Page 131 of Someone Like Me
DREW
ANNIE: They admitted Grandma to geriatrics. Running tests now.
I make a noise in the back of my throat as I read my sister’s text at the stop light. Evie’s eyes snap to me. She’s been quiet the last few minutes, but she’s on high alert now.
“Bad news?” she asks, worry tightening her voice.
I shrug, put down the phone, and focus on traffic. “Not bad. Just… real.” The hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach hasn’t faded at all since I walked into Grandma Quincy’s room and saw her like that.
And I should have known. When she wasn’t in the kitchen with her coffee when I came in. I knew how bad she’d been coughing. I should have checked on her right then instead of telling myself to let her sleep while I made coffee and breakfast.
But I’d wanted to surprise her. Her and Evie.
I’m gripping the steering wheel hard, and Evie lays a hand on my elbow. “You’re worried.”
I glance at her and make the turn onto Johnston. “Of course, I’m worried. Grandma’s eighty-three.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and then, “I hate worrying. I usually try to figure out what’s underneath the worry, and then I feel that instead.”
I can’t help it. I look at her like she’s crazy. Like she’s my one and only Guppy.
She nods and drops her hand to my knee, smoothing it over my jeans. The touch isn’t sexual. It’s loving. If I could lean into it, press back, I would.
“What’s underneath your worry, Drew?” Her voice is so gentle. It’s like the pull of the tide on a calm day at the beach. I feel like I’m being tugged along with it. I turn into the lot of the Yoga Garden, park the car, and kill the ignition. I already know we’re going to be here for a few minutes.
“I don’t really get your question,” I tell her, and I mean it. I’m not trying to be stubborn and block-headed. “I mean, isn’t it obvious?”
Evie gives me a soft smile, but I can see a wisdom in her eyes that… well… I’ve never noticed in someone so young. I sure as hell didn’t have it at twenty-one. “What’s obvious?”
“Why I’m worried. I mean, Grandma’s old. She’s sick, and it’s serious.”
She watches me for a moment, but she’s not searching my face. I think she’s waiting. Waiting for me to take it a step further. But she can just keep on waiting because I’m not going to say that out loud.
Okay, maybe now I am being stubborn.
“Is it her death you’re worried about?”
My breath escapes me like I’ve been punched in the gut. “Don’t say that.”
Her green eyes soften with compassion and what I now recognize as love, and she grips my hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just—” She stops, frowning a little as she presses her lips together.
“What?”
Evie shakes her head. “No. I’m not going to push. If you’re not ready to talk about this, I don’t want to make you.”
But the initial shock — the instinctive recoil from the idea of death, the way someone jumps back when they see a snake — has faded. And now, I’ll be damned if I’ll let her walk away without hearing what she has to say.
“No. I’m alright,” I insist. “Tell me.”
She looks at me now, and this time she is searching. Assessing. Making sure I can handle whatever she’s about to give me. And the truth of it hits me like a falling oak.
“I want whatever you have for me, Evie. Hard truths. Yoga poses. Lessons in Chinese mysticism. Whatever,” I tell her, completely serious. “Spill it.”
Her slow smile has become one of my best friends. I want to know it for the rest of my life.
“Okay.” She nods, still smiling, but her eyes have an intent kind of seriousness. “So, I think we’ve established that you’re worried about your grandma dying.”
This time, it’s not a shock, but the thought still makes my stomach ball up. “Yes. I am.”
