Page 94 of Emmett
“Even if he’s fine, up and moving, and only stuck there on technicality?”
“Even if,” he tells me. Something flashes behind his eyes just for a second while he looks at me – pain - but he quickly shoves it away, reaching instead for the deck of cards waiting on my bedside table. Tapping them against the rolling table we’ve been eating all of our meals on, he asks, “Do you remember how to play War?”
We play through the deck twice, and I’m grateful that he doesn’t take it easy on me or try to let me win. The game is just as competitive between us now as it was when I was a kid and he first taught me how to play. I don’t tell him how much better I can breathe knowing that he isn’t handling me with kid gloves and treating me like he’s afraid that at any second, I’ll break again.
My eyes land on someone standing over the counter of the nurse’s station, talking to one of them. Dark, neatly-styled hair sits on top of his head, a thick stubble of matching color and neatness covering his jaw. His cream-colored sweater seems almost too formal for this place; toonice.
“You should go grab a coffee,” I tell Dad while he shuffles the cards for a third game.
Lifting his watch, he lets out a chuckle and tells me, “I’ve had three already, and it’s not even noon yet.”
“Dad, I need some space.”
“Oh.” Realization crosses his features – what he thinks he’s realized, I’m not sure, but he claps his hands together as he stands. “Got it. I’ll give Rowan a call and be back in a bit, alright? I’ll let the nurse know and she can check in on you. I’ll be right outside.”
As he leaves the room, he pulls his phone from his pocket and heads down the walkway that leads past the nurse’s station. My breath halts while I watch him walk past Nash, completely engrossed in the little screen in his hand.
As Nash approaches my room, he stuffs one hand into the pocket of his dark wash jeans, and I look away from him, reaching instead for the deck of cards. I pretend to shuffle them as he steps closer and raps his knuckles against the frame of the sliding door.
“I’ve been calling you,” he tells me as he walks into the room.
“I saw. Nineteen whole times.”
“I was worried.” Inviting himself closer, he moves away the table that Dad and I were using for our game and he settles onto the bed, closer to me than I want him to be. “You tried to die on me.”
“Most people would be happy about a parasite dying,” I bite, and he flinches at my words.
“Emmett, I’m sor—”
“They’re your words, Nash. Own them.”
With a heavy sigh, he rests his hands on his thighs and pushes himself to a standing position, heading back toward the door. With his hand braced on the door frame, he turns to me. “I’m glad that you’re okay,” he tells me as the thumb of his free hand affectionately traces the crucifix around his neck.
“I thought you and God broke up.”
“Apparently, we found something that we could agree on. Stay well, Emmett,” he tells me.
“You told me that I belonged to you,” I snap as he turns to leave. “You said that you wouldn’t leave me. And then you threw me away like a piece of garbage.”
He stops in his tracks, taking another deep breath before running his fingers through his perfectly-coiffed hair. Turning back to my room, he slides the door shut and draws the curtain behind it to give us some illusion of privacy.
“Do you know the definition of the word sacrifice?”
“I know what a sacrifice—”
“Thedefinitionof sacrifice,” he says, cutting me off, “is the act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else which is more important.”
A laugh floats out of me; not because it’s funny, but because he seems like he’s genuinely being serious. Acting as if he’s deluded himself into thinking he’s done me some huge favor, as if the cruel things that he said to me and the way that he manipulated me were somehow formybenefit.
“Calling me a parasite desperate for love was to...helpme, that’s what we’re saying?”
“No,” he responds through gritted teeth. His hands ball into fists and come down on either side of my legs, pressing into the mattress. Hazel eyes bore into me with a heat so intense that I might melt beneath their gaze.
“I have thought about you every single day since you walked out of my house,” he tells me. “I’ve imagined your head underwater and your skin raw and picked away.” He takes my hand in his and raises it to inspect the side of my thumb, where the skinisraw and picked away.
His lips brush against the skin there before bringing my hand to his chest to feel that his heartbeat is strong and steady beneath the wall of his body. “I wanted to tell you that it was okay. I wanted to tell you that I understood and that you would be fine. I wanted you to befine. When those words came out of my mouth instead, I feltsick, pretty boy; but it made you hate me, and I could be okay with that if it meant that you wouldn’t hate yourself.”
“You didn’t answer any of my calls.”