Читать книгу Love On Her Terms - Jennifer Lohmann - Страница 16

CHAPTER SEVEN

LEVI’S BLINDS WERE still open when he got home. The lights were on in Mina’s house, and he could see right through from his kitchen into hers. The ice-cream bowls were on the counter where he’d put them.

Mina only had good ice cream in her freezer. Dinner had been delicious, even if there hadn’t been any meat. Levi pulled everything out of his pockets and plopped his keys and his phone on the table, before dropping into a chair facing her house. He’d enjoyed himself at Mina’s. She’d been funny and interesting, and her face moved when she talked, and he hadn’t wanted her to stop talking, because he hadn’t wanted to stop watching her face move.

But then he’d been leaning in to kiss her, and she’d told him about her HIV, and the animation in her face had turned into pill bottles on the bathroom counter and blinds that were always closed and doctor’s visits and the heavy weight of watching someone slowly withdraw until the day you came home, and they weren’t there at all.

Levi rested his forehead in his hand, feeling the weight of his head and the way it pressed his elbow into the table. He’d caught his skin on the table in a weird way and he should move his elbow, but the pinching kept him from disappearing into the past. Into what he should have done better, the times he should have reminded Kimmie to take her pills and the times he’d reminded her too much. Into the last day when she’d said, “Don’t go to work today. I feel like something bad is going to happen,” and he’d been frustrated because he couldn’t find his keys, and he’d said, “You always feel like something bad is going to happen.”

Only this time, Kimmie had been right.

He dropped his palm to the wood with a slap, his head bouncing once before he righted it and stared again at Mina’s house.

Knowing what he knew now, knowing how everything ended, he still wouldn’t go back and change anything about the day he’d walked up to Kimmie and asked for her phone number. He’d loved her more than he thought was possible—still did. Every minute they’d been together had been the best minute of his life.

A love like that was possible, and he believed lightning could strike twice.

But he didn’t know if he could go through the pain of loving someone who was slowly dying again. He had doubted he was strong enough for more heartbreak. Was he strong enough for worse?

The screen on his phone flashed on with his sister’s face, then vibrated on the table.

“Hey, sis,” he said.

“I’ve been trying to call you all day. Where have you been?”

“Yeah, sorry.” He’d felt the phone vibrate in his pocket but hadn’t wanted to interrupt Mina to even check who it was. “I was over at my neighbor’s, helping her build a raised garden bed. She made me dinner.”

“Oh? The neighbor Dennis mentioned?”

“Don’t go getting any ideas,” he warned, hearing ideas she already had in the oh. If she got ideas, she’d call and text him nonstop to ask how the relationship was going. Eventually he’d turn off his phone just to get a break.

At some point when they were kids and she’d been stuck being Mom, she’d apparently gotten the idea that Moms smothered, and she hadn’t let go.

“Nothing is going to happen,” he said, before she could start planning his future wedding. “Mina is HIV positive.”

“Oh.” This oh was flat, not yet judgmental but edging that way. Brook was no longer getting any ideas. “I guess it’s best, then, that you’re not yet over Kimmie’s death.”

“What?” He regretted answering the phone, regretted saying anything. He especially regretted saying anything about Mina. Her disease was not his sister’s business, and it had not been his information to share, even if he’d thought Brook would understand his hesitation.

Which she clearly didn’t. “Maybe it’s not so bad if she’s one of those poor souls who’s had it since birth or got it from a blood transfusion or something. But what do you know about your neighbor? Maybe she got it from sharing a needle or she slept around in college or... I don’t know. How else do people get AIDS?”

“I think there’s a difference between HIV and AIDS,” he said slowly, realizing he didn’t know for sure. He didn’t know the answer to any of his sister’s questions. And the question of how Mina got HIV didn’t matter.

Did it?

“Well, you’re not going to be seeing her again to find out, are you?”

“Brook, less than a minute ago you were hopeful I was over Kimmie, would fall in love with Mina, get married and produce nieces and nephews for you to spoil.”

