Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)(16)

I turned onto the freeway. “It’s Mom or my place,” I said.

“I don’t want to give up my apartment,” Benny said tiredly.

“I know,” I said, merging into the left lane. “But your apartment looks like shit. You’re barely taking care of the cat. Just move in with me. It’s only for a little while. You can have your old room. You can have my old room, it’s bigger,” I said, trying to sell it.

He paused before replying like it was wearing him out just to conjure sentences. “I don’t want to mess up your dating thing,” he mumbled.

“There’s nothing to mess up. I’m like the most single person you’ve ever met. You seriously wouldn’t be cramping any of my style moving in. I have nothing going on right now.”

He didn’t reply and I glanced at him. “This is only temporary, Benny. You’ll get a transplant and you’ll get your life back.”

He stayed silent for a long moment. “I’m going to be dealing with this for the rest of my life,” he said quietly.

“It won’t always be this bad. Once you get a kidney—”

“I won’t. You know I won’t. You just don’t want to admit it.”

Now I went quiet. I didn’t know what was better. Trying to keep his hopes up or managing his expectations.

“Okay,” I said. “So let’s say you don’t get one and this is just your life now—it can still be a good life. It can be a great life. Why don’t we get you a home dialysis machine? You can do it at night while you watch TV. You only need to do it for two hours if you do it every day.”

There was no reply again, so I had to look over at him.

“I can do it from home?” he asked tentatively.

“Yeah, totally. You have a doctor for a sister. You can’t do it when you’re living alone, but if you move in with me, I’ll be there to sterilize the equipment, monitor your vitals.”

He looked slightly if not hesitantly optimistic.

“And if you do daily dialysis instead of three times a week, you can have restricted foods since the fluid won’t build up.”

He sat up. “I can have ice cream?”

I nodded. “Yup. We might even be able to get you off some of the meds with the more frequent dialysis. You’ll feel better, you’ll have more energy…”

I think this was the first time I saw him smile in months. Well, he sort of smiled. It was more of a neutral frown on the cusp of a smile—but still, it was progress.

“Benny, you can do this. You just need to get adjusted. I can help you.”

Please let me help you.

The silence hovered between us.

“Okay,” he said finally.

“Okay? You’ll move in?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

I let out a breath. I felt simultaneously relieved and sad. Relieved that I’d be able to take care of him, that I wouldn’t get any more surprise ER visits, that him being with me would give him a better quality of life. And sad that a certain chapter was ending—for both of us. Because both of our lives had officially come to an abrupt stop. We were adults, regressing.

It was like the clock had just wound back twenty years. Suddenly I wasn’t grown-up, thirty-five-year-old married Briana anymore. He wasn’t bright, driven Benjamin working in IT, training for a 5K. I was the older sister again, in charge of watching a brace-faced Benny while Mom took night classes and worked a double. And I was going to have to watch him. Because I didn’t trust him with himself.

I got him home to his apartment and made him dinner. He barely touched it and went straight to bed. I drove home after starting a load of dishes and watering his wilting plants that still looked twice as alive as my brother did.

I was so mentally drained by the time I got back to the house I just plopped on the sofa wrapped in a blanket and passed out there until the cat unceremoniously walked across my body at two a.m. Then I dragged myself to my room and stared at the ceiling in the dark, unable to go back to sleep.

I was getting further and further away from the me I’d planned. Of the life I had planned.

In two weeks, I’d no longer be married. I would, from this day forward, be alone.

I was never doing this relationship stuff again. Any of it.

I’d always told myself that what happened to Mom with Dad was isolated. That most men didn’t walk out on their pregnant wife and eight-year-old daughter, leaving them homeless and destitute. I believed in love. And when I met Nick, I’d believed I’d found the one. I was almost snide about it. See? There are good men out there. I knew lots. Zander, Gibson, Benny—and now I’d found one to be the love of my life too.

But having men as friends and peers and family is very different than having them as partners.

Everything Mom had told me my whole life about being in relationships with men turned out to be true: They can’t be trusted. They can’t be relied upon. Men will always hurt you and leave you and let you down.

What Dad did cut even deeper now, because he’d given his son his rare blood type but didn’t bother to stick around to give him a kidney when he needed one. The bitterness twisted in my gut like a knife.

I was done. Done with men.

From now on I’d use them the way they used women. For entertainment. For sex. For convenience. I would never live with a man I was dating and I’d sure as hell never get married again. Ever. And kids? No. Not if it meant I’d be attached to their father for the rest of my life.