I'll Be Here

It’s not really fair.”
    “ God .  Your mom had cancer.  You were afraid that she was going to die.”
    I cringe.  Even now, with radiation and chemo long behind us, I hate hearing the word “cancer.”  It makes me want to scream and pull on my hair. 
    Mom has a clean bill of heath now.  Remission .  And all the bad stuff is over so I know that I should be able to get my emotions under control, but I can’t seem to figure out how.  I keep my head down so that Laney can’t see that I’m tearing up while she continues to talk. 
    “I get why things changed and yeah, okay, you should have been a better friend, but I should have too.  I should have tried to understand what you were going through.  I should have stuck by you even when you were so wrapped up in Dustin that you pushed me away.”
    Ignoring the lump in my throat, I swallow and exhale my breath slowly.  Unsure of what to say, I settle on “Thanks.” 
    We’re quiet for a bit and I know that I should get out of the car but it’s one of those comfortable quiets that no one wants to break. 
    “Do you miss him?”
    I shift in my seat.  “Miss isn’t really the right word.  It’s like there’s been this huge hole inside of me since we broke up.”
    Laney nods like she gets it.  “When Mark and I broke up last year, I felt like I’d been run over by four thousand bicycles.”
    I can’t help but laugh.  “Bicycles?”
    She shakes her head and this slow smile spreads across her face.  “Well, yeah.  Or trucks, or steamrollers… or whatever.  Pick your mode of transportation.”
    “But I thought that I heard that you broke up with him, not the other way around.”
    “You heard right.  But, it doesn’t really matter who technically broke up with who.  I still felt like crap.”  She clicks her tongue.  “He cheated on me.” 
    This is news to me. 
    “Twice.”
    I wince.  “I’m sorry Laney.  I had no idea.  You two looked so happy.”
    “Yeah well, that’s the way things usually look from a distance.”  She is staring at herself in the rearview mirror, wiping away the mascara buildup underneath her eyes.
    “Here’s what I’m thinking…”  Her voice is low and strangely resolute.  “You should get revenge.”
    “On who?  Dustin?”
    “Who else?”  She cocks her head to one side and looks at me.  Then she sits more upright and raises her finger dramatically.  “He will rue the day that he broke your heart.”   
    I giggle at her. 
    “But I don’t want revenge or even for him to rue the day , I just want things to go back to how they were—how they’re supposed to be.”  It’s the first time that I’ve said out loud to another person that I want Dustin back.  I’m sure that it’s obvious and all but saying it out loud makes it real and I’ve been scared of that feeling.  It seems too sad. 
    It’s bad enough to be that depressed girl trying to recover from a crushed heart.  Being a depressed girl still struggling to put the pieces of a destroyed and broken thing back together is just plain pathetic. 
    Laney studies me in the mixed shadows.  “Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be,” she offers. 
    I think about that for a minute.  Then, out of the nowhere, it pops out of my mouth.  “I saw Alex a few days ago.  He came into my work to drop some papers off for my boss.” 
    I haven’t really let myself think about Alex at all this week and my heart speeds up at the sound of his name coming off my tongue.
    “I guess you could say that it was a little weird since I haven’t seen him in so long.”
    Her eyes bulge.  “Willow, are we talking about Alex Faber ?”
    “Yep.  And he was…  He was…”  I don’t even have the right words. 
    Laney’s staring out the windshield.  Her hand finds mine in the dark car and she gives it a little squeeze. 
    “Like I said, maybe this is the way things are supposed to be.” 

 
     
    There were about seventy-nine squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by fifteen or twenty of them.
    ~Nick Hornby

 
     
    CHAPTER NINE
     
    Jake and my mom began dating when I was in the fourth grade.  She’d known him for years.  He was one of the regulars at the gym where she worked.  Back then she was a yoga instructor, not the manager, and Jake took one of her classes almost every day.  
    She was impressed with his diligence towards achieving physical and mental