“All I said was ‘Oh.’”

“Yeah, but we both know where that oh was going.”

“Well,” she huffed, “you had always wanted to get married and have kids. Maybe you could marry someone with HIV, but you couldn’t have kids with them. It would be wrong to knowingly bring kids with AIDS into the world.”

I think HIV and AIDS are different. He didn’t bother repeating himself. She hadn’t listened the first time, and she wouldn’t listen a second. “I think someone with HIV can have children who don’t have the disease. Isn’t that part of what they talk about on the news when they talk about AIDS in Africa?”

“Honestly, Levi, you think a lot of things, but what do you know? About the disease or your neighbor?”

He bristled at her tone. She was his older sister, and her tone had likely been condescending since the day he was born.

At least, that was how he remembered it.

Most of the time he was able to remind himself that she was his sister, and she cared about him, and she fussed and bossed over everyone she cared about, from Dennis to her children to their aging father.

But tonight, he wasn’t in the mood. “Look, Brook, I get that you want me to get married again—”

“You liked being married,” she interrupted. “Even if...”

“Yes. Even if Kimmie had entire weeks where she didn’t leave the house, I did like being married. But I’m thirty-seven years old, and I get to pick the women I date.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, he felt like her baby brother.

“And if you want to hear about any of them, you have to reserve judgment. At least until you meet them. And you have to pretend that I’m an adult and might pick out someone good. After all, I picked Kimmie.”

Silence reigned through the phone as Levi waited for Brook to point out that Kimmie’s clinical depression had eventually killed her. He could feel his phone shudder at the effort his sister was putting forth to keeping her mouth shut.

“Kimmie was great,” she said finally, her voice soft with affection. Because Kimmie had been great. She had been unable to be a light in her own life, but she’d been the sun, moon and stars for many others.

“Good night, Brook. Go remind Dennis to take his high blood pressure medicine or something.”

“I worry.”

Whether it was about him, or Dennis’s health, or any number of things, Brook didn’t say, and it didn’t matter. “I know.”

“Someone has to.”

“But it doesn’t always have to be you.”

On that note they finished their goodbyes, and Levi ended the call. Then he slouched in his chair to catch his breath. Talking to his sister for ten minutes was more exhausting than an entire day spent building a raised bed with Mina. For all Mina’s chatter and energy, Levi had felt better after building the raised bed than he had before.

This was why he didn’t call his family and only occasionally answered the phone when they called him.

His breathing back to normal, Levi glanced up at his windows. Mina’s blinds had all been closed, and her house was dark.

It was too late to go over and apologize, but he could at least prove his sister wrong about the baby thing. He sighed. He knew the growing list of items he needed to apologize to Mina for, though he didn’t know what he wanted out of it. To be back on her couch kissing? To be friends and neighbors? To make the barest effort at not being a total ass?

Or did he need to apologize simply because he was wrong and sorry about it?

Levi rolled his eyes at himself. No matter what he was sorry for and why, he could at least be less ignorant when he apologized. Gathering his phone, he went in search of his laptop.

* * *

IT WASN’T UNTIL Friday that Mina was finally able to be outside after work, hands shoved in the new dirt in her new raised garden bed. Even though the nights were getting cooler, the sun had shone on the dark dirt all day, and it pressed warmth and possibility against her skin. She didn’t even care if the greens she was planting grew into anything edible, so long as she had the excuse to be out here, away from her thoughts and her work and her problems.

The past week had been rough. Classes were starting, increasing the amount of work she needed to do and the amount of time she had to spend on campus. Departmental meetings, syllabi, double-checking on the assigned readings and that the bookstore and library both carried what the students would need, etc. The meetings were the worst. She could work on the syllabi from home, but the department wasn’t yet willing to hold meetings through Skype. She’d always suspected that her emotions played a big role in the side effects of all her meds, and this week had done nothing to disprove her theory.

