Valerie nodded. “Nice to meet you too, John. Hopefully I’ll see you again in a better situation.”
“I plan on being here for Melanie’s surgery on Monday. If she finally agrees to let me go.” He looked at me, his eyes sparkling. He knew the best way to get me to say yes. I kind of wondered if he planned on staying the night so he’d have to meet my sister the next morning.
I swallowed hard, thinking that I really needed to brush my teeth. “Yeah. Eight sharp.”
“I’ll be there.” He squeezed my hand and walked toward the door. “See you both then.” He waved and walked out, closing the door behind him.
Valerie watched him walk out and then turned her attention to me. “Wow, Mel, he really is hot. Damn you did good.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” I may have said the words, but even I doubted them. Truth be told, I didn’t know what we were. Friends for sure, but after his performance on the dance floor, I was wondering how much more we were than friends.
“Just the guy that sleeps in your bed, takes you to doctor appointments, and that you happen to be wearing lingerie for?” She arched her very thin eyebrows high on her head.
I crossed my arms over my chest, hoping that I didn’t have another nip slip. “It’s a top. I wore it when we went out last night.”
“Out? In that outfit? No wonder he came home with you.”
“Can we just drop it?” I didn’t want to talk about John anymore than I had to. It was confusing enough to me what was going on with us and I didn’t want to dissect it anymore with my sister.
“Fine. Fine. We can drop it. For now. But you know Mom is going to have even more questions than I do.”
I sighed. “Since when did the guy I hang out with overshadow everything else that’s going on? The real reason that you’re here. My surgery.”
She blinked hard, her eyes watering. “I didn’t think that was something you would want to talk about. I thought we could maybe talk about something happier, like possibly how happy Mr. tattooed wonder boy is making you in the sack.”
I shoved her arm. “God, Val! Even if I was sleeping with him I wouldn’t be talking about that with you.”
“Oh come on!” She laughed. “Like any girl wouldn’t want to hear more about that hot piece of man candy that just left here. How did you wind up with a guy like him anyway? I thought you preferred the pretentious, intellectual types?”
I pushed a strand of my now frizzy hair out of my face. “It’s a long story.”
“Give me the shortened version.”
“Fine. Monica dragged me to a party at her boyfriend’s fraternity. John is her boyfriend’s fraternity big brother. We hit it off. The end.” I didn’t need to tell her that he was wearing just a loincloth when we met or any other of the details of that night. The more basic the better.
“Monica’s dating a guy in a fraternity? Wow, you really are going to have to catch me up on things before Mom gets here.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, but I need to shower so you can sit and talk to me while I do that.”
“It’s like middle school all over again.” She beamed.
Strange, but true. We had to share a bathroom when we lived at home, so one of us would always be showering while the other one was doing their hair or makeup or whatever else we had to do in the bathroom. We both got used to having most of our talks while the other one was in the shower. Some people found it weird, but I’d had some of the best conversations with my sister while I was putting on mascara or shaving my legs.
“So tell me what is this surgery all about? Mom didn’t seem to understand it,” Val yelled from the other side of the shower curtain.
“They’re basically lasering the cancer out.”
“That seems way too simple. Are you sure you heard the doctor right?” I heard the clanking of metal and figured she was either going through my medicine cabinet or my makeup. Valerie didn’t do privacy.
“Yeah. I’m sure they keep the sample they take out and make sure they have all of it and then the doctor will do another biopsy to see if all of the cancer is removed.”
“And what if it’s not?”
I let the water run over my body. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if they didn’t get all of the cancer. It was something I kept putting into the back of my mind. I tried to focus on the feeling of the warm water on my skin instead of thinking about that. “Then the doctor will tell me what to do, I guess.”
“If you don’t want to talk about this, we could just talk about the cute babies you and John would make.”
I laughed, spitting some water out that got into my mouth as I washed my face. “There will be no Melanie and John babies.”
“I’d make his babies. Lord, I don’t know how you keep your hands off those abs. He had like a freaking eight pack.”
Truth was, I’d thought more about babies than a nineteen-year-old without an actual steady boyfriend should think about. I wondered if there was even a chance for children in my future. Up until last night I didn’t even think I’d want to have any sexual contact with someone again. Even if it was only his hand. John was everything I wanted physically in a guy and he made my sex drive run wild, but that wasn’t what I needed. I had to stop kidding myself. Fooling around with the hot guy wasn’t going to fix me.
“When’s Mom coming in?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“I don’t know. I guess she was working this morning or something.”
I finished washing my hair and then turned off the water, pulling my towel from the shower rod. “Isn’t she always working?”
“Well, yeah, you know Dad left her with shit. What else is she supposed to do?”
I dried my hair and body and wrapped the towel around me before I opened the shower curtain. As I suspected, Valerie was staring at herself in the mirror, putting on one of my lip glosses.
“Is this why we have such fucked up relationships with men?”
Valerie blinked at her reflection in the mirror and then put the lip gloss down. She turned toward me, her eyes serious. “Your relationships are what you make of them, Mel. We can’t just blame everything on our parents’ mistakes. Mom and Dad may be fucked up, but that doesn’t mean we have to be.” She leaned on the sink behind her. “I mean, look at you. You have your own apartment, a job, and you’re practically paying for college on your own. You’re the exact opposite of Mom. You don’t need to depend on a guy to save you. When Robby left you didn’t just fall apart. You moved on. Mom cried for weeks when Dad left and she almost lost her job. It took everything she had to finally go back to work.”
I shook my head. “That can’t be true.”
Valerie rolled her eyes. “I don’t know if you just didn’t notice because you were too busy doing your own thing, but Mom was a freaking wreck. She called me every single day while you were at school and I wasn’t in class. I told her that it was your last year of high school and she needed to buck up for you, and eventually she did, but I really thought you would have seen it since you were living with her.”
I didn’t. I was so self-absorbed that I didn’t want to be anywhere that wasn’t with Robby or work. The only good thing that came out of that was that I saved up enough to help with college expenses. But now I just felt like the most insensitive daughter in the world.
“I really didn’t know,” I whispered.
Valerie took a step closer and put her hand on my wet shoulder. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up over it. You weren’t supposed to be the one to save her. It was her cross to bear and she survived.”
Mom was broken and was able to be saved. Hopefully I would be able to do the same. And then it was as if she heard us talking about her, because a knock came at the door.
“I’ll get it.” Valerie turned and walked out of the bathroom, of course still leaving the door wide open while I was standing there in my towel. Luckily it really was my mom at the door and not some maintenance dude.
“Good morning.” Mom was carrying a drink tray with three iced coffees and another small brown bag, while dragging her suitcase behind her. Mom had to go back to work after my surgery so she wanted to come in a few days early to help out with anything. Then she’d be back for Thanksgiving. Valerie took the week off of work. I
