Page 39 of Marriage is a Shore Thing
“Then where—”
“Noah has an air mattress that I can borrow. I probably should have offered it to you, but I didn’t think…”
I’m about to ask Geneva what she was going to say, but her fingers are in my hair again while the washcloth moves over my jaw, and all thought leaves me. I’m just an empty—incredibly sweaty—shell of a man, and Geneva can do whatever she wants with me.
“I won’t be as good at this as you. I’m not a doctor. I don’t…take care of people.”
My heavy eyelids blink open to catch a wrinkle of worry between her brows.
“You’re doing fine, darlin’.”
I also want to argue that shedoestake care of people. I’ve seen it in the short time we’ve been together—with the woman in Vegas, by defending Carol, by protecting Joanna’s tender feelings. Heck, Geneva took immaculate care of me that firstnight we met, distracting me when it felt like my life was quicksand.
Attending the Raven Sacaria concert in Vegas had nearly done me in. I’d already been avoiding the grief threatening to swallow me for months, working every extra shift I could find. When a memory of Taylor popped in my mind, I pushed it away. If I was constantly in motion, I didn’t have to think about what I’d lost. But singing along with the artist my sister loved so much, I just felt…so broken. Then Geneva had rescued me by making fun of my favorite cocktail and challenging me to dares. It’d been the only time I’d felt remotely whole in months.
Being here, keeping my word to Taylor, and fixing up Geneva’s house has been a good distraction, but with fever raging in my brain, the thoughts I usually subvert come flooding in. My chin drops, and my eyes close as I think about the future my sister and I will never have.
She’d just started dating a great guy, and call me foolish, but I’d been looking forward to giving Taylor away at her wedding. After that, I planned on being the best darn uncle anyone had ever seen, so knee deep in tea parties and finger paints that her kids would beg for me to watch them.
But…that future no longer exists.
That’s the hardest part of my sister’s death. When an otherwise healthy person dies young, you can’t use any of the well-worn platitudes to make yourself feel better. There’s noat least they lived a long, fulfilling life.All you feel is emptiness for what will never be.
“Van?”Geneva whispers, her hands framing my face.
If I open my eyes, tears will spill from them. I’m not embarrassed of crying, but I’m pretty sure it’d make Geneva uncomfortable, and I’m already sweating all over her bed and living in her house when she didn’twantme here.
The sigh leaving me takes all my energy with it.
“I think it’s time to get some sleep.”
I nod into Geneva’s hands but don’t say anything, just shift until I’m lying again. I know it’s weak of me to keep my eyes closed, to turn away as Geneva clicks off the bathroom light, but I don’t feel like I have anything left. I’m vaguely aware of cool fingertips on my back, but consciousness is getting patchy. It could very well be rivulets of air from the ceiling fan. And I’m one hundred percent certain that the soft brush of lips I feel at my temple is nothing but a dream.
sixteen
Geneva
Iwant to call 911 twenty-seven times over the next twelve hours. When I’d been feverish, I’d still been able to sit in whatever room Van was tinkering in and occasionally throw insults at him. Van is barely able to stand when I decide to put him in a cold bath, hoping that will help like it did with me. Fortunately, I’m strong enough to bear his weight, but now I’m concerned about my ability to get him safely out of the tub.
Once Van is reclined back with his eyes closed and a washcloth over his forehead, I tell him I’ll be right back and sneak into the hallway with my phone.
“I think I messed up,” I say when Noah picks up my call. My fingers tug at the collar of the oversized sweatshirt I’m wearing because I have my AC turned as low as it’ll go.
“Excuse me? I know you’re recovering from the flu, but are you delirious? You must be to admit that. Put Van on the phone.”
“Ican’t.” I glance around the open doorway, catching Van’s strong jawline.
Still above water. Good.
“He’s worse off than me.”
“Here we go,” Noah groans. “Men are babies. Women can go through twice as much pain while simultaneously nursing a newborn, making dinner, and solving world peace.”
“No.” I pause. “Well, yes, that’s all true, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
Noah finally catches on to my anxious tone. “What happened?”
“Nothing? His fever hasn’t gotten worse, but he’s weak. I have to help him with everything.”
