Page 65
Aravind hummed. “Yeah, why not. I can snoop around and dig into all their suitcases.”
“I don’t think you’re going to find anything interesting,” I warned as I tried the door handle and found it unlocked.
“Boooo,” Aravind said as we stepped inside.
I kicked my shoes off, and he followed suit, and then I pulled him toward the living room. “Oliver?”
“No one’s in here,” Aravind said, “but I think I see someone outside on the deck. Oh, there’s no pool,” he added. “Bummer. Is your nephew cool?”
I frowned. “I don’t know him that well, but probably. He didn’t seem thrilled with his parents’ behavior last night.”
“We can invite him over if he wants a break from all this weird WASPy bullshit.”
I snorted as Aravind took the lead, and we made our way out the back door. It was easier with my white cane and the dimly lit afternoon, and I eventually found Oliver’s head of dark hair in one of the chairs.
“Dad said you were coming by,” he muttered. I could feel his eyes on me as I made my way closer. “You really need that thing out here?”
Oh, good. My parents had gotten to him too.
Squeezing the cane handle, I fought back a sigh. “I need it where I need it. And as much as everyone complains about it looking weird, it keeps me from falling on my face or cracking my head open. Or walking into traffic.”
There was a tense silence, and then I heard Oliver shift on the chair. “So, it’s that bad?”
“Do you want me to intervene?” Aravind asked very softly.
Shaking my head, I turned to him. “I think he’s actually curious. If you want to go snoop around, I’ll be alright here. Just…when they get back…” I didn’t know how to tell him I didn’t want to be alone with my family without sounding pathetic.
“I won’t leave your side.” He leaned in and laid a soft kiss to my jaw that threatened to destroy me. And then he was gone.
I found the chair nearest to Oliver and sat, doing everything I could to not look like I was catching my breath after that kiss. I could feel more tension coming off my nephew, and I couldn’t help wondering if maybe he was some dipshit, homophobic jock just like his dad and other uncle.
“Your boyfriend?”
“Something like that.” It felt kind of terrible to lie to this kid. “It’s new.”
Oliver cleared his throat, then said, “Does it suck?”
“New relationships?”
“No,” he scoffed. “The…not-seeing thing. I mean, it has to suck, right? Feeling fine, feeling normal. Then suddenly—wham. Fucking blind.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, “it wasn’t like that at all. It was more like having shitty-as-fuck night vision and no peripheral vision and parents who didn’t notice until I started running into things. Then it was the doctors telling me that it was going to get worse and me waiting around for years and years and thinking oh, it’s not so bad. Until it was so bad.”
He made a soft noise. “Years?”
“Several long years of plateaus where the doctors weren’t sure if it was going to stay that way or progress further. The last year, it’s been…a lot. I lost all my light perception in this eye.” I touched my right one. “This one has about two percent, give or take.” My finger made a shadow past the pinholes in my left eye. “Hockey helped.”
He made a disbelieving noise. “Right.”
“I’m not joking. I mean, it’s not for everyone, and I get it—Canadian family, what a stereotype, right? But it helped me feel, I don’t know, like I belonged somewhere, I guess.”
“Your knee though. Is it true you might not play again after that check?”
I released a sharp puff of air. I hadn’t realized he knew about how I got hurt. “Yep. It fucking sucks. A lot.”
I could hear Oliver drumming his fingers on something solid. Probably the arm of the chair. “Everyone thinks that your life is hard. Being, like, blind or whatever. Like it’s over, and if you didn’t do hockey, you wouldn’t do anything at all.”
“They didn’t make it easy on me,” I told him.
