Chapter 4

Alex

I got up as quietly as I could to go rowing on Saturday morning, but when I came into the living room, Cecilia wandered out of the guest bedroom, rubbing her eyes, with her curly hair spilling over her face. She yawned, then stretched, her arms over her head. I watched in fascination as her t-shirt pulled up, exposing an arc of her flat stomach. I shut my eyes. I was like a fucking Peeping Tom.

Cecilia had been staying with me for three weeks. Having her there had changed almost every aspect of my existence. I planned meals for the first time ever, and went to the grocery store on a regular basis. I hired a cleaning lady so the condo would be nicer for her. I did laundry instead of taking everything to the cleaners, so she wouldn’t feel weird using the washer and dryer in my condo that I’d never touched. I adjusted my schedule, to be home at a certain time every day. I found myself doing all kinds of things that were out of the norm for me, so much so that I was forgetting what the norm for me actually was. I found I didn’t miss it.

I had thought I wouldn’t like a roommate. And I probably wouldn’t have, but man, I did like Cecilia. We talked together, laughed together, rode in to work together a lot. I was trying to keep her out of Nina the van, which I was sure was an inch away from a breakdown. We sat on the couch and she read to me, starting with her feet in my lap so I could rub them, then gradually moving across the seats until she had her head somewhere near my shoulder. I didn’t even think she was aware that she did it. She was a natural snuggler.

Really, she was natural at happiness. Every time I saw her or heard her voice, I felt my mind lift a little. It was becoming a permanent condition, and that was a good thing.

“What are you doing up so early today?” she asked, her voice sleepy.

“I’m going to row,” I said softly.

“Wait for me, I’ll come and swim.” She hopped back into the bedroom and came out a few minutes later. I realized I was thinking about her in a bathing suit. I needed some alone time with lotion, apparently.

She carried a bag, which I took, then she gathered some more things from her van and we rode downtown. She was quiet in the morning, still yawning and huffing around in her seat. I reached in the back and grabbed my coat, and when I covered her up with it, she made another little huff and fell back asleep. I drove to the Y and woke her up as gently as I could.

“What? No, I want to see where you row. I’ll walk back over to the Y.”

That wasn’t going to happen, but I obediently drove down to the boathouse and she stretched again as she got out. “I’m so sleepy today,” she complained .

“Let’s go look at the water,” I said, and put my hand on her back. Just because she was tired, and I didn’t want her to fall in. Or maybe she was cold. I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her to me, just in case. I was showing her the shell I was going to go out in when another rower showed up.

“Hey, Alex. Is this your cox?”

Cecilia whirled around. “What the hell did you just say to me?” She took a threatening step forward, which was hilarious, since the man she was trying to intimidate was easily 6’6” and probably more than a few times her weight.

“Easy, tiger,” I said, and pulled her back to me. “He’s making a joke that you’re the boat captain, the coxswain. It’s not an insult.”

The man held up his hands innocently. “No harm intended.”

“Oh,” Cecilia said, and turned her face into my ribs. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.” She peeked out and looked at the guy she was going to throw down with. “Sorry! What’s the captain called again? A cockman?” I laughed. We went all around the boathouse while she asked me more questions, until it was time for me to join the crew and get out on the water.

“You’re not walking to the Y from here, ok? It’s dangerous for you to go alone,” I told her.

“Alex, I’m very self-sufficient,” she informed me. “I won’t walk if you don’t want me to that much, but I do a lot of stuff on my own.” She puffed out her chest like a tiny fighting rooster. I wanted to kiss her so much, I almost couldn’t stop myself.

“I know you’re self-sufficient. Do you have everything you need from the Jeep?” A terrifying thought crossed my mind. “You’re not going to hitch, are you?”

Cecilia laughed, and pushed me a little toward the boats. “Go do your rowing. Come get me at the Y when you’re done.”

She stood on the shore waving as we started to stroke away. “That your girlfriend?” the guy behind me asked.

“Yeah,” I told him. She sure as fuck wasn’t going to be his, if that was what he was getting at. And then I spent the rest of the time on the water thinking about her shirt pulling up that morning, and wishing it had gone up a little farther.

