Page 26 of We Thought We Knew It All
He looked back into his place, making a decision. “No, it’s fine. Come in.”
I followed him into the immaculate space. White tile covered the floor, with an ice blue rug centered in the living room in front of dark leather couches. Tall glass sliders opened onto a large balcony where two single chairs were placed with a table between them.
The place was sparse, almost unlived in.
“I was about to grab a drink, you want one?” He pulled open the fridge in his open kitchen.
“Sounds good.”
He handed me a Cigar City beer. Colby drank craft beer - that didn’t surprise me.
“You just get off work?” I asked.
He nodded. “One of my patients took a bad turn last night, and they called me in.”
“They okay?”
“No.” His shoulders slumped. “I lost her.”
He led me out onto the balcony and I sat down, unable to take my eyes from him. He looked too despondent.
“You’re in oncology, right?” I asked. “That’s got to be hard here in Florida with all the older folks. Do you lose a lot of patients?”
“April was nine.” He looked at me. “Jackson’s age.” Taking a long sip of his drink, he looked off toward where the sun was setting. “It’s never easy, but when a patient is older, you can see it might just be their time. The kids, though, those you never get over.” A sigh shook his shoulders, and he closed his eyes as he took another drink. “Subject change.”
“Ok, how about this? You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve been working.”
“Then I have a follow-up. Why wouldn’t you avoid me?”
He gave me a long look before cracking the first smile since I’d arrived. “You make no sense.”
“Of course I do. Jay wants nothing to do with me. I expected you to be the same. I thought I’d have to make you talk to me.”
“Like you could,” he scoffed. “You couldn’t force me to do anything.”
I matched his smile.
“You want honesty?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from a McCoy.”
“I’ve seen a lot over the past few years. When you spend all your time in a hospital, you witness other people’s lives. I’ve seen people die, leaving behind a lot of devastated loved ones. I’ve seen people die, leaving behind no one at all. I’ve seen families reconcile over hospital beds, friends reconnect.” He drained the rest of his beer. “Maybe I don’t see the point in waiting until something terrible happens to realize we’re still family.”
“Colby-”
“I hate that you cut us off. I hate it so much. Not just for me, but Callie and even Jay.”
“Callie was married,” I felt the need to say. It didn’t justify anything.
“You still don’t get it. It wasn’t about your damn feelings for her. It was about the fact that you were friends for more than ten years and only dated for half of one. Does the latter destroy the former?”
“That’s not exactly true.” I didn’t know why I was defending myself when I knew he was right. “I was friends with you. She was friends with Jay. She kind of hated me.”
“That’s shit. Even if she didn’t know it, you spent all those years protecting her. And she didn’t hate you. You two would have done anything for each other. All four of us would have. But then you left, and she left, and we were fractured. That’s why I can forgive you, because I want us to be fixed more than anything else in the world. I don’t want to stand over a hospital bed one day looking into the face of the guy who used to be my brother and realizing I don’t know him anymore.”
My hand tightened up as I lifted my beer. I almost dropped the bottle, catching it with my other hand. Colby was watching me as I set the bottle down and massaged my bad hand, my fingers still curled as if holding an imaginary object. The pain barely registered as I pushed my fingers flat.
