One Last Song Part 6

When I returned to our table with their drinks-turned out the bartender didn't care about stamped or unstamped hands-and a smile still on my lips, Pierce and Zee were gone.

"They're over there, dancing while they still can." Drew gestured to the floor a couple of yards away.

"And you can't anymore," I said, sitting down. "Or do you just not like to dance?"

"More of the second, but I like to say it's the first." He grinned, took a sip of his beer. "What about you? Dancer or not?"

"Believe it or not, I haven't ever been asked," I said, taking a sip of my Dr Pepper.

Drew looked at me. I expected him to say something like, "Oh, I don't believe that!" but he didn't. I didn't know whether to be appreciative for the lack of bulls.h.i.t or slightly offended that it was so easy for him to believe me.

After a moment, I smiled over my gla.s.s. "So, uh, have you recovered from the insane amount of sugar you inhaled at China Garden?"

He laughed, but didn't rush to answer. I was right, I realized; he didn't want to talk about that here, though I wasn't sure why. After another quiet moment, he said, "You seem to be doing fairly well. For having the aggressive version of MS. I knew a woman when I was little who had it, and she had the tremors within a few months of being diagnosed."

I took another sip, as if having liquid in my mouth could be an unending excuse for not answering his unasked question. But finally, I swallowed, shrugged. "Yeah. I guess I'm lucky." I couldn't quite meet his eye.

"Lucky is one way to put it. Balanced at the edge of a hole with a man-eating lion in it is another." He shook his head. "Sort of what I feel like most of the time."

We sipped at our drinks as the speakers blasted out some pop song or another. Was it awkward? I couldn't tell. We'd just met and we weren't talking, which automatically might qualify as awkward territory. But somehow, sitting there, it didn't feel like it. The silence wasn't exactly a comfortable one either, though, because it seemed like we each had a lot we wanted to say, but couldn't quite figure out how to start. I'd never experienced anything like it.

Even though I sat there and watched Pierce and Zee dance under the multicolored lights, my entire body was tuned in entirely to Drew's frequency. I was hyperaware of his every movement, his hand grasping his beer bottle, his head nodding to the beat. I was the sunflower to his sun, following his every movement. The intensity of it all scared me a little. What was it about this boy? What was happening?

A few minutes later, Pierce and Zee made their way back to us. Zee's shirt was drenched with sweat, her pale skin visible under the wet cotton. Pierce looked paler than usual, his hair plastered to his forehead.

"I think we overdid it," he said, sitting down and pulling his wine close.

"Yeah, definitely." Zee was trying to control her breathing. "Wouldn't it be just awesome if I pa.s.sed out here and they had to call an ambulance?"

Drew grabbed Zee's purse off the back of her chair. "Okay, I'm taking you home." He pulled her keys out.

"No. Way. In. h.e.l.l," she said, struggling to pull the words out. "You can barely press the pedals with those wonky-a.s.s feet."

"He's right, though, Zee," Pierce said. "You need to be on your oxygen tonight." He looked worried for her in spite of his own obvious overexertion, his eyebrows pulled together like one long black caterpillar. I didn't quite know what to make of his selflessness. On the one hand, it was touching and n.o.ble, but on the other, I found it completely baffling that he'd downplay his own discomfort.

"I'll take her," I replied, before my brain had even processed that I was going to say it. "I can drive. I'm just not usually allowed to use my mother's precious car."

"I'll come with, just in case she pa.s.ses out and can't direct you." Drew shook his head and stood up, leaning heavily on his cane.

I turned to Pierce. "Would you like a ride home, too?"

"Nah," he said, looking back out at the dance floor. "I'm gonna rest a bit and then head back out there. I had my eye on something pretty."

I wondered, but not aloud, whether the pretty "thing" he had his eye on would bother tossing him a glance in his current state: harrowed, pale, sweating, and wearing a surgical mask.

"Okay," I said instead. "See ya."

Chapter Fourteen.

In spite of the snow and ice threatening to derail our hastily a.s.sembled human train, Drew, Zee, and I made it safely across the parking lot to Zee's car. Somehow, Drew and I managed to wrestle her into the front pa.s.senger seat. It wasn't that she was heavy; she was just limp and way too tired to do anything for herself. Of course, Drew's loss of balance and his cane didn't help matters, and there were a few times I was intensely worried that we'd fall in a helpless heap to the frozen concrete. But finally, she was buckled in. Drew got in the back as I hurried over to the driver's side.

By the time the car was in reverse, Zee had her head resting against the window, her breathing ragged.

I looked from her to Drew in the rearview mirror. "Should I drive to the hospital instead?"

Zee turned to me with some effort and shook her head. "Don't. You. Dare. My mom... kill..." She didn't finish her sentence, but I got the gist of it.

