Page 32 of Really Truly Yours
Hey, it isn’t my fault she looked so sweet and amazing all of a sudden.
It’s not her fault, either. I’m just in a weird headspace with all this long-lost parent stuff, so let’s call it no-fault and leave it where we found it. And to be blunt, I got nothing for my trouble, nothing except lemonade breath in my face and a good look at a pair of lips I’d like to but will not kiss.
The stool groans when I remove my weight, my intention, the door. Instead, I detour to a short, particle-board bookcase at the distant end of the sofa. “These your textbooks?”
You think, detective? I eye the stack of thick tomes with yellow used stickers on the spines housed on the bottom shelf. Even the middle plank, supporting simply a Bible, a study guide, and a handful of paperback novels, dips, threatening disaster.
“They are.”
“You’re in school?”
Sydnee has moved from the kitchen and leans near the stool I vacated, one hand white-knuckling the bar. Do I make her nervous?
“I was.”
“You graduate?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a long story.”
And it seems I have nothing but time. I help myself to the sofa. A little springy, but then, with my size, I’m tough on furniture in general. The words biology and human anatomy pop from the bindings of the textbooks. “Nursing?”
There’s a touch of spunk in her who-are-you-again-and-why-are-you-here look.
You know the answer. I need a little therapy, baby.
Ahem. Not that kind of therapy. I am not a creep. Some conversation would be nice, though. “Sydnee?”
A sigh drifts over. She perches on the edge of an easy chair with a towel over it. “That was my plan.”
“You changed your mind?”
“More like it was changed for me. I got sick.”
My gaze flashes toward the kitchen counter. The medicine. The mega-thin frame. The out-of-season sweater as if she’s cold literally all the time.
“What kind of sick?” ’Cause this is my business, right?
Wrong, yet the idea of Sydnee suffering with something awful unsettles me worse than Donny and all his junk.
“I’m okay now…”
“But?”
“Well, it wasn’t cancer or anything. Nothing as dramatic as that. Quite lame, actually.”
How is something that alters her life’s course lame?
“Two years ago, I started having stomach trouble. Nothing stayed down. The pain was unbearable. I got misdiagnosed a couple times. Thankfully, because the doctors threw some pretty scary stuff at me. Turns out it was boring old IBS, just a very severe case. There’s medicine that helps, and when I have that, I do fine.”
“When you have it?”
Her expression blanks. She stands and returns to the kitchen, grabbing the unused cup and tugging open the freezer like I decided I wanted that water after all. “Sydnee?”
Ice rattles, nearly overpowering her voice. “It’s expensive. Insurance companies are so obnoxious.”