You would think that two hours of physical exertion would have dampened my, uh, enthusiasm for Cecilia. But when I saw her in the pool at the Y, I was immediately at half-staff. Great. For eight years I’d had little to no desire to even be near a woman, and now three weeks into knowing Cecilia and I was going to dive into a pool and maul her against a lane line. What the hell was happening with me?

She started to hop out when she saw me, and I quickly handed her a towel. Better to be covered up, head to toe, if necessary. “Good swim?” I asked her.

“Yes! I feel so much better. Good row?”

“Yeah. Your hair is so long when it’s wet.” I saw my hand reaching out to touch it and pulled it back. I held her bag while she pulled on some clothes. I focused on the water aerobics class in the shallow end.

Cecilia wanted to drive, so she took the wheel of the Jeep, and we headed back north to my condo. I could hear her stomach growling even with the radio on and her singing along with it. “ Want to stop and eat?” I asked her, and she nodded.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m almost always hungry.”

“I don’t understand where it all goes,” I told her, as I tried to think of a breakfast spot. “How about pancakes? Make a right here if you want them.”

“Oh, I LOVE pancakes! We should make them tomorrow too! And fruit compote. And bacon.” She paused. “And sausage. Wow, I sound like I’m crazy about food! My mom is the same way. She eats and eats and is always small. At least, she was the last time I saw her.”

“When was that?Turn left at the light.”

She considered for a few minutes. “I guess…I saw her two years ago. She flew into New York to see Paulo and I drove up to see her.”

“Who’s Paulo?There’s the place.”

She turned into the restaurant parking lot. “He’s her friend. Also, a boyfriend, I guess. I mean, I know they have sex together,” she said matter-of-factly.

I coughed. “I can say with certainty that I’ve never known anything about my parents’ sex lives. Nor do I want to.”

“My mom tells me everything. I’m her best friend,” Cecilia said. “Hold on, let me get my money out before we go inside.” She started to reach into her bra.

“I have this one.” Now I was thinking about reaching into her bra. A lot.

I diverted my dirty mind by thinking about her mother. After we were seated, I asked, “Is your mom your best friend too? ”

Cecilia considered. “I guess. No, not really, anymore. I don’t know.” She looked out the window. Dr. Mavromatis would have something to say about their boundaries, for sure.

“Cecilia.”

“Huh?”

“Isn’t that your phone ringing?”

She looked puzzled for a second, then her eyes got enormous. She frantically rooted around in her swim bag, then grabbed the phone and ran outside.

I was hoping it wasn’t Paulo calling about her mom. I suddenly thought about Cecilia leaving, and I didn’t like the idea, at all.

She was in a funny mood when she got back to the table. “Everything ok?” I asked casually and she nodded, then lit into her stack of pancakes. She was quiet throughout the meal and in the car as I drove home, not even singing when I found the Motown station.

As we turned into my street, she said, “I have to go somewhere, ok?”

“You don’t have to tell me your plans. We’re friends, roommates, right? I’m not keeping track of you.” Of course, now I was completely curious about where she was going.

She nodded, biting her lip. “Ok, Alex. I’ll see you for dinner, then. Get some fish if you want that. Maybe salmon!” She rushed into the condo and a second later I heard the shower running. I got dressed too, and fast, but she was already gone by the time I was out.

Steve had texted me twice, asking me to come over to watch our cousin Tucker’s game on TV. Since he was avoiding the topic of me going up north, I had decided to forgo his input and had settled on the upcoming weekend to go get my dad’s lodge ready to sell. So I took “come over to watch the game” as a euphemism for Steve wanting to pump me for information about the trip. Sighing, I got back into the car and drove north on Woodward to Birmingham.

He was clearly waiting for me when I let myself in, because he sprang from his chair as if something poked him. Then he sat back down, but looked wound up tight.

“Hey, Alex,” he said casually. “How’s tricks?”

“‘How’s tricks?’ Really? How’s Tucker playing?” I asked, settling down on the couch and gesturing at the TV.

