Only When It's Us (Bergman Brothers #1)(7)
“Willa, you’re getting that far-off look that has no business being on a twenty-one-year-old woman’s face.” Mama’s hand is cold and painfully slim, but I still lean my cheek into her touch. This isn’t her first rodeo with cancer, and I know better than to take any moment with her for granted. Life is fragile, and while I’m hopeful Mama can beat this, I never pass up the chance to slow down and savor that she’s here.
“You don’t need to worry, honey,” she whispers. “I’m taking care. Dr. B’s doing everything he can for me and worries enough for the both of us, okay?” Her hand drops and squeezes mine. “You need to live your life. All you do is exercise, go to class, practice, and play, then sit here in the hospital, watching your mom lose her hair again.”
“Stop it.” Tears prick my eyes. “I love you. I want to be with you.”
“But you need to live, Willa. To thrive, not just survive. Go out with Rooney. Wear a short dress, show off those killer soccer legs. Kiss a boy, screw him six ways to Sunday—using protection of course—”
“Mother!” My cheeks turn bright red. “You know I don’t date.”
“I didn’t tell you to date. I told you to get laid.”
“Motherrrr,” I groan.
“I’ve been sick off and on for a while now, but you know what, Willa? I don’t feel like I’m missing too much. I lived as a young woman. I went to wild concerts and backpacked. I hung out with weirdo beat poets and read fat novels and hitchhiked. Smoked dope and stared at the sky while I rode in truck beds. I had fun and worked hard, enlisted, traveled the world as a nurse. Got to see new places, have exotic lovers and a few sexy soldiers—”
“Mama.” I shake my head. My mom’s pretty, even with her hair gone and a soft turban around her head. Her eyes are a rich brown like mine and wide-set. Her cheekbones pop and her lips are full. I’ve seen pictures. Mama was a babe when she was younger. I just really don’t like to think about her boinking.
“You know what I’m saying, Willa. Life doesn’t live itself for you, and nothing is promised to us. You have a lot to offer, so much to experience. I don’t want you to miss it because of me.”
I want to tell her that I’d miss everything life had to offer if it meant I got to keep her always. I want to tell her I’m scared she’s sicker than she lets on, that I’ll hate myself for spending nights doing what regular college kids do when I could have been spending those fleeting moments with her.
But I’m me. I don’t talk about uncomfortable things like that. So, instead, I squeeze her hand in reassurance and say, “Okay, Mama. I will.”
Ryder
Playlist: “Elephant Gun,” Beirut
Precisely two years ago, I realized my life was never going to turn out how I thought it would. Denial’s a powerful coping mechanism. After I got sick, my psyche held on to denial as long as it could. But, eventually, the thick pragmatic streak that runs in my family came knocking on my mind’s door and demanded I face reality.
I’m not your stereotypical Cali guy. I don’t hang ten or say gnarly. I grew up in Olympia, Washington, and I wish I still lived there, but Dad got an offer he couldn’t refuse from Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center—RRMC, as most people call it—so here we are.
I miss the feeling of fall. I miss wet leaves smashed into a slippery carpet beneath my feet. I miss the cold turning my nose pink and burning my lungs on long, snowy runs. I miss darkness, as weird as that might sound. I miss candles and hearth fires and hunkering down with a book once the sun set at dinnertime.
And I miss soccer. I miss the game I was so sure would direct and fulfill my adult life.
So, of course, on the anniversary of all my dreams going down the shitter, Willa Sutter, women’s soccer’s rising star, dropped herself in the seat next to me in Business Mathematics. It felt like the universe was kicking me right where it counts.
Didn’t help that she seemed to inexplicably hate my guts. As class ended, she gave me the death glare and shoved a pen in her hair like she wished it was a shiv spearing my heart. Rage tinged her amber irises coppery red, and violent energy practically radiated off of her. The woman whose future was once mine, the future I’d give anything to have back, looked like she wanted to kill me, then do it again, just for kicks. Sticking around to watch her try to melt me with her eyes when I had no idea what I’d done to earn such hatred might have been entertaining another time, but not that day.
Next class was just as bad. Once again, she dropped into the seat beside me, making me intensely aware of her body nearly brushing against mine. I’m an over-average-sized guy. I have broad shoulders, long legs. I don’t fit in those desks. So, it wasn’t necessarily surprising when I shifted in my seat and accidentally elbowed her, earning her evil eyes again.
What was surprising was that when she glared at me, demanding an explanation, I actually wanted to answer her. And that’s really saying something because I haven’t spoken a word in two years.
“Ry.” I hear it like I’m underwater, faint and warped. That’s what life sounds like with moderate and severe hearing loss, in the right and left ears, respectively. Bacterial meningitis came out of nowhere just a few cruel weeks before pre-season at UCLA began. I got horribly sick, fast, and the next time I woke up, I was in the hospital, hearing my mom’s voice as a tinny, garbled sound I barely recognized. Meningitis damaged my inner ear, and the antibiotics did their fair share, too.