Page 17 of Marry Your Best Friend

He pulls off his T-shirt and tosses it on the chair in the corner of my room. I shouldn’t be staring at him, but a bomb would have to go off in order for me to look anywhere else. He undoes his pants and pulls them off before laying them on the same chair. My heart is racing, and I pull the covers up over my chest to hide my erect nipples.

He’s smiling at me as he walks toward the bed, and I force my gaze from his black boxers up his chest to his eyes. He doesn’t seem affected at all, and I try to calm my nerves. He lies down on the bed, pulls the covers up over him, and then holds his arm out. “Come here.”

I move over to him and rest my head on his bare shoulder. His hand comes down on my arm, and he holds me to him. “You wanna talk?”

“No… yes,” I answer him with a soft laugh. My mind is working overtime, and I’m not sure what to make of anything today.

He doesn’t laugh; he just strokes my arm with his hand, waiting patiently.

“She was an elderly woman. She came in with chest pains, and she was all alone. I asked her if I could call anyone, and she said there was no one.” I suck in a breath, trying to keep the tears at bay. “She was having a heart attack, but we were able to get her stable. Dr. Jane was amazing; she was so patient with her and tried to calm her nerves. We were going to move her to a room and run more tests. We thought she was stable.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

I inhale long and hard and let it out slowly. “The ER was crazy like usual, and I kept thinking of her… I didn’t want her to be alone, so any chance I got, I would go in there to check on her. Throughout the day, she opened up to me. She told me about how she didn’t have a mom or dad and she was raised in foster care.”

Gabe pulls me to him, holding me tighter.

“She did get married, but she couldn’t have kids. Her husband died last month, and she was alone in the world. She kept saying that she missed him and she wanted to be with him.”

I wipe the tear off my cheek before it hits his chest. “I tried to tell her that she had so much tolive for, and she told me she didn’t. She has no one that would care if she lived or died.” I sniff loudly in the quiet of the room. “But I told her I cared, and I wanted her to live.”

I clench my eyes shut as I relive the moments after that. “There was a code blue, and I had to go. I told her I’d be back. I was doing CPR, waiting on the doctor to come when I heard another code blue called. It was her… her heart gave out, and nothing they did could get it pumping again.”

I start crying in earnest then, and he pulls me until I’m practically on top of him. He’s kissing the top of my head, stroking my back. “Oh baby, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you had to go through that.”

“She died alone, Gabe. She died believing that no one cared about her and no one loved her.”

“No, honey. She didn’t. It was her time to go. You told her you cared and that you wanted her to live.”

He’s rubbing his chin across my head softly, and we’re both quiet for a few minutes.

“Can you promise me something, Gabe?”

“Anything,” he answers without question.

“When I die… I mean, I don’t…”

I let my voice trail off, unsure how to say what I want to say.

He brushes the hair off my face and lifts my chin. We’re so close to each other, I can feel his warm breath on my cheek. “You’re my person, Chrissy. Do you know what that means?”

I just blink up at him.

He strokes my hair with his hand, twirling it in his fingers. “It means that no matter where you are, I’m going to be with you.”

“But you’re going to have a family one day and—”

He cuts me off. “You are my family, Chrissy. I’m going to be by your side forever, through the good and the bad. You will never once think that no one cared about you or loved you… because I care about you… I love you.”

There’s so much emotion in his eyes and in his voice that it is almost overwhelming. I lay my head down on his chest because I’m afraid he’ll be able to see exactly what I’m thinking if I don’t. “I love you too, Gabe.”

He locks his hands together around my waist. “I know you do, honey.”

We lie quietly, and I can feel myself getting more tired. “Are you staying the night?”

His voice is groggy. “Yep, I’m here for the duration. No nightmares on my watch.”

When we were younger and I had nightmares, Gabe would always stay with me until I went to sleep, and he’d always say the same thing: “no nightmares on my watch.” To this day, I’ve never had a nightmare any time he’s been with me. I smile against his chest and burrow deeper into his side, knowing that I’ll be able to sleep through the night.

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