Page 109 of The Hookup
“It was cancer,” he said, not even blinking. “I had surgery. I’m fine. You didn’t need to come.”A phone call would have done.
“Why don’t we all sit down,” suggested Kay, “Let’s go into the living room and get out of the kitchen.”
He watched her herding them out, and wondered why the hell hadn’t she told him?
They sat on the sofas; he and Amanda on one, and Maggie and Kay on the other one.
“That looks nasty,” Amanda commented, staring at his scar.
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean, it looks serious,” she said, with a laugh, attempting to lift the atmosphere which had plunged by about fifty degrees.
“Cancer is,” he replied.
“Travis wanted to come,” offered Maggie.
“Good job he stayed away,” he replied, touching his scar lightly.
“We thought it would be better if he didn’t come,” Amanda chimed in.
“Then why did you come?” he asked Maggie.
“Daddy sends his regards. He was worried,” said Amanda.
He said nothing, biting down on his teeth, holding back. The last few weeks had imbued him with a sense of calmness that he hadn’t known before. Time away from work, thinking about life, and his own mortality had been sobering. But this sudden unexpected appearance from Amanda and Maggie was too much. Even though he loved Amanda, and even though Maggie no longer inspired feelings of hate in him, it still bugged the crap out of him that she was here and ruining his morning with Kay.
Mention of his brother and father made staying calm more difficult with each passing moment.
Amanda took his hand. “I just wanted to come and see you.” Her worried gaze swept over him again, and every now and then it settled on his scar.
“How was the surgery?” Maggie asked. He tried to stay calm, tried to ground himself. He thought he was over this fucking shit. Instead, he pointed, shot-gun style with his fingers, towards the ugly scar on his neck. “Done, and dusted.”
Maggie’s eyes narrowed, the same way they used to when she would examine something. He knew that expression well, just as he knew she felt uncomfortable now. At least at the wedding they had been in a big room, surrounded by lots of people. Even at Amanda’s first wedding, he’d been with Ginger, the escort he’d hired so as not to go alone.
This was tricky, being in a confined space like this. The more she sat here, the more it brought the past back and he didn’t need that, not when he was pushing past it and needing to move on. Seeing her again took him back in time to that warm, hazy summer’s day when he’d arrived home early from the warehouse where he worked. Feeling sick, and unable to work the 8-hour shift, he’d come home only to walk past his brother’s room, with its door half-open and his girlfriend, Maggie, in bed with his brother.
He had walked in, shocked and broken, and they had looked up. That sight, the smell, and the sounds—music playing on the radio, her giggling—he could hear it even now. And the sheets, a crumpled mess, and the smell of sweat and sex in the air. The image was stamped in his head, but over time it had become interspersed with the image of his mother lying on the blood-red sheets of the bed where she had died, bleeding out on the bed she once shared with his father.
“Will it come back?” Amanda asked, shaking him out of that nightmare.
He looked at her, confused. “Will what come back?”
“The cancer.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, if you don’t mind,” he replied, a growing sense of unease spreading all over him.
“Sorry.”
“It shouldn’t come back,” said Kay, stepping in. “But he’ll have to have lots of checkups along the way just to make sure. Apparently, they call it the good cancer”.
“Thegoodcancer?” Maggie asked, and the three women laughed lightly. The conversation was so awkward, and the silences like barbed wire, that he wished he was back in the isolation room.
“Why did you come?” he asked Maggie, unable to hold back. He felt nothing for her, and knew he would never have visited her had the situation been reversed. Why had she come?
“Luke!” Amanda and Kay’s voices rang out in a chorus.
“No, I really want to know. Why did you come? You didn’t need to.”
