Page 88 of Not Another Yesterday
His right hand moves to my cheek, his thumb softly sweeping over my scar as if to erase it.
My grandpa sets the coffee mug he’s been sipping from down, then squares his shoulders while his arms fold across his sturdy chest. Like my dad, that man is a damn beast—6’5” and all corded muscle honed by a lifetime of hard, heavy ranch work. “You’re feeding the wrong wolf, Ran.”
I’m not sure if it’s the late hour or the Mount Everest-sized lump in my throat, but his words make no sense to me. “What?”
He chuckles. “You’re feeding the wrong wolf.”
“Okay, repeating the same words doesn’t help me understand what you’re saying, Athair.”
His brown eyes bore into mine. “The Cherokee believe that inside each man live two wolves. One dark, the other light. One represents our anger, our anxiety, our fears. The other represents love, kindness, hope. The question is always: which wolf wins? The answer—”
“The one we feed,” my dad says quietly, his eyes on my grandfather.
A whole lot of nonverbal communication happens between them; their gazes stay locked on each other for a moment before my grandpa’s eyes crinkle at the corners and his lips curve into a smile. He gives my dad a proud nod, then turns his attention back to me. “The one wefeed,” he says with a slight tip of his head. “And Ran, you’re feeding the wrong wolf.”
My grandma nods. “Ronan, you have to try to heal. If you never heal from what hurt you, you will bleed on people who didn’t cut you. And right now, you’re bleeding on Cat.”
I take a deep, settling breath. “Okay, let’s say Cat and I fix things”—that’s if she’d even consider taking me back—“but then, later down the road, Cat starts to resent me because I don’t want children. What then, Morai? We had one fight about it and she literally made out with some random guy at a party. What does that mean for us?” I ask, the hurt resurfacing. Every time I recall seeing Cat kiss that dude at the party, my heart threatens to shatter all over again.
“Maybe you’ll change your mind about having childr—”
“I won’t.”
My grandma pinches off a sigh between her lips. “Fine. But, Ran, she made a mistake. Your grandfather kissed another girl once to make me jealous after we had a vicious fight. Forty years later and he still randomly apologizes for it,” she says with a smile. “Relationships aren’t easy. We all make sacrifices; it’s constant work, a constant give-and-take. And as for you giving me great-grandchildren: you are young. You don’t have to decide right now. And even if in a decade or two you decide you really don’t want children, then you should allow Cat to decide what to do with that. Or maybe you’ll end up changing your mind, which, quite frankly, I hope you do, because you two would make gorgeous babies,” she says and I frown again. “You have to trust that Cat is capable of making her own decisions and telling you what she needs.”
“You sound exactly like Shane,” I say, exhaling loudly. Kellan stirs but doesn’t wake.
“Shane’s a great friend,” she says with a smile.
“He is.”
“Ran, you’ve shouldered a lot of pain in your young life. We know you’re one hell of a fighter. You’re strong. But I speak from experiencewhen I say you’re even stronger with Cat by your side. Now, answer this question for me: do you still love Cat?”
I don’t need to think about this one. “Of course I do.”
“And do you want to be with her?”
“Yes, but—”
“Great, then I expect you to fix this. And you better do it fast because, girls like Cat don’t stay single for long. Don’t let her get away, Ronan! Stop bleeding on her. She didn’t cut you.”
Saturday, April 1st
Cat
The pretzel bounces off my forehead, jolting me from the sea of data compiled by Professor Meyers—the same data I’m supposed to analyze over the next few weeks.
“Hey!” I yank the earbud out of my right ear. The sudden onslaught of airplane engine hum, airflow, and passenger chatter assaults my ears. Just a second ago, the ambient sounds flowing into my ears from my phone had my body convinced I was sitting by a babbling river, the wind rustling leaves while I tried to find correlations in my professor’s survey responses.
I crane my neck right, past my mom, in search of the culprit. I fully expect my little brother Benny to look back at me with a victorious smile. Benny’s attention, however, is on a superhero movie playing on the small seatback screen in front of him.
But a seat down, my dad grins triumphantly, a crinkly bag of airline-brand pretzels in hand.
I frown. “What was that for?”
“Just making sure you heard the announcement that we’re starting the descent. You might want to put away your work and fold up your tray, Kitty,” my dad says with a nod at my makeshift desk.
“We should be landing in Missoula in about thirty minutes,” my mom chimes in, smiling.
