He looked startled. “Are you sure?”
“I’m not a child, Carson. I know how to drink something besides soda pop.”
“Rave on, Kathleen,” he said. He stepped over to the beer keg and drew himself a cup.
The wine cooler tasted sweet and cold and went straight to Kathleen’s head. For once, she didn’t care. She was darn tired of keeping a lid on her emotions. She grabbed another bottle and ignored Carson’s lifted eyebrow. “Let’s dance.”
She led the way back down the hall, and in seconds they were surrounded by the crush of bodies on the dance floor. She wasn’t much of a dancer, but that hardly mattered. The music and lights, the noise, the drink and the warmth of bodies sent her into a zone of euphoria. Her blood tingled. She felt alive, free and wild, in sync with the universe. She didn’t even care when Stephanie bumped her hard and sent her reeling.
“So sorry,” Stephanie yelled. Her face was a blur to Kathleen, nothing but an impression of bright lipstick and mascara-smudged eyes.
Carson caught Kathleen and righted her. “Let’s take a walk outside.”
“I’m having fun! Isn’t that wonderful?” She felt light-headed and giddy.
He steered her through the crowd to the door. She tripped a couple of times, but someone caught her and pushed her back toward Carson. The cool night air struck her face and she shivered. He got her to his car, and when he unlocked the door, she turned, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him long and deeply. Desire throbbed through her veins like hot water. He had taught her how to kiss; she knew what he liked. Her clothes were confining and damp with perspiration. She wanted them off, wanted her skin next to his skin. Somehow she got the back door of the car open and pulled him inside and down on top of her. Everywhere his hands touched lit a fresh fire on her body.
She heard his voice in her ear. “You’d better stop right now, because I’m not going to be able to.”
“Stop what? This?” She dragged his shirt out of his jeans and stroked his bare skin.
She heard his ragged breathing and reveled in the sheer power she possessed to make him groan, make him want her. The world began to spin. She felt dizzy, woozy. Carson was saying something, but she couldn’t make out the words. For an instant, her whole body seemed to be floating. Then everything went black.
Holly’s first date with Chad was a trick-or-treat party on the hospital’s pediatric floor. She suggested it when he asked her out because she figured it would create the least amount of attitude from her parents. In actuality, they’d hardly asked any questions when she told them, which surprised her, since it was the first real date she’d ever had. The pediatric floor had been decorated for more than a week in the black and orange of Halloween, and when Chad and Holly arrived at the recreation room at four, someone had set up tables and chairs and activity centers. The cafeteria had prepared a large sheet cake, and some clever person had set up drinks in IV bags and hung the bags on the familiar stainless steel poles. Holly laughed when she saw it, realizing that she, Raina and Kathleen might have thought up something like that in better days.
Chad seemed to know all the nurses, and they welcomed him with smiles and small talk. Holly watched him laugh and joke with them before commenting about it to him. He said, “I’ve been coming here on and off for treatment since I was three.”
“That long?”
“Some years were better than others,” he said with a self-conscious smile. “Last year I got a flu that I couldn’t shake. It sent me here four times in six months.”
“That’s awful.”
“Not so awful,” he said. “It helped me meet you, didn’t it?”
The way he looked at her when he said it sent a fluttering sensation to her stomach. “Hard way to meet girls,” she mumbled, embarrassed by the fluttering. She shouldn’t be feeling such things, not after what had happened to her brother, to her family.
The children who were mobile came to the rec room. Four teens from the Pink Angels group showed up to help, and soon the room was rocking with squeals and laughter. Holly and Chad took bags of candy to the kids who couldn’t make the trip down the hall. When they returned, the supervisory nurse announced, “We’ve arranged for wheelchairs to be brought up and for a few of you volunteers to take the older kids around to the nurses’ stations on other floors.” She passed out orange plastic pumpkin-shaped buckets and a list of the areas that were expecting the trick-or-treaters. “You’ll end up in the cafeteria for another party. Just remember, everybody has to be back in their rooms by eight. Go have fun.”
Much later, after all the patients had been tucked into their rooms, Chad walked Holly to her car in the mammoth parking garage. “Where are you parked?” she asked, unlocking the car door.
“Next level up.” Before she could open the door, Chad caught her arm. “Wait. I—I want to ask you something.”
She turned to face him and saw that his expression was anxious. She knew what he wanted before he even asked.
“Holly, I know that tonight was a trial run, but I want a serious date with you. A real one, where we go to the movies, maybe grab a burger.”
She felt her hands getting clammy as nervousness took hold. Isn’t this what she’d always wanted? For some guy to like her, ask her out? “I—I don’t know.”
He looked crestfallen. “It’s the CF, isn’t it?”
Certainly that was part of it for her, and she felt ashamed of feeling that way, but there was more to it. She didn’t want to hurt Chad, but she didn’t want to lie to him either. “I’m not sure I should be dating. It doesn’t seem—” She hunted for a word. “It doesn’t seem right, you know?”
“Because of your brother?”
