An Ex for Christmas(7)

Let me paint a picture for you. Mark Blakely: six foot two, age twenty-eight, dark hair, dark eyes, buff, Levi’s-and flannel-wearing, sarcastic and no-nonsense, a Virgo, and happens to be a really good cook. Does not believe in fate, fortune, or luck.

Me: Kelly Byrne, age twenty-seven. Five foot four, more padding than I’d like, especially around the middle. Thick blond hair, medium length. Outgoing Gemini with keen interest in Tarot cards, Magic 8 balls, astrology . . .

From the outside, it’d seem crazy for us to have been best friends since we were seniors in high school. His parents moved here from Vermont the summer before our senior year. As class president, I’d been nominated to show the new kid around school. He’d been quiet and a little caustic. I’d been bubbly and persistent.

That’s the outside story that most everyone else knows, and it’s totally true.

There’s a bit more to it, though.

Physics was the only class Mark and I had together senior year, and we were partners. Alone, we were both pretty mediocre at science; together, we were managing to hover in the B+/A-range. Usually we studied at my house, but one mid-November Sunday my parents decided they wanted to get their ancient hardwood floors refurnished before Thanksgiving. We’d had to be out of the house for a day or two. Mark and I had procrastinated a bit on our work due the next day, the library was closed, so . . . his house.

He’d always been reluctant to let me anywhere near his house, but I hadn’t let it bug me. Instinct told me it was more about shielding me from his home than about shielding his home from me.

My instinct was right. Mark had never talked about his sister, so I assumed she was either much older or much younger and they simply weren’t close.

That rainy Sunday I’d learned that they were close. Emily was two years younger than us, and . . . sick. My aunt Ida was a breast cancer survivor, so I thought I’d understood cancer. I’d been horribly wrong.

Watching it ravage a sixteen-year-old was much different.

I didn’t spend much time with Emily. She was home-schooled, since her chemotherapy treatment appointments made any regular schedule impossible. The thought had been almost unbearable to me—dying and lonely.

Mark had said it wasn’t like that so much. She was dying, yes. But not lonely. Emily had apparently always been a quiet, loner type even before the diagnosis. She hadn’t been unfriendly to me that first day, or any of the few days after, just . . . aloof. Like she didn’t really care one way or the other whether Mark’s friend was in the house. Heck, for that matter, she hadn’t seemed to care whether Mark was around.

It bothered him. He never said it, and he tried hard not to show it. He’d shrug when she failed to say thank you for the bracelet he’d (well, we’d) picked out for her at the mall. He never flinched when she snapped at him for asking how she was feeling. It was an awful situation. I’d hurt for Emily, obviously. Fate had dealt her a nasty hand, and not everyone handles that with the sunny Zen you see in the movies.

But I’d hurt for Mark and his parents, too. Not only did they have the helplessness of watching someone they love fade, they also had been kept at arm’s length.

Anyway, the point is . . . my knowledge of Emily, I think more than any other reason, is why Mark and I became friends—good, lasting friends, not just casual, last-year-of-high-school friends. Not just because I’d known that secret part of him, but because I hadn’t told anyone—not even my own parents, although Mark had eventually told them himself as they’d become pseudo-parents for him while his own parents became consumed with caring for Emily.

I still don’t know why he’d let me in. He hadn’t even told his own girlfriend (Melanie, his high school girlfriend, whose introverted Taurus was a perfect match for his Virgo—just sayin’). I’d asked him once, the afternoon after her funeral. Emily fought hard for years, but even after going into remission briefly and giving us all hope, she’d passed when she was eighteen.

Mark and I were twenty. I came home from college for the memorial service, and afterward we were sitting on his bed, sipping beers even though we weren’t yet twenty-one, but given the circumstances, nobody said a word.

The service had been small, family only. Well, family and me, although by that point I’d begun thinking of myself as family. And I asked him why. Why he’d told me when he hadn’t told anyone else.

He’d shrugged and taken a sip of his Coors. “Just one of those things, Byrne. You’ve gone this long without making it weird—don’t start on me now.”

I got it. Some things just weren’t meant to be questioned; they simply were.

Mark and I are one of them, I guess.

Where was I going with this? Oh, right. Mark and I are close—as close as a guy and girl can be without hooking up (which we’ve never done—I know you were wondering). But anyway, we’re close and yet there are some things we don’t see eye to eye on.

My “superstition” (his term—I call it “cosmic wisdom”) is one of them.

Which is why he’s not going to be nearly as excited about my afternoon as I am, but I tell him about it anyway.

“Okay, so,” I begin. “Actually . . . do you have any wine? I just realized I should celebrate.”

“Celebrate whatever you read in your tea leaves, or celebrate the last day of school?”