Page 127 of Mariposa
Kade is here, in front of me,breathing.
He’s alive?
Am I seeing a ghost?
“Sorry, my love. This is Kade. Kade O’Connell. He’s Violet’s friend.” My grandfather pops up behind him with a stunned expression. He looks straight at me, clutching his cell phone in his hand.
I feel like I’m going to faint. Everything is spinning. Suddenly, gravity stops pulling, and time comes to a stop. I think I’m going to float and disappear into thin air. My mouth and throat run dry as my words get caught in my throat—paralyzed from the inside and out. My heart palpitates, skipping beats and bounces around within my chest. Sweat coats my skin as the entire room implodes into something small. I’m suffocating.
“I’ve got to take this. I’ll be right back!” My grandpa exits the room, closing the door softly behind him.
I part my lips to say something, but all that comes out are incoherent sounds. I can’t form a question while a hundred of them are screaming at me in my scrambled mind.
“I…? K-Kade?”
Grandma cuts me off, grabbing her cane, practically jumping out of bed. She places her teddy bear down and gets up, slowly. I rush over to her to get her back into bed.
“Nomija. That’s Graham! He’s back! Look, he’s right there behind you. He’s come back to dance with me.” Her voice shakes.
She thinks Kade is Graham.
“No, grandma, that’s not him,” I mumble faintly. My muscles turn into mush, struggling to stand upright.
The corner of Kade’s lips lift when our soft gazes meet.
I take a step back, tempted to grab a lamp and hurl it at him.
“I’m home, baby. I’m sorry it took me so long,” he says to me, closing the distance, towering over us both. His cologne drifts into my senses, and my heart does that stupid thing where it jumps every time he looks at me.
What the hell is going on?!
Am I dead?
I’m dreaming. This is a cruel dream. It’s all an evil dream!
My grandma slowly turns to me as she leans on my shoulder weakly.
“Oh…he's not Graham? Are you sure?” She frowns weakly. I look into her dreary, grief-stricken expression. She’s pleading with me, and I don’t want to remind her that he’s dead again.
I know she’ll fall apart, and she doesn’t need that stress on her aging heart.
“Grandma, please get back into bed.”
Her lips fall downward and tremble. A frown that exudes pain. She inhales a shaky breath like she’s trying to differentiate reality from the fog she’s enduring.
Kade turns to me.
“I’ve got her.”
My brows knit together.
“If you don’t mind.” Kade takes out his phone, and my grandmother and I watch him for a few seconds as he taps away at his screen. A short moment later, “We Belong Together” by Ritchie Valens plays loudly on his phone. He sets it on her TV tray and steps in front of me.
“Would you take this dance with me, Mrs. Isla?” He smiles, bowing down and forward slightly with his hand laid out for her to take.
She looks at me, then at him. She pauses for a moment to think. But as the song continues, the tension in her eyes fades away, and she takes Kade’s hand.
I hand my grandmother over to Kade, and they intertwine their hands. They slowly dance to the beat of the music, all the while I’m holding a tissue, gluing it to my face, hoping I can hold it together and not collapse on the spot.
