Until the Day I Die(42)

“Okay, sure.”

Moments later he’s back with two steaming mugs.

“Thanks,” I say, and gulp it down black. It burns the back of my throat.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” He cradles his mug, and I study his hands. They’re rough-skinned, perfectly proportioned, with knobby fingers and squared-off nails.

“Sure.” I steel myself, thinking he’s about to ask me where I got the money to pay him. If we’re rich because of Jax.

“Before your dad died, did he . . .” He hunkers closer to the table. “Did he give you anything special? I mean, like a graduation gift or something that felt important? Like, I don’t know, meaningful to you in a way that you knew you would keep it forever?”

I stare at him for a second, thinking about the plastic bag Mom and I got at the hospital.

I swallow. “No.” Just a Beanie Baby spider.

He nods thoughtfully. “It’s weird, you know? I think about stuff like that a lot. That I wish my father had given me, like, an old knife of his, or a watch or something. So I would have something concrete to pull out and look at any time I wanted to remember him.”

“Your father died?”

“Cancer, yeah. It was the worst. He was in hospice for about six weeks. He handwrote this five-page letter to me, on notebook paper, the kind you tear out, with the fringe . . .” He flutters his fingers, but I know what he means. “He didn’t put it in an envelope or anything. He just handed it to me one afternoon. I took it up to my room and stapled the pages together because I was so afraid of losing any of it. But I didn’t read it for the longest time.”

Envy stabs at me from the inside out, tiny pinpricks in my heart and gut. It shocks me how bad it hurts. How instantly resentful I feel. I mean, yes, I have one unread message on Jax, but it’s not a goodbye letter; it’s just instructions about school and Jax. Nothing like what Rhys is talking about.

“I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but you seemed—I don’t know—a little wrecked last night about the ice cream card.”

“I guess I was.” I manage a smile. “Pretty pathetic. Getting upset about something like that.”

“Not at all. I get it.” He hesitates. “I was eight when he died. So maybe I was just a dumb, ungrateful little kid who wanted a cool knife instead of a letter.”

“I’m really sorry about your dad.”

He shrugs but doesn’t say anything. I get it. Talking doesn’t really help; sometimes it feels like it just diminishes the whole experience. I toy with my mug. The coffee looks oily to me now, and my stomach turns.

“You’re lucky about the letter, though,” I say.

“Well, your dad wanted you to have his freebie cone. That’s pretty touching too.”

I grin. “I guess.”

What I really want to ask is what Rhys’s father had written to his son, but I can’t force the question out of my mouth. It’s none of my business, first of all. But the main reason I don’t ask is because, if it turns out he wrote something really wonderful and perfect and life-changing, I may start crying.

Rhys shifts in his chair. “So, the fee.”

I lean down and dig into my purse, crestfallen and glad for the opportunity to hide my face. I hand over the padded envelope full of cash. He doesn’t look inside to count it or anything, just tucks it in his messenger bag and drums his fingers on the table.

“Okay, you’ve got my top woman all ready to go for the main four: English comp, tech and civ, Calculus I, and core science. For Intro to Engineering, I had to cast a wider net.”

“Is there a problem? Can the other girl not do it?”

“No, apparently once she got a B in it, and—”

“Yeah, no.”

“I already found another girl. Same height, same hair. Pretty—”

I freeze.

“But that means I’m going to have to get two Tiger Cards, so—”

“The price goes up,” I finish for him and then feel my face warm. He thinks I’m pretty.

“It’s no problem, Shorie. It’s my cost. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“No. I’ve got it.” I open my purse and plunk down five more hundred-dollar bills. He sweeps the bills off the table, fast, then we return to our coffee.

“So what’s your job at Jax?” he says. “I mean, if you’re paying me a shit ton of money to get out of your first semester of college, it must be a great company to work for.”

Now I’m not just warm, I feel hot all over, and my eyes water a little bit. It’s none of his business, and yet part of me is wildly grateful that somebody’s asking, that someone’s interested. But I just can’t tell him the truth. Not until I know more.

“It is.”

“You know,” he says slowly. “If you ever want to talk about your dad, you can hit me up anytime.”

I so desperately want to tell him about my dad: He was a brilliant, goofy, fun nerd. He liked poetry and science and coding. He hiked with my mom and me, and followed this group of French mathematicians and poets called Oulipo, who wrote entire novels without the letter e or made up stories that follow mathematical problems like the knight’s tour of a chessboard. He learned the songs from Wicked and sang them with me. He called me “Shorie, my sweet.” And I scared the shit out of him every time we played hide-and-seek . . .