Page 79 of Parallel
“I’m just happy I’m here now,” she says, nestlingcloser.
* * *
It’sthe rain that wakesus.
A light mist, fortunately, but even a light mist isn’t something either of us could sleepthrough.
I drive her back to her mother’s house and walk her to the door. So much about this feels like high school again, but high school as it should have been: spent with a girl I can hardly stand to leave. “I think I kept you out past curfew,” I tell her. “If you get grounded, your mom won’t let me take you toprom.”
She grins. “She’ll have a bigger problem with the fact that you’rethirty.”
I kiss her one last time and then I pull her close. “Seriously, Quinn,” I say. “Don’t let your mom guilt-trip you into changing yourmind.”
She goes on her toes to press soft lips to my jaw. “I somehow found you once in London, and then I found you here, when I didn’t know who you were,” she says. “And nothing can keep me away from you now that Ido.”
36
NICK
Iarrive at my building just after five. I decide to skip my morning swim in lieu of a few more hours of sleep. In truth, what I’d like to do is just sleep until Quinn is back, and safe. It’s new for me, caring like this about someone else. As if my heart is now somewhere outside my body, completely beyond my control. What will I do if we don’t find a solution to the tumor? We’ve only been together for a few hours and I already feel like I won’t survive losingher.
I unlock my door and stagger to a halt when I step inside. Meg is sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, looking at me like I’m a cheating spouse caught tiptoeinghome.
“I went to the lake yesterday,” she whispers, her eyes red-rimmed and raw. She looks from me to the window and stares at it blankly. “I really thought that if I just did things your way, did the stuff you like for once, you’d see how good we could be together. But you weren’t there, and you didn’t sleep here either. So I want to know who you werewith.”
I exhale both guilt and irritation. We aren’t together anymore. I broke up with her for the right reasons, and I shouldn’t have to feel bad about it. I shouldn’t have to come home at five in the morning with her waiting to confront me. But I don’t want to hurt her either, and the way I feel about Quinn would definitely do that. It could also get me in a lot of trouble if she were to ask aboutit.
“Iwasat the lake,” I tell her, forcing myself toward the table and taking the seat across from hers. “I must have missed youthere.”
“Alone?”
I should lie but somehow the truth slips out instead. “Most ofit.”
“So you took someone to the lake,” she says, voice warbling now, heavy with tears, “but you never tookme.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted to go to thelake.”
“That’s not the point!” she cries. “The point is that you never asked! I had to drag you kicking and screaming into this relationship, and this girl—this stupid, stupid girl you barelyknow—gets everything I had to fight for. She’s the one you stayed out with last week, isn’tshe?”
My ribs seem to pull in, constricting my breathing. It looks bad. Maybe it is. I should have ended things with Meg a lot sooner than I did. I should have ended them the first time I tried, months ago. “It’s not what you’rethinking.”
“Then what is it, Nick?” she screams, standing and pulling at her hair. “Because I figured out weeks ago that you were interested in someone. I thought it was the patient Lynn said you were spending so much time with, and I figured it would pass because we both knowthatcan’t go anywhere, so if it’s not what I’m thinking, please tell me what the fuck itis.”
I sink low in my chair and rest my head against its back, cornered and suddenly depleted. I could lie right now, but I have a feeling it’ll come back to bite me in the ass. It’ll be easy enough for her to find out who Quinn is and assume the worst. “She’s someone I knew a long time ago, and now she’s here and”—I pause because the next words sit like something bitter, gritty on my tongue—“she’s dying. So I want to spend every hour with her while Ican.”
Meg’s mouth hangs slack. For the first time I see a hint of disgust in her eyes when she looks at me. “So sheisa patient. Why didn’t you turn her over to someone else once you realized you knewher?”
Because I don’t trust anyone else to take her case. “She wanted me to treather.”
Meg laughs, an angry, hysterical sound, loud enough to wake the neighbors. “Yeah, Ibetshe did. Who the hell is she? You said you’d never had a long-termrelationship.”
Cornered again.Jesus. For a guy who’s been generally truthful through most of his life, I’m getting called on a lot of shit right now. “I haven’t. It’s complicated…we didn’t date for long, but we’ve known eachforever.”
Her arms fold over her chest as she paces. I feel like I’m being cross-examined. “Where do you know herfrom?”
The easiest answer would be London, except that’s also the easiest to disprove since Quinn’s never been. “College.”
“We’ve talked about college a thousand times,” she says, throwing out her arms, “and you never thought to mention you werein lovewith someonethere?”