Five Feet Apart(37)

We talked back and forth for close to an hour, about how happy he is that I’m here with Poe at the hospital, about how great Poe is.

How he doesn’t understand what went wrong.

He really cares about him.

“Michael DM’d me,” I say, glancing up to see Poe’s reaction to my words as I toggle back onto FaceTime.

“What?” he asks, surprised. “Why?”

“Asking if you’re okay.” Poe’s expression is unreadable, his dark eyes serious. “He’s sweet. Really seems to love you.”

He rolls his eyes. “In my business again. Clearly, you’ve fully recovered.”

Poe is missing out on love. Because he’s afraid. Afraid to go the distance. Afraid to fully let someone into all the crap we have to live with. I know what it’s like to have that fear. But that fear didn’t stop the scary shit from happening.

I don’t want it anymore.

“I’m just saying,” I say, shrugging casually, even though my words are serious. “He doesn’t care that you’re sick.”

Michael doesn’t care that Poe has CF. He cares that he can’t be there for Poe.

When you have CF, you don’t know how much time you have left. But, honestly, you don’t know how much time the ones you love have left either. My gaze travels to the pop-up bouquet.

“And what’s this about visiting your family—you’re definitely going, right?”

“Call me when you’re off the drugs,” he says, glaring at me and hanging up.

I send a quick text to both my parents, telling them to head home and get some rest, since it’s already late afternoon and I need to sleep a bit longer. They’ve been stuck here for hours, and I don’t want them waiting for me to wake up when they need to take care of themselves.

They both object, though, and a few minutes later there’s a knock on my door, the two of them, together, popping their heads in to look at me.

I remember vaguely the “we” from when I first woke up, the two of them a united front for the first time since Abby’s death.

“How are you feeling?” my mom asks, smiling at me and kissing my forehead.

I sit up, shaking my head. “Listen, you two should really go, you’ve been here—”

“We’re your parents, Stell. Even though we aren’t together, we are still here for you,” my dad says, taking my hand and squeezing it. “You always come first. And these past few months . . . we definitely haven’t showed that.”

“These past few months have been tough on all of us,” my mom says, sharing a look of understanding with him. “But it’s not on you to make us feel better, okay? We’re your parents, honey. More than anything, we want you to be happy, Stella.”

I nod. Never in a million years would I have expected this.

“By the way,” my dad says, plunking down in the chair next to my bed. “The soup was great. Say what you want about cafeteria food, but they make a mean broccoli cheddar.”

My mom and I look at each other, smiles giving way to deep belly laughs that I have to suppress so my new G-tube doesn’t hurt. The sadness stays put, but I feel an ounce of the weight on my shoulders slowly drift away, and I inhale, breathing a little easier than I have in a long time. Maybe this surgery wasn’t the worst thing after all.

*

I doze off for a little longer after my parents leave, sleeping off the last bit of the fogginess, and when I wake up an hour later, I’m fully out of the anesthesia haze. I slowly sit up, stretching, the pain from my surgery pulling at my side and chest. The pain meds are wearing off too.

I lift up my shirt to take a look. My skin is still raw and sore from surgery, but the area around my G-tube already looks about a million times better.

My eyes fall on the pop-up bouquet and I grin excitedly, carefully standing up and taking a deep breath. The air struggles in and out of my lungs, and I take my portable oxygen off my bedside table, putting the nose cannula in and turning it on to give them a hand.

I reply to Mya and Camila to let them know I’m awake and not to worry. I’m as good as new. Or, at least back to 35 percent.

I still have to dish to them about what just happened with my parents, but they’re getting on a boat and I have somewhere I need to be too.

Getting changed, I move slowly and carefully, pulling on a pair of leggings and a tie-dye T-shirt that Abby got me when she went to the Grand Canyon. I catch a look at myself in the mirror, the dark circles under my eyes looking deeper than they’ve been in months. I brush my hair quickly and put it into a neat ponytail, frowning when it doesn’t look as good as I hoped it would.

I put it back down, nodding in contentment at my reflection as my hair falls gently around my shoulders. Grabbing my makeup bag from the bottom of my drawer, I put on some mascara and lip gloss, smiling at the idea of Will seeing me not just alive, but with makeup on, his blue eyes gazing at my gloss-covered lips. Would he want to kiss me?

I mean, we could never, but would he want to?

I blush, shaking my head as I send a quick text to him, telling him to meet me in the atrium in ten minutes.

Pulling the strap of my portable oxygen farther up on my shoulder, I take the quick way, going up the elevator and across the bridge into Building 2, then back down the stairs into the atrium, which takes up the entire back half of the building. I sit down on a bench, gazing around at all the trees and plants, a stone fountain trickling softly behind me.