Page 106 of As a Last Resort
“Ooh, that’s a good one.”She pulled at her lip with her teeth and a flash of her biting my shoulder last night crashed into my mind.“How about a baby kangaroo so you’d have to carry me around all day?”
“You’re too heavy to carry around all day.”She laughed and palmed my face.I rolled on top of her and pinned her to the bed as she laughed.I kissed a line down her cheek, following each of the freckles on her face.I wanted to bury myself in her for the rest of the day.
“We’re going to be here all day if you’re kissing every one of them.”
“That’s—my—plan,” I said, in between pecks.
Patrick and his cousin had been manning the majority of the ferry runs this week while I spent every waking moment I could with Sam.I wanted to soak in all I could with her.Some part of me hated to admit it, but they were doing an amazing job.Not only did it not sink or run aground, they weren’t even late—not a single time.I even had a few emails in my box praising them.
So, I stayed with Sam.
I’d count the freckles on her face until she woke up in the morning.Then I’d make her breakfast, knowing she thought runny scrambled eggs were gross and a bite of toast not covered in butter was an atrocity.She told me how she never had bacon in high school.She was scared of the grease popping from the stove, and she never had anyone else to cook it for her.
So I did.
Every morning.
I paused after I kissed the faint white line through the middle of her brow.
“It’s from the accident,” she answered without me asking.“Doctors said I was lucky.They had no idea how I flew through a windshield and walked away with only a scar on my eyebrow.Well, andtwenty-three screws in my arm.”She turned her arm around and a faint line trailed down the underside of it all the way down to her wrist.“Oh, and a medically induced coma for three days but there’s no scar from that anywhere.”
“She came to pick you up that night?”I lay back down beside her and hooked my leg around hers.
“The night of the pep rally.I knew she had been drinking, she always did.I just didn’t realize she was that far gone.She masked it really well.”
I couldn’t imagine living in a house with someone who would put her daughter in danger by choice.
“She’d wake up and have vodka in her coffee and I had no idea for months.”As she talked she ran her fingers along my arm.“It was small in the beginning.I’d find her keys in the fridge or in the silverware drawer.She’d forget conversations we’d just had the night before.At first I thought she was just having trouble processing everything with Dad, but then I started to find empty containers in hidden places, like in our garage or in the trunk of the car.This one time I came home from school and there was a take-out soda on the counter.I took a sip and it felt like gasoline coating my throat.I coughed so hard I almost threw up.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
“I didn’t at first.I wanted to see what she’d do.When she got home, she picked it up, took a long sip and didn’t miss a beat.When I asked her what she was drinking she said,Just a Coke.When I told her I had a sip and it didn’t taste like Coke to me, she got snippy and said,Well, it’s the off brand, it’s not going to taste like Coca-Cola.”
I leaned in to kiss her scar again.I held my lips to her, breathing in her scent, wondering how many things she’d seen over her lifetime.How many times she’d been disappointed, let down, forgotten about.
I wanted to take care of her.
I wanted to be the one who showed her she wasn’t someone who could be forgotten.
Her phonedinged from the bedside table.She leaned over to check it and a sour sneer passed over her face.
“PuggyWuggy?”I asked.
“Ooh, that’s a good one.”The sound of her laugh belonged here, in this bed, with me.
She looked at me with sad eyes.“I have to work today.”
When she sat up I pulled her arms back down and nuzzled her into the sheets.
“Not all day, just a few hours.Promise.Just enough to stave them off until Saturday when I get home.”
The silence felt like a rupture in my stomach.
Saturday.
One day left.
“I’ll make a few runs with Patrick and we’ll meet up for dinner.Sound good?”
