Five Feet Apart(42)

My first surgery. My first best friend. My first chocolate milk shake.

And now, my first real date.

I hear the door slowly creak open, and I peer around the corner to see Will.

“Over here,” I whisper, standing up to hold out the pool cue to him.

A huge smile breaks out on his face, and he takes the other end of the pool cue in his gloved hand, a travel-size bottle of Cal Stat shoved into his front pocket.

“Wow,” he says, his eyes warm as he looks me over, making my heart do somersaults inside my chest. He’s wearing a blue plaid flannel that hugs his thin body, making his eyes look an even brighter shade of blue. His hair is neater. Combed, but still maintaining that messiness that is unbelievably hot.

“That’s a beautiful rose,” he says, but his eyes are still on my exposed legs, the dip in my silky tank top.

I blush, pointing at the rose tucked behind my ear. “Oh, this rose? This one? Up here?”

He pulls his eyes away, giving me a look that no other boy has given me before. “That’s the one,” he says, nodding.

I tug on the pool cue, and we walk through the atrium toward the main lobby. He looks to the side, noticing the vase full of white roses sitting on the table, his eyes crinkling as he smiles. “You stealing roses, Stella? First a whole foot and now this?”

I laugh, reaching up to touch the rose tucked behind my ear. “You got me. I stole it.”

He pulls at the other end of the pool cue, shaking his head. “Nah, you gave it a better home.”





CHAPTER 18


WILL


I can’t take my eyes off her.

The red ribbon in her hair. The rose tucked behind her ear. The way she keeps looking at me.

I don’t feel like any of this is real. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, mostly because all my relationships before were centered on living fast and dying young and always leaving for a new hospital. I didn’t stay anywhere or with anyone long enough to really fall for anyone.

Not that I even would have, given the chance. None of them was Stella.

We stop in front of a big tropical fish tank, and it takes everything in me to look away from her at the brightly colored fish behind the glass. My eyes follow an orange-and-white fish swimming around and around the coral at the bottom of the tank.

“When I was really little, I used to just stare at these fish, wondering what it would feel like to be able to hold my breath long enough to swim like they do,” she says, following my gaze.

That surprises me. I knew she had been coming to Saint Grace’s for a while, but I didn’t know she’d been here when she was a little kid.

“How young?”

She watches as the fish swims upward before diving back down to the bottom. “Dr. Hamid, Barb, and Julie have taken care of me since I was six.”

Six. Wow. I can’t even imagine being in one place that long.

We walk through the doors into the main lobby, the large staircase looming in front of us. She looks back at me, tugging on the pool cue and nodding to them. “Let’s take the stairs.”

The stairs? I look at her like she’s actually insane. My lungs burn from just the thought of it as I remember my exhaustion from my trips up to the roof. Not exactly sexy. If she wants this date to last longer than an hour, there is no way we’re about to walk up those stairs.

Her face breaks into a smile. “I’m kidding.”

We roam the almost empty hospital, the hours blurring together as we walk, talking about our family and our friends and everything in between, the pool cue swinging back and forth between us. We head up to the open bridge between Buildings 1 and 2 and walk slowly across, craning our necks to look through the glass ceiling at the stormy gray night sky, the snow falling steadily onto the roof of the bridge and all around us.

“What about your dad?” she finally asks, and I shrug.

“He cut and ran when I was little. Having a sick kid wasn’t in his plan.”

She watches my face, trying to see my reaction to those words. “It happened so long ago, sometimes it feels like I’m just telling someone else’s story. Another person’s life that I’ve memorized.”

You don’t have time for me, I don’t have time for you. Simple as that.

She moves on when she sees I mean what I’m saying. “And your mom?”

I attempt to hold the door open for her, which is apparently very tricky to do when you’re holding a pool cue and need to be five feet apart at all times, but I’m a gentleman, dammit.

I sigh, giving her the brief, generic response. “Beautiful. Smart. Driven. And focused on me and me alone.”

She gives me a look that says this isn’t going to cut it. “After he left, it’s like she decided to care enough for two people. Sometimes I feel like she doesn’t see me. Doesn’t know me. She just sees the CF. Or now the B. cepacia.”

“Have you talked to her about it?” she asks.

I shake my head, shrugging the topic away. “She’s not there enough to listen. She’s always dictating, then out the door. But starting in two days, when I’m eighteen, I make the decisions.”

She stops short and I’m yanked back as my end of the pool cue is jerked in her direction.

“Hold up. Your birthday is in two days?”