Page 22 of Tripped By Love

ME: Sleep well.

ANGEL: Marco?

ME: Yeah?

ANGEL: Never mind…just…sleep well, too.

It was going to eat away at me a little, not knowing what she’d really wanted to say, just like the night before when I’d left her house. We weren’t close enough for her to bare her soul, but it was all I wanted her to do. I wanted every little thought. Every concern. Every smile.

Then, I thought of Jonas, and his buzzing phone, and the girl he liked who had a boyfriend, and I chuckled. He and I weren’t as far apart as I sometimes felt.

???

When Jonas and I got to the hospital the next day, Maliyah was sitting up with knitting needles in her hands while trying to demonstrate something to Maria Carmen who was at her bedside. Maria Carmen had aged more gracefully than Maliyah. Her black hair was hardly streaked with gray, and her tan skin was almost wrinkleless, whereas Maliyah’s hair that had once been a deep auburn bordering on chestnut had very little left that wasn’t gray when it wasn’t dyed, and her wrinkles were deep and lined. I didn’t know if the differences were on account of their genetics or if it was the lives they’d led.

Maliyah had been in and out of foster homes from the time she was five. She’d been taken away from her parents who’d been drug dealers. One of the last foster homes she’d been at had been next door to Maria Carmen’s house, and the two women had become fast friends. So much so that Maliyah had lived with Maria Carmen’s family her last year of high school and right on through college where she got her degree in social work.

“Until you can knit without dropping a stitch again, you’re staying with me, end of story,” Maria Carmen huffed. Her eyes caught sight of us and lit up. “Mijos!”

She came over and patted me on the cheek before slinging her arm around Jonas’s shoulders. “You ate last night?”

I held back my snort.

“Yes,Tía,” Jonas said, and he didn’t hold back his eye roll.

“Don’t you worry about Maliyah. We are going to have her on her feet and running wild before you know it,” Maria Carmen said, giving Maliyah a warm smile.

Jonas disentangled himself from Maria Carmen and went to Maliyah’s bedside. “You want me to go with Marco?”

Maliyah’s eyes shot to me and then back to Jonas. She patted his hand, and when she talked, one side of her mouth was stiffer than the other. Not quite keeping up. It could have been so much worse?the stroke and her heart stopping—but it was still the second occurrence of cardiomyopathy in less than eight years.

“I’ll be at the rehab clinic for a while,” she said.

“I can stay at the house on my own. I’m not a baby,” he said, but the tone almost belied his words.

My phone buzzed.

TREVOR: Everything is good here. Stop worrying.

I wanted to laugh because he knew me well enough to know it had been the first thing on my mind this morning. Brady’s detail. His family counting on me. Cassidy.

ME: Thanks. I’m hoping to be home soon.

Austin was where the people who knew me best were at—or at least the people who knew my history. All of it. The good and the ugly. Yet, I couldn’t help feeling like Grand Orchard really was my home.

I sent the next text before I could stop myself, repeating Trevor’s words to Cassidy.

ME: Stop worrying about me. I’m fine.

ANGEL: You really mean fine as in faking-it-so-nobody-sees-the-pain, right? I know that kind of fine.

I snorted, and it drew the eyes in the room to me. Maliyah’s knowing ones lit up.

“Who you texting?” she asked.

“Trevor…about the detail,” I said, shoving the phone away.

I couldn’t get her hopes up. There would never be anything between Cassidy and me. Nothing more than this little bit of friendship we’d carved out.