Chapter 36
Landon
“You didn’t have to come.” I should just tattoo the words on my forehead, I’ve said them so many times now.
“I don’t have to do anything,” Callan says with a smirk as he leans back in the chair near the foot of my bed and knits his fingers behind his head. “But this is a hell of an excuse to skip my history class. I fucking hate history.”
“Glad to be of service,” I snark back and then pull myself up a little on the hospital bed.
It’s ridiculously uncomfortable, and the blanket is scratchy because, like all hospital linen, it’s been washed and bleached within an inch of its life.
“But you can just tell them you were here, get the doctor to write a note or whatever, and take off. Do something fun in Portland. Take Lola.”
Lola turns her head to glare at me. “Why are you like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like a selfish prick.”
I sit straighter. “How is wanting you guys to do something interesting selfish? I know it’s a pain in your ass. That’s why I want you two to go. Mom and Dad will be here eventually anyway.”
“You think we’re pissed you’re sick?”
“We don’t know I’m sick again.”
“Landon, you puked into my potato chips and tipped over like a lawn chair in a hurricane.” Lola folds her arms over the front of her overalls. “You are sick. That doesn’t mean you have cancer again, and for the record, this time, if you do, I’m not staying away. I don’t give a shit what you want.”
“What I want?” I balk. “What I want is to let you guys have a life that doesn’t revolve around me being sick.
You guys had started college and deserved to have a carefree time, not spend it flying home on weekends to see your bald barfing brother.
I was trying to help by telling Mom and Dad not to bring you when I was sick. ”
Callan’s smirk disappears. He leans forward.
“You told us not to come visit you when you were in the hospital. When summer break would have brought us back to San Fran, where you were getting treatment, you bought us that fucking trip to New York and a trip to Italy because you… You were trying to keep us from being bored by your cancerous ass?”
“My ass was not cancerous.”
“You know what I mean, oh, and also, fuck you.” Callan kicks the bottom of my gurney. His eyes are serious and soft at the same time. “You had us thinking you didn’t want us around because we annoyed you. Because you didn’t like us.”
“What? No! I was…” I swallow and stare at my fingers as I knit them together in my lap. “You guys spent your childhoods being dragged all over the place for my games. Even when you started playing, Callan, Mom and Dad weren’t always there for you.”
“So they sent Uncle Levi and Aunt Tessa to some of my tournaments.” Callan shrugs. “But sometimes they switched, and you got them. Who cares? When you’re on the ice, do you really even think about who is in the stands?”
I shake my head and finally look up at them.
“Landon, in case we never said it, which it appears we did not,” Lola says, “we are proud of you and we love you and when you got sick, we were devastated and we wanted to be there for you.”
“Yeah, Italy and New York kind of sucked because we just kept texting Mom and Dad for updates on you,” Callan says.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, you should really send us again.” Lola smiles and winks at me. “Or better yet, come with us. This summer. Once you’re cleared for this wonky ear shit.”
I give her a smile, but I’m not feeling hopeful.
The paramedics who showed up at the cottage tried something called the Epley maneuver on me, it’s supposed to help with vertigo if it’s caused by crystals in the ear canal, but it didn’t help.
Nothing felt right again until they gave me a shot of something in my ass.
The doctor was a huge Riptide fan, and so he knew who I was when they brought me in, and I could tell from his somber expression that he also knew about my medical history.
So he ordered more testing, and here we are. Waiting.
There’s a knock on the door. First, I see Angie’s face. She’s smiling, but it’s tentative. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Callan came while Angie stepped out to talk to Grady and check on my parents, and see if they got a flight. He hasn’t seen her bump yet, which is accentuated today because she’s in leggings and a clingy shirt. His eyes go right to it. “Hey Angie… are you… feeling alright? You look a little…”
“If you call her fat, I will slap you in honor of all women everywhere,” Lola says frankly.
“I was going to say, bloated?” Callan squeaks and dodges Lola’s hand as it flies out to swat him.
“I’m pregnant,” Angie says and raises her hand when Callan’s eyes bug out of his head. “Calm your tits.”
Callan presses his palms to his chest through his Henley. “I do not have tits. I have pecs. Well-developed, sexy pecs.”
Lola rolls her eyes. Angie walks over to hug Callan, and that’s when I see Grady. He walks in right behind her, filling the overly large opening to my room in the E.R. My heart soars out of some kind of muscle memory, and then it plummets like it should because fuck him.
“Hey man! Garrison, right?” Callan moves past Angie and walks towards Grady with stars in his eyes. “I’m Callan Casco. Nice to meet you. I’m a huge fan.”
I forget sometimes that Callan’s a goalie, like our dad, and his dream is to be where Grady is right now. Wait… “You should be at the rink.”