“He isn’t actually in the lineup today. I’m just asking how you’re doing,” he said, still going for the nonchalant effect. It wasn’t something he could pull off, and I told him so.

He hemmed and hawed for a while about baseball and then about work. I’d had enough. “Spit it out, Steve. I know you hate baseball. Why did you want me to come over?”

“You’re acting strangely and it’s worrying me,” he told me bluntly. “It’s close to the anniversary of your accident, your spending patterns have changed, you’re taking off on a road trip with some friend I haven’t met. I’m worried,” he repeated.

“So you sat around on a Saturday figuring out ways to lure me over here to lecture me?” I tried to tamp down my anger. “Stephen, I’m twenty-nine years old. You’re not my dad. I’m perfectly fine. Ok? Let’s not get into a fight.”

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he agreed. “And I’m trying to respect your boundaries.” I snorted. “I am trying. But I’m concerned.” He hesitated. “Have you met someone?”

“I made a friend,” I admitted. “It turns out, I’ve been a little lonely for a friend.”

Steve looked at me. “Lonely.”

“Yeah, you know that feeling, when you need some human company? Lonely.”

“I know the feeling,” he said quietly, and it made me feel terrible.

“Man, I know it sucks to have me as a brother. I’m a deadweight on your back. I’m going to get my shit together and you won’t have to worry about me,” I told him. “You can have a life of your own.” He would have a fit if he knew that Cecilia was living with me. Platonically.

To my absolute horror, his eyes filled with tears. I hadn’t seen Steve cry since I woke up from the accident. “Jesus, Stephen, I’m sorry. I’ll get my shit together, I promise.” I felt like crying, too.

He stood up, his back to me, and cleared his throat. “You’re not a weight on me,” he said gruffly. “I worry about you because I love you, not because you don’t have your shit together. You’re doing fine.”

I walked around the chair and hugged him, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had done that. All that hugging Cecilia and I had been doing was loosening me up or something. “I love you too,” I told him. “I’m ok. I’ll be ok if I go up north. I’ll text you, and I’ll call you, and if anything goes wrong, Luke’s there, right?” I stepped back. “You can trust me, I know it’s hard, but you can. I won’t let you down again.”

He looked like he was trying not to lose it, but he nodded at me, and we sat back down to watch baseball, which neither of us liked.

Cecilia

My phone hadn’t rung in forever, and my first thought was that something was wrong with my mom. But when I got to the parking lot of the pancake place and answered, a crackly, old voice was on the other end.

“I’m looking for Cecilia Byrne?”

“This is her. I mean, she. I’m Cecilia!”

“My name is Virginia Eubank. You left a note on my door? About Roger?”

My heart stopped. I finally got a call back! “Yes, I did.”

“Why do you need to find him?”

I hesitated. “I think he may be a…a relative of mine. I just want some information about him. Do you know him?”

“He’s a relative of mine, as well,” she answered.

Oh, wow! I had found someone!

“Why don’t you come back and we can talk in person,” she invited me, and I quickly accepted.

“I’ll be there as fast as I can. ”

“There’s no rush. I’m not doing anything but aging,” she said smartly.

After that, I could barely focus on anything. If I was right, Virginia Eubank was Roger’s second cousin, once removed. The genealogy course I had taken in Pittsburg at the community college was really paying off! If Roger was really my dad, then she was my cousin too! Twice removed. What came after twice, thrice? Was that really a word, or did they just say that in E. Nesbit books? I could feel Alex’s eyes on me, looking over his orange juice glass. My plate was empty and I hadn’t even tasted the pancakes. What a waste. Glumly, I scoped a little syrup on the tine of my fork. What I was wrong, and Roger Trelles wasn’t my father? What would I do next?

“Ready to go?” Alex asked, and I realized I was drawing patterns in the pool of syrup on my plate. I forced a smile at him, and he looked at me strangely. I was lost in thought the whole way home.

