14. Lucy
My hands might have been shaking,but I needed this caffeine more than anything. I took another sip as I walked up the front steps. Sawyer trailing behind me only a few steps back, I rattled the keys out of my purse.
“I apologize in advance for the mess. It’s a lot more… It’s different from when you saw it last.”
I slowly pushed the door open, delaying the reveal of the utter mess we were about to walk into. I slid boxes out of the walkway and kicked at loose packing paper scattered across the floor.
I was officially drowning in the “deal with later” pile, and it was way past later.
“I thought you needed to pack this place up?” Sawyer let out a joking snort.
I scoffed, “Every time I think I’m making headway, I find three more things I need to take care of. There’s no way I can bring even half of this back home with me. I live with someone who owns more handbags than I do clothes. I started unpacking to sort through everything and now,” I waved my hands over the mess, “This sort of just happened and I couldn’t stop it.”
He rubbed his hands together. “Put me in, coach.” He clapped his hands together, then rolled up his nonexistent sleeves. He reached for his back pocket and held up my list. “It’s a good thing a super duper smart person decided to make a game plan.”
I started down the hall, trying to hide the warmth I felt building on my cheeks. “We can take these downstairs,” I said, pointing to the pile of boxes near the entryway. “It will help clear out the main area.”
“I’m sorry, there’s a downstairs?”
I opened up the hidden door and made my way down. He followed after.
“Wow, I guess I didn’t expect these places to have a basement. They’re so…”
“I like to think of it as a Mary Poppins house.”
Sawyer said nothing.
I turned to look at him, adjusting the box in my hand. “Please tell me you know Mary Poppins?”
We reached the bottom of the stairs, I flicked the lights on. The musty smell of mothballs and dryer sheets lingered in the air, it was the signature scent down here.
He sat his box down at his feet. “Is that the same lady in the Princess Diaries?”
“You know the Princess Diaries, but not Mary Poppins?!” I planted my hand on my hip.
He shrugged his shoulders and looked around. “Guess that means we’ll have to watch it together,” he said, inching closer.
I took a step back, almost stumbling over the stacked boxes behind me. I was certain my face turned a crimson red. I felt it more than anything and I thanked my lucky stars that even with the light on, it was too dull and dungeon-like down here. Sawyer caught me quickly before I fell. His hands wrapped behind my waist, stabilizing me.
“Thanks,” I whispered out.
He pulled himself back and walked towards the stairwell again. He coughed out, “I wonder why Gus’s doesn’t have a basement.”
I moved myself over beside the washing machine. Allowing my heart rate to return to its normal state. “He does. All four of the cottages do. You know that gaudy coat rack that he has by his stairwell?” I asked, and he nodded. “Behind it is their basement door. They never use it. Leanne is terrified of it. Out of sight, out of mind.”
Gus would do anything for Leanne, as long as it made her happy. Something as small as using a coat rack as a cloak for the basement that houses so-called monsters, or something as big as selling the grill so he could spend more time at home. He would do any and every thing under the sun, moon, and all of its stars for that woman.
I don’t ever want a love if it isn’t like the one that they have.
I blew out a breath as I studied the space. “Okay, I don’t think a list, a pamphlet, or a book is going to help in this case… I have no idea how I want to go about this.”
“I’ll follow your lead and try not to break anything as much as possible.”
I widened my stance. I was paralyzed with the heaps of boxes. “I guess I’ll deal with this over here, and you can head over there. Sound good?”
He gave me a thumbs-up. Crouching down to lift some boxes, he quickly became frozen by the creak of the stairs.
“Don’t worry about that, that’s our ghost friend Tony.”
He squirmed, shaking out his entire body. “That is so not funny,” he winced.
I giggled before tackling my headache of a pile. Photo albums, painted pictures, sad excuses of mugs that I made in pottery class that Tiffany refused to get rid of… I pushed them all off to the side to add to the rest of the mayhem upstairs.
The other boxes consisted of winter coats and boots and they were stacked high up to the ceiling. Those, I knew, could go straight to the donation pile. I can’t remember the last time I wore anything heavier than a light sweatshirt in Arizona. I pulled them down only to reveal behind it all was Tuck’s folded-up flag displayed on the wall. Framed awards and medals hung on either side of it.
I mourn a person I have never even met. I knew of a laugh that belonged to someone I had never even met. The home videos and memorabilia kept him close, though. I traced my fingers over the photo of him that sat in the center of the award plaque.
Sawyer shuffled his way up behind me. I felt him without him even laying a finger on me.
“Can I ask you something?”
I sucked in a shallow breath and nodded. “Always.”
“Why sell? It’s not like it’s going anywhere,” he asked. How bold of him. He asked a question I hadn’t wanted to ask myself. I slowly pulled my hand off the photo of Tuck before turning around.
“There’s nothing left for me here.”
He tried to find the answers behind my eyes as he jumped his attention back and forth between them. Answers that I desperately needed, too. But nothing escaped his mouth.
I never expected to leave Rider. Rider was going to be the place that I always came back to. I was going to go to school, get my degree, and come back to start my life here.
