All We Can Do Is Wait(70)

It gave the past year some much-needed clarity, it lent some new shape to the brief summer when everything had seemed to click into place. Part of her wished she’d known then that Kyle and her brother were falling in love, were in love. But she also thought, standing there with her brother outside the hospital, that maybe it would have changed things. Even though the summer had ended so terribly, what had come before was the happiest she’d ever been, just as it was. And she didn’t want to change that for anything.

Alexa pulled away from her brother, who gave her an awkward smile.

“Do we hug now? Is that a thing we do?”

“That can be a one-time thing if you want,” Alexa said, sniffling and shivering. “It’s cold. We should go back inside.” She gave one last look to the glowing apartments, not knowing when she’d be outside next, and then headed back in, into the familiar and sallow waiting room, all the nurses looking haggard and frayed, though probably not more than she and Jason did. Jason had bags under his eyes, and his hair was in tangles. Though, Alexa supposed, that wasn’t exactly anything new.

When they walked into the waiting room, it was almost empty. She figured Morgan and Scott had left. There wasn’t really any reason for them to still be at the hospital. But then she saw Scott’s jacket, crumpled on a chair, and heard someone’s throat clearing behind her. She turned, and there was Scott, eyeing Jason warily, looking pale and guilty, his eyes round and dewy. He was like a pitiful cartoon, or one of those big-eyes paintings her aunt Ginny loved so much.

“Hey,” Scott said. “Any word?”

Alexa shook her head. “Nope.” She paused, not knowing if she even wanted to talk to him. “Where are Aimee’s parents?”

“Uh . . . I don’t know, actually. I mean, they went back there, and I haven’t seen them since. But I was, like, not here for a little bit.”

“Where’d you go?”

“To throw up.”

“I’m so sorry about Aimee. Before, I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s O.K. I get it. I . . .” Scott shot a quick glance at Jason, looked back at Alexa. “You want to, uh, go talk somewhere?”

Jason threw up his hands. “I’m actually going to go find Morgan, if she’s still around. See if she’s O.K. So, it’s all yours,” he said, gesturing to the waiting room. He turned and walked off.

“I just want to say again that I’m sorry,” Scott started once they were alone. “I shouldn’t have lied. I guess, just, in my head, or something, it wasn’t a lie, you know? We were together for a long time, so I just thought . . .”

“It’s O.K., Scott. Really. It doesn’t matter now. You love her. I get why you came. I would have done the same thing.”

Scott’s shoulders dropped, suddenly less tense. “Thanks. I mean, thanks for saying that.”

“So what will you do now?”

He shrugged, frowned. “I don’t know. Go home, I guess. My parents are probably freaking out. They know where I am, but . . . I should go home. They really liked Aimee.”

Alexa nodded sadly. “Yeah.”

Scott burst into tears. He put his hands over his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just . . . I missed her so much, for so long, and now . . . Now I have to miss her forever. And I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do.”

Alexa reached out and gave him a tight hug, Scott falling into her arms while he sobbed. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do,” he repeated.

“It’s O.K., Scott, it’s O.K. It’s O.K.”

He hugged her until his body stopped shaking with sobs. He pulled away, looking very young, very lost. “I can’t believe any of this happened.”

“I don’t think anyone can.”

“What am I going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Alexa said. And that was true.

“You know,” Scott said, sniffling, “a while ago, when I was feeling sad about Aimee, a friend told me that I just had to, like, be in the present and deal with things and, y’know, cross bridges when I got to them.” He realized immediately what he’d just said. “Jesus,” he whimpered, the tears coming again.

“Your friend was right, though,” Alexa said.

“But how do we know when it’s going to feel better?” Scott asked, pleadingly. “Will it ever feel better?”

Alexa shrugged sadly. She wished she knew for sure. “It has to eventually, right? The longer we keep living, the more time passes. I think it has to get easier at some point. For now, I guess all we can do is wait.”

“You’re right.” Scott sighed. He shifted, gave Alexa another doleful look. “I wish we could have met, like, some other time, y’know? In some other life or something.”

Alexa knew what he meant, or thought she did. She wished none of this had happened too. That the alternate dimension was out there somewhere, that she could just slip into it, where everything was better and easier. Where, sure, maybe she’d meet Scott, or some version of Scott, and things would be different. But that place felt even further away than it had in the chapel.

And the more she thought about it, the more she realized she didn’t want to go searching for that other place. She wanted to stay where she was, as shitty and awful as it was just then. And she certainly didn’t want to follow Scott into some what-if fantasy.