“So. Where the hell have you been?”
Monica is standing in front of me, arms crossed, eyes blazing. She looks over my shoulder, eyes narrowing as she sees Aaron’s taillights fade away down the street. She grabs my arm and pulls me into the living room. I can feel her fingers digging into my skin. She points at the couch.
“Sit,” she says.
“Shhh! You’ll wake up my mom!” There’s no way she could wake up LaoLao or Granny Dee. LaoLao sleeps through anything and snores, so Granny Dee wears earplugs. And an eye mask. And sleeps with a hot water bottle, no matter how hot it is outside.
Monica sits next to me and leans very close to my face, so close I can smell her morning breath. Or middle-of-the-night breath. Whatever it’s called at five a.m. I wrinkle my nose and she frowns.
“What?”
“Your breath stinks,” I say, like it’s an apology.
“Wing, were you and Aaron visiting Marcus? Without me?”
“What? No! Of course not!” I pause. “Monica, you know I’ve been to see Marcus, right? Without you?” Family only, the doctors say, but I bet if Monica came with us, she could charm her way in there, the way she charms herself into anywhere. But she hasn’t been by to see us to ask to come with us, and I wonder if it’s because she doesn’t want to intrude. Monica should know that she can’t intrude on us; if anything, sometimes it feels like our whole family is intruding on her and Marcus, the way they look at each other like there is no one else, and I mean no one else, in the room, in the house, in the whole world. She could never intrude. She shoulda known that and come round before last night. But she’s here now and I guess that’s what matters.
“And how would Aaron and I sneak into the hospital at five a.m.?” I smile a little, trying to show her how ridiculous she’s being.
She raises an eyebrow. “Well, you are certainly sneaking around doing something…” She pulls back and looks me up and down, her eyes darting over the football jersey and the running shorts and back up to my hair, which has poufed out to almost twice its normal size since I didn’t have a rubber band to tie it up. “Wing. What the hell is going on?”
I tell her the truth. Or at least, as much of the truth as I can. I don’t tell her that I’ve got a dragon and a lion waking me up every night, or about my feelings for Aaron, but I do tell her that since the accident I haven’t been able to sleep and I’ve been running at night.
Monica is less skeptical about the running bit than Aaron was. Maybe because she hasn’t seen it. Doesn’t know just how fast I go.
Or maybe it’s because she’s a better friend and believes I’m capable of doing something like running at night.
She is, however, highly skeptical of the fact that I just happened to run into Aaron on the field. Her line of questioning starts to make me think that she suspects my whole running thing is about seeing him.
“Wing, honey, didn’t you know that Aaron likes to go running at night?” she says, and there’s a touch of pity in her voice, like a pat of butter scraped over burnt toast. Like she knows what she’s saying is going to make me feel like crap but maybe if she says it in a nice way it won’t.
I think you shouldn’t serve burnt toast at all, but that’s just my opinion.
“I didn’t know,” I say, even as a memory of him mentioning it slots into my brain. “But, Mon, it isn’t about Aaron. I like it. The running. And I think … I think I might be good at it.”
“I’m sure you are, sweetie. But you can’t go out running in the middle of the night.” A slow smile spreads over her face. “Even if you know that Aaron’ll be around to be your knight in shining armor.”
“I don’t need no knight in shining armor,” I snap back. My exhaustion is finally catching up with me, making me lazy with my language. “I’ve got a dragon!” Apparently I’m also sloppy about what secrets I tell.
“Wing, honey, you know I don’t always get your metaphors.” Monica has that same slow smile on, the one I can picture her using on her kids someday when they’ve done something stupid or silly and she has to chastise them but doesn’t want to make them feel bad. Like “Oh, Marcus Junior, sweetie, you can’t eat a whole tub of peanut butter all by yourself.” Or “Little Monica, don’t you know that Santa only comes if you’ve been good?”
Thinking about Marcus and Monica’s children makes my heart hurt. Because I don’t know if there will be a Mini Monica and a Marcus Junior. I lean toward Monica, and even though I’m all sweaty hair and sticky skin and smelly jersey, I hug her tightly around the shoulders.
“What was that for?” she asks, but she’s grinning.
“I’m just happy you’re here.”
“So you really aren’t going to tell me the truth about these nightly rendezvous with Aaron?”
“There aren’t any nightly rendezvous!” I protest. “Seriously. Tonight was the first night I’ve seen him.”