Page 109 of Drawn Together
You know when you find a new book and you get interested in the cover or the author or a friend's recommendation? You’re intrigued, sure. But what do you do before you really get into it? Read the back of it? If it’s an audiobook, maybe listen to the first chapter. Maybe look up quotes or reviews or the author themselves and where they grew up and what their favorite color is. And, once you really get to love the book, that’s when you dogear pages or crack the spine, when the corners start to get worn and golden from your constant picking and rereading? That’s when the annotations and tabs and comments start to flow back, and you realize you liked this book from the start, but now you love the familiarity of it more than anything. I think that’s what this whole situation is like.
The last two months, I’ve only had a mere introduction of who Fletcher is—the pitch on the back, the tropes listed on a graphic, a best-selling author blurb on a billboard in passing. And now, here in this moment, is the start of finding out the rest. Where you climb into the book, imagine the characters as your real-life friends. Where the images of castles and dragons and romance, grief, love, and heartbreak all intercede into a seamless thread of a story in your brain, to linger there as long as it chooses to do so.
Maybe everything until now was the first half of his book, and now I have to decide if I want to stay in the second.
Do I? Want to read the rest, that is. I look down at the curly-haired angel face in my arms, like maybe she’ll give me the answer.
She doesn’t. Unless the gas she is attempting to push out is supposed to be a sign for anything, and if it is, then I am choosing to not accept it as one.
The rest of the event is passes in a blur. Lennon is cleaning the bathroom for half of it. Cliff is playing very well in hissecurity guard role, going as far to wear sunglasses in the dimly lit entrance and pointing to anyone who dares get near the phone basket by the door. Edith is resting finally, sitting back in her worn out chair behind the counter, happily watching as the crowd goes on and on about the store. Words like ‘quaint’ and ‘cozy’ and ‘charming’ are fluttering all around her, and I can feel the sense of ease wafting from her chest all the way over here.
If nothing else, there is that. Fletcher single-handedly has brought life back into this place, whether he meant to or not. Whatever side I choose to land on after all this, he did that for this store, and I think for me, too.
It’s with that thought as the very last customer, who happens to be Todd’s nine-year-old daughter, slips out hand-in-hand with her dad, gripping a signed copy of The House That Hums cradled to her chest.
“Phew.” Cliff locks the door and slides down the wooden entrance to land on his butt. “I’m done, guys.”
We all silently agree, social batteries drained down to nothing, and even the soft jazz music playing in the background is wildly overstimulating.
Fletcher walks over to the speakers and presses the off button, allowing me a moment to sit in my little pencil chair and soak in the silence. Then, like it’s taking every bit of effort to not say anything, he walks up and takes a seat in the other chair. His hips get stuck halfway, and if I wasn’t completely rung out like a wet towel, I’d laugh at the picture.
“Hi.” He leans in, staring at me, and I can’t force my eyes away from the arrow pointing to the restrooms where Stephan is fanning Lennon.
“Hi.” My voice is all washed away sanded down by the grit of fake smiles and sore cheeks and unknown feelings.
“I— uh,” He pats his hands on his legs, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen the man look so unsteady. So uncomfortable inhis own skin, like he’d enjoy crawling out of it and becoming someone else for just a bit. “I wasn’t sure if you still wanted to get dinner tonight, but I, uh, am. Wanting to. With you. If you’re able. And willing.”
I can easily say no in this moment. No one would blame me. But, looking up at those sad hazel eyes and knowing there is so much more in this whole story that I’m missing out on, I know my answer before I can even think about it.
“Okay.”
Thirty-three
Wordoftheday:Lethologica
Definition: When you can’t think of a word for something
We land on eating at the Italian place, again. It’s less of an out-loud decision and more of an intuition on his part, knowing exactly how much I love mushrooms. Our food comes and the waitress slowly backs away, like that makes any of this less awkward.
“Are you okay?” Fletcher whispers low. His eyes have yet to leave my face, like maybe the words floating in my head might present themselves on my skin if he stares hard enough.
“I-I’m not sure.” I look up and the eye contact is gut-punching. “I don’t exactly know where to go with all of this right now.”
“I’ll follow your lead on any of this. You want to know more? I’ll tell you everything. If you need some space, I can do that too. I think. I just, I want you to know—” He sighs and lifts a shaky hand across the table to lock fingers with mine. “I—”
“I think you should just say it all. Tell me everything, and we can maybe go from there?”
“Yeah?”
I nod, and he spares me no details.
Fletcher has always hated the smell of hospitals. When his grandmother was sick and in the ICU for weeks to months at a time, his parents would drag him there between piano and chess lessons to sit in a sterilized chair and visit with a woman who didn’t even know his name. All those memories he had formed with her over the years—far more with her than his own parents—were being wiped from her memory, and he had to sit there while it happened. From the moment she was gone, he vowed to keep hospitals at an arm’s length for the rest of his life.
But life, in its brutal irony, never honored his vows very well.
Unprepared didn’t even begin to cover just how little Fletcher was ready to devote his entire being to hospital visits for one more person in his life. Ryan came into his and Fletcher’s apartment at 5:06 pm on a Tuesday and plopped himself on the couch next to his sister, a far-off look rivaling that of a zombie in his eyes, letting their entire group know he had an estimated year left of his life. Fletcher knew at those words there was no chance of him not sticking with Ryan through whatever the next year looked like. He gave medical details—words like aggressive, already metastasized. Brutal treatments—hormone therapy, radiation, chemo if things worsened. Meanwhile, Fletcher was already making lists and finding the best oncologists in the state and doing extensive research of his own.
Once Lennon had Ryan settled into her apartment, Fletcher didn’t hesitate to move directly across the street from them. And, when Lennon told himthat they were removing the privacy screen from their windows—just in case of emergencies—Fletcher vowed to keep his eyes on his best friend when at all possible. Even if he wasn’t with him, he was still with him. Driving to and from appointments, scans, treatments—he was there for it all.
