Only When It's Us (Bergman Brothers #1)(29)

My eyes narrow at Mama. She smiles brightly and waves her hand. “Go on. Buy me one of those sweet peach teas they never want me to drink.”

“Pure sugar!” Dr. B says playfully. “It’ll go straight to your hips, Joy.”

Only an oncologist and a veteran cancer patient could find humor in her sickly weight loss. I step out, shut the door behind me, and feel dread roll up my spine. I can’t think of any reason a parent kicks their kid out of their hospital room unless the news in that room is the kind you never want them to hear.

She’s dying.

I feel myself start to shake, fear clawing up my throat.

Inside the room behind me, both my mother’s and Dr. B’s laughter echoes. Who would laugh about death? About palliative care and end-of-life choices. Maybe Mama isn’t in danger after all?

Dr. B throws open the door, an easy smile on his face. “Have yourself a nice evening, Ms. Willa,” he says.

“You too, Dr. B.”

I know better than to ask him for answers. “Talk with your mother, Miss Willa,” he’s told me countless times. “It’s her prerogative.”

“What was that about?” I ask her. Mama’s tongue is stuck out, her eyes focused on her crossword.

“Oh,” she says on a sigh. “Some plans for a new experimental drug. Because it’s still in clinical trials, he can’t discuss it with other people in the room—blah, blah, blah. You know. Now come here, and help your old lady with a few of these words, Willa.”

I do my best to concentrate, as I answer Mama and peel our orange, but I can feel it churning inside me. Anxiety. Fear. I’m terrified she’s dying and lying to me. I’m desperate to hope everything’s as fine as it seems—Mama doing her crossword, Dr. B strolling out breezily.

It’s chaos in my head, a hurricane in my heart. Emotions collide, intensifying into frantic energy. I’m a building storm, the first bolt of singeing electricity about to touch down.

There are two proven methods to diffuse Willa Sutter when she’s about to erupt: long, excruciating runs, and getting shit-faced. Both work the same way. They wreak havoc on my system until that furious energy is grounded and drained. Until I’m empty, so numb and dissociated, that I crumple into unconsciousness.

I know. I didn’t say they were healthy coping mechanisms, just that they were proven effective.

My body’s spent from practice today. If I try to run, my legs will collapse from underneath me long before I’m adequately wrung out. Running won’t work. Which means tonight’s a night to pickle my liver.

Swiping open my phone, I find Rooney’s number and text her. Neither of us party, but in a rare crisis, we’re there for each other, prepared to do what’s necessary, even if that includes alcohol. I don’t drink much, and I never do it without paying the price, but we have a rare rest day tomorrow, so I can spend it hungover and recovering.

Maybe in my lazy day tomorrow, I’ll figure out how to retaliate after Ryder’s latest trickery. He got me back for sexually torturing him during notecard studying and costing him twenty bucks. His mature response was a whoopie cushion he set on my chair in Business Math. As usual, I was a little late. After a sprint right to my seat, I dropped down, shattering the silence held for Mac’s lecture with an echoing “fart.”

It took him ten minutes to get the class in order.

That motherfucker. Ryder had to turn and hide his face in his arm those whole ten minutes before he could look me in the eye and not fall into hysterics. His eyes glittered with tears from laughing so hard, and beneath all that beard, I caught a wide smile. If his prank hadn’t been beyond humiliating as well as annoyingly clever, I would have been almost happy that I put such a giddy look on that smartass tree-hugger’s face. Almost.

In summary: I owe him. Big. Time.

Maybe it’s because I’m stewing about the whoopie cushion still, as I make plans with Rooney, but a brilliant thought comes to me. At some point after I met Ryder’s two roommates, I told Rooney about them. She made the small-world connection that she and Becks have chemistry together. Did not see that one coming. Becks strikes me as lots of things, smart not being one of them.

I text Rooney my sinister plan. It’s a stretch because I’m not sure how friendly she and Becks are beyond being lab mates.

She responds immediately. I’ll text him. He’ll know where to go. Be there in thirty. Is it a little red dress night?

I stare at my phone, debating. Bad, bad things happen in the little red dress, dress being a generous term for that garment. It’s more like an extended tube top. But tonight, I want to forget about being responsible and self-respecting. I want to be stupid and careless and not worried about biopsies and GPA and my average goals per game. I want to be twenty-one and carefree and reckless. I want to dance with my friend and sexually punish a particular overly bearded vengeful lumberjack.

Yes, I type back. And bring my hooker shoes while you’re at it.





Ryder





Playlist: “Sugar on My Tongue,” Talking Heads





Willa’s trying to kill me. It’s the only explanation for what’s been going on between us the past few weeks. First the shirt in Business Math. I’ve never seen a woman wear that color and not look like her kidneys were failing, but yellow made Willa light up like a ray of sunshine.