Within my first year of med school, I was convinced I wouldn’t make it to see my last. After the first semester was over and I had finished my finals, I had booked a flight home ready to accept defeat and return a failure. I swore I had tanked all of my exams, something that had never happened before. I felt like all of my dreams and everything I thought I knew about myself was coming to an end.
As I arrived at the airport, the first report rolled through in my email. I moved like a zombie through the TSA check-in line. I scrolled and scrolled, and hit refresh about a million times. The airport Wi-Fi was absolute trash. But as I was about to hand them my passport and ticket, it loaded. Every score for every class was right there at the tips of my fingers. And every single one read that I passed. I passed with flying colors.
I ranked incredibly low, but I passed nonetheless. A fire was lit inside of me. And I made a promise to myself to keep at it, even on the hardest and longest days.
I stuck around and made sure never to let it get to that point again. I studied any free chance I had. Woke up early, stayed up late. I never got lower than a ninety-two for the rest of med school.
“It’s not the same anymore,” I continued.
Sawyer lifts his hand and runs his fingers through my hair, pushing it behind my ear. He stopped at my jaw and my heart skipped a beat—or two. I rested my face in his palm.
“I get it,” he said. “The place you thought would never change, did.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. The warmth of his hand comforted me.
“I need to be honest with you.”
I saw all of the color of his face disappear with that statement.
“Earlier. With the coffee. It wasn’t about the coffee.”
“I had a feeling it wasn’t.”
“Coronary Heart Disease. My grandmother, I mean. That’s what she passed away from.”
I hated that even the slightest mention relating to her passing, the cause of it, turned me into a mess. It didn’t make sense, I don’t think that it ever will. The person with the greatest, biggest heart I’d ever known lost her life to it. Sawyer’s comment had no ill intention behind it, that I am sure of, but still, I let it shake me up.
“And I was making jokes about having heart issues,” he dropped his hand from my face and pulled me in for a hug.
I could feel his heart beating against my cheek. Thump, thump, thump. I could hear it throughout my entire body. But then I couldn’t decipher if it was his or mine anymore.
I pulled away from him, “You didn’t know,” I wiped away a tear I didn’t even realize had formed.
“She was sick for a few months, which seems like a long time. But it happened really fast. And it being so close to the time I was planning on leaving for college… I didn’t think I was going to accept my offer.”
“But you did.”
“You asked me why I chose neonatology.” He nodded, then pulled at my hand, directing us to a makeshift seat made of some of the firmer boxes. He never once let go of his hold on me. The palms of my hands became clammy, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull away. I liked feeling him hold me, even if it was just my fingertips. “When I was waiting around at the hospital, I spent a lot of my time up at the nursery. I thought being around newborns would cheer me up. I was staring death in the face so much that I wanted to focus on all of the little, adorable lives that were just beginning. Until all of the alarms went off on one of the monitors for this little girl. All of these nurses rushed in, their coats flew in the wind after them. They looked like they had on capes,” I let out a chuckle, “in a way, they did have on capes. They were real-life superheroes.
“My heart dropped and I didn’t even know this little girl. But a couple of days later when I went to visit Tiffany, that little girl was back in the nursery looking better than ever. I had always known I liked the idea of taking care of people, I thought I was going to go to school to become an English teacher. I hadn’t always had an interest in it. I said I did. Honestly, blood spooks me and the smell of Isopropyl Alcohol makes me sick. It wasn’t until that moment that I decided I’d focus on medicine. When I decided to leave, I went to college for that little girl, for Tiffany… For me.”
“Either way, you left to save the world, Lucy Collins.”
I took a step back. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe it for myself.”
His brows threaded with a sense of anger, and annoyance. “How could you think that? You’re doing amazing things.”
“I was supposed to become an English teacher. The plan was to teach at Hillside High just like she did. I never even got to tell her about my career change.”
“And you don’t think she knows regardless? That love, that connection? I am positive that she is with you always. She knows, and she’s proud.”
I looked up at him. Sawyer’s jaw was clenched and his chest heaved as our faces were inches away from each other now. I reached my hand up the bottom of his face, the scruff scratched under my palm and he covered mine with his.
“Lucy…”
I quickly pulled my hand out from underneath his, “I’m sorry.” I stood and stepped off to the side, “D-do you want to grab some food? I can clean another day.” I patted my fingers along the frame of my face, dabbing away the sudden layer of sweat that grew in a matter of seconds.
My cheeks were warm, but the moment I no longer felt him, the coldness grew exponentially.
“Yeah… Let’s go.”
We scooched past the boxes and headed for the stairs, “Watch your step for Tony.”
The silence as Sawyer followed me up behind the stairs was deafening.
You left to save the world, Lucy Collins.
I felt unworthy to receive such words. And I dismissed it like I do everything, talking about how what I was doing wasn’t good enough. That I’m not good enough. All because I didn’t stick to a plan.
Life hasn’t gone according to plan for as long as I can remember. Whether it was in my control or not. Yet, I felt responsible all the same. I have always had this insistent need to make sure people were proud of me. It was my mission to never stop until they were. Though, when I received the praise I so desperately wanted, it still wasn’t good enough.
I still wasn’t good enough.