I felt a little weird ditching him for the afternoon, but he made it clear that he didn’t have any claim on me. We were only roommates. I was sure that he had better things to do, anyway, than hang out with me all day! I drove as fast as Nina could safely carry me back to Detroit and knocked on Virginia Eubank’s chipped door.

There was movement in the curtains again, then the door opened and I saw a face just at my own eye level peek out at me. “Cecilia?”

“Hi, Mrs. Eubank!”

“It’s ‘Ms.,’” she told me, as she shut the door to drop the chain. “After my husband died, I never saddled myself with another man. I went back to the Ms. Eubank. ”

“I’m not saddled, either,” I said, as I stepped into her hallway.

“Good lord, are you old enough to drive?” she said, and I stretched to my full height. Which was, by the way, about the same as hers.

“I’m twenty-four,” I told her. “I’ve been driving for years!” My mom had let me drive as soon as I could see over the dashboard. We had been in Cura c ao at the time and it hadn’t been exactly legal, but by the time I got my license eons later in Florida, I was an old pro.

Ms. Eubank pointed me to a small living room, and I sat on a plaid sofa. “Your note made me very curious. I haven’t thought about Roger Trelles in years. Tell me what you want with him, please,” she asked me. “He is what he is, but he’s family, so I’ll need to know before I give you any information.”

“I think he’s my father,” I admitted to her. “About twenty-five years ago, he lived in the Florida Keys. He worked in a dive shop there. That’s where my mom was docked—lived—at the time.” This next part was a little embarrassing. “She wasn’t exactly sure which of her, um, partners was my dad. I’ve been looking everyone up, and I’ve eliminated seven. I’m down to only Roger Trelles.”

“Seven?” Ms. Eubank looked a bit scandalized.

“She was very popular.” I took out my notes from my bag. “I eliminated four candidates by DNA tests, and three because my ancestry doesn’t show any Asian or African background.”

“Well, my goodness. It sounds like you’ve been hard at work on this. I think I need some water. Would you like any?”

I shook my head no, and she walked slowly to her kitchen and came back sipping from a glass. “I decided to skip the water and go right to a cocktail. Something like this doesn’t happen every day.”

Maybe not for her, but I had been looking for a while and waiting for an answer from her to my note for almost three weeks! “Can you tell me about Roger?” I prompted her.

“He was my cousin. I should say, some type of cousin. He was a great-grandson of my great-aunt, if I have it worked out correctly.”

“Right, he’s your second cousin, once removed.”

She made a face. “Whatever you say. He was a relation. We used to see him every now and then at holidays, and once we had a big Eubanks’ reunion in Lansing, and he came too.”

I was struck by something—“Ms. Eubank, you’re using the past tense to talk about him.” I bit my lip. “Is he deceased?”

She put down her cocktail, and reached across the sofa and squeezed my hand. “Now, I don’t think so, but I don’t know. I guess I was talking about him that way because it’s been so long since I’ve seen him. At least, gosh, forty years.”

Forty years was a long time. Well, at least he wasn’t dead, as far as she knew! And here I was, finally talking to another relative! I had to look at the pluses.

“Roger was a wild young man. I’m sorry to tell you, he was in jail for a bit of time. Not prison, jail.”

I nodded. I had found that when I researched him. “It seems like he lived in the Keys for a while, but then I can’t find any trace of him. Do you think he would have left the country?”

She shrugged. “Well, as I said, he was always a little wild. He used different names sometimes, I think. It could be that he had to leave the country, if you know what I mean.”

I felt a little sick. “He was arrested for credit card fraud, right? Nothing violent.”

“Oh no, he wasn’t a violent person, as far as I know. A smooth talker, that’s for sure. Whenever I saw him, he had some kind of new idea, needed investors. Which I was never in the position to be, so we never spent much time together.” She let go of my hand, and patted it. “But he was a handsome devil, that’s for certain!”

“Do I look like him at all to you?”

She studied me. “Just a moment, let me get my pictures down. I’m sure I’ve got a few of Roger.”

