CHAPTER 25
10 SIGNS THAT YOUR
PERFECT RELATIONSHIP IS
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
ADRIAN
I woke up on Christmas morning, my arms wrapped around her warm body. She was in nothing but a baggy T-shirt. Her hair was pulled over one shoulder and I kissed the bare skin on her neck and she tipped her head to one side.
She smelled like vanilla. She smelled like home.
I couldn’t even understand how I had lived without her once. How I’d gone through my days not knowing her. I was turned to her now the way a house plant leaned toward a sunny window. I felt like the luckiest man in the world.
Christmas was one of the best I’d ever had. We ate breakfast and opened presents. I got Richard and Mom an espresso maker. A smaller, less vulgar (as Vanessa called it) version of the one in my own kitchen. We’d gotten the approval from the rescue and we talked to Richard and Mom about Harry.
Grandma was already holding him when we told her, and she was very excited.
Vanessa’s mother’s ring was my main gift to her. When all was said and done, I could have bought five rings for the price of what it cost me to find this one, but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world. The look on her face when she saw it was priceless.
I also got her an Office shirt with Jim’s face and BEARS, BEETS, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA on the front. She loved it.
Since Badger Den hadn’t panned out, she got me a bottle of 2010 Château Lafite Rothschild Pauillac. She said it was “a Bordeaux with a strong sense of its own self-importance”—a lot like her dad. Her words, not mine. She also bought me an ant farm, which was ironic since my last gift to her, still en route to her apartment, was a butterfly habitat.
After presents and lunch, Dad offered to take Vanessa ice fishing with him. I opted to stay back and spend some time with Mom and Grandma.
Grandma went to take a nap about thirty minutes in, and Mom and I moved to the four-season porch on the back of the house overlooking the pond. It had a little fireplace in it, and we were on the couch. We could see Richard and Vanessa like two little dark specks out on the white frozen tundra.
“She’s exceptional,” Mom said, putting her teacup down on the coffee table. “And she’s perfect for you. I never liked Rachel.”
I laughed. “You only met her once.”
“She couldn’t look me in the eye!”
Well, I guess that made sense.
“Thank you for coming,” Mom said. “It meant the world to me.” She nodded to the pond. “And to him.”
I gazed out the window at Vanessa and Dad.
Vanessa was right. I needed to forgive.
I didn’t realize the weight I’d been carrying around on my back all these years until it was gone.
It seemed so pointless now, all the time I’d hated him. I felt like if I’d ever given him another chance, I would have realized that I never really did.
I’d gotten something back today that I’d lost a long time ago. Maybe it was him—or maybe it was just the place I used to keep my feelings about him. Either way, there was room inside of me for other things now. Better
things.
And I was looking forward to them.
“I’m glad you’re happy, Mom. You’ve got a nice life here. I can see why you wanted to make the move.”
She smiled. “I am happy. I really am.” Then she seemed to remember something. “Vanessa says she wants to talk to me about joining a club she and Kristen are in?”
I started choking on my coffee. “Don’t join.” I cough-laughed. “Trust me. You’ll learn more about me and Josh than you’ll ever care to know.”
Mom smiled. She nudged my arm. “I like her. You know, I think it’s destiny that you met this girl.”
And then I had to laugh, because I think it was the first time in my life that I actually believed that. But what other explanation could there be?
If I hadn’t met Rachel, I wouldn’t have gone to Vanessa’s apartment that morning. If Becky had taken the studio when it was available or if Vanessa had moved into a different building—or even into a different unit—we wouldn’t have met. I’d have never known her or Grace.
It had to be destiny. Stars aligning. Some master plan.
I wasn’t ready to have Becky drop my horoscope into my email every morning, but I was open to considering that there might be more to all this than I’d given it credit.
Mom nodded at the baby sleeping in her swing. “I have to be honest, I never thought you’d be like this.” She shook her head. “And to be with someone like Vanessa, even knowing that she might be sick?” She smiled at me. “You’ve grown into a good man, Adrian. I’m so proud of you.”
I wrinkled my forehead at her. “What do you mean? She’s not sick.”
“No, I know.” She waved me off. “But with the ALS always being a possibility for her. God, Richard and I must have watched half her videos after you told us you were bringing her. She is so brave.”
I stared at her. “What are you talking about? ALS is random.”