"Unfortunately, this has happened before," Drew said from the back as I hit the gas and shot down the road. "Zee is, uh, famous for pushing herself to the edge."

"It's... the only way... to live," Zee wheezed.

I arched an eyebrow. "Yeah. Clearly."

"You say that now, but wait till your MS begins to catch up to you," Drew said. "You'll find yourself making not-great choices, too. Comes with the territory. Make a left here and then a right two miles down onto Ashley Street."

I turned left. "Have you made some questionable decisions, too, then?" I asked him, looking into the rearview mirror again.

Zee wheezed and coughed, apparently laughing at my question.

Drew crinkled up his nose, which made him look adorable in a mischievous sort of way. "Uh... You could say that. My doctors suspected I had FA because I kept falling over. I swore the rugs in my apartment were moving, you know, defying gravity and rising up to tangle with my feet. Anyway, so after the tests and everything, when my doctor told me I'd likely lose my ability to walk sometime in my twenties, I got this crazed, compet.i.tive, 'I'm going to defeat this thing, you just watch you stupid doctor, you' mentality going on. So I blew my paycheck on hiking boots and a hiking backpack."

"No." I glanced up from the road into the rearview mirror yet again. "You didn't."

"He sure did," Zee said, her breathing much calmer now. Her laugh actually sounded like a laugh.

"Yep, I went hiking that weekend. Alone, up in the White Mountains."

"And?" I turned on Ashley Street.

"Go about a mile and a half and then make a left onto Cameron Street." He cleared his throat. "And I was lucky my cell phone got a signal out there or I might've died in the wilderness like an a.s.shole. My friend Zach came and got me, took me home. I was fine once I got some rest and took off those d.a.m.n boots."

"Wow." I shook my head slowly, trying to imagine someone with Drew's limping, slow gait hiking a mountain. "Wow."

"Yep. We all do it. Stupid decisions based on panic and defiance."

"Mm hmm," Zee said. "Like me. I just found out I've got mets in my lungs. Can't stop me from dancing or doing other stuff, though. I guess I'll learn at some point." She looked at me, grinning. "Maybe."

It made me vaguely uncomfortable, talking to them like I was a part of their club. I had no right to do it, to claim their friendship through this channel, by pretending to be just as sick, just as unfortunate.

But a part of me loved the power. I loved being the girl I'd wanted to be since the day I swallowed that needle at seven years old, I loved wearing the badge of disease proudly instead of clutching it in my sweaty hand while my therapist posited why, exactly, I was so screwed up.

I turned on Cameron Street, and Zee pointed to a squat brick house to our right. "That's me. You can keep my car. Just come pick me up tomorrow and we'll hang out again."

"Only if you promise you won't dance," I teased.

Zee laughed a little shakily. "I promise."

"Want me to help you to your door?"

"Nope, I'm feeling better." She opened the car door and heaved herself out into the frigid night. "See ya, losers."

"Bye."

Drew got out and made his way around to where Zee'd been sitting. He gave her a brief hug, one I examined very closely. Could they really be such great friends, going through such similar, life-changing experiences and be strictly platonic? The big cynical b.i.t.c.h inside me smirked at the idea. But I saw no evidence of anything but friendship in the hug, at least from Drew's side. Zee might've held on just a second too long. Then again, she was tired. Maybe it was just that.

As we pulled out of her driveway in her car, I watched her hobble up the drive and let herself in to her house. When the door closed behind her, the night was silent and still once again, as if she'd never existed. The world went on.

Chapter Fifteen.

I drove back down the street, the streetlights striping the car in brief flashes of orange. Drew was in the pa.s.senger seat beside me, his knees up because his legs were too long for the small s.p.a.ce, even with the seat pushed as far back as it would go. "So, where do you want to go next?"

"Home, maybe."

"Oh." I was disappointed, and a little angry at myself for being disappointed. What the h.e.l.l did I expect? That he'd want to go back to Sphinx and hook up? That we'd have another non-date at China Garden? One he could refuse to talk about later, as if he was ashamed of it or something?

"You can come in. If you want to, I mean."

I looked at him, and he was watching me, a small smile at the corners of his mouth. Did he mean he wanted us to f.u.c.k? Was this some sort of guy code that I didn't know? With my limited history of interaction with my peers, I tended to carefully scrutinize every word people said and what each of those words could possibly mean. It was like those pictures that, at first glance, looked like a jumble of colors and meaningless scribbles. Only when you stared really intently, looked past the thing to the essence of the thing, that you saw the wondrous house or boat or person that the artist had wanted you to see in the first place.

