“I love you, too,” I whispered, my lips still against the bottle.
I reached my arm back, and, as hard as I could, I threw it into the ocean where it bobbed, rather undramatically for a few moments, before a series of large waves took it under and out of my view.
I stared for a minute at the spot I last saw the bottle, filled with the part of my soul that belonged to Rae, and the part of hers that had belonged to me.
“Are you okay?” Georgia’s voice came from nowhere and reconnected me to our clasped hands.
I peeled my eyes away from the ocean. From my past. Georgia looked unsure, nervous, maybe, as she locked eyes with me and waited for my answer.
With a smile I pulled her into a hug. “I think I’m ready for those cupcakes now.”
She didn’t try to berate me with the ins and outs of my psyche that created my bottle-tossing idea. She simply nodded and led us back to the land-end of the pier, where our cupcakes waited.
We sat silently on the edge of the pier, fumbling with the paper wrappers and finally biting into the gorgeous therapy.
The salty air around us made them all the more sweet.
Georgia
As I waited for my mother in the waiting room on Wednesday, I thought back to my morning on the pier with Regan a few days before.
“You’re doing it wrong,” I teased.
“Eating a cupcake? How do you do that wrong?”
I rolled my eyes. “God! Stop! Eat the cake part first, like this. Save the frosting for last. That’s the point of a cupcake, you know ... it’s a vehicle for the frosting.”
I’d laughed until my sides hurt as he took the entire top of the cupcake in his mouth at once.
“Mmmm. No. You’re wrong. It’s always better to have the sweetest part first.” He licked his lips, and my eyes followed every move.
“Why are you such an optimist?”
At my question, he just shrugged and said, “There’s no good reason to be anything but.”
He chose happiness the way people choose to put on clothes in the morning.
Thinking back to the way he played his violin for Rae on that pier, I knew I had to be fully honest with him about my mom, my life, just ... everything. I didn’t have to, I suppose, but I wanted to. My phone buzzed with an incoming text. I smiled at his name across the top.
Health inspector here. Everything’s good so far. Hope you’re doing okay.
Thank you so much! I texted back.
Everything is okay ... right?
I instantly felt bad about being so vague about the “appointment” I had that was keeping me from an important step in the opening of my bakery, which was only two short weeks away.
Everything’s great. We’ll talk when I get back, K?
Just as I sent the text, the nurse came out to let me know my mother was ready to be released. It was going to be her last appointment for a couple of weeks. She was feeling stronger and more in control of herself than she had since I was a little girl. The hours immediately following the appointments were still tough. Effects of the anesthesia and varying degrees of memory loss were difficult to navigate.
Once my mom and I were in the car and on the road, I turned the radio down.
“Mom?”
She slowly rolled her head in my direction, seeming to be more tired today than usual. “Yeah?” she asked with a yawn.
“Is it okay if I bring you back to my place for a little while? I need to meet with the health inspector, if he’s still there. You can rest in my bedroom, if you’d like.”
“Sounds good, Alice...” My mom trailed off with droopy eyelids, her head rocking back to the support of the window.
That wasn’t the first time she’d called me Alice during her treatment, and it usually came when she was fighting sleep. I welcomed the slip of the tongue, reassured that even though her short-term memory was spotty in the days surrounding her treatment, her brain still clung to the most precious moments of my childhood.
I’d planned to tell Regan everything. To tell him that the mortar holding my walls together was pure fear, certainty that I’d follow the same path my grandfather and mother had. Only, now they weren’t fears. I couldn’t do anything about the genetics, and I had to let that go. But watching how my mother handled her life, her diagnosis, and her treatment taught me that fear was more debilitating than almost anything else could be. I needed to tell him about what my mom and I had just been through over the last few weeks. He deserved that. Frankly, I deserved that, to be honest with another human being about something without them dragging it out of me.
When we arrived at the apartment, I helped my mother up the stairs and she insisted on sitting on the couch in front of the television, claiming she needed some brainless entertainment for a while.
Her joke, not mine.
“Be right back, Mom.” I kissed her on the forehead and she dismissed me with a wave of her hand.