Page 57 of As a Last Resort
“I didn’t let her touch my room though.He gave me this poster sometime before his diagnosis that year, then he was gone in two months.”Her eyes flicked toward the wall where it still hung, faded but defiant.“I wouldn’t let her take it down.”
“I didn’t realize it happened so fast.”I slipped my hands into my pockets.I couldn’t imagine a world where one season your dad was there, and the next, he was just gone.
“You hear all those horror stories about watching the people you love wither away but that wasn’t him.”She walked over to a white desk where Polaroids of friends and landscapes were taped up.Random beaded necklaces draped over the corner of the mirror.“One day he was here, the next he wasn’t.”She opened the top drawer, reached to the back, and pulled out an old Polaroid.
She handed it to me.“Lexi took this with that little camera she carried everywhere.”
It was a faded Polaroid of her and a man.Dark eyes, dark hair, tanned skin.She was the spitting image of him.
Her eyes stayed glued on the fuzzy picture.“His eyes smiled like that all the time.”
I leaned over her shoulder at the familiar face staring back at me.
“Yours do that too,” I whispered without a beat.She barely turned her head and held my gaze for a second before turning away.I never really understood that phrase until she said it, but that’s exactly what her eyes did.
I couldn’t just leave.She had spent her entire life dealing with her mom by herself.Lexi had seen this play out a hundred times,and she would know what to do.But Lexi couldn’t be here at the moment.So I decided I would be.
“Hey, so I actually have extra hands on the boat tomorrow, so it’s not like I need a ton of sleep tonight.I’m going to stay here if you’re cool with that.You know, in case you need help or something.I’ll sleep on the couch.”Part of me wanted to make sure I was here in case her mom took a turn south for some reason.But a bigger part of me just didn’t want her to be alone.
“No, you’re good.Really.She probably won’t move all night.Plus, I really don’t want to sleep in here, it totally freaks me out, so I was going to take the couch.”
“Sleeping with Taylor winking at you doesn’t do it for you anymore?”
“Sadly, my tastes have evolved,” she responded.“And I’m kind of wired at the moment.I wasn’t planning on going to bed anytime soon anyway.”
“Me either.I feel like lying down would be pointless at the moment for either of us.”I really didn’t mind.All I was going to see was her face when I closed my eyes anyway.
“We could stick in a movie?”she suggested.“But I think the only movies we have are my mom’s old chick flicks.”
“Perfect.”
“You sure?”she asked.“You really don’t have to.I’ll be fine by myself.”She looked so scared all of a sudden, like I might back out and change my mind.
“Yeah, I know you would be.But your mom lives right by the marina.I can wake up tomorrow and literally walk on the boat.It’s closer than my house, and all my stuff ’s already on board.That way if she wakes up or you need help with her before she’s able to actually walk herself, I’ll be here.”
“And you’re okay staying in here?You’re sure allthiswon’t give you nightmares?”she asked, waving her hands in the general direction of “MMMBop” royalty.
“Yeah.Taylor’s actually pretty cute.It’s all the stuffed animals I’m more freaked out about.”
And she cracked a smile—the first real one of the night.
“How do you think they got all those ducks to stay in the water while filming?”She lay back on the couch wrapped in blankets, eating popcorn.
Ducks?
“What?It’s a logistical question.Everyone knows you don’t shoot movies with kids or animals.They’re difficult to work with.”
“That’s what you’re thinking when you watch this scene?Not, how romantic it is that Noah took Allie out on a canoe and is paddling her through, like, a whole other universe?”
“I’m thinking it probably smells really weird and somehow they’re all quiet at the same time.”
She had a point.
“I guess every romance has to suspend real life to some degree,” she continued.“Nothing like that would actually happen.But I still don’t understand how they pulled it off.”
“Okay then, since you’re such a movie romance expert—enlighten me.What wouldactuallyhappen?”
“First of all, there’s no way they could hear what each other was saying because there would be way too much quacking.When have you ever heard a duck be quiet?Let alone four hundred of them at one time.”
