Rain pelted the window of Jake’s room while Olive sat in the chair by his bed. At some point this should feel normal. She’d seen Jake like this hundreds of times by now. But it was always a shock. Every time she came, her brain rebelled against the scene in front of her. That thin, unconscious person on a hospital bed couldn’t really be him. This person surrounded by machines couldn’t be her brother. She surveyed the room, eyeing the painted light green walls. The curtains framing the windows. The large bulletin boards covered in photos.
She had picked up a sandwich on the way over. It made the room smell more like cheese and tomatoes and onions and less like a hospital. She bought the sandwich at one of their favorite restaurants before the accident. She tried to eat lunch with him at least once a week like they had in the “before the accident” times. Eating also gave her something to do with her hands. A thing to do that made her feel less awkward about hanging out with a person in an irreversible coma.
“Sorry I didn’t bring you one.”
Asshole move, Sis.
Olive knew his answers weren’t real. But she’d known him well enough to have a pretty good idea what he’d say.
You gonna tell me about the woman who wants to be your fake girlfriend?
“It’s not fair that since your voice is a figment of my imagination you know what’s going on in my head.”
A privilege of being mostly dead, I guess.
“Jake.” Her eyes went misty.
Stop crying and tell me about her. It’s boring here.
Olive dabbed her eyes with her napkin, before realizing it had some of the pepper grease on it. She ran to the sink and flushed her eyeballs to stop the burning. “God, why did you have to like the spicy sub. Damn it.”
Murphy’s Law strikes again.
“Bastard.” She almost smiled then. He’d be dying laughing if he saw her do all that. Such a typical Olive move.
Face a mess, and eyes probably still fire-engine red, she sat back beside her brother. Her feet rested on the bottom wheel beneath the hospital bed.
“Stella’s a pilot, so of course you’d love her. And before you ask, no, it doesn’t make me want to get on more planes. Yeah, she wants me to be her fake girlfriend, and that’s so fucking weird. But Jesus, she’s spectacular.”
Spectacular, eh?
“Yeah. And her dad’s sick, and she wants to do this for him. She’s super driven. Type A like you. Really smart and funny, sometimes unintentionally. She’s flying all day today, so we’re going to talk tomorrow night. I’m going to give her a final answer about the whole ‘fake girlfriends’ thing then. I sound like an idiot saying that aloud.”
Is this one more way to put off your own stuff?
“What do you mean? I don’t have any of my own stuff.” Olive had spoken without thinking. “I mean, I’m working my way through the national parks you hadn’t been to yet. I only have so much leave after what happened last year, and—”
You didn’t take the flight back from Orlando.
Olive scowled.
She hadn’t even confessed that humiliating truth to Derek. The truth of her canceling her flight and renting a car because even though she’d succeeded once she couldn’t quite believe she’d be able to get on that next plane again, Valium or no.
The Jake in her mind did not seem ready to let up.
What do you mean you don’t have stuff?
What did she mean when that had fallen out of her mouth like self-pitying word vomit?
YOU ARE READING
Fly with Me: a novel by Andie Burke
Romance(Books you want to read but don't want to buy) A sparkling and steamy Sapphic romance, Fly with Me by Andie Burke is filled with sharp banter and that sweet, swooping feeling of finding "the one" when and where you least expect it. A one-way ticket...
