Page 104 of End Game

He tells me about his family’s Coming to America story. It’s something I’ve heard a dozen times and never gets old. My great-grandparents left everything behind in South Africa to come here, only to get trapped in North Carolina by the arcane Jim Crow laws. They were able to build a life for themselves in a small town in the mountains, and then fifteen years later, a devastating forest fire took out their homestead and left them with nothing once more. It’s such a dramatic story, it deserves its own book.

He tells me about how his parents, my grandparents, met way back when. He tells me about his first date with my mother. He tells me about when he first decided he wanted to marry her, and how he was so nervous to propose, she thought he was trying to break up with her. He tells me how she first told him she was pregnant with me. They weren’t trying, but they weren’t not trying, either.

We’re both all too aware that time is running out. Nobody knows how much time he has left. It could be weeks, it could be months, it could be years. Time is fickle that way. Nothing is guaranteed.

Mostly we just spend time together, not necessarily talking, just enjoying our time together. My mom is there too, reading, puttering around. She brings a pile of blankets down to my dad’s favorite armchair, so he can set up a home base downstairs, and she makes his favorite meals because his stomach is still a little upset. He’s eating a lot of red jello and chocolate pudding, too, which is something he’s never enjoyed until he had it in the hospital after surgery and it was the best thing he’d ever eaten.

While my mom makes her signature banana bread (chocolate chips, no walnuts) just for me, I sit at the kitchen island and watch her work. Her classic version includes the walnuts that could kill me, so she takes the time to make me a special batch even though it goes against her very being to omit what she sees as a vital ingredient.

I don’t actually like banana bread. I don’t like bananas, either. But this is what she’s known for. So I’ll take a few loaves of it back to school, and I’ll give it to Barrett and the boys. I know B loves it. I don’t understand it. Bananas are gross. I like making Barrett happy, though.

I’m avoiding my dad. He’s taking a nap, which is fine. But I’m avoiding him. I don’t like seeing him like this, weak and in pain. I only want to remember the good, not the bad. I want to remember my dad as a strong, capable man, not the version of him he is now.

But this is who he is. It would be a disservice to who he is at his core to block this time out. A person is allowed to be weak. They’re allowed to be fallible. They’re allowed to be failed by their own bodies. They’re allowed to be human.

There is a hard road ahead. My dad is not going to get better, not really, and we’re all going to have to stand by and watch. We’re powerless to help him. He’s taking meds, he’s doing procedures, he’s doing everything he needs to in order to keep going on.

But eventually, it won’t be enough. The clock is ticking. His goal isn’t to live forever—it’s to live as long as he comfortably can. And that terrifies me.

Chapter 32

Barrett

The guys and I are watching our Sunday night Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune marathon when the doorbell rings. Amir is on the end of the couch, so he gets up to answer the door. I shift in the armchair and scroll through my phone again. It’s been a week. I still haven’t heard from her. I want to, I want her to reach out, but I know I can’t make the first move. Not this time.

“I need to see Barrett,” Diana says.

Amir glances at me. “It’s Sunday.”

“Please,” she says, and I swallow at the neediness in her voice. “He’s here. I know he’s here.”

Amir lets her in, shutting the door behind her, and Wes pauses the TV in the middle of a Wheel spin.

“We need to talk,” she says, lifting her chin. I start up the stairs to my room and she follows me. I try not to remember the last time she was in my room.

“What are you doing here? Not that I don’t want you here,” I’m quick to reassure her. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“We need to talk.”

“Agreed.”

She takes a deep breath, clasping her hands over her stomach. She looks decidedly green around the gills.

“Barrett…”

“Holy fuck. Are you pregnant?”

“What?”

“Because we can totally make this work,” I tell her quickly. “We’ll get married and—”

“No, I’m not pregnant,” she says. “Why would you…”

“You’re holding your stomach.”

She cracks her knuckles and releases her arms. “No, I’m not… you would marry me?”

“In a heartbeat. If you were pregnant, if you wanted to have a baby… yeah, I’d do it.”