Sam looks annoyed at me, but I press on.
“This isn’t about Marley. Or me. It’s about you, Sam. Things haven’t been about you for a long time. If you love her like I think you do, tell her how you feel.”
Sam swats at my water bottle as I go to drink it. “Come on, dude. This is fucked up. She’s going to Berkeley and she wants to have some space,” he says. “Besides, you’re right out of a coma and you two just broke up.”
She told him we broke up. That has to count for something.
I take another swig, carefully staying out of swatting distance this time. “She wanted space from me. She talked to you. She’s still here now. Don’t you want her to know?”
“Whether or not you’re right doesn’t matter. You can’t control everything,” he says to me, his face serious. “You gotta let people be their own person, you know? Just like you gotta be yours. Whether you’re with Kim or Marley or nobody. You can’t make someone choose you.”
A long moment passes, and eventually I launch the water bottle at him, my throwing arm still intact post-coma. “That was wise as hell,” I say to him as he catches the water bottle, smirking.
“You know I’m the brains of this team, dude.” He laughs as he mimics tucking the water bottle under his arm and running, dodging playfully around my chair.
The jokes, the no-bullshit talks. Things finally feel right between us. Like they did back in the dream world.
“You want to get some pizza?” he asks, nodding toward the double doors out of here. “I hear the cafeteria makes a mean pepperoni.”
I snort. “Is that even a question?”
I’m already unlocking the wheels of my wheelchair, knowing full well the cafeteria’s pepperoni pizza is terrible, but I need a prison break right now.
In two seconds, Sam grabs the handles and we bust through the doors into the hallway, flying out of the PT room before Henry can even realize I’m gone.
33
She’s here.
I know it immediately even though I can’t see her. I chase her shadow down a hallway of my house, the paint peeling even more than last time, but she’s always just a little bit out of reach, her hair disappearing around corners, her hand slipping through my grasp.
“I told you I wasn’t meant to be this happy,” her voice says from right next to me, but when I turn quickly to look at her, I jerk awake instead.
I sit up, gasping for air, my eyes scanning the room automatically for some trace of her that everything and everyone tells me I won’t find.
My head falls back against the pillow, and I rub my hands over my face, taking in a long, deep breath.
When I inhale, there’s… her smell. Orange blossoms. Or… I roll my eyes. Honeysuckle.
I lift my head toward the window and breathe in again, but no scent comes. It fades just as quickly as it came.
Groaning, I roll over and pull my blanket up over my head.
That’s when the scent of orange blossoms and honeysuckle overpowers me, like it’s stitched into the blanket. I breathe deeper and I know it’s not coming from the garden. It never was.
It’s Marley’s smell.
Somehow, she was here. She was actually here.
I flick on the light, grab my crutches, and struggle to climb out of bed. Once I right myself, I limp over to the open window, gazing outside, the early-morning light casting a warm glow on all of the plants in the courtyard.
Looking out, I see yellow Doris Day roses, the color jumping out at me. Smiling, I picture Marley, the yellow dress she wore that last night we had together.
“You’re yellow,” I say, still able to feel the fabric underneath my fingers. “And Laura loved…” I notice the Stargazers, planted just across the path from the Doris Days, the pink and yellow next to each other.
If Dr. Ronson were here, he’d say that this was tangible proof that I made that up too.
But I get a chill.
Because I realize what a complete idiot I’ve been. I hobble as quickly as I can over to my bed, grabbing my iPad and opening up Google. I type in “Marley + Laura + accident,” and results materialize before my eyes.
* * *
Sam finds me surrounded by sticky notes, all of them different Marleys, their geographic location in miles written next to their names.
“What’s going on here?” he asks warily, picking up two of the sticky notes and reading them. “Marla and Laurie, accident, eighty-eight miles? Marley, Laura, accident, 1,911 miles? Dude, I thought—”
I hold up another one, showing it to him. “Marley, Lara, seven miles.”