Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(88)

We’d gotten a lot closer over the last few months. I stopped being his big sister and started being his friend—and I liked it better that way. I needed a friend. And he needed me to know he could take care of himself.

And he could.

There was a raging pig roast going on in front of the dock. I could see the glow of the tiki lamps from between the palm trees, and music was pulsing in the distance. It was an interesting crowd over there. You were as likely to be sitting next to a Sherpa at dinner as you were Brad Pitt.

“You should get back,” I said to Laird. “You’re missing your own party.”

He smiled as he clipped my mic to my lei. “Eh, I’d rather be here. That’s Drake’s thing, not mine. I hate crowds.”

I smiled. “Well, I’m happy to have the company—and the help. It’ll be nice to have a video for this series that wasn’t made in selfie mode.”

I’d spent the last two months lying low, trying not to get recognized. I backpacked for a few weeks in the UK. Spent a week in Amsterdam in random hostels.

Then I’d sort of lost my way. Like a windup toy that ran out of up, I just stopped. I couldn’t move forward anymore.

There was nothing I wanted to see. No places I wanted to go. I always enjoyed Ireland, so I went there thinking it would cheer me up.

It didn’t.

I rented a cottage near Dublin and I just sat. For three solid weeks, binging romance novels. I didn’t go check out the quaint village nearby, I didn’t make any friends. The only thing that got me out of that little house was the wedding, and I’d probably squat here on this island until I died for no other reason than I simply couldn’t go anymore.

Drake didn’t care if I stayed. I don’t think he had any idea how many people lived on his island. It was sort of a living, breathing entity, gathering and losing inhabitants with the tide. Yesterday I asked him who the dreadlocked man living in the hammock out by the gardens was and he legitimately didn’t know. He said he thought it was, and I quote, “The llama guy maybe?”

If there was a random hammock llama guy, there could be an eccentric vlogger chick who drank all the wine and lived in the hut by the banana trees.

My hand hadn’t gotten any better.

I had good days and I had bad ones. On the good days I could feel my fingers. I could lightly grip things. On the bad days I had almost no use of my hand at all.

It wasn’t unusual for ALS’s progression to stop for a time, or even regress a little. But eventually it would progress. It always progressed. And now it had started to move up my arm. I’d lost strength in my bicep. The change was noticeable now compared to the other side. Skinny.

Atrophied.

It was scary to look in the mirror and see the differences. So scary that I’d taken the full-length mirror out of my hut. It was even worse seeing everyone else notice. To turn around and catch Brent’s eyes darting away from me like he hadn’t been staring at it.

It made me even more certain that I’d done the right thing leaving when I did. Annabel and Dad couldn’t have handled this.

It was official. There was a tiny, toothless, ancient Chihuahua in Nebraska that was probably going to outlive me.

Drake’s acupuncturist took a shot at helping. It worked a little. The good days were usually right after a visit. But my apathy, my lack of drive and enthusiasm and love for life—nothing could improve that.

I lost something when I lost Adrian.

It took me a long time to come to terms with that. But I did. I’d lost the ability to decide not to be sad. That was officially out of my hands.

There are people you can know for a lifetime and they never get into your heart. And then there are those who are already inside it, before you ever even lay eyes on them. Adrian was a part of me always, I realized. It didn’t matter that I’d only known him for a minute in the day of my life, or a second in the day of his. He was eternal for me, immortalized in my soul, before, after, and forever. And forgetting him wasn’t any more possible than changing my DNA.

I missed him. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night and it took me a minute to realize I was alone. That Adrian wasn’t next to me or just on the other side of a wall. Sometimes I’d see the back of someone’s head and I was sure it was him. But of course it never was.

It never would be.

I imagined he’d thrown himself fully back into his work. Maybe he’d started training for a new marathon.

Maybe he’d started dating again…

Hopefully everyone was getting back to their lives. I wouldn’t know.

I’d been radio silent with Dad and Annabel. I changed my number and canceled my email. It was better that way, at least for now. I was a crutch for them—and maybe they were a crutch for me too.

I had to acknowledge that there was some codependency between me and my family, and all of us needed to learn to live a different way. They needed to make decisions on their own, and I needed to accept being okay with them failing. They’d never be independent if I kept being one phone call away from bailing them out. It was better if they learned to stand without me, that they practiced that now before they had to do it in earnest.

If Dad or Annabel needed to reach me for anything that wasn’t money, Brent knew how to find me. I put my adoption attorney in touch with Sonja. I knew between her and Dad, they’d find a perfect family for Grace. They didn’t need me to micromanage it. Dad was a smart guy—and way too paranoid to let her go to anyone who didn’t pass muster.