Ralph #2
But the good years. God, the good years.
Those high school afternoons when we'd clear out the training logs and she'd challenge me to a straight sprint, every single time, knowing her stroke rate couldn't match my reach in freestyle and not giving a single damn because she was the most competitive creature God ever put on the earth.
She'd surface after getting beaten by three body lengths, wipe the chlorine from her eyes, and bark, "Again, Brandt," with that stubborn fury in her voice, and I'd dive back in because refusing her anything was a physical impossibility.
Those long summers at the beach with Theo, the three of us burning our shoulders on towels, sharing a single bag of salt chips, arguing over music until the tide came in.
I'd call her little mermaid just to watch that slow, beautiful flush start at her collarbone and climb all the way to the tips of her ears.
She'd throw a handful of dry sand at my chest, or shove my shoulder, or tell me to shut my mouth, but her face always betrayed the line.
She loved it. She loved being my mermaid.
She just possessed too much pride to say it out loud.
I could see her at seventeen, diving off the gray rocks into the Pacific, her arms locked above her head, her body a flawless, unbroken arc against the sky.
I could see her at twenty, standing on the second tier of the podium with a silver medal around her neck, absolutely furious because silver wasn't gold, her chin thrust out, her eyes blazing with blue fire.
I could see her at twenty-five—the last time I ever saw her competitive stroke—a qualifier where her times were so far off her personal standard she climbed out of the lane and walked straight to the locker room without looking at a single soul.
I had sat in the upper bleachers with my hands wedged between my knees, wanting to tear down the railing to follow her, and knowing I had no right to enter her dark space.
And soon, I wouldn't be able to see her face at all.
All of it would fade out, one shade of blue at a time, until Emma Carrow was reduced to a voice, a warmth, and a memory I carried in the only square inch of my head the tumor couldn't reach.
My phone vibrated against my hip. I pulled it out, my eyes straining against the glare until the pixels resolved into a name.
Mom.
Her caller ID picture was from last Christmas at our house in Bakersfield—sitting at the oak table, her reading glasses pushed up into her hair, smiling at something Athena was doing off-camera.
She looked healthy there. Now, her blood pressure had been a dangerous metric for three years, kept under control only by Athena's relentless management.
The absolute last thing her heart needed was her son calling from a hospital stairway to tell her the surgery was mandatory, the career was dead, and her boy was going blind.
My thumb hovered over the green acceptance bar. I let it ring. One. Two. Three. Four. The automated voicemail system kicked in, her recorded voice filling my ear for a brief second before I cut the connection and shoved the phone back into my pocket.
Not today. I couldn't carry her sorrow along with my own.
I turned the corner toward the main elevator bank and nearly ran flat into a man coming from the opposite direction.
He was an older guy, his white cane sweeping a practiced, rhythmic arc across the linoleum, his left hand trailing the wall molding.
I swerved hard to miss him, my balance failing as my foot caught the edge of a trash bin, and my shoulder slammed into the drywall hard enough to rattle my jaw.
"Sorry," I muttered, my voice rough. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't see you."
The man paused, a gentle, sightless smile touching his mouth.
"No harm done, son." He kept moving, his cane resuming its steady tap-tap against the tile, and he took the corner without slowing, without a hand out for the wall, moving through the dark like it held nothing he hadn't already mapped.
I couldn't imagine ever owning it that way.
He didn't need my apology. He didn't need my pity.
He just needed me to get out of his way.
My palms were slick with cold sweat. The corridor was suddenly doing something terrifying—stretching and compressing in my vision, the white walls breathing in and out like a living lung.
The fluorescent fixtures above were simultaneously blinding and murky, shifting between a harsh white glare and a dark, amber wash.
My vision was strobing at the margins.
I reached the elevator doors. Hit the down arrow.
Leaned the full weight of my spine against the wall.
The floor numbers above the door were melting, the digital red display blurring into an unreadable smear of light.
I abandoned the elevator and took the concrete stairs instead. Four flights. My right hand was locked onto the steel railing the entire way down, gripping the metal so hard the edge bit into my palm. One flight. Two. Three.
I hit the ground floor. Pushed through the heavy fire exit. The midday California sunlight hit my face like an attack of white noise—so brilliant, so absolute that I stumbled sideways.
I leaned hard against the brick, my chest heaving, my black shirt damp with sweat despite the cool breeze coming off the asphalt. My hands were shaking. Both of them. I pressed my palms flat against the rough mortar and forced myself to count the breaths.
One. Two. Three.
Four. Five. Six.
I was going to pass out. I could feel the gray perimeter closing in on my consciousness, the asphalt tilting up at an impossible angle, the rough brick sliding against the fabric of my jacket as my weight shifted toward the dirt.
Then a hand touched my arm.
Small. Warm. Utterly solid. Five slender fingers pressing into the muscle of my forearm with a fierce pressure that cut clean through the static in my brain.
And a voice. Clear, soft.
"Ralph?"