Page 61 of Motivating Mira
I managed to stumble through my shift, thankfully not having to deal with anything harder than stitches, a family with food poisoning, a minor motor vehicle accident that resulted in a mild concussion and some small contusions, and a man having transient ischemic attacks.
I was still exhausted when I opened the door to the house though. Quietly, I set my bag on the bench by the door. I suddenly remembered Marni had asked me to help her with her school project when I saw Jesse and Marni hunched over a cardboard box together. They were laughing and hadn’t even heard the door.
I stood there and just listened, both proud and a little crushed. Their banter made me smile through my despair though. They were supposed to be making a model of a cell out of Jell-O and produce for her science class, but instead they were tossing grapes into the air and attempting to catch them in their mouths. They both burst out laughing when they accidentally ate the last grape, or rather the nucleus of the cell, from the bowl.
“Not going to have to worry about the mitochondria disappearing,” Jesse said.
Marni scrunched her nose at the thought of the celery stalk they were using to represent mitochondria celebrating its lack of demise. “Ew, celery. It needs to disappear!”
“Yeah, ew.”
“We better go back to the store,” Jesse said. “And we’re getting two bags of grapes.”
Marni laughed, until she turned and saw me. “Oh, Uncle Wes is home! Don’t worry, Jesse, you can go back to whatever it was you were doing. Uncle Wes can help me finish.”
The look on Jesse’s face tore me up. He was trying. Trying his damnedest and here I was fucking it all up. Dammit. Mira was right. It was time for me to take a step back. A giant one. And if that meant I couldn’t don the hero cape I seemed to need to wear, so be it.
“Actually, I forgot about it and made plans.”
Marni frowned, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly that most people might miss it. She was pissed.
“Yeah, fine okay,” she said and turned her back to me.
“Shall we go grab the grapes then?” Jesse asked, sounding as cheerful as he could manage after the blatant rejection.
“Can you go? I don’t feel like leaving the house.” She put her hands on her abdomen. “Cramps and all that.”
I almost stepped in. Almost. She was clearly being pouty and using an excuse neither of us men could touch with a ten-foot pole without sounding like total assholes. She walked away, heading to her room and Jesse looked at me.
I shrugged. And within seconds of Marni’s bedroom door shutting, a Taylor Swift song started blaring.
“I’m sorry, bro. I wished I’d been five minutes later.”
“Me too. For once I finally thought I’d made some headway.”
“Well, maybe you’ll do better if I’m gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean? Like tonight or…” He waved an arm toward Marni’s bedroom door which was firmly closed. “I can’t do this alone.”
“Actually, I think you’re both better off without me. Instead of me being a bridge for you two to come together, I think I’m a dam. Or to put it another way, I’m a floatation device that you’re both hanging on to and it’s stopping you from learning to swim.”
“Bro, I can’t.” He looked terrified.
“I’m leaving you for a few days. We can reevaluate after that. And this isn’t just some tough love bullshit, Jess, I need to figure some shit out.”
“Women troubles?”
I nodded.
He looked back at Marni’s door. “Maybe we were never meant to understand them.”
“Maybe not,” I replied, with a small grin.
“But that doesn’t stop us from loving them.”
“No, it sure doesn’t.”
I packed my stuff and then knocked on Marni’s door.
