Page 46 of In the Net
I nod. Even though I’m still tense, the smile she beams on me is so infectious that my lips are ticking. “Yeah. I saw the news, and …” I trail off.
She nods eagerly. “You can go in. He’ll be so happy to see you.”
“You think?”
A glimmer of gladness sparkles in her eye. “I’m sure.”
I step into Bryce’s room. Apprehension and uncertainty roll through me. The knots that the interaction with his mom loosened pull tight all over again.
Even though I’ve been reading every new Instagram post and have seen tons of pictures his mom’s posted confirming that he’s getting better, it’s still a shock to the system to see him lying in a hospital bed like this.
The tubes are out of his mouth, but he’s still hooked up to machines monitoring … I don’t know what the hell they monitor. His heart rate and other stuff, I guess. Either way, the sight is a reminder of how close I came to never being able to see him again, and that’s enough of a jolt to sharpen my courage and make me approach his bedside.
He looks at me. “Sebastian.”
A long beat of silence ticks by. I can’t read any emotion in his voice or in his expression.
“Hey, Bryce.” It feels like such a dumb, empty greeting after all this time, but I don’t know what else to say.
A longer beat of silence passes. Then, a shallow grin tilts on Bryce’s face.
“Where you been, man?”
He asks it like we’re still eighth-grade kids who’d meet up at his house after school every day to watch YouTube and play video games, and I’m just an hour late.
I try to laugh, but my throat is too clogged. All I can do is take one step closer to grip the railing on the side of his bed.
“I’m sorry, Bryce,” is all I can think to say when my throat unclenches.
He just shakes his head, more understanding than I could have imagined in his eyes. “You don’t need to apologize for anything.”
“Like hell I don’t.” Is he full of some kind of Zen, post-near-death-experience wisdom or something? Because, yeah, I wanted him to forgive me, but I kind of want him to take it out on me too, a little bit. I deserve it.
“What, you were the one driving the car?” he quips.
I narrow my gaze at him. Just like this son of a bitch to make me want to laugh even at a moment like this. “Not funny.”
He fixes a wry look at me. “Over-sensitive.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, I’m sorry. I’ll say it again, because I do have something to be sorry for. I was an ass, it was my fault we fought, and I wasted years and years being too stupid and too much of a coward to tell you that.”
His shoulder tilts under his hospital gown. “You had your own life to live.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t as good without you in it.”
Forgiveness shines in his eyes. “Same here, man.”
I let out a heavy sigh, pulling a chair up next to his bed and dropping my weight into it.
“You’re not mad enough at me,” I say. “You should want to kick my ass or something.”
He huffs a laugh. “Well, I’m tired. If you haven’t heard, I was just in a car accident.”
“Fuck, dude, stop joking like that.”
“I’m the one in the hospital bed, I’ll joke however I want.”
We spend the next hour laughing, reminiscing, and catching each other up on what’s been going on in our lives.
