Promises

CHAPTER 29

THE first few times I woke, I was heavily drugged. I was vaguely aware of a parade of faces: one gray-faced doctor and an army of nurses, all interchangeable in their blue scrubs. Lizzy, Brian, Mom, Matt. Lucy? My molasses brain caught on that one, ripples of confusion, before flowing along into oblivion. I was vaguely aware that there were often people in my room I couldn’t see. They talked a lot, but only random phrases stuck with me—“replace the window” and “like a nanny”—but I couldn’t make any sense of them.

I kept feeling things crawling on me, but nobody seemed to notice. I finally managed to catch one of the nurses and said, “Bugs on my skin.”

She patted my hand and said, “It’s the Oxycodone.”

I heard the words but had no idea what they meant. I was trying to break the sentence down. It was definitely in English.

I fell asleep again before I got any further than that.

THE time finally came when I woke up, and the world made sense again. The fog in my brain had receded and become only a cloudy blotch in my memory. I was relieved that, at that moment, the only person in the room with me was Matt. He was leaning against the wall, looking out the window.

“Oxycodone makes me itch,” I said. Well, maybe there was still a little bit of fog left. I wasn’t exactly sure why that was the first thing to come out of my mouth.

His head whipped my direction. “What?”

“The painkiller they were giving me. It makes my skin crawl.”

He smiled and came to sit on the bed next to me. “That explains a lot. You kept saying ‘bugs.’”

“Next time I get shot, tell them I want Vicodin instead.”

“I will.” But then his face became serious. “You look like hell. How do you feel?”

“Like I need a shower.” I was looking around a little more and realized there were flowers everywhere. “Who are all those from?”

“Mostly your students and various members of the Coda Police Department. The school. Mr. Stevens. A lot of them are from people I don’t know. You’re a hero, you know?”

“Do I get a cape? I want red.”

“The way the story is being told, you bravely jumped in front of Mom and me in order to save our lives.” His eyes were crinkling at me, and his voice was light. “You took a bullet for us.”

“What am I, the secret service? I was just trying to get your attention. I wasn’t planning on getting shot.”

He smiled. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

We didn’t talk for a minute, and I started thinking about the scene at the table, before the incident in the front yard. Matt had actually told his dad about us.

“Why did you do it?”

He must have been thinking about it, too, because he didn’t have to ask what I was talking about.

“That day, I just kept thinking about the choices I had made in my life. Some of the hardest ones were decisions I knew he would hate if he knew about them. But they all turned out to be good. First, I decided not to join the military. And I think that was the right choice. Second.” He was ticking them off on his fingers as he talked. “I decided a few years ago to quit dating. I’ve already told you that my life got a lot easier after that. Then, I decided that your friendship was more important to me than what my coworkers were saying. And that turned out to be a good decision. And then when Cherie died, I decided to accept the fact that I wanted to fuck your brains out.”

“And that,” I interjected, “was a very wise decision.”

He smiled and winked at me. “It was.” His face grew serious again. “So we were all sitting there at the table, and he was screaming. And I was thinking about all of those decisions and how they had brought me to this place in my life where I was really, truly happy for the first time ever. So I asked myself, what’s the worst he can do to me? And I knew the answer right away—he could disown me. And I wasn’t really sure anymore why that seemed like a bad thing. It was like the solution was right there in front of me, and I was just being too fucking stupid to see it.” He was looking down at where our hands were clasped together on the bed by my side. “It’s actually a relief. I don’t have to waste another second of my life trying to make him happy.”

“What about your mom?”

He brightened a little. “Once she calmed down, she told me that she had suspected all along.” Funny how that works, I thought, remembering my conversation with Brian so many years ago. “I can’t really say that she’s happy about it, but she knows I’m happy. And that means something to her, I think.”

“I thought she was here.”

“She was. She delayed her flight and spent a couple of days here. Turns out with Dad gone, she and Lizzy and your mom are like three peas in a pod.”

“She’s gone now?”

“She is, but she’ll be back.” His eyes tightened a little, and he frowned. “She’s leaving him. She went home to get her things in order. Lizzy offered to let her live with them for a while. She said she could use help with James anyway.”

“Like a nanny,” I said quietly to myself, as one piece fell into place.

“Yes.” He was smiling again. “She’s so excited to have a surrogate grandchild; I think she would leave my dad for James alone.”

We were quiet again as I thought about all that he had said.

“Matt, I’m so sorry. You lost your family, all because of me.”

He looked at me with alarm. “What? No! You’ve got it all wrong.” He leaned forward on the bed and put his hand on my cheek. “I didn’t lose my family because of you. I have a family because of you.”

I leaned into his touch. “I want to go home. When are they letting me go?”

“Tuesday afternoon. I work the two to ten that day, but I’ll get it off.”

“Don’t. Mom or Brian or Lizzy will give me a ride.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“I’m sure. I’ll be waiting for you when you get home.”

“Will you be naked?” he asked with a wicked grin.

I laughed and pushed him off the bed. “Just wait and see.”