if this was a time when Cheyenne would sleep for a few hours, he figured maybe it was time to go home. He could shower and grab a change of clothes. And he could take the box Bailey had given him home to his apartment. He shared his plan with Tara and she agreed. “I’ll stay here … in case she needs anything.”
Cody thanked her, and after taking one more look in at Cheyenne, he found the box from Bailey behind the hospital chair and set off. The hospital was outside Indianapolis, ten minutes from his apartment near the city campus of Indiana University. His roommate wasn’t home when he walked inside, and Cody was grateful. He needed an hour or so alone. Just him and God and whatever Bailey had given him in the box.
He took it to his room, shut the door behind him, and opened the blinds. It was the last day of April, and a thunderstorm was headed their way. He could see out the window the dark clouds gathering in the distance. The way they were gathering in his heart.
For a long time he held the box in his hands and looked at it … just looked at it and remembered his conversation with her the day before.
She was leaving … he understood that much. Bailey had gotten a role in the Broadway musical Hairspray, and tonight she would already be in New York City. Ready to start rehearsals.
He ran his hand along the box lid and tried to imagine her cleaning her room, going through a lifetime of memories and keepsakes, treasures from her childhood and high school days. Along the way she’d come across whatever was in this box, and she’d set the items aside. As she cleaned, she must’ve known she would take the box to him the day before she left.
But what she hadn’t known about was his involvement with Cheyenne.
She had no right to be mad at him, of course. Not about Cheyenne. Not when she was seeing Brandon Paul. Cody could still picture the way Brandon and Bailey looked together at her house that day, moving boxes across her front porch. He had come to her house that afternoon to find common ground with her. But after seeing Brandon, Cody had turned around and driven away. He hadn’t seen Bailey again until yesterday. So she couldn’t be upset that there was someone new in his life.
But maybe she did have a right to be upset about the fact that he hadn’t called her once since January.
That’s what she told him as they stood facing each other in that brightly lit hospital waiting room a few doors down from Cheyenne yesterday. He closed his eyes and he could still hear the pain in her voice.
“You promised to be my friend.” Her eyes held a hurt so raw, Cody had to look away. Even so, she continued. “But you know what, Cody? You never meant it.”
She was right, but he didn’t say so. Instead he let her stand there in the waiting room, hoping for an answer that never came. Cody breathed in long and slow and ran his hand over the top of the box again. If he were painfully honest with himself, deep inside he had never meant to keep the promise of being Bailey’s friend.
Not when he was still in love with her.
Cody ran his hand over his head and felt the blow of that reality, felt it like a physical pain. He never would’ve done anything to hurt her, and yet he had. The rest of his life he would regret that.
Finally, in an effort that felt beyond his own strength, he lifted the lid off the box. He’d lived with the Flanigans through the last half of high school until he’d joined the Army, until he left for Iraq. After that he’d shared two years with Bailey at Indiana University in Bloomington — Thursday Campus Crusade meetings and long walks around Lake Monroe. They had reached a point last summer when it looked like they’d never be apart again.
Then the Fourth of July picnic … where they finally admitted their feelings for each other. For all the crazy things Cody had been through in life, the last thing he saw coming was that his mother might get arrested for drugs again, or that her dealer boyfriend might make death threats against not only his mom, but also Cody and whomever Cody might be with.