She was sitting there, eighteen and golden, and she smiled at me, a real smile, a beautiful, heart-stopping Tess smile, and then said, “Abby?
Are you—is something wrong?” her smile fading like she understood how I felt.
“Nothing,” I said, wanting to destroy her, the world, everything. As if Tess could ever understand how I felt. As if anything truly bad had ever happened to her.
“Okay,” she said slowly, clearly not buying it, and then moved her feet from the sofa to the floor, making space for me. “Want to watch a movie about aliens trying to destroy the world?”
I looked at the television screen. “You’re watching that stupid ‘modern’ version of Cinderel a starring the actress whose head weighs more than her whole body for the ten mil ionth time.”
“I know,” she said. “But I can change the channel. And hey, you can laugh at me when I get scared.”
“I don’t want—”
“I know how you feel,” she said. “You don’t have to tel me, but just—I real y do know, okay?”
I didn’t believe her—I’d spent my whole life watching her break hearts, not getting hers broken, after al , but she sounded so sincere. That was another thing about Tess. She had this way of making everything and anything sound true, sound like she knew what you meant, that she understood you.
She had a way of making you feel like she needed to be there for you. Like she wanted to. And that night, I needed to believe that someone was there for me.
Even if it was her.
And so I sat next to her, and we watched a movie where people got eaten by aliens. Tess hid her face behind her hands for most of it and never once said a word about the sand on my clothes or how the mascara she’d seen me put on before she left for work had washed into muddy smears under my eyes. She was so nice, so understanding—so Tess. And I hated her for it. For being so perfect yet again.
When I went to bed that night, I lay there, dry-eyed because I wasn’t going to cry. I wouldn’t let myself, and wondered if Tess would ever know what heartbreak was.
If she would ever know anything unpleasant, and how much I wished that she would.
And now she does.
I know I didn’t cause the accident, I know I’m not why Tess’s in the hospital. But now I wish I could take al the anger I’ve ever felt when I looked at Tess, when I thought about her, and make it disappear.
I wish a part of me doesn’t stil feel that anger when I look at her lying silent and far away. I wish I wanted her to wake up only because I miss her.
But I don’t. I miss her, but not like I should. I … I want her to wake up so I don’t have to be tied to her forever.
I want her to wake up so I won’t forever be reminded that I’m not her.
That I’l never be her.
the hospital the next day, frowning because my bag got wet on the ferry and the lone bathroom on it was out of paper towels.
I curve my mouth into a huge, fake smile, and he laughs and pul s out a cough drop.
“Found someone to work in the gift shop starting today,” he says. “Have something you’d like to say to me?”
I grin at him. “I hear that eating too many of those things you like so much gives you gas.”
He laughs. “My wife would have loved you. Do you like Jaffa Cakes? Harriet loved them. Used to be hard to find them over here, but now the supermarkets have international aisles and you can get anything.”
“I love them,” I say, and wonder what the hel Jaffa Cakes are.
He grins at me. “Now what are you going to do when I bring you a box of them?”
“Tel my parents my new boyfriend is a little older than I am.”
Clement laughs so hard he chokes on his cough drop, causing the reception area people to come running with water and offers of help.
Sometimes I think he gave more money to the hospital than even rumor says, because normal y the people at reception don’t and won’t move unless someone’s bleeding al over the place. Or if it’s time for their breaks.
“Go on,” he says, waving me off through a sea of faces watching him. “Tel Eli I said hel o.”
I go up to Tess’s unit, and see Eli sitting in the smal waiting room outside. He’s easy to spot because a couple of nurse’s aides are busy organizing carts by the door and gawking at him.
I ask them if they’ve seen Claire, and they both shrug and go back to gawking. I squeeze past them and into the room where Eli sits, tapping the fingers of one hand against a chair as he stares at the television bolted to the wal .
“Hey,” I say, and tel myself the kick-in-the-gut drop I get when he looks at me is just an involuntary reaction. Like stomach cramps after eating bad food.
I don’t real y believe it.
“Hey,” he says, voice as low and steady and sweet as I remember, and the aides out in the hal are gawking so hard I can feel their gazes boring into me.
I can feel them wondering how and why someone like him is talking to someone like me.
“You ready to go?” I say, and they’l stop wondering as soon as Tess wakes up and they see him with her.
