I went through the motions that day. This was it. This was really it. Everything was exactly the same, except for one crucial thing: There was no hope anymore.
Kit stayed with me the whole day, cutting hearts for the party and making organizational phone calls, but I didn’t tell her. I didn’t want her to argue with me. There was nothing to argue about. She popped out for a bit in the late afternoon while I had PT with Rob, and when I came back, she was still gone. I fell asleep hard that afternoon, and I didn’t wake until supper: hospital food. There’d be nothing delicious tonight. Kit would be at the helm of her epic party, and I would be in here. Alone. Eating Jell-O.
As my meal came into focus, something across the room came into focus, too. A dress, hanging from the television stand, with a note on it in Kit’s writing—big, in Sharpie: Genuine vintage roller-disco diva dress
off the (right) shoulder!
JUST YOUR SIZE!
$5 at Salvation Army! (I washed it for you!) Come to the party!!!!!!
It was a pink-and-gold, one-shoulder, polyester maxidress with ruffles. It was hilarious, and also strangely lovely.
But I still wasn’t going to the party.
I lifted the yellowish plastic cover on the dinner plate. Some kind of gray meat, rehydrated mashed potatoes, and canned green beans.
Nope.
I poked at the Jell-O. I listened to the nurses joke around out at the station. One of them had a little thing for Man-Bun-Rob, and she’d heard he was going to be there.
Guess that meant there would be no tutoring for me tonight, either.
Fine. It was pointless, anyway.
On the tray, dessert was a chocolate chip cookie, which seemed like a stroke of luck—until I bit in and discovered it was oatmeal raisin.
Things seemed quieter than usual. Everybody, I guess, was in the rehab gym.
Then the door pushed open, and it was Kit.
“I need you,” she said.
“What?”
“The mariachi band is terrible! The children are crying!”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“Oh, yes, it can!” she said, pulling back my covers. “Go pee. Brush your teeth. Put on your dress! You’re doing a love song medley in ten minutes.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
She put a hand on one hip. “How many times have I been there for you when you needed me?”
“Are we talking recently, or our entire lives? Because I think you started with a deficit.”
Kit pulled on my arm. “I need you. The kids need you. Valentine’s Day needs you. Ian’s mother needs you!”
What? She got my attention with that last one. “Ian’s mother?”
She pointed at me, and repeated the favorite saying of hers Ian had told us once: “When you don’t know what to do for yourself, do something for somebody else.”
*
SHE GOT ME with that.
I did go to the party—although, when I showed up, the mariachi band was totally normal, not one kid was crying, and it was clear that Kit had tricked me.
I glared at her. “Not cool.”
“Just try to keep that scowl on your face while you eat one of these cookies,” she said, handing me a heart-shaped one with sprinkles.
It wasn’t oatmeal raisin, I’ll give it that.
Kit had gone all out. There was a craft table, a disco ball, the world-famous stolen chocolate fountain, and hearts and streamers everywhere. She had even hung a ball of mistletoe off the end of a stick to dangle over people’s heads and force them to kiss. Rob was doing the honors for her, bursting out with that foghorn laugh every time it worked.
Confessions: It was a lovely party, I did love wearing my diva dress, I did sing a love song medley, and everything about being there was better than being in my room alone. It was, in truth, an effective distraction.
As sad as I was, I felt a little happy, too.
I stayed and stayed. We sent the children to bed at eight o’clock, and we all continued eating cookies and singing our hearts out.
My best song of the night by far was my last one: I absolutely belted out “Best of My Love,” and halfway through, I looked up and saw Ian across the room, watching like he was spellbound. That, of course, made me sing harder and better, and I poured everything I had into the rest of it. At the end, I got the cheering equivalent of a standing O, and when I rolled across the room for cookies afterward, Ian followed and met me there.
We both held still for a few seconds too long.
“That was a hell of a song,” he said at last, his expression focused and warm and non-robot-like. The sound of the real Ian filled me with longing.
“Thank you.”
“I’ve never met anybody who could sing like you do.”
Now I smiled. “Thank you.”
“It’s good to see you,” he said.
“You could have seen me all week in the gym, if you hadn’t been ignoring me.”
“I wasn’t ignoring you,” he said, frowning. “I was—” But then he stopped. And he didn’t start again.
“Kit said you weren’t coming to the party.”
“I’m not.”
“But you’re here.”
“I’m just stealing cookies.”
“I see.”
He gestured back at the hallway to the offices. “I was working late.”
“You do that a lot.”
“I’ve been researching your injury, actually,” he said, looking a little embarrassed about it. “Trying to think of some way to help.”
I had to hand it to him. That was nice. But I said, “It’s a waste of time. It’s over.”
“What’s over?”
“My recovery.”
He shook his head. “There are all kinds of ways to recover.”
I looked away.
It would have been a good time for him to escape, but he didn’t. Instead, he attempted to start up some chitchat. He nodded at the room. “Looks like you’re all having fun.”
“Not on purpose,” I said. “Kit forced us.”
He glanced over at Kit, who noticed us talking. When he turned back, he let his eyes take me in. “Great dress.”
“I think I’m going to become a one-shoulder-dress person,” I said. “You know, even when I have the option of two.”
“You should.”
“It can be my signature thing. Then, when I do something truly amazing that history needs to commemorate with a statue, they’ll have no choice but to put me in this.” I flipped one of the ruffles.
Ian smiled then—a genuine smile. Hadn’t seen that in a long time.
He was about to say something else when Kit showed up next to us and said, “Mistletoe bomb!”
Ian and I looked up. She was holding the mistletoe over our heads.
“Mistletoe is for Christmas,” Ian said.
“Ask me if I care,” Kit said.
“She’s been forcing people to kiss with that thing all night,” I explained.
“You’re going to force me to kiss your sister?”
Kit gave a shrug. “Kinda looks that way.”
“He can’t kiss me,” I told Kit. “It’s against the rules.”
“Which rules?” she asked.
“All of them,” I answered.
But Ian was considering his options. “What happens if I refuse?”
Kit leveled a don’t-mess-around look at him, and then, like it was a challenge, she said, “Then I guess you’ll waste a chance for a kiss.”
“You don’t have to kiss me,” I said to Ian, and then to Kit, “Cut it out! You’re going to get him fired!”
But Ian squatted down in front of my chair. He flipped up the foot rests as he lifted one foot, then the other, setting them flat on the floor. I was barefoot and I could feel, in places, how cool the surface was. Then Ian leaned close for me to put my hands on his shoulders, like he’d done so often in the pool, and he placed his hands on my hips to steady me, and I leaned forward, and I locked my knees, and I moved toward him—and we stood.
“It’s bad luck to ignore mistletoe,” Ian said.
Those blue eyes. His face so close. The air tingled in my lungs. Was he going to do this? “Nobody in this room needs any more bad luck,” I said.
His gaze was locked on mine. “Very true.”
“But you can’t kiss me,” I said, hoping like hell he wouldn’t agree.
“I can’t?”
“What if somebody reports you?”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t?”
“Want to know the only question I care about?”
I nodded.
He looked into my eyes and said, “What do you want?”
I held my breath. What did I want?
What the hell kind of question was that?
I wanted him.