Page 64 of A Good Book

“Stop,” Sarah warned her. “Of course she didn’t sleep with him.” She eyed me. “Right?”

“Is it a problem if I did?”

“Oh man.” Eve covered her mouth and snorted.

Sarah’s lips pressed into a hard line as she shrugged. “No. Why? Did you?”

“Yes. And FYI, he had no problem putting on a condom. And he’shuge. And I had seven orgasms.”

Eve and Sarah looked at each other as if deciding which one would break the news that no one had seven orgasms. And I knew that, but I just wanted to say something to shut them up.

“I don’t want to talk about Matt or Ben. I don’t want to talk about school. Can’t you two talk about yourselves, your perfect boyfriends, and your perfect lives?”

“I’ll go first.” Eve raised her hand.

Sarah scowled at Eve. “Gabby, I know you don’t want to talk about Ben, but Mom said you’ve called her every day to do just that.” At nearly twenty-three, Sarah already sounded like a mother, self-burdened with a need to fix everything and everyone around her.

I wasn’t broken, but Ben was. However, after seeing him, I wasn’t sure he could ever be fixed.

“What if he never hears again?” I exhaled. “What if he spends the rest of his life on the floor in his bedroom, playing with Legos in a deafening silence? What if he hates his family, friends, God, and life in general? How can anyone make him feel anything but sorry for himself?”

“Gabbs,” Eve said, shifting her demeanor to a more serious sentiment, “speaking from my own experience, it’s probably not going to be his family or friends who help him see light and feel hope again. It will be someone he probably hasn’t met yet. Or it will be another life-changing event that wakes him up, and gives him a different outlook on life. And I know that sucks because you and everyone else want to fix him.”

“Duh, I know I can’t fix him. He’s deaf. If they can’t do surgery and hearing aids won’t work, he’ll never be fixed.”

“What Eve means is everyone wants him to accept what has happened. They want him to embrace his new life, adapt to his disability, and move in a new direction. And maybe (we all hope) that he will. But he’s doing it on his own time. You can’t rush him. This isn’t a nightmare that he needs to wake up from. This is his life, his new reality. Grieving the loss of someone, or in his case, something, is a lifelong process. You’re never really ‘fine.’ You just figure out a way to move past the part where you hate God and everyone who tells you it’s going to be okay. Acceptance becomes your new world, and each day you find yourself clawing another inch out of a dark hole in search of light—in search of hope.”

“No one died,” I murmured.

Sarah squeezed my hand. “If I could never sing, play, or hear music again, it would feel like the most irreplaceable loss.”

“More than if you lost Isaac?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Isaac is a man. And I love him so much. And if you tell him this, I will kill you.” She pointed a finger in warning at both Eve and me. “But there are other men in the world. It would feel impossible at first, but I could love again. But if I lost music, there’s nothing that would ever feel like a second chance. There’s not another music. It would feel like a death.”

I stared out the window again, willing my next round of tears to go away.

“But seriously, Kyle hooks both of my legs over his shoulders and does this thing with his tongue …” Eve’s comment was insensitive, ill-timed, and exactly what I needed.

I turned. Sarah looked horrified, as if she was afraid to breathe. Eve bit her lips together, her wide eyes unblinking. And just like that, those tears vanished.

That’s what we did; that was our thing. We took really awful situations and worked through them together until we were a pile of flailing arms, kicking feet, and laughter on the bed.

CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE

BON JOVI, “BAD MEDICINE”

Ben

Cochlear damage.

Fibrosis and ossification.

Cochlear spiral ganglion.

Sensorineural damage.

There were too many scribbled words for me to comprehend. The good news? I was alive. The bad news? Hearing aids wouldn’t work for my kind of hearing loss, and I wasn’t the best candidate for cochlear implants, not to mention they were expensive and not covered by insurance.

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