This was better than I could have hoped for! I trailed after her, up a narrow flight of stairs to her attic, and she pointed out boxes for me to open to look for her albums. The leatherette covers were cracking and the old photos were all stuck down to the pages, yellowing a bit. We were both sneezing in the dust, so I carried some albums back downstairs for her as she carefully descended in front of me, and we sat on the couch together and looked at the pictures.

Ms. Eubank pointed out everyone who could be related to me and explained who they were, and what they were doing, and there was almost always something interesting or salacious. There was her Aunt Audrey, who had a still in her back yard and buried four husbands. Ms. Eubank raised her eyebrows significantly at me after mentioning that. Her grand-niece Anne, who had been in the Peace Corps and still lived in Africa with six children who only spoke French and Wolof, which I had never even heard of. It was so exciting! Uncle Kevin, who, shortly after the picture had been taken, had decided to leave his wife and make it on Broadway as a tap dancer. It hadn’t turned out so well. And then she said, “Oh, there he is!”

I traced my finger over the plastic sheet that covered the page. This guy, in the red short shorts, could be my dad. He didn’t look much like me, after all, but I looked a lot like my mom, except for the hair which I had always assumed had been paternal. But the Roger in the picture had on a trucker hat, so I couldn’t tell. “Did he have curly hair, like me?” I asked Ms. Eubank.

She studied him. “Not as I remember. His was more wavy than curly, as I recall.” She pulled the plastic back and used her nails to pick the photo free of the glue holding it to the page. “Here, you can take it.”

“Really?” I held it to my chest.

“Sure, sure.”

“Thank you!” I told her.

“I’m certainly sorry if Roger left your mother in a difficult position.” Ms. Eubank looked uncomfortable.

“Oh, no! She was glad to have me, after she got used to the idea. And really, I think she was lucky that she didn’t catch a terrible disease, having unprotected sex with so many guys. I was a good wake-up call for her.” Ms. Eubank now looked horrified. I’d said too much. “Anyway, is there anyone else who might have an idea of where Roger is?”

She thought for a moment, then wrote out a list of names in wobbly handwriting. Two matched the names on my list of people I had already visited and hadn’t answered my notes or phone calls. “Can you believe, I was a schoolteacher? I used to teach script, and now look at this writing!” She made a disgusted face at the paper. “I’m getting too old for everything. Well, it was very nice to speak with you, Cecilia. It was a real treat for me, how you let me go on.”

I got the feeling that she was alone a lot. “Do you have any family that visits you? I mean, besides me, if you’d let me come back?”

She didn’t answer the first question, but she patted my cheek. “You can come back and visit me anytime.”

“Ms. Eubank, you don’t know what you’ve opened yourself up to. I still have a pen-pal from when I was seven. I work not too far away, so I will come visit you again, soon!”

When I left her house, I realized it had been a while since I had visited the hair salon and seen Neveah’s mom, Diana, so I stopped in to say hello. Neveah told the ladies there about Alex, and they wanted details, details, details.

“There’s nothing to tell!” I protested when I got up from the shampoo bowl and sat in Diana’s chair.

Eight pairs of eyes stared at me. “We’re friends. Roommates,” I explained.

“You’re living with him?” Neveah squealed. “For real? When did this happen?”

“That’s a mistake,” one of the stylists said. “Cow and the milk, honey, cow and the milk.”

“Wait a minute! There’s no milk. He’s not getting any milk from me,” I protested.

Another customer in a chair looked at her watch. “Tick tock on that!” Her stylist laughed .

“I think she likes him,” a woman said.

“Of course she does!”

“Who is he, really? Do we know anything about him?”

“He has a job. What about prior relationships? Does he have exes? Kids?”

“How does he feel about her?”

“You have to have your own house in order before you settle down. And isn’t your house a van, Cecilia?”

Oh, lordy. I had to put a stop to this. “Everyone, please! We are JUST FRIENDS.”

Diana, Neveah’s mom, hugged me. “You should listen to these women, Cecilia. They have a lot more life experience than you do. Now, I have a new product that I think will really work for your hair. Put a half-dollar sized squirt in your hands and rub it through after you shower, not on the roots. I’m concerned about split ends with all that swimming you’ve been doing.”

