Page 277 of Disarm
It feels like… pacing ourselves.
That night,before curfew rolls around, Miguel lies beside me on top of the covers, fully dressed, one arm crooked under his head. We’re not touching. We don’t always touch each other now. Sometimes it’s enough just to know he’s there.
Right now, recovery is small and unglamorous and so fucking boring. It’s showing up to group. Answering honestly when someone asks for my volume. Eating my mom’s leftovers instead of “forgetting” dinner. Handing Miguel a copy of my new weekly plan. Letting my dad sit quietly in the rec room while I watch a game, both of us pretending this is normal, and maybe someday, it will be.
It’s also bigger, in a way I’m just starting to understand.
Dr. K said, “We’re not meeting you in the morgue. We’re meeting you here.”
Miguel said, “Leaving you is not on the table.”
Mom said,“No pidas perdón por estar vivo.”
The beeping monitors are gone, but their rhythm is still in my chest.
In.
Out.
I stare into the dark, feel Miguel’s weight on the mattress, and breathe. I don’t know what tomorrow’s wave will look like. But tonight, I let myself imagine redwoods and glass walls and a bed forty feet up in the air. Miguel’s curls in morning light. Coffee in real mugs. No alarms except the waves.
“Hey, Miggy?” I whisper.
“Yeah?” he murmurs, half-asleep.
“If we ever go,” I say, “I’m calling dibs on the side of the bed with the best view.”
He laughs softly, sleepy and fond. “You can have the whole damn view, pretty boy,” he says. “Just… be there to see it.”
“I’m working on it,” I say.
I smirk and think to myself that for the first time in a long time, the sentence doesn’t feel like a lie.
FORTY-EIGHT
MIGUEL
Thirteen weeks after Caleb graduates IOP, the treehouse vacation is forty-eight hours away and my stomach has decided to train for the Olympics.
Not Caleb’s stomach. Mine.
Which feels unfair, because I’m the one who booked the damn thing.
I’m at Mom’s kitchen table, laptop open, the confirmation email glowing at me like,You did this, pendejo.The listing photo is still ridiculous: a treehouse wrapped around a redwood, all glass and warm wood and fairy lights. The Big Sur coastline is in the background, all cliffs and fog and “one wrong turn and you die.”
Ten seconds in, my brain helpfully supplies, “What if it’s too much?” What if he freaks out? What if being away from routine makes everything worse and not better?
I shut the laptop before I can spiral. The screen snaps closed with a click.
Mom glances over from the stove, where she’s making enough carne asada to feed a small army. “What are you doing over there?” she asks. “You have your thinking face on.”
“My thinking face is hot,” I say automatically.
She snorts. “Your thinking face is your worried face,” she corrects. “Which is less hot.”
I rub a hand over my jaw. “Just… looking at the reservation again,” I admit. “The treehouse. Making sure the dates are right. Making sure I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing.”
Mom turns down the burner and comes to lean on the back of the chair across from me. “You could recite the directions in your sleep,” she murmurs. “You’ve checked it ten times.”
