“When did you drive all the way back to the beach?” I kept staring at the bracelet.
“Marissa, you’re funny. I didn’t drive back. I got it that day. When I sent you to get a table for us to eat lunch.” He took the bracelet from the box and began fastening it around my wrist.
“Brandon,” I said again. But before I could continue, his lips were on mine. The kiss was electric, and my brain became foggy. His face was still inches from mine after our lips parted. “I have to tell you something.”
Chapter Eighteen
He wrapped his hands around my waist and pulled me closer to him. “What do you want to tell me?” His voice was soft and deep.
The warmth of him so close to me made me want to start crying again. I was so sick of crying. It’d felt like I had been crying for years, not always outwardly but internally, like a leaky faucet that only I could hear dripping inside me. The sorrow. My body had been filled with a deep, buried pain that I never fully let out.
I thought about the survival mode I had put myself in. The way I had to stay in a state of disbelief just so I didn’t have to accept my mom’s death. My thoughts were always focused on the moment, not on what had happened, so I felt like it was okay to not think about my mom as being… dead. In a way I would pretend in my mind that she was just away on a business trip — although she never traveled for her job — and that someday, somehow, she’d come back. Maybe she’d bring Marc back with her. It sounded crazy but I know it worked because the handful of times I let myself fall into the reality of it all, when I’d totally focus on the fact that I didn’t have my mother anymore, that’s when I’d lose it. I’d turn into a heaping pile of moans and tears on the floor. In those moments, I felt like I’d never be able to pull myself out of the darkness. Like the grief was going to cause me to implode, and I’d disintegrate into its clutches. I didn’t want to feel that place, so I continued on, living instead in a surreal state.
But there I was, with Brandon’s soft hazel eyes looking down at me, wondering what in the world was I was thinking. “I just…” Hot darts poked me behind my eyes. The words of psychotherapist Janet Lillyhood rang in my ears: “The only way to finally free yourself of the pain you’re feeling is to experience it. From that, you’ll be able to heal.” Oh, forget you, I thought to myself. To Brandon I said, “I just don’t know how to thank you. That’s all.” I looked up at him and let his warm, easy smile wash over me.
****
The next morning, I was pulling books out of my locker wondering what I was doing at school. I should have been at the hospital by my grandmother’s side. Earlier that morning, I had spoken to the doctor, and he told me the MRI had showed less damage then he had originally anticipated. Bottom line, it looked like Gram was going to be okay. She would have to take it easy for a while and spend the next two days in the hospital, but after that she’d be prescribed a bunch of overly expensive pills to try to prevent another stroke and heart attack, even though nothing can truly prevent that type of thing. And I had to come into school to take a stupid algebra test and suffer through the other mind-numbing courses I had before heading over to the hospital to visit her. Then I had to work from five to nine.
“Hey, I didn’t think you’d be here today.” Zoe had come up on my left and wrapped her arms around me. “Any updates?” The night before, I had called her and told her everything that had happened.
“Yeah, she’s doing better. The doctor said it looks like everything will be okay. She can come home in a few days.” I slung my bookbag over my shoulder as we started down the hallway.
“Oh good. Hey, I’m sorry again for sending Brandon to your house. My mom had borrowed my car, and I was worried when you didn’t text or call me back.”
“It’s all right,” I said while adjusting my backpack on my shoulder again.
“Hey.” Zoe reached out and touched my wrist. “That’s beautiful.” She stroked the blue sea glass stone.
“Thanks. Brandon gave it to me last night.” His name felt cumbersome in my mouth.
We stopped in front of the door to my class. “So,” Zoe eyed me conspicuously. “You’re getting pretty close then.” Again her eyes were hot on me.
“Yeah, I guess so.” My backpack suddenly felt like it was cutting into my shoulder.
“Does he know?”
“What?”
“Marissa, don’t play dumb. I hate when people play dumb.”
I knew she did. And I knew what she meant. “No.”
She made some dramatic, exasperated hand gestures. “You still haven’t told him about your mom?”
I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “Not yet.”
“What about the race? You could have opened up to him when you brought up the breast cancer race.” Her eyes wildly darted back and forth.
“Well, I still haven’t decided about the race,” I half-mumbled.
“You wh-at?” she broke the last word into two exaggerated syllables.
The bell rang, and kids were shoving past us rushing to get to their classrooms. I never understood why they rushed. What did it even matter anyway? You could be dead tomorrow.
Zoe looked over her shoulder at a girl who yelled to her that she was going to be late. “I’m coming,” she yelled back to her. Then to me, she said, “You have to tell him before things get