Her eyes instantly filled with tears. “There are two Hollys inside me—happy Holly and sad Holly. Some days I get up, go to school, come here, forget about what’s happened. And then when I’m getting into bed, I think, ‘Gee, I haven’t thought about Hunter all day.’ And then it’s like my mind hits a wall and I can’t think about anything else. I can’t tune out the loss of him and the hole left in our family.” She stopped, realizing that she’d not been able to verbalize this to anyone, and now she was spilling everything to Chad, a near stranger. Embarrassed, she opened the car door and got inside. “I have to go.”
He stepped back, his expression unreadable. “I’m not giving up, Holly. Not unless you tell me to get lost.”
She couldn’t tell him that.
He reached through the open window, touched her damp cheek. “I understand. My CF has let me see life through different eyes, and it’s taught me things about people. About life. I’m not giving up on us.”
She put the car in reverse and backed out of the space, leaving him alone in the shadows.
thirteen
FROM THE MOMENT Kathleen opened her eyes, she wished she hadn’t. Light poured through her bedroom window, stabbing into her eyeballs like daggers. Her head hurt and her lips felt glued together. She moaned and put her pillow over her face, wishing the daylight away. Slowly, images of the night before came back to her. She recalled blinking lights, driving music, the cool interior of Carson’s car and his hot breath on her throat and … nothing else.
She peeked out at her bedside clock radio. Eleven o’clock. She’d slept far into Sunday morning, and she wondered why her mother had let her. She staggered to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, looked at herself in the mirror and made another moaning sound. She was wearing her green sleeping T-shirt emblazoned with SNOW WHITE LIVES!, with no memory of having put it on.
She knew she had to go out and face her mother. What would she say? A wave of nausea hit her and she returned to bed just as her cell phone chirped. She saw Carson’s number and thought about not answering it, but then realized he might be able to fill in the blank spaces in her memory.
“You’re alive?” he said when she answered.
“Barely.”
He chuckled.
“How many of those coolers did
I drink?”
“One too many.”
She saw nothing humorous in her situation. “Um—how did I get home, and in my bed?”
“I brought you in. And I did it without waking your mother too. You owe me, babe.”
“My clothes—”
“I’m innocent. I poured you into bed, pulled up the covers and left. Honest.”
Maybe she’d gotten up and changed and just didn’t remember. “Are we still friends?”
He laughed suggestively. “Very close friends.”
An image of herself pawing his body flashed and she sat straight up. Her head pounded. “Did we—I mean—how close are we?”
“Are you asking me if we’re now ‘friends with benefits’?”
His use of the familiar term so embarrassed her that she felt hot, then cold all over. She squeezed the cell phone. “Please tell me.”
He waited a few torturous beats. “Believe it or not, I prefer my girls to be alert, aware and in full control of their senses when things get hot between us.”
Relief rushed through her. “So I’m still—?” She couldn’t get the word out.
“You’re still the one I want more than anybody.”
“Really?”
“From the first day we met.”
“Oh, Carson! I’m so sorry about last night. I—I didn’t mean to—to go crazy that way. I’ve just been sad for so long and I wanted to be happy again. Forgive me?”
“Nothing to forgive. It was nice to see your wild side. And there was another fringe benefit.”
“What was that?”
“I left the party stone cold sober.”
As it turned out, Kathleen didn’t have to tell her mother anything about the night before, because when she ventured out of her room, Mary Ellen wasn’t home. She’d left a note on the counter saying that she’d gone off to church and lunch with Stewart, the man she was seeing from the multiple sclerosis support group. Fine, Kathleen thought, surprised by her resentment. Had Mary Ellen even checked on her before she left?
Kathleen drank some juice, took a long, hot shower and called Holly. “How did the hospital party go last night? And your date with Chad?” she added, suddenly remembering.
“The party was fun. The kids had a great time. Chad and I worked, so we didn’t have much alone time.”
This didn’t sound like Holly, who was prone to babble on when it came to a guy she liked. “So, you want to do something this afternoon? A movie? I can check what’s playing and the start times—” Kathleen stopped herself. She’d forgotten it was Sunday and that Holly’s family had “together time” on Sundays.
“That would be all right,” Holly said.
“You sure?”
“Mom’s taking a nap and Dad’s out working in the garage.”
“Oh. But it’s all right for you to take off?”
“Perfectly,” Holly said, with a flatness in her voice. “No one seems to care much anymore.”
“That can’t be true. I’ve lived with you. I know how much they care.”
Holly didn’t say anything right away. “Yes, they care. They just care differently now. Everything’s different now.”
“Your birthday’s coming up, Raina. What would you like?”
Vicki’s question gave Raina pause. Raina was curled up on the sofa, under an old quilt, mindlessly surfing TV channels. Outside, a chilly November rain was falling, pelting the windows like tears. In one week she would be eighteen, on Thanksgiving Day. “I haven’t thought about it.”
“Think about it.”
“Nothing comes to mind.”
“A shopping spree? A trip to Orlando for a few of the attractions? You could take Kathleen and Holly—my treat.”
“I don’t care.”
Vicki walked over and turned off the television. “Raina, please talk to me. You’ve got to snap out of this funk.”
“Snap out of it?” Raina was incredulous. “My boyfriend was murdered! How do I snap out of that?”
