Page 210 of Story of My Life
My phone vibrated in my hand, and I glanced down at it.
Hazel:Is Laura okay? Are you okay?
I looked up, and for a second, it wasn’t Laura in the hospital bed. It was Hazel.
We don’t know if she’s going to make it.
Jesus, this was some royally fucked-up panic attack. Hazel was fine. Laura was fine. I was fucking fine. Wasn’t I?
“You okay there, Cammie? You look like you’re gonna puke,” Laura observed.
“Sweetie, you do look pale,” Mom said, jumping up from her chair and slapping a hand to my forehead.
“I’m fine, Mom.” I managed to get the words out, but they sounded unconvincing, even to my own ears. “I’m gonna…take off.”
“Later, loser,” Laura said.
When the beerdidn’t do anything to take the edge off, I moved on to bourbon I found in my kitchen.
I hadn’t even bothered to turn the lights on in my apartment. I just wanted the darkness. I didn’t want to feel this again. I’d buried the loss, the fear, the pain before. I could do it again.
I’d gotten distracted. I’d let Hazel make me forget the most important, unforgiving rule in life.
You lose the people you love.
Sometimes they went to dinner and never came back to their three young sons. Sometimes it was a run and someone never made the finish line. Sometimes it was a sudden diagnosis, or sometimes they just left. But in the end, the results were always the same.
Through my misery, I heard a knock at the door.
I swung it open. Hazel looked up at me. She had helmet hair and concern in her eyes. I wanted to reach for her, to wrap my arms around her and hold on tight. But I couldn’t afford to. I already loved my family. There was nothing I could do about that. I’d have to survive the devastation of losing them one by one to whatever tragedies life cruelly dealt out.
People dealt with it in different ways. Hazel wrote fictional stories about unachievable happily ever afters. My sister suffered through one day at a time and called it a life. But I could at least mitigate the damage. I didn’t have to add anyone else to that list. I didn’t have to face falling for her, only to lose her the way Laura lost Miller.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, planting myself in the doorway, refusing to let her in. As a defense, it felt like it was too little too late.
“I called and texted a couple of times, but you didn’t answer. Gage gave me an update, and I came to see if you’re okay.” She reached up to cup my face.
I wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
I jerked away from her touch, startling her. “Why? So you can use my family’s misery in your book?”
“Cam!”
She flinched like I’d hit her. Like I’d physically hurt her. I told myself it was good. That it was for the best, even as my gut churned, my lungs burned.
“What? You’ve been mining my life for weeks for your own gain, your own entertainment. Why stop now?”
“That’s not what I’ve been doing,” she insisted. “Where is this coming from?”
“Can we just not? Can’t we just say it’s been a long fucking day and we both know this isn’t working anymore?”
“It seemed to be working just fine this afternoon,” she insisted.
I shook my head like I was embarrassed for her. My level of assholery amazed even myself. “I’m sorry if I led you to believe that. This just isn’t what I want.”
“Hang on. Stop for a second before one of us—and by that, I mean you—says something unforgivable.”
I opened my mouth to do exactly that, but Hazel stopped me with the wave of her hand. “No. You were fine when you left.Wewere fine. We were better than fine. We were making plans. I can understand how seeing your sister in the hospital again would be triggering?—”