Neveah dragged me into the back room after my haircut. “You’re really just friends?”

“He said it himself today. We’re roommates. He’s letting me stay with him until I go to California.”

“You’re really going to go?” she asked mournfully. “But I need your advice!”

I laughed. “I’m not leaving this minute! What’s up, Nevvie?”

“What would you do, if you really liked someone, but he doesn’t know you feel that way? Like he just thinks of you as a friend?”

“Who are we talking about here?” I asked her carefully.

Neveah hesitated. “Me and Jason! I really like him, ok? He’s so funny and when he sings…” She got a starry look in her eyes. It was true; it was hard to resist a man who sang.

“He has no idea?” I asked.

“None. Don’t tell him!”

I waved her off. “Let’s do some recon on Monday. I want to see the two of you together.”

I had to run the gauntlet back through the beauty shop to leave and I felt like I barely made it out alive. No matter how I felt about Alex, he had made himself clear. We were just friends! I cleared my throat against the funny tickle that had been bugging me. Just friends. Period. But wow, he was nice to cuddle with. And he gave really good foot rubs. And he was so sweet to me, in little funny ways and big ways too, like buying hand soap for dry skin, and trying to look at Nina’s engine, as if he knew what he was doing at all, and helping me figure out all the different credits I had gotten from the various community colleges I had attended on my long trip north from Florida. He was always showing me that he cared, even if it was just as a friend.

I was lucky to have him. In any way I could. But the beauty shop chorus had been right. Of course I liked him!

Alex

The headache had started while I was at Steve’s, and finally I couldn’t take sitting with him anymore, pretending that we hadn’t had an emotional moment. I drove home extremely slowly, glad it was cloudy but still cursing the weak light filtering through. Goddamn sun. My sunglasses dragged on my face and hurt too much to wear.

I got myself into the condo and onto the couch and shut my eyes, trying to think of something else, but only focusing on the dull throbbing behind my temples and forehead. Pound. Pound.

The garage door wheeled open, and I tried to rouse myself. Shit, I forgot to get salmon for Cecilia. I stood and an eddy of dizziness twirled me up, and I went back down, on my knees, gripping the edge of the coffee table.

“Alex? Hey, are you ok? Alex?” Her voice sounded panicked.

“Ok,” I said. “I just got dizzy.”

Cecilia was pulling me to lay back down, and I managed to haul myself onto the couch, my arm over my eyes. After a minute, I felt better. “I’m fine,” I said. I could hear her breathing pretty quickly. “Come here, I’m fine.” I stretched out my other hand, and she took it, and then she must have knelt down next to the couch. I felt her reach across me, and rest her head on my chest.

“You scared me a little,” she said in the vicinity of my nipple. “What happened?”

“I have a headache. I stood up too fast. I forgot the fish,” I clipped out. Pound, pound went my head in time to my words.

She was stroking gently across my chest. “Screw the fish. Want to try the essential oils?”

I would have tried anything short of cutting of my head, it hurt so much. “Sure. Pills didn’t touch this one."

She let go of me, and I missed her warmth. “Here,” she said after a moment, and she picked up my head and laid it down in her lap. Then I smelled the familiar aroma of her pillow, lavender, and felt her light fingers gently rubbing my temples. She was humming too, very softly.

I think we must have been that way for a while. My head did start to feel better, and the pounding was lessening. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, Cecilia was curled up against me on the couch, and my headache was gone.

I traced my fingers down her back. She made a funny little huffing sound when she slept. I had heard it in the car, too. The room had gotten very dark, and she was going to be hungry. I thought that I should probably wake her up, but then I just stayed where I was, drawing patterns on her back and arm. Her hair had expanded into a curly cloud that was tickling my neck, but not in a bad way.

She made a deeper huff, then said, “Hm.”

“Cecilia,” I said, softly, and she tried to bury her head in my chest.

“I’m awake,” she announced clearly.

I started to laugh quietly. “I don’t think you are.”

