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“But I want to know the same thing,” Birdie said. “I thought he was the dream guy?”
Mara frowned. “And why is it taking you so long to save for a house? Do you have a gambling problem or something?”
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. “No, I don’t have a gambling problem.”
“Then what is it?” Mara asked. “You’ve been saving as long as I’ve known you and living with your parents to save costs. Even if you wanted twenty percent down, you’d easily have enough for a smaller house out here.” She wasn’t judgmental about it. Just confused.
If I told my parents and grandma the real reason I’d been saving, they would talk me out of it, and I didn’t want anyone to do that. But my friends could respect my choices. I trusted them. Still, I asked, “If I tell you the truth, can you promise to keep it a secret?”
Birdie and Mara each offered their word.
I took a breath.
I hadn’t ever voiced my plan aloud. But I knew I needed to get it off my chest. I needed someone to understand and tell me I wasn’t completely insane for letting a guy like Tyler walk away.
“When my grandpa got colon cancer six years ago, it was the worst year of my life. He was diagnosed at stage IV, and he got so horribly sick, he was gasping for air with every breath for months. He deteriorated to skin and bones, but there was so much fluid in his body that his stomach was the size of a beach ball.” I choked on my words, on the memory. He’d been such a strong, proud man, but this disease reduced him to nothing.
Birdie reached across the table and held my hand.
“Grandma had to sell her house just to pay for his hospice care. It wiped out all of their savings. The care wasn’t great either. The hospice house was so sterile, and turnover was so high you couldn’t count on the same workers being there every day. And then the walls were so thin, you could hear all those people suffering around him.” My voice cracked, and I hung on to Birdie with all I had. “He kept begging to come home so he could go peacefully in his bed, but Grandma couldn’t tell him she’d sold the house. There was nowhere else for him to go. I felt so powerless, watching him suffer and not having the money to do anything about it, especially after all he and Grandma did for me.”
My friends waited silently, so I took a deep breath, revealing my biggest secret of all.
“So, I promised myself that I would save all the money I could to keep my grandma from suffering the same fate he did.”
Mara covered her mouth, tears in her eyes. “That’s why you’ve been so frugal? Hen, why didn’t you tell us?”
I wiped at my own teary eyes. “I got so used to telling the house story around my family, I guess it was easier to keep up the lie.”
Birdie squeezed my hand. “That’s so selfless of you, Hen, to do that for your grandma. Does she know?”
I shook my head. “If she knew, she’d try to talk me out of it.”
“How much do you have saved?” Mara asked.
I bit my lip, knowing the exact number. “Almost a hundred thousand.”
Birdie let out a low whistle. “I knew end-of-life care was expensive, but not that expensive...”
“They say to budget for five thousand dollars a month,” I said, “and I want to give her two years of really good care in our home, if she ever needs it. I should be able to save the last twenty thousand dollars this year, but by the time I do...”
“It’ll be too late for Tyler,” Birdie said.
I nodded. “But if I risk my job to be with Tyler and shit hits the fan, then I have to look for a new job, which could take months. Especially if I want to find one that pays as much as this one.”
My friends and I were quiet as the weight of what I admitted hung over us. Because the truth was, some things were more important than following a potential love.
Mara tilted her head, smiling softly. “You know, in business they say short-term loss can lead to long-term gain. It’s kind of like with you and Tyler. Even if you’re set back a few months, you could gain experience at the very least.”
Birdie nodded. “You could find your person, Hen. Tyler could turn out to be nothing—but you’ll never know if you don’t give him a chance. And if you’d go through all of this for your grandma, don’t you think the potential love of your life deserves a date?”
22
Tyler
Gravel crunched under Henrietta’s tires as she approached the construction site. I’d love to say it didn’t hurt like hell to hear her pulling up, but it did. And maybe I did the immature thing of hiding out in the trailer because I wasn’t quite ready to see her yet this morning. She’d been so stoic with me all week, only talking about work and not bantering with me like she usually did. It hurt almost as bad as her rejection.
Rich, an older guy on the construction crew, with white hair and a red face from years of working in the sun, came in and got a couple of folding tables. “Hen brought treats again. I’m really coming to love that girl.”