Page 8 of Without You

Her hands rest on my cheeks. “I’m sorry we didn’t work out.”

“Me too,” I offer gruffly.

“Be happy, Deac.”

* * *

I’m standingin front of the coffeemaker in the breakroom when my best friend and business partner, Wade, asks me, “So how long are you going to be gone for?”

Removing the drip tray, I place my travel mug in the machine alcove and press the power button. “I don’t know,” I respond. “Just the weekend?”

“Is that a question?” Wade frowns at me. “Are you asking my permission?”

“I just don’t want to leave you here alone.”

He sits down on the two-seater couch in the corner of the room. “You are so bad at lying. If you don’t want to go, don’t go.”

I scrub a hand over my face. “You know it’s not that easy.”

Being my best friend, Wade is probably the only person who can see through my anxiety, and call me out on my bullshit. “Just stay for the weekend. Tell them that’s all you can get and if it’s going well, take the week. Hell, stay the whole two weeks until Thanksgiving even.”

“I can’t imagine it going well,” I say despondently. I clap him on the back, his calm logic exactly what I need right now. “But thanks, that seems like a good idea, as long as you promise to let me know if things get a little too hectic around here.”

“You do know we have five other full-time mechanics here, right?” He stands up and makes his way to the door. “You’re good at what you do, but not that good.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” I call out to him as he slips out of the room.

Adding sugar to my coffee, I stir the hot liquid and then screw on the lid. When I’ve got a big day scheduled, I fill up the large insulated travel mug and keep it with me for most of the day. It stays warm enough that I don’t need to stop and start what I’m doing in order to get my coffee fix.

Following Wade, I head to the main garage where he’s bent down tinkering with the engine of a steel-colored ‘68 Charger.

Wade and I met when I first moved to Seattle after finishing high school. I never had plans to attend college, intending to study automotive mechanics at a technical school instead. But when I mentioned moving to Seattle, my parents insisted I go to college.

Seeing as I needed money from them to get me started, I agreed and finished a degree in Automotive Engineering. Part of me wanted to prove to them how well I could do on my own, and the other part of me wanted to experience what it would be like to be alone, independent, and not feeling overshadowed by everyone else’s expectations of me.

It would be a lie if I said I didn’t know when it started or how it happened, but the older I got and the sicker Rhett got, I just wanted to get away.

He’d been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. I remember it like it was yesterday. He had the flu for what seemed like forever, and when he finally went to the doctor to find out why he couldn’t shake it, they discovered the leukemia.

Your body naturally produces white blood cells to fight infection and sickness, but for Rhett, the cancer meant his own white blood cells couldn’t do that. Instead of protecting him, his own body was destroying him from the inside out.

Doctors told us it had been detected early enough to be treated and with many early cases, remission was highly likely if he remained cancer free for five years after the fact. We were all so optimistic, until we weren’t.

He was seventeen when he received the initial diagnosis. Twenty-one when doctors discovered it had come back, and twenty-four when they told him it had spread everywhere.

I’d grown up feeling like the wrong puzzle piece, not really fitting in anywhere, not really doing anything exceptional. I was always on the outskirts, more out of choice than a dramatic familial exile. I plodded along, trying to find my feet within my own family, but it never felt like it was enough.

My mother wanted the best for me, I was her first-born son, and like any parent, she had hopes and dreams and expectations, and like any parent, she was disappointed. I didn’t like the things she wanted me to like, and I didn’t do the things she wanted me to do.

When Rhett came along, he eventually took the pressure off. I became closer to my dad, and my mother burst with pride over him, while my dad let me be me.

Until cancer came along and somehow both pushed me out of the way and brought it all back with a vengeance. My mother’s comparison, her disappointment, her constant reminders that my brother could die and it was on me to live for him. This time I was older and my father couldn’t mask it up with gifts, games, and distractions. So, I chose to leave, or run away as my mother so eloquently put it.

Seattle was supposed to be my fresh start. Wade and I studied, we partied, we got laid, we got jobs we loved, and I lived this life where I could forget that my parents were occupied and my brother was now never too far away from death’s door.

Our friendship flourished as we bonded over a love of vintage cars and spent endless hours of our free time rebuilding, refurbishing, and fixing them for our boss. We started apprenticing for Mr. Duquette as part of our degree, and even though he wasn’t required to, the relationship we’d formed while working had him offering us full-time jobs once we graduated.

He was old in age, but young and vivacious at heart. Dedicating his life to his business, he used to say his love for cars was something no woman could rival.

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