Page 48 of As Long As You'll Have Me
She’s stepped down from her chair and is trying to move away but I grab her hand to stop her. “Hanna, I promise you I’ll be fine. I don’t care if you make me more sick than I’ve ever been. I’m not leaving and you can’t get rid of me.”
I tug on the hand I’m holding and she takes a step closer. When she’s within reach, I place my free hand on her cheek and slowly swipe my thumb back and forth. For amoment, she closes her eyes and seems to breathe to the beat of it.
“Now will you please sit back down and eat some soup with me?”
When she lifts her eyes to look at me, there’s a shift between us. One that I feel so deep in my core that I pray she can feel too. Looking at her, I make a silent vow to myself to do what I can to get her to look at me like this as often as I can. Because the thought of never getting her eyes on me like this again is worse than the thought of starving to death.
Nodding, she climbs back into her seat and takes a few bites of soup. At the chance of pushing things too far, I risk reaching for her free hand and hold it in mine. Then, we eat the homemade meal in silence, hands clasped together and resting in her lap, until the very last bite is gone.
“So, tell me about your brother,”she says, reaching over and placing a black checker piece one square closer to my side of the board. She seems to perk up after I feed her but I don’t want to leave and have her take a turn for the worst. When I offer to stay a little longer, I’m pleasantly surprised when she said she’d like it if I did.
“Foster brother,” I correct. “But to me he’s like my brother. He came to live with us about a year after I got placed with Ivy.”
She nods quietly, looking at me from her spot on the floor. We’d set our game up on her coffee table with me sitting up on the couch and her on the floor opposite of me. When I asked her what she wanted to do andshe suggested a board game, I thought she was joking. But sure enough, she pulled out a plastic tub filled to the brim with them.
“My dad and I would play games a lot when I was a kid. It’s how he got me talking. When I got my own place he gifted them to me. It’s a silly sentimental thing,” she explained while she picked out which game she wanted to play.
“Ivy is your foster mom then?”
“Ivyismy mom, or mama, as I prefer to call her. A lot of foster kids age out and grow apart from their foster parents, but not me. Carter, Cooper, and I go to Ivy’s house every Sunday for family breakfast.” A smile spreads across my lips as I think about my family.
“Is Cooper Ivy’s son? Or another foster sibling?” she asks, trying to put the fractured pieces of my life together. I’m not one to be so forthcoming with my personal life but she makes it easy. She has this softness to her that makes you feel like you can tell her anything and she’ll give you a safe space to land when you do. It’s probably what makes her such a good therapist.
I shake my head and move a red chip diagonally so it’s closer to the one she set down. “No, well, not really. He and his sister, Willow, lived in the same cul-de-sac as us. Since Coop is the same age as us, the three of us became fast friends. Unfortunately, his mom had an accident and passed away pretty suddenly. His dad couldn’t handle it and…well let’s just say Coop and Willow spent a lot of time at our house after that.”
Sensing my discomfort, she jumps my piece and then another. Picking up the pieces she claims, she playfully tosses them at me and laughs. “I’m kicking your ass.”
I match her laugh and feel my shoulders drop. “That you are, doc. That you are.”
We move our pieces a few more rounds, each time with me placing one of my own plastic chips closer to hers. Glancing up, I see her studying me over the brim of her glasses. I lean over my knees and bring my face closer to hers. I don’t care if I get sick, being any amount of space closer to her will be worth it.
“Tell me about your family. Still wanna kill your dads?”
She coughs into her elbow before answering. “Uhh, not as much as before but I think that’s because of the healing power of your soup.”
“Itisgood soup, isn’t it?”
“It really is.” She smirks. “I’m going to need the recipe, you know.”
“You’ll have to ask Ivy for it,” I say before I think about what that would mean.Her meeting my mom.
She doesn’t miss a beat in replying. “I’d like that very much.”
Holding her gaze, I lean back into the couch, abandoning the game. “So what’s it like, having three parents?”
“Mmm, probably the same as what it feels like to have two brothers who aren’t really your brothers.” She eyes me through her lashes and smirks while removing another piece from the board. “It feels like any other family structure. My parents were happy and in love my entire childhood. Then my dad came home one day and was honest with my mom about how he felt and their split was nothing but amicable.”
“You said your mom and dad are cool? You mentioned before that they do breakfast or something,” I probe, remembering what she told me in one of our earliest sessions together.
“That’s right. The three of them, my mom, Richie, my dad, and his partner, George, all get together once a week for breakfast. They have a group chat they text in all thetime too. You’d think they’re a throuple by how well they get along.”
As I listen to her talk, I can hear how much she loves her family. It must be taking me too long to respond because she’s suddenly fussing with her hair and checking her shirt.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Looking at you like what?” I ask, not realizing I was looking at her in any certain way.
“You were staring…” She tips her head to one side and blinks a few times.
