Just Friends(69)

“Oh,” I say in a small voice. “That’s very cool.”

It was, actually, very cool. But the casualness with which he referred to building me a deck for “my cottage” was making me dizzy. I couldn’t remember the last time I envisioned New York City. Or consulting. Or staying up late in a corporate office by myself. I stopped having those fascinations ever since my mom broke down in the back of the convenience store.

Declan and I mosey up to the cash register, and as he pulls out his wallet to pay, I see the edge of a photo peeking up behind some cash. My breathing catches as I try to study it without him noticing my bug-eyed stare at his wallet. But he slides his credit card out and pays with a quick tap before returning the wallet to his back pocket. Evidence of the maybe-photo disappearing with it. Was that it? Was that the photo Harper claimed Declan had of us in his wallet?

I trail behind him to the car in a daze, replaying what Harper said about Declan’s reaction to seeing me again for the first time. I try my best to reconcile that image with the silent man now driving beside me. If cognitive dissonance was a movie, this would win most accurate depiction.

We get back to the coffee shop and I still haven’t settled from the jolt of hope that shot through me at the sight of the tiny picture’s edge, but I don’t need to, because Declan wants me to stain a table he built. Our comfortable silence is easy to fall into again once the sound of his drill whirring starts and I have the paintbrush in my hand to distract me.

We continue until the sun has gone down, leaving one floor lamp illuminating the space. I remember the beginning of the summer when I came in to help him. I thought the lights were off because he didn’t want them on—like some reclusive vampire character. But now I realize it was because he got so enraptured with what he was working on that he didn’t notice until it was completely dark.

When the sun has finished setting, Declan’s voice sounds from behind me, tentative and grave. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” I reply without turning around, brushing a section of wood with stain.

A few seconds pass without a sound, and then slowly, he says, “What were your last few moments with Lottie like? If you don’t mind me asking.”

My hand pauses its pass on the wood like I’ve hit an invisible wall. A well of emotion rises in my chest, and not because the question is too emotional to answer, but because he was the first one to ask it at all.

“Oh,” I say, voice already shaking. “Yeah, no, I don’t mind you asking.” I rearrange my legs beneath me in a crisscross position and dip my brush into the stain again. “You know, I was writing about this the other day, actually.” I glance at him, and he nods for me to go on, like he can sense my trepidation.

“It really struck me how mundane our last handful of conversations were. Because, at first, there’s all this pressure to ask all the right questions. You’re so aware that it’s your last chance to learn anything and everything from them. So, I spent a lot of time asking her to go over every decade of her life. I asked her about times that were most significant or transformative, and I was so meticulous about writing every answer down. But then the last time I spoke to her, we talked about stupid things. Like, the dress I was obsessed with wearing in middle school, and if I was going to eat the leftovers in the fridge or get takeout that night. We small-talked. And it really stressed me out, thinking that I was wasting her last moments talking about these random, inconsequential details. But now, I think she was happy to be talking about those things with me, because that’s what loving someone is. It’s sharing the tiny, stupid, mundane things about your life, because they’re everything to the people you love.”

A warm tear slides down my cheek as I hold the image of Lottie’s wan face on the mechanical bed. I look down to collect myself and swipe it away, and don’t notice that Declan has moved from his spot to sit next to me.

“Sorry,” I mumble, wiping the tear with the back of my hand. “It’s just, I don’t know how to explain the feeling. But the whole thing—her getting sick, her dying, felt like this unexpected, violent shift in my life that turned everything upside down. And yet, somehow, it was all so infuriatingly routine. It just felt so cruel that it was so life-changing to me, but not for anyone else. Everyone was acting so normal. The hospice care nurses. The lady in the purple pantsuit they sent to tell me she was dying. The people at the funeral home who held the door open for me. Even my best friends. Everyone was acting so painstakingly casual. And it made me want to throw something at the wall to shake them all up in the way I felt shaken up. The way I feel shaken up.” The words tumble out with the force of my emotion behind them, and I feel self-conscious now that they’re laying between us. “I’m sorry. That probably sounds selfish. Obviously, everyone else was acting normal because people die. That’s just a fact of life. And I was somehow expecting everyone to feel the desperation I felt, but that’s not possible because—”

Declan places his hand on my wrist. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I look down at his hand. Up into his eyes. They’re open to me, like he’s offering a bridge he wants me to walk over.

“I felt exactly the same way after the accident. The anger. The frustration. The confusion. No one responds in the way you want them to. And you can’t blame them, because they don’t know what you want. But, at the same time, it’s infuriating because everyone’s just thinking about how awkward they feel about it, instead of caring about how much you need them to be brave for you. None of my teammates reached out for the first three weeks. Three weeks. And when they did? It was some fake bull crap about how I was gonna get back on the field soon.”