Elizabeth Scott - Between Here and Forever

“Tap that ass? What year is it?”

“Rick used to say it,” she says, a tiny smile appearing but fading fast, as soon as she’s said Rick’s name. “Wel , he said it about me. ‘I tapped that ass!’ Do you know he actual y cal ed me last night and said he didn’t see how Cole could possibly need money since he’s ‘you know, a little kid, and what do they need?’”

“Sorry,” I tel her. “So I guess you told him you wanted to get back together, right?”

“Oh yeah,” she says, grinning at me. “You know what the best part was? After I hung up on him, he actual y cal ed back and asked again because he thought he got cut off. I don’t know what I was thinking back in high school.”

“No offense, but what were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t,” she says. “He wanted to have sex, and I thought it seemed so much easier than being in love …” She trails off.

“Wait, you were in love with someone? Who?”

She blinks at me, and then looks out at the water.

“Someone who didn’t love me back,” she final y says. “Not enough, anyway.”

“Are they stil in town? Never mind, of course they are. Who is it? Did Tess know? Is that why she got so mad when you—?”

“Nice try,” Claire says. “But I haven’t forgotten you were in the gift shop talking to the guy who’s so good-looking someone who came into the hospital actual y stopped and took his picture.”

“Did not!”

“Did,” she says. “One of the nurses saw the whole thing.”

“That’s just sad.”

“He is awful y—I was going to say cute, but he’s not cute. He’s beautiful. Like, real y and truly beautiful. Don’t you think?”

“I think he’s going to wake Tess up.”

“What?”

I tel Claire my plan.

“So because you think that you saw Tess’s eyes move—?”

“It sounds stupid when you say it like that,” I say. “She … look, you were in the room. He talked, and something happened to her.”

“Because of Eli?”

“Yes, duh,” I say. “You’ve seen him. You even said he was beautiful just now. And you know how Tess is. She’s always wanted to be swept off her feet by the perfect guy. Beth even got her a book of ‘classic romantic fairy tales’ for Christmas.” I swal ow. “Or at least that’s what Tess said. She didn’t … she didn’t ever show us her gifts. She left them at school and now—”

“How is Beth?” Claire says. “I haven’t seen her at the hospital much lately.”

“She came a lot at first,” I say. “But now she’s … I don’t know. Busy with school, I guess.”

“They lived together for two years.”

“Yeah, but that’s how it is in col ege. Tess says that when you find someone decent to room with, you don’t mess with that.”

Claire stares down at the river. “You know, Abby, maybe you don’t—maybe you don’t know Tess like you think you do.”

“Oh, come on,” I tel her. “Tess wants to be happy.”

“No, she wants everyone to think she’s perfect.”

“I don’t think Tess ever worried about that. Why would she ever have needed to? I mean, she’s—”

“Yeah,” Claire says. “She’s Tess. But stil , she could never bring herself to do anything she thought someone, somewhere, might possibly think was wrong.”

“You know, Mom used to say Tess wanted things to be perfect,” I say. “Do you think that’s why she acted the way she did when you got pregnant? Not that I think you getting pregnant was bad or anything, but Tess—”

“I know,” Claire says, her voice bitter. “Believe me, I know what Tess thought.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, wel , I know you did too. You never told her about Jack after al , did you?”

I shake my head and force myself to laugh. It comes out rough, broken-sounding. “No, I didn’t. She wouldn’t—she wouldn’t have understood. I mean, look at how she treated you. And she liked you. Me and Tess just aren’t—we’re nothing alike.”

“I think … I think that you two aren’t as different as you think. I mean, look at this plan of yours. You’re expecting a happy ending, aren’t you?”

“Because I know Tess does,” I say. “Because she believes in them. I don’t.”

“Abby,” Claire says, but I shake my head again, as if I can shake off the pity in her voice.

“Don’t. Just … don’t. I know Tess was mean to you and she—I didn’t always like her, but she’s my sister. I’m supposed to want her to—”

“Supposed?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s what you said.”

“I have to go,” I say, and head back to my bike. I stare out at the water, at the Ferrisvil e dock growing closer and closer.

I don’t want Claire feeling sorry for me. I don’t want her saying that she knows I used to believe in love and al that crap. I don’t want to be reminded that I used to think it was possible for a guy around here, around Tess, to look at me and not see her.

I don’t want to think that once I was stupid enough to believe I could be with someone who wanted my sister and make them want me.

me in the kitchen poking pieces of toast into the jel y jar and then eating them.

“You’re supposed to put jel y on bread, not put the bread in the jar. And you did eat something else besides that, right?” Mom says, and sits down across from me, giving me her Mom stare. She’s real y good at it.

“Why are you home early? Is Tess—?”

“She’s fine. Your father and I—we decided to come home after we talked to the doctor.”

I look around for Dad, but he’s come in and gone straight into the living room. Something’s definitely happened. “What did the doctor say?”

Mom gets up. “I’m going to make a sandwich. Do you want one?”

“Mom,” I say, and she looks over her shoulder at me from the counter and gives me a smal , sad half smile.

“It’s nothing you need to worry about. We just … the insurance isn’t going to cover as much as we thought and—wel , Tess’s been in the hospital for long enough that we’re being asked to consider other options.”

“Other options? Like what?” I know for a fact that Mom and Dad have read everything they could get their hands on about comas. I also know that they’ve gone to see a bunch of other doctors, and always come back from those meetings grim-faced.

Mom doesn’t answer.

“Mom?” I say again, and Dad comes in from the living room, his mouth curved up in this weirdly familiar smile that, for some reason, sends a shiver racing through me, a flash bolt of panic-fear under my skin.

“I bet you have homework,” he says.

“Yeah,” I tel him, getting up and turning away so I can’t see his face and that smile. “I do.”

It’s silent, so silent, as I walk up to my room and shut the door, but as I creep out of it and back toward the stairs—I shut my door before I went through it because I knew what was coming—I hear my parents start to talk.

“I hate the idea of Tess going to a home,” Dad says. “She’s not—there’s stil a chance. She could stil wake up. And I don’t want her to think—”

“She knows you love her,” Mom says. “She knows you won’t give up on her. We al know that.”

“Katie—” Dad says, and Mom cuts him off, says, “Dave, I just—I’m not you, al right?”

Silence fal s again, and then I hear Mom sigh, hear her cross the room.

“I wish—” she says, love and sadness in her voice, and Dad says, “Me too,” his voice smothered-sounding, like he’s speaking from somewhere far away, or holding something back.

Like he’s trying not to cry.

I creep down the stairs a little more, and when I crane my head toward the kitchen I see them holding each other, Dad resting his head against Mom’s, mouth pressed to her hair.