Chapter 15 #3
I sat there for a minute, then shifted my body toward him. “How much can you see?”
“I don’t know. A good amount. It’s all weird and foggy on the sides, and a couple of spots in the center of my right eye, but I don’t always notice them. I don’t hang out anywhere at night though—I keep tripping on shit, so I’ve kind of fallen out with my friends.”
I remembered that a little too keenly. “You’ll make different friends, but you might want to give yours some grace. People get less shitty when they get older.”
He snorted. “My friends are douchebags. They’re all, like, Fraternity Legacy dicks, and Mom thinks I won’t even make it through my sophomore year of college if my eyes get worse.”
“Your mom is full of shit,” I spat, then took a breath because she was full of shit.
But she was also probably scared. She was pregnant again, which meant more chances of having a kid like Oliver.
Like me. “I’m not going to lie to you and say this doesn’t suck sometimes.
I’m probably a few months out from having no vision at all.
No light, no dark. No nothing. My retinas are almost completely dead, and all the treatment I had didn’t do jack shit. ”
He met my words with a heavy, heavy silence.
“I get scared a lot too,” I went on. “I’ve had years to cope, and some days, I don’t want to get out of bed. I’m not even sure I want to go back to hockey if I can’t see at all because everything I learned relied on what little vision I had left. I don’t know what kind of player I am without that.”
“So you’re saying there’s no point?”
I scoffed. “I’m saying that you have to nut up and learn to pivot because life is shit sometimes. But it can also bring you amazing people and good money and best friends and a hot-as-fuck…girlfriend?”
Oliver whispered a laugh. “I’m pan. And I’m not picky.”
I felt a small punch of relief to hear that. “I’m not going to say it won’t be terrible and scary, but so many things are terrible and scary.” I leaned back and rolled the hem of my shirt up, then down, then up, then down. “I have a friend—he actually became my coach. His name is Tucker Banks.”
“I’ve seen him on ESPN,” Oliver said softly. “Dad watches your games when no one’s around,” he added when I gave a startled hum.
I didn’t know what to say or think about my brother treating my hockey games like they were something to be ashamed of, but I also expected it. It had been going on so long it was hard to care anymore.
“Well, my friend Tucker was drafted to the NHL when he was in college. Then he made a bad decision and lost both his legs, one eye, and a good part of his vision in his other eye.”
“Dang,” Oliver whispered.
I felt a smile flit across my mouth. Tucker would probably appreciate that reaction.
“He was angry for a lot of years. He’d start to do well, then he’d let his anger get in the way, and everything would come crashing down around him.
But he figured it out. Now he’s married, he’s a professional hockey coach, and—”
“Let me guess. Happy?” Oliver asked.
I shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes he’s more content than happy.
He spends a lot of time pissed off because that’s just how hockey coaches are.
What I’m trying to say is that his life is just as frustrating as his able-bodied twin brother’s life.
Or the guy down the street’s life. Or mine. Or yours. Or Aravind’s.”
Oliver was quiet again, apart from his drumming fingers. “Mom and Dad left me here on purpose, by the way. They were hoping you’d be, like…I don’t know. Inspirational or something.”
I bristled. “Yeah. You’ll get that a lot. Every time you smile with your white cane in your hand, people will be like, oh my god, you’re so brave.”
“I don’t have one.”
“You will,” I told him. I felt the tension between us rise. “I fought it for a long time too. Eventually, I got tired of embarrassing myself by falling on my face.”
“People stare though,” he murmured.
“Yep. And they do weird-as-fuck things like offer to pray for you in public or grab your arm and try to haul you across the street without asking. Or they have really fucking offensive questions like, how do you know when to stop wiping your ass? Or annoying ones like, how do you read comments on Instagram?”
Oliver scoffed. “What kind of fucking boomer reads Instagram comments?”
I burst into laughter. I wasn’t old, but I felt old right then.
“I’m just saying that there are parts of this that suck.
It makes dating hard, and sometimes I really do need help with stuff, and I fucking hate it because I have never been able to trust people.
And if I’d known your parents wanted me to prepare a goddamn TED Talk, I might have had time to plan what to say. ”
“I like this better,” Oliver said. “My parents are so fucked-up. It’s like they want you to make me feel better so they can keep being weird about you. Grandpa found out, and he just said, ‘Don’t be like your uncle, eh? Swinging that stick around.’”
My stomach twisted, but I knew if it wasn’t the blind thing, he would have found something else to use against me.
I would never know peace from that man. “You do what you need to do, Oliver. I also have a really nice brownstone in Boston, so if you ever need a break, you can come stay with me. There’s plenty of room. ”
“Pool?” he asked.
I laughed. “No. I’m not pool-in-a-brownstone rich. But I’m vacation-house-with-a-pool-money rich. So maybe next summer, we can do something better than this?”
“Or come to my place while you’re still here,” Aravind said, startling me a bit as he set his hand on my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him come out. “It’s ten minutes down the road, and it has a pool that overlooks the ocean.”
“That sounds a lot nicer than a shitty fire pit,” Oliver said. I heard him stand up and groan with a stretch. “Do you care if I go listen to music?”
“Nope,” I said. “But before I go, make sure you get my number.”
“Yeah. Uh. Thanks, Uncle Tiago.”
It was weird to hear anyone call me that. My brothers had kept their kids so separate from me, it felt more like some formal title on paper and not a real thing. I smiled in his direction and waited for his footsteps to disappear, and the moment they did, Aravind slid himself onto my lap.
His weight was more than comforting, and so was the kiss he gave me. “Okay?”
I shrugged. “How much of that did you hear?”
“You’re not pool-in-a-brownstone rich,” he said. “And something about a TED Talk.”
I took a breath and let it out slowly as my arms tightened around him. “He has RP. The gene probably comes from my mom’s side.”
“Oh shit,” Aravind whispered, burying his nose in my hair. “Is he okay?”
“No, I don’t think so. But I wasn’t okay when I was his age either. There were a lot of years where I didn’t think I’d fully lose my sight though, so by the time it crept up on me like this, I was old enough to cope.”
Aravind traced absent lines along the back of my neck, and I groaned, leaning into him. “Is that why your brother wanted you here?”
I scoffed. “Apparently. They wanted me to do the hard part so they could keep being ableist assholes.”
He sighed. “Do you want to leave before they get here?”
That answer was almost too easy. “Yes. Yes, I do. But I want to give Oliver my number first. I have a feeling he’s going to need it.”
Lifting my hand, Aravind pressed a kiss to my wrist. “Okay. Let’s do that, then we can go back to my place, strip down, and get some sun on your pasty nips.”
I laughed and snagged him by the shoulders, yanking him into a kiss. It felt real. It felt so fucking real. And in that moment, I decided it wasn’t worth it to remind myself that in less than two weeks, all of this would be over.