Vicki looked weary. “I’m sorry. That was a poor choice of words. I just want to see my daughter again … the one I used to have fun with, who used to talk to me about everything.” Vicki sat on the edge of the coffee table and faced Raina. “Your grades are abysmal. You rarely go anywhere with your friends. You’re turning eighteen in a week and you don’t even want a present. I don’t know what to do to help you.”
“Nothing,” Raina said. She felt dead inside, like a plant left too long without water. “I just have to work through it on my own.”
“What about college? You used to talk about going to college.”
“Mom, everything I ever wanted was wrapped up in Hunter. I was going to find a college near him in Indiana. He held all of me in his hands. All of me.”
“How about nursing? You wanted to be a nurse. At the hospital, they raved to me about you in the Pink Angels program.”
“I like the hospital. They put me on the floor with the old people, you know.”
“I can ask them to move you to an area you’d like better.”
“Why? One place is as good as any. Some of the old patients are cranky. Some are really nice. But do you know what I think about when I’m with them?” She didn’t want an answer, so she said, “I think about how Hunter will never get to grow old. He barely had time to grow up.”
“You will love again, Raina,” Vicki insisted after a long silence.
“Really? You never did.”
Vicki recoiled. “I never took time for it. I had a child to raise and a job to do. Love just wasn’t on my dance card. I have no regrets.”
Raina held her mother’s gaze. “Then we have something in common. I don’t ever want to be in love again either.”
She stood, wrapped the quilt tightly around herself and went up to her room. A night-light glowed from a wall socket as the rain fell relentlessly outside. The glimmer of light reflected off the glass angel Hunter had given her the year before. “To watch over you,” he’d said. Last year, getting back together with him had made her birthday the happiest ever. This year, it would be her saddest. She cradled the figurine in her hands, pressed it against her cheek, longing to feel Hunter touch her, hear his voice say her name. There were only the sound of the rain and the feel of the cool, hard glass on her skin.
“We’ve got to do something special for Raina’s birthday,” Kathleen told Carson. They were watching a movie in his home theater, but she wasn’t paying it much attention.
“We do?”
“Normally I’d ask Holly, but I can’t very well do that now, can I?”
Carson paused the movie with the remote. “Point taken. What did you have in mind?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be picking your brain, would I?”
“Let’s see, I could take the three of you to a hotel—”
She slugged his shoulder. “Be serious.”
“Do I not look serious?”
She started to stand, but he hauled her onto his lap. “All kidding is over. Do you have any ideas?”
“It has to be something fun, something neither she nor Holly has ever done before. Something memorable.” She nibbled on a fingernail. “And something that doesn’t cost a lot of money. I don’t have too much saved up, and Christmas is coming.”
“Sounds like you need a fairy godmother to show up.”
“I don’t know how to help my two best friends,” she said softly. “They hurt so bad, and I don’t know how to help them.”
“Still no word about Hunter’s shooter?”
“Nothing.” Kathleen picked at a button on the front of his shirt. “People die every day in Tampa. You never think about that until it happens to someone you know. How do you fill up the hole that’s left?”
“Maybe you have to dig another hole,” he said. “What do you say we plan something really low-key? No party. No crowds.”
She considered his suggestion. “Sounds like an unbirthday.”
“Leave it to me,” he said.
“To
you?”
“Trust me.”
Through his mother’s connections, Carson arranged a supper for the three friends in the planetarium under a glass-domed ceiling. A waiter from the country club, dressed in a white coat, served them at a table draped with pale blue linen and adorned with bone china, crystal, silver and a centerpiece of fresh white roses—choices Teresa made, she said, “because beauty has a way of dulling grief.”
While they ate, classical music played softly, and on one wall an enormous movie screen showed amazing photos of galaxies thousands of light-years away taken by the Hubble telescope. The star masses looked like explosions of flowers, in every color imaginable, strewn on a blanket of black. Overhead, real stars glittered in the dark sky above the dome.
The waiter handed Raina a card that read “Happy 18th, Raina, from … Your Angels.” He gave Holly a card, also signed “Your Angels.”
“This is very wonderful,” Raina said, looking at her friends. “Thanks.”
“Kathleen’s doing,” Holly said.
“I had some help from a guy with a vivid imagination.”
“Lucky you,” Raina said sincerely.
Kathleen beamed inwardly. Carson had done something extraordinary and touched all their hearts with his magic. And she knew that no matter what the future held for her and Carson, she would forever remember the night he gave her the universe.
fourteen
“WHAT DO YOU mean we’re going away for Christmas?” Holly stared at her father, hardly believing what he’d just told her. They were sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal for supper because Evelyn was in bed with a headache.
“I just think it’s the best thing for us this year.”
“But we always have Christmas at home. If Mom doesn’t feel like decorating, we can do it together.”
He shook his head. “No, we can’t.”
“I can do it by myself, then.” She knew exactly where the Christmas boxes were stashed in the attic. “I’ll put it all away too, after Christmas is over.”
He touched her hand. “Honey, it has nothing to do with the work. I really don’t think your mother can stand to see all those decorations—all the stuff you and your brother made for our trees when you were kids. She’s not up to it. And I’m not sure I am either.”