came here to see Lola. I came here to see you.” She looks down at my arm and touches the needle for the IV at my wrist. Her eye follows the tubing until it reaches the machine pumping me full of God knows what.
I smile up at her. “It’s good to see you.” It’s not as hard to breathe as I thought it would be.
She nods and then pulls the needle out of my hand with a quick jerk, the tape catching on my skin.
“Nina! That fucking hurt!”
She frowns. “Language,” she scolds. “We don’t have much time.”
“For what?”
“You. We need to leave.”
She pulls me up to a sitting position, ignoring my groans. “And go where?”
My aunt stares at me as if I’m stupid. “Blue needs you,” she says. “Can’t you feel it, Benji? He’s almost gone. He needs you.”
I feel cold. And what’s worse is, I hesitate. Removed from the situation by a few days, I’ve allowed my anger to rise unchecked. And this time, it is all directed toward him. He had a choice to make, yes, and he was tested by his Father, oh yes, but he could have done something. He could have done something more. He could have stood up to his Father and said no. He could have done everything in his power to stop it from happening. He could have saved my father.
Or, Michael whispers, he could have promised him to watch out for his only son for the rest of his days. Or he could have fallen to earth to protect this son. Or he could have cared for this boy. Or he could have fallen in love with him and treasured him above all else, even though it was so close to blasphemy it endangered his mortal soul.
“Nina,” I say, hedging.
She stops and stares at me hard.
I look away.
“Oh, no,” she says. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to say no. Not now. Not after all he’s done for you.”
My mind is beginning to clear, and it hurts to think.
“That man loves you,” she growls at me, squeezing my hands tightly. “And he needs you, Benji. Just like you need him. You can’t stay here. You can’t keep hiding. This is just another white room and you know it. If you wait too long, the choice will be made for you.”
I snap my eyes to hers. “How did you….”
“It doesn’t matter. You must hurry.”
“I’m tired,” I say. “I’m tired of everyone telling me about choices. I’m tired of having to make choices. I’m tired. The choices I make don’t matter. Nothing I do matters. How can it? God can just take everything away whenever he wants, so how the fuck does anything I do matter? It’s just a game, Nina! It’s all just a fucking game!”
She flinches away from me as I finish, but it doesn’t last long. Her gaze filling with steely resolve, she leans over and brushes her lips against my cheek. “Then you fight,” she whispers harshly in my ear. “You fight for what you believe in. You fight for what’s yours. He would do it for you—he already has. The only real person in the world who can know what a father can mean is dying, Benji. He’s dying, and he needs you.”
“I can’t,” I whisper, the fight draining out of me. “I can’t watch that happen. Not after everything I’ve seen. ”
She stands back, the lines around her mouth pronounced in anger. “It’s not always about you,” she says coldly. “You may think it is, and maybe since Big Eddie died it has been, but not now. Not anymore. You’ve allowed yourself to drown in your grief, thinking only about yourself. You’ve been selfish long enough, Benjamin Edward Green. Big Eddie raised you better than this.”
Her words might as well have been a slap across the face. “You don’t have any idea what I’ve been through,” I say with a scowl.
“No? So I didn’t feel pain when Big Eddie died? I don’t feel heartache knowing my Christie was the cause of it? I don’t know grief now that my own sister is dead?” Her voice breaks, and her eyes fill with tears.
“It’s not….” But it is. It is the same. It’s all the same. Every single piece. Every single part. She’s right. This isn’t what my father taught me. These aren’t the lessons I was supposed to learn. Seeing him on the other side of the river as we said goodbye should have been