Love Expectations (Season 1 of Nata and Phillip's Romance) ✔️

1. ′I can still wipe my butt′

Phillip

My parents' bedroom has seen every stage of my life.

Even though it's been Dad's for longer than my parents', that's what I call it in my head. Mom's favorite peonies are on the small table for two by the window. Photos of her line the dresser, like a gold-and-crystal shrine. The pinkish cream colorscheme she chose hasn't changed, even though I persuaded Dad to upgrade the wallpaper and flooring to their modern versions.

This is the room I was born in, the room I slept in wedged between my parents for the first three years of my life, the room Mom died in two years after I agreed to sleep in my big-boy bed down the hall. The heart-shaped locker that takes up space in my chest rattles with familiar shards of what I'd never have.

I turn on another floor lamp, close the massive shutters, and sneak in a yank to my ear. The pain migrates from between my ribs into my burning earlobe. My memories tell one story. The photos that take over most of the walls and all the flat surfaces tell a different one. Each item has something in common: me.

By the bed, there's an oval frame with a baby Phillip swaddled in blue blankets in Mom's arms with Dad standing protectively over her. On the makeup table is a square photo of a toddler me hanging between my parents' legs, holding onto their swinging hands.

Behind it, is the image of my first day of preschool, bracketed by graduation photos, including Dad's favorite: my UChicago BIOS college commencement with me laughing next to my then-best-friend Chester and my gap-toothed tutor Nata. Above them-my Booth MBA certificate framed in platinum.

Like torn up pages from the longest photo-book, my birthdays and every other milestone you can think of stare at me. As if Dad was documenting them to send Mom every glimpse of me he could catch. As if she wasn't gone-gone. I stifle a sigh. Even with Dad's candids, this is a much more idyllic photographic version of my life than the faded Polaroids I sift through in the dusty boxes of my brain.

The longing in my heart overpowers the burn in my earlobe. I locate the crystal Waterford carafe, focusing on its solid weight in my grasp instead of the dull ache behind my breastbone, and pour some water into a mauve plastic hospital glass that clashes with everything this room represents.

"Are you sure you'll be okay on your own?" I pass the non-glass glass to Dad.

He takes it with both shaking hands and brings the straw to his mouth. "I don't think I've ever been on my own in this house. We have staff." He isn't wrong, but his housekeeper, Mrs. Buckingham, and his driver, Robert, are closer in age to him than to me. Dad needs an aid to perform the physical tasks he can't do on his own. Dad's brown eyes peer at me over the rim of the mauve container. "Hiring Tristan was highly unnecessary," he says as if he's reading my mind.

Dad taught me well, and I'm not going to jump in and give him the upper hand. I let the charged silence hang. He squints at me. The kind of squint that made me squirm as a child. "I can still wipe my butt," he says.

I tighten my fists. I won't give into him. "He's not here to wipe your butt." I take the water from his unsteady hands and place it on his bedside table. "He's not a nurse. He'll just make sure you don't fall over on your way to the bathroom, that you take your pills, and that you don't decide you feel well enough to run off on another adventure, like the one that landed you at the hospital in the first place."

"Life's short." Dad rests his head on the pillow behind him, his face even paler in the lamplight.

"Don't feed me that." I scoff. "I've heard you say it every day of my life. I know it's short, but that doesn't mean you need to make it shorter by disobeying your doctors."