“What?” She sat up, scooping a mass of hair back from her face. “What’s happening here? Alex? What are you doing here? ”

I tried to tuck some curls behind her ear. “As far as I know, this is my house. It seems like we fell asleep on the couch.”

She looked at me, then put her hand on my forehead. “Is your headache gone?”

“It is. You cured me.”

She tilted her head, and I got the strangest feeling that she was going to kiss me. But then she hopped up and said she had to get her hair pulled back before she chopped it off, and she disappeared into the guest bedroom.

I splashed some cold water on my face. I felt a little drained, but really relieved that the pain was gone. I checked my phone and saw I had five texts from Steve, who must have noticed that I was not at my best when I left his house. I answered that I was fine, stop worrying. As if that would work. He had always been a protective older brother to me, when we were little. Since my accident he had moved to a whole new level, from older brother to supermax prison guard mode.

Cecilia and I pulled together a dinner by scrabbling through what was left at the back of the cupboards. “I’m going to make a list,” she said. “We need some staples, like unsalted butter for baking, chicken stock or bullion, stuff like that.” She stared into the distance, planning, and I watched her. I found her fascinating, talking about groceries.

We hung out quietly for the rest of the night. I told her that I had been over to my brother’s house, and she said she had visited her friend Neveah at her mom’s hair salon on the West Side. “Neveah told me that she likes Jason. LIKES, likes Jason.” Then she clapped her hand over her mouth. “I probably shouldn’t have told you! Don’t say anything about it, ok?” She cleared her throat and rubbed it a little .

“How likely am I to run into the coffee shop and yell, ‘Hey Jason, Neveah likes you! Cooties!’”

“That’s not an appropriate use of the term ‘cooties!’” she informed me. She pursed her lips in mock disapproval and again, I almost kissed her. Jesus fucking Christ.

I batted the thought away. “How old are they?” I asked.

“Jason is twenty, and she’s nineteen.”

That seemed like a lifetime ago to me.

“So maybe you would know!” Cecilia said. “You’re a guy, right?”

“I’ve always thought so.”

“How can she tell if he likes her?”

My stomach did a funny twist. “Well, I think usually men are pretty obvious. He’d go out of his way to be with her. Text her, if she had a phone. Be interested in everything about her, worry about her, want to be around her all the time.”

Cecilia was staring at me. “Maybe he doesn’t like her that way. Maybe he’s just a nice guy. I mean, I know he’s just nice. Jason’s a really nice guy.”

“Right, Jason. Right. Well, I’d look for things like that.” I stood up slowly, trying not to get dizzy again. “I’ll clean up.”

Cecilia had buried herself in a thick, hardcover book when I finished with the dishes, and I tilted it to see the cover. “ Traumatic Brain Injuries: Recovery and Hope ,” I read.

She nodded. “I wanted to know more about TBIs. I wanted to understand more. ”

“You can ask me anything you want. I’ll tell you, if I know.”

To my surprise, she hopped up and pulled out a handwritten list of questions from her bag. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” She picked up a pen, and held it ready to take notes.

We spent the next few hours sitting on the couch, facing each other, talking about my accident, my recovery, after-effects. She kept tearing up, and we’d have to stop to hug for a while. That was fine with me. I had given out piecemeal versions to my various therapists and doctors, and obviously Steve had lived it with me. But this was the first time that I had explained the whole thing to someone else.

“I still take medication for anxiety and depression. I may for the rest of my life,” I said.

“That’s ok, right? I mean, it won’t hurt you?” She had dropped her pen, and was holding my hand.

“No, it won’t hurt me. I’m afraid to stop taking them. I was…a mess, without them. I know how you feel about western medicine—”

“No, no,” she protested. “I told you, I think there’s a place for everything. Whatever helps you, that’s what I want!”

I wanted to tell her that she helped me. Sitting like this, telling her all this, holding her hand, it helped. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Instead I told her, “Thanks for listening.” I reached out with my other hand and held her cheek, and she tilted her head, resting in my palm. Her sweet face.

We looked at each other. “I’m glad you told me,” she said softly. “I’m glad we’re friends.”

Right.Friends.