“I’m not playing tonight.”
“Even if they start Michaels, you still have to be there,” I argue and watch as he moves to the foot of my bed.
“I’ve got the flu. At least that’s what the press release will say because that’s what Coach is telling everyone. About both of us.” He seems so unbothered by this. Coach is lying for him? So he can come see me? Why would Coach do that?
“What? Why? What did you say to him?” I ask, and then my eyes dart to my siblings and back to Grady. “I don’t want you here.”
“Yeah, you do,” Grady replies.
“What’s… what’s going on here?” Lola asks quietly. “Hi. I remember you from Los Angeles.”
“Yeah. Hi. Grady Garrison.” He extends his hand, but Lola keeps her arms crossed and stares at it like he offered her a flaming bag of dog poop.
Lola clears her throat. “So, like, why are you here?”
Grady looks at me so long my heart starts to stutter. “Your brother is my best friend, and I wanted to be here for him.”
“You have a game tonight.”
“They’re gonna put in Michaels and put the EBUG on the bench. It’s fine.”
“EBUG?” Angie repeats, confused.
“Emergency Back-Up Goalie,” Lola explains, her tone annoyed not that Angie doesn’t know a rarely used hockey term but by the fact that she does know it. Lola’s biggest hardship in life is that she was born into a hockey family.
“You can play. You’re going to play. Go to the fucking arena, Grady,” I snap. “I don’t want you here.”
“Yeah, well, too bad. I can’t play. I’m in no headspace for it, and I’ll cost them,” Grady snaps back.
“I have to be here with you for my own sanity. I’ve wasted too much fucking time pretending I don’t give a shit.
I’ll go sit in the waiting room if I have to, but I’m not going to go play hockey and act like I’m not sick to my stomach over you and all the fucking time I’ve wasted running from this. ”
The room is deadly silent. Callan and Lola are staring between Grady and me like they’re watching a tennis match. Angie finally steps forward. “Yeah, so I think we should maybe go to the cafeteria. Take a walk. Give them a minute.”
“They need a minute?” Callan asks, his voice kind of high. “The way, like, you and Landy used to need a minute when you’d fight?”
“Just come with me.” Angie takes each of my siblings by the arm and leads them out of the room.
“I’m sorry about so much,” Grady says quietly when we’re alone. “And I guess I need to add outing us in front of your siblings to that list of things. I’m sorry for that too.”
“You can’t pull someone out of a closet they were never in,” I reply coolly. “I haven’t told my siblings I’m bi yet because it hasn’t come up, but I wasn’t actually hiding it. That’s you.”
“I think I’m done hiding it,” Grady replies.
His voice is a bundle of nervous cracks, but he’s standing at the foot of my bed, eyes soft, shoulders back, defiantly.
He’s terrified but confident. I wish I could crawl inside his head and help ease the worry I see etched between his eyebrows, but I know I can’t. Grady has to battle his own demons.
“I really don’t think you should be skipping the game,” I reply. “Above all else, you’re a professional athlete.”
“Guys skip games when their wife gives birth or a family member gets sick,” Grady replies. “Why can’t I be there for my… for the person I care about?”
“You told that to Coach Larue?” I can’t believe it.
“Yeah. I have to have a meeting with him when we find out you’re okay,” he explains and shoves his hands into the kangaroo pouch on his hoodie.
“Grady… I may not be okay.” I haven’t admitted that fear to anyone.
“Tell me what happened.” He moves to sit on the edge of the bottom of my hospital bed.
I lean into the pillows and explain Lola showing up and the vertigo, which caused instant vomiting.
I explain to him that, despite the symptoms being gone, the doctor ordered a CT scan.
And then I tell him, when you Google causes of vertigo other than crystals in the ear canal, brain cancer is one of those causes.
“They thought Nash’s leg thing last season was cancer, and it wasn’t,” Grady says, like that one case is the benchmark for all cases.
“Nash didn’t just have leukemia.”
“You were cured.”
“I went into remission,” I correct. “We tend not to use the word cured until five years without recurrence. I’m not there yet.”
“Well, that’s dumb. Cured is a much cooler word than remission,” Grady grumbles, and I actually crack a smile. He notices it, and it causes his face to explode into a smile, too.
“I’m still hurt,” I say softly.
“Does it help that I regret wholeheartedly the way I’ve been handling… well, just about everything since we started?” he asks meekly. His hand lands on my calf. “I’ve been a fucking idiot.”
“You totally have,” I agree. “But right now I have too many emotions swirling inside me to deal with the ones associated with you.”
“Okay, let’s table that and just concentrate on figuring out how to confirm you’re still cured.”
“Remission.”
“Potato potahto.” He winks at me. Fuck, this guy, he makes it impossible not to love him.
Holy shit… I love him.