couple of weeks, cherish the moments that felt real, and forget who it was. I could have fun with it. It could be enough.
For now.
————
I didn’t bother knocking. I didn’t feel the need to anymore. I pushed the door open into Wade’s office, my bag flying around on my arm as I burst through, hair a mess and no makeup.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I blurted, pushing my hair back from my face. “My mom was awake when I went to visit her and she remembered me?—”
“It’s fine.” Wade stood before his bookshelf, sideways to me as he looked up and down at the different trophies. “Don’t worry about it.”
There was an air about him that felt… different. Melancholy was the only word that came to mind, thick and heavy in the space, his lips pressed into a thin line. I took a step forward toward his desk. “Are you, uh, okay?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Would you like me to dust them?” I offered, my gut coiling as I realized I had no idea what to say to him. It felt like I was in uncharted territory—the normally happy-go-lucky teasing Wade or irritated beyond belief Wade had become a down-in-the-dumps Wade.
He slowly turned his gaze to me, one dark blonde eyebrow lifted. “Dust them?”
I shrugged.
“No, I don’t want you to dust them.” The side of his lips twitched upward, just a hint of that happy-go-lucky Wade peeking through, but it was gone before I could fully capture it.
I held my breath as he lifted his hand toward one of the trophies, pointing at it.
“I got this one when I was seventeen. Felt like I was walking on air.”
I couldn’t see the trophy properly from where I stood. Part of me wanted to approach him, look at it with him, but another part of me wanted to ask instead. Mom had always said I was never a fight-or-flight person. Freezing up was my go-to, in more ways than one.
“And this one,” he motioned to another on the shelf below, blues and reds climbing the shiny frame, “I got at eighteen. It was my first FIS competition.” His eyes darted to the platinum ski leaning next to the bookshelf for stability. “That one was right before the accident.”
The accident. The words echoed in my mind, over and over, begging me to ask him what that entailed.
I could feel the sentence climbing my throat, sitting on my tongue, and banging against my clenched teeth to be let out.
But if I asked, that would mean admitting there was a little piece of me that cared enough about him to want to know.
And I wasn’t sure I was ready to admit that to either of us.
“I’m glad you had a nice morning with your mother?—”
“What happened?” I blurted out.
Maybe Mom was wrong. Maybe I was a fight person.
Wide eyes flared as they collided with mine, sending my heart rate off the charts. Another step forward and I was in front of his desk, my hands fidgeting, my sleeves pulled down over my palms.
“What happened?” I repeated, smaller that time, uncertain.
“Do you actually want to know or are you just humoring me?” he asked. He crossed his arms over his chest, his button-up pulling around the muscles of his biceps.
“I want to know.”
He seemed to mull it over as he looked between me and the trophies, his lips between his teeth. “Come here.”
I didn’t hesitate.
Stepping around his desk, every click of my heel felt like torture, like I was bearing something to him instead of the other way around, and maybe I was.
Maybe my chat with Mom that morning had let the idea of pretending for a little bit go to my head.
But I wanted the human connection, however small.
He motioned for me to sit atop his desk as he leaned back against the window, the morning’s pale, white light filtering in through the snow clouds. I pressed my hands into the hardened wood and hoisted myself up, my feet dangling below.
“Comfortable?” he asked, one brow raising again, challenging me to say anything other than yes .
I nodded.
He looked again at the platinum ski. “It was two weeks before my nineteenth birthday. I had signed a deal to ski with the Olympic team the following winter, but to keep my spot, I had to keep winning,” he explained.
His voice had dropped. It was deeper, harder, a hint of what I could only imagine was pain behind it.
“That was all I cared about. That and Emily.”
Emily. I opened my mouth to ask, but he held up a single hand to stop me.
“I’d stupidly let my ego take over everything I had,” he continued.
“I’d stopped worrying about the risks. Sure, I’d had a few tumbles over the years, but nothing too bad had ever happened.
When you’ve got an ego as large as mine was and a too-large dose of teenage invincibility, shit tends to hit the fan. ”
“To be fair?—”
“I know,” he said, the smallest, saddest smile spreading across his lips for a fraction of a second. “My ego is still massive. Just be glad you didn’t know me back then.”
I shut my mouth, allowing him to continue.
“I needed to win, and in order to win, I needed to be fast. Speed was always my biggest advantage, so I didn’t think twice when I angled myself forward and took the corner too sharply.
” He sucked in a breath as if the memory was real and tangible and happening in front of him.
“My right ski caught on a skinny aspen. Fully twisted it. Fractured two bones in my shin, shattered my kneecap, and had a spiral break in my femur. I went down like a fucking bowling pin.”
The image of it flashed in my mind. A younger Wade screaming in the snow, ski bent and leg in all the wrong angles. “Oh my God,” I breathed.
“Yep.” He nodded, briefly meeting my gaze before looking back to his trophy. “I still remember the look on Emily’s face when the doctor told me I’d never ski again. I can’t remember the details of the heartbreak I felt, but fuck, I remember how angry she looked.”
I wanted to ask so badly, wanted to know who she was.