Page 32 of Good Luck, Babe!
I don’t ask what she means exactly. Been there for me? For him? For the diagnosis, for the hospital visits? In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Here’s how you know my mind is out of my body in this moment: I tell Yumi the truth. “Me too.”
“I’ll try,” she says. “I promise. I’ll try to act like…For him, I’ll try.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
“But you can’t read too much into it,” she says in a voice that tugs my attention back to her.
I know that voice. That’s her smiling voice. That’s her joking voice. Iknowthat voice. It hits me. No metaphor, because it doesn’t hit melikeanything. It just hits me. I turn slowly to find her smiling down at her notebook.
She looks up, pointing her pen at me. “I don’t forgive you. And if it seems like I do, it’s just friendship muscle memory. I’ll do it, but after we win, I’m never talking to you again.”
I can’t catch my breath—drowning in relief, gratitude cresting over me in waves. “I…Thank you. Yes. Got it. I…Thank you.”
She rolls her eyes, smiling. “You’re embarrassing yourself, Breland.”
Oh, I know. I just don’t care. Tentative, aware that thismoment is something very fragile I hold between my hands, I quip, “And yet you’re dating me.”
“Only under great duress,” Yumi says gravely.
“It’s charity work, really.”
She huffs a laugh.
I hesitate before continuing, but I’ve already come this far. Might as well dive further under the bus. “I’m about to say something you’re going to hate. If we’re going to be dating, I think we’re going to have to start calling each other ‘babe.’ ”
She furrows her brow. “Why ‘babe’?”
I swirl my hand. “Doesn’t have to be babe. Bunny, snookums, light of my life, whatever. You have to call mesomethingbesides ‘uh, hey’ if we want people to believe we’re dating.”
She sighs exaggeratedly, but without malice. “Fine, sure. Whatever convinces Aliona.”
“Yay,” I say, not even caring about how small and dorky I sound. It’s such a weight off my mind to know that we’re going to at least try. I spin the globe again.
“And you’re not allowed to be weird about this, by the way.”
“I…don’t know how much control I have over acting weird.” My cheeks hurt from smiling. I spin my necklace again.
She tips her head playfully. “Well, to the best of your ability, then.”
“Friends would probably hug right now,” I comment with a frown, knowing that she’ll say something likeYeah, and girlfriends would probably make out, but we won’t be doing that, either.
But she doesn’t. She just shrugs, smirking. “Yeah, but I’m not getting up. You’ll have to come over he—oof!”
The hug is more of a collision, a crash that results in us lying on her comforter, staring at the ceiling. We’re not quite side by side, I’ve somehow ended up near the foot of the bed, but we feel closer than that.
“Thank you,” I whisper to the overhead light.
“I love him, Noe. I didn’t like seeing him like that.” Her voice is sharp, angry at something, but it’s not me this time.
“Welcome to my entire last year,” I joke humorlessly.
“I hate it here.”
“I did, too.”
The night doesn’t last much longer—the Second Adventure starts at seven a.m. and we want to be well-rested—and for the first time in a year, I fall asleep easily and I don’t dream of anything at all.
Chapter 19
