Chapter Twenty
Marlon woke me up in the morning, ready for breakfast and a bathroom break. I had to pee and brush my teeth and do normal human things, but first: dog duty.
I stumbled out of my room and past the kitchen and the living room. The refrigerator door was open and I could hear Eli on the phone, laughing. Nothing in the world could possibly be funny to me before I’d had a chance to brush my teeth.
Marlon spun in circles outside, searching for the perfect spot to do his business, and when he was done, I opened the front door quietly and attempted to sneak past Eli. But he was off the phone and waiting for me, leaning against the counter with a cup of espresso.
And he wasn’t wearing a shirt. The planes of his chest were tanned and the dusting of hair visible.
“Good morning,” he said, his voice low and still a little sleepy.
“Thanks for steering me to my bedroom last night,” I said. “You have a very good couch, though.”
“You would know,” he said. “You are a connoisseur of couches. Espresso? I have a coffee maker too.”
I nodded. “Regular coffee would be good.”
I sat down at the little breakfast table in the kitchen as he pulled out a fresh filter. “I’ve got a churro-flavored creamer in the fridge.”
“Mr. Fancy Espresso Machine has flavored creamer?”
“I have nothing against creamer, but for the record, it’s not mine.”
It was like he was begging me to ask. He wanted me to know he was with someone. And now he was just rubbing it in, but I didn’t plan on giving him the satisfaction of my curiosity.
He threw back the rest of his espresso and sat down at the table across from me as we waited for the coffee.
I might not have been interested in asking him about the mystery person in his life, but there was one question that had been gnawing at me.
“Eli,” I said, “how did you end up here?”
“I’m guessing you don’t mean here in this kitchen.”
“You were going to be an interventional cardiologist, right? This feels way less high stakes than that.”
He nodded, tracing a small circle on the table and concentrating carefully on it. “I changed course after the first year of medical school.”
“Your whole family is full of cardiologists, I thought.”
“Except for my cousin, Stacy. She’s a podiatrist. A real rebel.”
I snorted softly. “And then came you.”
“Yeah, my dad wasn’t really thrilled by the thought of geriatric and palliative care.”
It was so far off from what I knew about him all those years ago. It struck me as the type of medicine that required patience, something I never considered Eli to have in abundance.
The drip on the coffeepot stopped and Eli stood to pour me a cup. I accepted the creamer, because regardless of who it belonged to, it did sound good.
The mug he set down in front of me had a spaceship shooting around it and in bold letters it read Crawford Basin Astronomy Camp. I topped the coffee off with creamer, his brow rising as I continued to pour. It was infinitely unfair how much he could communicate with just a single eyebrow.
Holding the cup up to my lips, I couldn’t resist a smile. “So what was the inciting incident? With med school.”
“The inciting incident? Is my life some kind of script treatment in need of workshopping?” He smirked before dropping his chin to his chest. “Someone I loved very much got sick. The medical community cares very deeply about lifesaving efforts. That’s where the money is.
But death? We’re not very good about helping people die.
We’re all so scared of the end, but it’s the one thing we can’t prevent. Only delay. And only for so long.”
I blinked, not realizing that my eyes were welling with tears. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was just . . . My mom was dying for a very long time before she finally went.”
He nodded, running a hand up the back of his neck. “So you’re part of the Dead Moms Club too? I’m so sorry, Vera.”
“It’s okay,” I told him. “But your mom . . . Is that— Was she—”
He nodded. “Parkinson’s. What about your mom?”
“Colon cancer.”
“That’s a fucking miserable way to watch someone die.”
It was. It really fucking was. Amid all the condolences and encouragements, this exact moment was the first time someone had acknowledged the pain of watching her deteriorate.
Mom endured the truest misery, of course, but watching it unfold had turned into an immovable part of me.
Not only her death, but the process of watching it happen was a canon event in the story of my life.
“Parkinson’s couldn’t have been easy,” I said.
“It made me furious. It made me want to punch walls.” His eyes, green with a lighter ring around the pupil, shifted down to where Marlon was curled up like a croissant at our feet. “Sometimes I did.”
“I liked your mom,” I said. His parents were big donors, so it wasn’t unusual to see them on campus.
We’d met only two or three times, but she actually made eye contact with me.
And she remembered my name and my major and one time during parents’ weekend at Sigma Chi, she said I had a contagious laugh.
“She liked you too,” he said.
“You’re just saying that to be nice.”
“You should know by now that I don’t say anything just to be nice.”
My stomach clenched. It was true.
“I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up,” he went on.
“I mean, I was always surrounded with people. Like my Sigma Chi brothers or the lacrosse team in high school, but she liked knowing that I hung out with Brody. And you. Plus I told her about the time you got drunk and called me an entitled sycophant. She was an English major. She liked big words.”
I laughed. “Sycophant maybe wasn’t the right word.”
“But entitled was,” he said quietly.
I swallowed, running my tongue over my bottom lip.
“Maybe. But you obviously had things going on. Like with your dad. He sounded like a ray of fucking sunshine.” I’d only heard about Eli’s dad from Brody, but from what I knew, he was the kind of man whose approval and affection was a moving target, which was what I’d always thought of Eli, to be honest.
“I told her,” he said, his chin in his hand. “About our short-lived marriage.”
“Oh my god.” I wanted to melt into my coffee cup and then be poured down the drain. “She must have been horrified.”
He shook his head. “It surprised her. I don’t do that to people often and she liked surprises.” He went silent for a moment, and then looked back to me all serious and earnest. “For the record, surprises are awful.”
“Well, you’ve been surprising me since I showed up here,” I admitted.
He leaned back, with his arms folded and his feet crossed at the ankles. My fingers itched to run through the hair on his bare chest. “Nah. I haven’t changed, really. I think I was always there deep down.”
I gave him a pointed look.
He bit back a smile and shook his head. “Okay, maybe I have changed a little. But not too much.”
“Well, considering you could barely stand to have me in your room back in college, and now you’ve asked me to live with you, I’d say you’ve changed quite a bit.”
His forehead creased with concern. “Is that what you thought?”
“What else was I supposed to think?”
He thought for a moment and then opened his mouth to speak before simply saying, “I’m sorry. I . . .” He shook his head, whatever he was about to say dying before it could reach his tongue.
“What did you think of me back then?” I asked because I was too nervous to urge him to complete that last sentence.
Sucking in a deep breath, he took my empty coffee cup and rinsed it out in the sink. “You . . . made me feel like a bad person.”
“What! What does that even mean? I never once said you were a bad person.”
“No.” He shook his head, like he was trying to shake his thoughts loose. “You didn’t make me feel like that because of anything you said. But I was a jerk, Vera, and being around you made that easier to see.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. What did he want me to say? That he wasn’t a jerk? He was moody and gruff. I rarely felt welcome in his company. If it weren’t for that night in Vegas, I would have thought he despised me entirely. Hell, even after that night, I figured he might.
“What are you doing today?” he asked suddenly.
“Um . . .” The truth was I had planned on rotting in bed all day, but that didn’t sound so great when you said it out loud.
“I don’t know. I’ve got some work to do for upcoming programs. I need to find a tarot reader .
. . but I was thinking of checking out drag bingo to see if we could set one up for the residents. ”
“I’ll drive,” he said.