She scrunched up her eyebrows. “Well, yes, most of the time. But it runs in her family. She has a fifty-fifty chance of getting it.”
I felt the color drain from my face. What?
“You saw this on her channel?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level.
“She talks about it in almost every video she does.” She waved me off
again. “But you knew that.”
I blinked at her for a long moment.
“I have to go change the baby,” I said, getting up, trying to keep calm. I
grabbed Grace and made a beeline for my room.
As soon as I got there, I locked the door and pulled out my laptop. I googled “Vanessa Price First Video” and hit Search. When I saw the one I was looking for, dated three years ago, I played it, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
A younger Vanessa came onto the screen. “Hi,” she said, waving at the camera. “My name is Vanessa Price.”
She held up a glass with something dark sloshing around in it.
“My sister died yesterday. I just poured myself a glass of Sambuca and decided that it was too gross to drink straight so I poured some grape juice in it, which only managed to make it worse. And I sat there staring at this and I asked myself, ‘Vanessa, do you really want to be the kind of person who deals with loss by drinking shitty cocktails?’ And I decided no. I don’t want to take the edge off my sister’s tragic and untimely death with disgusting alcoholic beverages because, one, she wouldn’t want that. And secondly, I don’t want that either. You see, I might be dying too. And dying changes things. I’ll get to all that in a minute.
“If I know my days might be numbered, I want to savor each day. I want to enjoy every single thing I eat and drink, and all the people I meet, and every last second on this Earth. I want to laugh. I want to explore. I want to live my life, what’s left of my life, like a butterfly in the wind and go where the world takes me. I definitely don’t want to sit around in my dead-end job and wait for the next installment from the creepy old guy in Monett, Missouri, who met me in an online support group once and now sends me handwritten love letters in cursive.” She leaned into the camera. “Let me just tell you, as someone who might have a fatal health condition, there’s still nothing more terrifying than a handwritten letter in cursive. Especially when it’s accompanied by a Ziploc bag of his slightly-moist-for-some- reason homemade beef jerky. Trust me on this.
“So, I cashed in my 401(k), all $1,023 of it. Oh, and by the way, Patrick, I quit. Sorry you had to find out like this. And I’m leaving today. Now.
Right after I upload this video. Actually, no. Right after I have a yard sale, sell my hair, and pawn my jewelry. Then I’m leaving. So, like, maybe tomorrow.
“Probably nobody will watch this. I don’t even know who I’m making this for. But I figure if it leads to even one dollar donated to research or one
person deciding to live their best life, then I guess it’s worth it, right? Now, about my sister.
“My sister died of a rare fatal disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS. You probably know about it because a few years ago everyone was doing that Ice Bucket Challenge and dumping ice water on themselves in support of ALS research.
“I know about this disease because it’s been a part of my earliest memory. It is my family curse. My family has what’s called familial ALS, meaning it’s hereditary. The strain my family suffers from starts earlier and kills faster than the sporadic kind and the limited treatments available will only extend your life about three months. The particular mutated gene that causes it in my family hasn’t been identified yet. Meaning I can’t even test for it.” She paused. “I might have a ticking time bomb in my DNA.
“My grandmother had it. My aunt had it. My mom had it, though she died in a car accident before ALS took her life. My sister Melanie had it.
And there’s a fifty percent chance I have it too…”
What she said after that, I don’t know, because my ears started to ring.
I’d been pacing, but now I had to sit. I had to sit or my knees were going
to give out.
A 50 percent chance?
I mean, I knew about Melanie, but I didn’t know about the rest of them.
She never told me, I didn’t know, it wasn’t in Drake’s videos or…She
probably thought I knew because—
Her hand…
I started to wheeze.
Her hand… She had told me. She told me and I didn’t fucking listen. I didn’t fucking hear her.
Information came flying back to me in patches, each bit sticking until it pieced together into some black, macabre obituary.
Hand weakness.
Her reasons for not dating.
Her tubes were tied, her saying she couldn’t adopt Grace because she
wouldn’t be here in a year…
No…no no no no no.
I couldn’t breathe.
It was a wrecking ball to my universe. The shattering of everything. A beautiful stained-glass window in a thousand pieces at my feet.
She might be dying. The love of my life might be dying.
And I was going to have to watch.