I really didn't want to have s.e.x with Drew. It wasn't that I hadn't had casual s.e.x before. And I definitely found Drew painfully, ridiculously attractive. A kind of attractive that seeped past his hair and eyes and height to his bones, his flesh and muscles.

But there was something else about him, too. Something about the chemistry or whatever between us that I didn't want to f.u.c.k up. And I knew casual f.u.c.king would definitely f.u.c.k it up. "Um..."

"I thought we could listen to some music, hang out. I'm sort of worn out."

"Oh. Okay. That sounds good."

His apartment wasn't very much farther, and I slid easily into a parking s.p.a.ce reserved for him. "You don't have a car?"

"Nope. Like Zee said, my driving does leave a lot to be desired since I can't really control my ankles that well. Plus, I can either hop a bus or ride with Zee for most anything."

We got out, plumes of white smoke drifting from our noses and mouths as we breathed. The black asphalt of the lot glittered with ice under the streetlights.

"Pretty," I said.

Drew laughed, looking around the parking lot. It was hemmed in on all sides by condos, ugly cream-colored budget things. "If you say so."

His apartment was only a few steps from the parking s.p.a.ce, with narrow windows that looked out onto the sidewalk. He had a doormat shaped like a guitar. I wondered if he'd picked it out himself, browsing specialty stores online patiently until he found just the right one.

"First floor. I lucked out. I started renting this place before my diagnosis." He slid his key into the lock and c.o.c.ked his head at me. "Do you do that yet? Divide your time before diagnosis and after?"

I didn't really remember a time before I was sick, so I shook my head.

"You will. It happens without a conscious decision. Weird how stuff works out that way. It usually annoys me when people make stupid a.s.sumptions about sick people. You know, that we all, like, have this innate sense of wonder at life now and stuff like that. But some things really do happen across the board."

We walked in then, and I was struck by how nice it smelled. I'd never been to a guy's apartment before. All the boys-all three of them-I'd been with in high school had lived at home with their moms and dads. We'd groped around in dank bas.e.m.e.nts or on floral couches after their parents were asleep.

This was a much more pleasant experience than I'd expected. I always imagined that a guy's place would smell like socks and old food, but Drew's place smelled like clean laundry and cookies. It wasn't dirty, but it wasn't OCD-clean either. It looked homey and lived-in, and that was it.

"I like it," I p.r.o.nounced, and then immediately felt like an a.s.s. That wasn't presumptuous at all.

But Drew just laughed. "I'm glad. Sit." He gestured at a puffy black leather couch. "Would you like something to drink or eat?"

"Do you have Dr Pepper?"

He did that nose-crinkly thing I was starting to really like. "No. I didn't know people actually drank that stuff before you ordered one tonight."

"Water would be great, then."

He disappeared into the kitchen. I slipped off my jacket before looking around his living room. There was the requisite thirty-inch flat screen TV and Xbox controller. He had a weight machine in the corner, the kind you sit on to build up your upper body. That explained the biceps I'd noted that first day in TIDD group. An image came to me, of him sitting there sweaty and shirtless, working out. I flushed and looked away, at the rest of the room. His walls were bare except for where they were obscured by bookcases. When I looked closely, I realized only one shelf actually held books. The others were filled with CDs.

"I enjoy music."

I turned and took the gla.s.s of water from him. "Thanks. And yeah, I noticed."

"Most of these were gifts from friends or CDs from other bands I've met playing around the East Coast. What kind of music do you like?"

We were standing close, our arms almost touching as we examined the contents of his bookcases. I could feel my skin tingle in antic.i.p.ation, as if it wanted to reach out and bridge the gap. My eyes lingered again on the sheer height difference between us. I was five foot six. Even though Drew was slightly stooped and leaning on his cane, I barely came to his shoulder.

"Any kind," I said. The truth was I hadn't listened to music in a long time. I liked to read instead, medical books. And I couldn't read when there was noise.

"Come on. You have to have a preference." He turned to face me, his hoodie unzipped and hanging off of him like loose skin. I tried not to drop my gaze to the sweater clinging to his taut chest and stomach.

I shrugged, my face heating up. I hated being put on the spot. "Um, Carly Rae Jepsen?"

I realized the moment after I said it that the only reason I'd named her was because we'd just heard her song play in the bar. Also, it occurred to me that that wasn't the coolest music I could've picked.

Drew's face sort of sagged, his mouth falling open. "Seriously? That's not music."

"Hmm. That sounds a little judgey," I replied, taking a sip of water.

He raised his free hand, surrendering. "Okay, fair enough. But you've got to listen to what I consider music. Then you can judge for yourself." He reached past me, his arm brushing my shoulder, and slid a CD out of a shelf at eye level with me. "Carousel Mayhem," he said, a sort of grand flourish in his voice. "Arguably one of the best young musicians of our time."