Chapter 2

Eleven at night, and the acute gastroenteritis came on fast and hard.

I went to the hospital, jaw clenched, and when the nurse slid the needle into the back of my hand, I shut my eyes without thinking.

For a hazy second I was back in the campus health center at seventeen, a hand laid over my eyelids.

"If you don't look, it won't scare you."

I opened my eyes, and there she actually was. Margery Mason.

She stood a little way off, her expression tight.

Her name came out of me before I could stop it. "Margery."

The next second, my voice was drowned out.

"I'm fine, Dr. Mason, just a little cold."

Graham Lyons sat in the chair, his voice roughened by a cold.

Margery pulled off her coat at once and wrapped it around him.

"Put this on first."

She bent her head and straightened his collar, the motion easy and practiced.

And it hit me, clear all at once, that the person standing there had long since stopped being the Margery who covered my eyes at seventeen because she couldn't stand for me to hurt.

Something bitter rose in my throat, too thick to swallow, too stuck to spit out.

"Why are you here?"

Her gaze drifted over and caught on me. She frowned.

I didn't answer.

She looked at the IV bag, then at my bloodless face.

"Are you sick? Or is this another act?"

I found it almost funny.

"People come to the hospital because they're sick."

I was no longer the Mike Gilbert who'd once taken a cold shower in the dead of winter to burn himself into a fever just to make her come sit with me.

"Dr. Mason."

Graham called to her softly from behind. "I'm a little cold."

Her eyes rested on my face for a second, then she turned away.

The second was so short it could have been imagined.

As she passed, a faint trace of jasmine came with her.

Two years ago it was my favorite scent.

Now it only felt like a stranger's.

Margery waited while Graham's needle was taken out, then came over.

"Lend me your umbrella."

"Why would I?"

She lifted her eyes to me, out of patience. "Graham has a cold, he can't get rained on again. He needs this umbrella more than you do."

She stared at me for a few seconds, then simply took the umbrella out of my hand.

Hard enough that a small bead of blood welled up at the needle mark.

She opened it and walked out into the rain, shielding Graham.

I watched her back get smaller and smaller.

The same as always.

She was always so final about it.

The same as the last time we fought.

That day, the lab held the vote for the research-program slot.

The last vote belonged to Margery.

She gave it to Graham.

I waited until everyone else had gone before I asked her, "Why?"

"You know how long I prepared for this. You know I'm better than he is!"

Margery laughed.

"You're really ridiculous, Mike. The decision was mine, not yours."

I held back the tears. "Either we go public now, or we're done. Pick one."

She looked at me like I was a stranger throwing a tantrum.

"If you insist on trapping yourself in this relationship, that's your problem."

"Don't make yourself sound so wronged."

That night, Graham boarded a plane to England.

And I got the call that my father was critically ill.

I dialed Margery's number over and over. Fifty calls, every one of them cut off.

When it finally connected, it was Graham's voice that came through.

He asked softly, "Is there something you needed?"

I gripped the phone, cold all over.

There was a faint rustle of fabric on the other end, then Margery's low, hoarse voice.

"Who is it?"

"Mike."

"Hang up."

The line went dead.

That week I lost my father, and I lost Margery for good.

The sound of the rain pulled me out of the memory.

I had just stepped out of the hospital when I saw Margery holding a newly bought umbrella.

"Get in the car."

"You just finished an IV, your face looks like that, and you still want to act tough?"

I didn't move.

"Are you still upset about that slot? I gave it to him because he needed the chance more than you did."

"He lost his parents young, he had to work just to scrape together tuition. You at least still had your dad. And you had me."

I looked at her and asked quietly, "So all I wanted was for my girlfriend to stand by me, when it didn't break any principle to do it. Was that wrong?"

Margery let out a scoffing laugh.

"You always take feelings too seriously."

"And you always treat my feelings like they're worth nothing."

"Mike, there's no point."

Those same words again.

Suddenly I didn't want to argue anymore.

"Give me back the prayer beads my dad gave me."

They were the ones my father went to a temple to pray for himself, after he found out we were together.

All these years, Margery had worn them.

I'd thought they were proof she accepted me, that she accepted us.

Her face darkened.

"What? You really want to draw a clean line between us?"

I said nothing.

Margery raised her hand and yanked the beads off her wrist.

The next second, she hurled them at me.

"Mike, are you ever going to stop?!"

The beads struck my collarbone, and the pain snagged my breath.

Margery turned and walked away.

I crouched down in the rain and picked up the scattered beads, one by one.

The rain washed through the mud.

As if even the last bit of tenderness my father had left me was being washed away too.