She’d spent more time on the toilet than she cared to admit to herself. Today wasn’t just the first day she’d been able to be outside in the sun, it was the first day her stomach had felt like it belonged to a normal human being. Or mostly normal. She’d gotten accustomed to the base level of nausea her meds caused.

She patted the soil down over the seeds, trying not to let her feelings press down too hard.

Her emotions and her side effects fed off each other, making everything worse. She felt self-conscious about the time spent in the bathroom, which brought her thoughts back to Levi walking out on her, almost without a word. She’d stay later in her office, hunched over her desk, hand cramped from her tight control on her drawing—which meant her drawings were shit. And she’d both wish she were home where she would be more comfortable and be glad that she couldn’t see if Levi’s truck was pulling into his driveway and wondering if she’d catch a glimpse of him.

It had taken her three days of concentrated effort on what her therapist had said about thoughts just being thoughts before she had been able to say, “I’m better off knowing his true stripes now,” and mean it. Only then had she been okay with leaving her office and spending time at home, in her garden and near her own bathroom.

Of course, when her emotions had settled down, so had her nausea.

“Hey, Mina,” a woman’s voice called from behind her. Mina stood and turned around to see her neighbor Echo standing on the sidewalk with her fluffy little dog on the other end of the leash, the dog’s tongue flipping in and out of its mouth in exaggerated, adorable pants. “Nice garden bed.”

“Thank you.” Mina took advantage of the opportunity for a break. She and Echo had spoken a couple of times when her neighbor walked past with her dog. The woman seemed friendly and interesting and worth getting to know a little better.

“Was that Levi I saw helping you build it?”

“Yeah...” Mina replied, not sure where this was going.

Echo looked right and left, as if checking for spies in the bushes. “I’ve barely gotten Levi to say hi to me when Noodle and I walk by.”

Noodle? The dog with the papillon ears and dachshund body and Pomeranian coat was named Noodle? Echo might be even more interesting than Mina had thought.

“I’m not sure he wanted to help,” Mina said, feeling the lie stick on her tongue as she tried to make Sunday sound like no big deal. Echo caught the lie, too, because her eyebrows lifted up to her hairline.

“Okay, so he wanted to. And he’s brought over my mail and helped me buy a lawn mower, but there’s nothing more.”

Given the continued elevation of her eyebrows, Echo understood the subtext of there might have been something more as easily as she’d recognized the lie. “I want to hear about this. You have dinner plans?”

Other than pasta with butter and Parmesan cheese? “No.”

“The store had some nice-looking salmon. I bought myself a piece for tonight and a piece for tomorrow, but one indulgent dinner with a friend is better than two indulgent nights in by myself. Come over for dinner and a glass of wine, and you can tell me all about how Silent-Neighbor Levi ended up building you a garden bed.”

“Honestly, Echo, there’s not much to tell.” And Mina wasn’t certain she was comfortable sharing what information there was. After all, blurting out “I’m HIV positive” rarely went as well as she hoped with possible friends, too. And she still hadn’t figured out how not to overshare.

“Do you not like salmon? Or wine?” A teenager rode by on a bicycle, and Echo’s little dog barked and jumped about like the devil himself had been on those two wheels. “Or little barky dogs?”

“I like salmon. And I like wine. I’m okay with little barky dogs that aren’t coming home with me.” And she needed to make friends. So she needed to trust a little. Dinner and boy talk wasn’t a bad place to start. “Is there anything I can bring?”

“Bring dessert. Come over in about an hour.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Gossip in the neighborhood.” Echo tapped the tips of her fingers against one another. “This is doubly exciting because no one ever tells me anything.” The movement of her fingers stopped, and she looked down at her dog, who looked up expectantly. “Probably because gossip is always a trade, and I only like to take. Greedy, my ex-husband always said.”

Mina laughed at the blatant attempt to reassure her. “I’ll be over in an hour, with ice cream.” She was less sure about bringing gossip.