“Does what feel weird?” I watch his face for clues, but I find none.
“This talking thing we’re doing. Does it feel weird to you?”
I raise my brows. “Should it?”
He shrugs.
“Does it feel weird to you?” I ask, and I brace myself for his response.
He shakes his head. “No, actually it feels pretty damn good,” he says.
We walk around the side of Jake and Katie’s house and walk up the porch steps, still chatting and laughing together. When we hit the top step, we look up to find everyone staring at us. Jake and Katie stand slack-jawed, and Aaron’s eyes get big, almost comically big, in his face. Mr. Jacobson lets out a snort.
“What?” I ask. I look down at myself, thinking maybe I dropped some food on my shirt when I was cooking. I see nothing. “What’s wrong with all of you?”
Aaron grins. “Nothing.” He reaches into the cooler for a soda and passes it to Kerry-Anne. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Then why are you all looking so funny?” I ask.
Aaron looks over at Jake with mock horror on his face. “Dude, I think she just called you funny-looking.”
“I don’t care what she calls me as long as that bowl has loaded baked potato salad in it,” Jake says. He reaches for the bowl and whistles as he looks inside. “My favorite.” He points a finger at Eli. “If you try to hog it all, things are going to get ugly,” he warns.
“She made me my own bowl,” Eli taunts.
Aaron pretends to pout. “What do I have to do to get my own bowl?”
“You have to marry her,” Mr. Jacobson says. He looks from me to Eli and back again, a supreme look of satisfaction on his face.
“And put up with her snoring,” Eli adds.
I elbow him in the side, and he ducks down and kisses my cheek, which makes me lean into him a little. Everyone goes still. Completely still. Then they all immediately go back to normal, like somebody scratched a record and time stopped.
Why are they being so weird?
32
Bess
“How did it go at the doctor’s office?” I ask Aaron as we stand hip to hip at the double sink in Katie’s kitchen, washing dishes.
He lowers the collar of his shirt and shows me a neat row of butterfly stitch bandages where his port used to be. “They took my port out.”
I feel like he has just kicked me in the gut. “So you’re officially done. Done. Like, no more. Done?”
He nods slowly. “I’m done.”
“Did they give you a time frame?” I ask quietly.
The older kids are all outside, and Katie just went to give her youngest two a bath so they can go to sleep, while Jake and Eli make a fire in the fire pit so the older kids can roast marshmallows and make dough doggies. Still, Aaron looks around to be sure they can’t hear him. “I didn’t want one,” he admits. “Call me a coward if you want to, but I don’t want to plan for it. I want to plan for a good summer and nothing else.” He arches his brows at me like he’s waiting for reassurance.
“You’re not a coward,” I say quietly. “You’re the strongest man I know.”
He shakes his head. “I’m just playing the cards I was dealt. That doesn’t make me strong. It makes me normal.”
“The words Aaron and normal have never been synonymous, you jackhole,” I say playfully. I pick up a fingerful of soap bubbles from the sink and flick them in his direction. I force myself to sober as he wipes his face. “How was Sam?”
“She was surprisingly, weirdly composed, honestly. I expected some crying or histrionics, but she asked a few questions, and she