All I know is that I can’t afford to miss them. What if the one time they clearly point me in the direction of what I’m meant to do with my life, I’m not even paying attention? What then?
I step onto the elevator, she pushes the circle with the sixteen, and it lights up. Sixteen years and the signs still haven’t told me what I need to know most. I finally have the chance to quit basketball, but I still don’t have a clue what to replace it with.
Mom’s always telling me to be patient, to keep listening to myself and it will come. Yeah, easy for her to say. She’s known she wanted to be an interior designer since she was a little girl, like Cole has known he wants to be a photographer or Jordan has known she wants to play basketball.
Sometimes I think about being a magazine editor, but then I think being a poet or writer would be cool, or maybe some type of visual artist, or a historian, or even an astrologist or a thrift shop owner. But I could also see myself as a professor. Or even an astronomer. It would be amazing studying stars, moons, planets . . . the whole universe. I don’t know. At any given moment, I could have a million ideas about who I’m meant to be floating through my head. So what exactly am I supposed to be listening to?
Cole must see the angst on my face because he reaches for one of his hugs. I let him pull me in, and watch Daddy walk past us to the back corner of the elevator, as far away as he can get from Mom.
REX
I turn off the car. Check my phone again. Cole’s posted a new pic of Carli walking into her hospital room with the caption “The strongest girl I know.” She’s looking back over her shoulder, scared.
“You’re okay,” I whisper, tracing the curve of her face with my finger. But her expression doesn’t change.
My heart slumps and I’m out of my truck, hitting the lock button. I have a plan. I’m going to move as fast as I can. So fast I can’t think about where I am.
Full-speed through the parking lot. I mean, my legs are moving so fast in these stiff jeans, I’m sweating. I swear February doesn’t mean shit in Houston.
A minute later my red-and-black Air Jordan 1s hit the curb to the hospital entrance (like what!), and I’m walking toward the doors. Almost there. So close that the sliding glass doors part for me.
Then bam! Here comes the world’s fat ass—thirteen million billion billion pounds—trying to sit down on my chest.
I turn around, walk away from the doors, and slide my right hand down the back of my neck, trying to get rid of the weight. But this hospital is extra heavy. Air is ripping in and out of the very top of my lungs—in-and-out and in-and-out and in-and-out so fast it burns. Feels worse than the final minute of a game I’ve played all thirty-two minutes of, when I’m sure my lungs are about to say, I’m done.
Come on, Rex. Hands interlaced on the top of my head, I place one foot in front of the other until I make a wide circle around the porte cochère. Two wide circles and I’m breathing a little easier.
Turning back toward the doors, I nearly bump into a tall, brown-skinned man wearing a white coat over scrubs. My insides jump. He looks about ten years younger than my father, though. False alarm.
Back to the plan. Let’s go!
This time I run (damn near fly!) through the doors and down the waxy hospital floors toward the elevators. Shoes squeaking, I pass a man walking in Wranglers and a cowboy hat like he’s standing still.
In the elevator I close my eyes and see Carli’s face in front of 1604. I push sixteen and it lights up. I can’t believe I’m about to see her again. A mixture of ease and excitement wash over me. Then the metal doors slide closed, and I’m staring at my reflection.
My chest tightens.
I swear anytime I catch my reflection, it’s looking at me funny. Thick brows (like my father’s) tense like they wish I would step to them. Big lips (like my father’s) perfectly still like they have nothing to say to me and never will. All my moles like tiny unforgiveable sins.
See, this is exactly why I don’t keep a mirror in my bathroom. Instead I keep a sticky note that says You’re good. The only time I intentionally look in the mirror is once a week in the chair at the barbershop. Gotta make sure the high-top fade is on point.
And it is. Sponged the top this morning. Don’t need to do much else but let the barber keep the lineup fresh. And I went yesterday, so I’m cool. With my fingertips, I brush the edge where my hair meets my forehead and tell myself, You’re good.
But my reflection tells me that’s a lie. Dude, what are you doing? I don’t remember anybody inviting you.
And he’s right. The only reason I know about Carli’s surgery is because I’ve been stalking her brother’s IG. What if she thinks I’m crazy when I show up? The red number above the elevator doors blinks to eleven, and I push buttons twelve through fifteen to buy more time.
When the doors open on twelve, two buff-looking dudes in blue scrubs walk on. “Thirteen plea—” the blond one starts before he sees it’s already lit up. The dark-haired one stands behind him, talking about a lady over-waxing his eyebrows. Then a man rolling a pregnant lady in a wheelchair gets on and stands right beside me.
Really? I close my eyes and brace myself for the weight.
But it doesn’t come.
We all start rising, and I actually feel the opposite of weight. It’s the feeling I get sometimes when I’m sitting under the trees, when the wind is blowing just right and the sun is glinting down through the leaves. Like everything is okay. Like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.
CARLI
In the pre-op room, when I get Mom alone (Cole and Dad went to get a snack from the vending machine. Yes, they actually announced it in front of me like I’m not lying here starving), I try to take my mind off the surgery by asking her the same question for the millionth time:
What happened between you and Dad?
She’s sitting beside me in a puke-pink pleather chair. Her sunglasses are off, and her eyes are definitely looking better than they did this morning. They’ve been in a perpetual state of red puffiness since last Saturday, but first thing in the morning, they’re always the worst.
“I’ll be fine,” she says, looking up from a design budget. I guess she felt me eyeing her. She’s had I’ll be fine on repeat all week, mostly for Cole. She doesn’t need to say it to me. I believe her. Mom always finds her way back to happy.
Found her way back after her first design business failed and she had to close her studio and start working from home again. We were in elementary school. Found her way back after her mom died from breast cancer four years ago. Grandma Rosemary was cool.
And it’s not that fake, always smiling kind of happy. With Mom, it’s like no matter what happens, big or small, she finds her way back to enjoying her work, her family (well, that’s obviously complicated right now), her music, her books, her art, her random dance sessions, her tea, her candles, her long baths, her wine, her million trinkets around the house—her life. It’s a kind of enjoyment that gets all up in your face, but in a good way. I swear if she didn’t enjoy her life so damn much, I’d probably still be planning to ball. But I see her happiness and want it for myself.
“I know,” I say, voice cracking. Wait, where did that come from? I’m not worried about Mom. I’m really not. But she has been crying a lot. The most I’ve seen since her mom died.