The person I can’t live without. I think of Marley. How it felt to hold my entire world in my arms. How it feels to have it ripped away from me.
“Yeah, right,” Kim says with a tearful laugh as she pulls away. She quickly grabs a tissue and blows her nose.
“Hell, go on a date with Sam—”
The words are barely out of my mouth before she slugs me with her sling-free arm.
“You’re stupid,” she says, acting like I’ve just said the craziest thing.
I grab on to the bed rail, smiling at her as I catch myself. I see it, though. In her eyes. That thought. That glimmer of a possibility.
“Don’t settle again, okay?” I say after I right myself. “Ever. And I won’t either.”
She nods, agreeing, and we shake on it. “Deal.”
I take a deep, determined breath as her hand slides out of mine.
For the first time since I woke up, I feel a little closer to peace. Because I will not settle.
I won’t give up until I have Marley in my arms again.
32
I’m back in my house.
My house, but not. The world I live in now is leaking in more and more every time I close my eyes. It’s weird, even scary how much my dreams are changing.
“Kyle.”
I follow the sound of the voice down a hallway, the walls crumbling around me as I fight to get to her, peeling paint giving way to the pale walls of the hospital, the standard-issue TV, the big window in the corner.
I finally find her at the kitchen table. I can see her, but… barely.
I squint, straining, the colors so dull.
“Everything’s going to change now, isn’t it?” she asks, her voice the same as I remember it. Sadder now.
I try with everything in me to get closer to her, to hold her again, but my feet won’t move. My legs strain, fighting to take even a single step in her direction. I look down to see my feet are enclosed in grass and mud, the cherry blossoms from the pond sprinkled around my ankles.
The second I look back up at her, I jolt back into my hospital room, my sheets twisted tightly around my body, sweat beaded across my forehead, and the loss consumes me again.
* * *
Her voice still echoes around in my head as I grip the support bars in the physical therapy room a few hours later. I put a guarded amount of weight onto my leg, carefully taking one step and then another. My only break from my tireless googling the past two days has been going down to see Henry every afternoon, the grueling leg exercises he puts me through an attempt at distracting myself from everything.
But no matter how hard I try today to focus on my legs, on getting them stronger, I can’t escape the dream I had last night.
Every day the world around me gets less hazy, but that means every day she feels farther and farther away, that dream I lived in for a year crumbling, cracking, showing its holes every time I go to sleep.
“I wish I could do that for you,” a voice says.
I come to a shaky stop and look up to see Sam. Even my good leg feels about as strong as a toothpick, yet somehow Sam looks worse.
“You would, wouldn’t you?” I ask him. “You’d go through this for me if you could.”
Sam rolls his eyes like that’s an idiotic question, but he nods. “Of course, dude. You’d do the same for me.”
I swallow, wobbling, and Henry takes notice. He grabs on to my forearms, giving me some extra support.
“Let’s take a quick break, okay?” he says as he helps me into my wheelchair, leaving the two of us alone for a bit.
I’m trying not to live in my dreams, but I think of the day at the cemetery. There’s truth in that conversation, even if we never had it. So maybe we have to have it now.
“I’ve been a shitty friend to you,” I say.
Sam quickly shakes his head. “No—”
“You said it yourself. Kim’s tried to break up with me seven times since the ninth grade,” I say, looking up at him. “You paid close attention. Why?”
“Uh,” Sam says, frowning, his eyes narrowing as he looks back at me. “I don’t remember saying that.”
Right. Off to a great start.
“Well, either way, it’s true. You helped me see her perspective, and you helped her see mine,” I cover. “Every time, Sam, you helped me win her back.”
I think about yesterday, how he left when he saw us together. “And now you’re trying to do it again. Why?”
Sam looks away, shrugging.
“Because you’re a good friend. Too good,” I say, flexing my skinny leg. “I’ve realized a lot of things. And even though I was asleep, a lot of what my brain was processing was real. There’s a reason Kimberly and I could never quite get it right.”