Chapter 40 - A Million Rainbows

Lyndsay and I sat on stage at graduation. I thought I’d be nervous sitting up there with everyone staring at me. But I liked having that wide-angle lens, getting a clear view of everything and everyone.

Because despite Kyle’s optimism about the future, I was still trying to slow down time and take in as many moments as I could.

The principal called on Lyndsay to give her speech. She twisted to me before getting up. “Let’s do it together.”

“What?” I had been perfectly okay with Lyndsay giving the speech in front of everybody. More than okay.

I started to protest, but Lyndsay rolled her eyes at me and pulled on my arm. I would look stupid arguing about it on stage in front of everyone, so I took a deep breath and got up.

We stepped up to the podium. I found Kyle in the crowd. He was smirking at us. I wanted to slap him; that ridiculous grin probably had something to do with the fact that both his ex-girlfriend and his current girlfriend were Valedictorians, and they were both on the stage together. It was exactly what I was trying not to think about.

Lyndsay and I took turns reciting the speech I had written. It was a short, hopeful speech about living for today. Living in the moment. Looking forward to the future with optimism, while not forgetting that all we really have is now.

I just wrote everything Kyle had ever said to me, and I clung to those words with a lot of desperate hope. Because I needed them to be true. I could handle now, but I was leery about the impending future. A future that was still filled with so much uncertainty.

A future that was now at my doorstep.

“Charlie!”

Mom, Kyle, and I were outside her school screaming her name when the bell rang. She ran over to us, hugging me, then Mom, then giving Kyle a high five she had to jump for.

“Last day of school, Pumpkin Patch!” he shouted with a happy grin.

“Okay, so the plan is the park, right, Charlie?”

She gave me a big enthusiastic nod.

This had been my idea. I knew going to the park with Mom was a dream of hers.

Since Charlie’s stay at the hospital, Mom had remained sober. Every day was a milestone, and I still approached each one with trepidation. The steep climb to 127 days sober meant the fall would be that much harder were she to slip.

I wasn’t sure when you could stop worrying about that. Maybe you never could. And I knew the fear was greater in Mom, so I was trying to be as supportive and as helpful as I could.

But in my mind, it was Charlie who had the most to lose.

But Charlie wasn’t afraid. She either knew something we didn’t know, or she was taking a page from Kyle’s book and was being highly optimistic.

She stopped trying to tap into the realities with the other Mom. She told me it was because she now had that Mom. It would never make sense to me. But when we were sitting on the blanket at the park, and when Mom came over and whisked her away to go get ice cream at Dairy Queen, I couldn’t help but smile and hope Charlie was right.

A summer with Kyle was just as amazing as I imagined it would be.

I spent nearly every day at his beautiful house. But since he could now legally drive me, we didn’t just stay at his house. He took me to baseball games, the beach, the movies, the mall—anywhere he could think to go, we would go.

Charlie was by our side all summer. We’d gotten so used to being together that, even though I was starting to at least hope I could trust Mom … well, Charlie and me, we were still stuck together like glue.

She’d had three more seizures since that first one on her birthday. We were still trying to figure out the best way to control them with tweaking her meds and monitoring her diet. There wasn’t an easy overnight fix, and it was scary as hell. I hated it. But it served as a reminder that Charlie needed someone by her side. I realized at some point that I was more than okay with it if that someone had to be me.

Mom’s book sold to a small publisher, and she received a small advance for it. The money wasn’t much, but it was the push she needed to keep writing, and she spent the summer working on another book, chewing a lot of gum, watching Frozen a million times with Charlie and me, and oftentimes Kyle, too. Most importantly, she continued with her AA meetings.

June had been okay. The beginning of July was mostly fine (celebrating my eighteenth birthday with Kyle had been a dream). But by the time August rolled around, I was a sad, hopeless mess. The future I had been waiting my whole life for was at my door, and I was heartbroken over it.

“So this is all set up,” said Kyle. “You’ve got Wi-Fi, and I also set up a Netflix account for you.” He handed me the laptop.

We were sitting on my bed, and I took it in my lap with a huff. “Okay. Sure.”

“Bree, you need a computer.”

“I know, but I was going to look into getting one secondhand on eBay or something. And really, how much is the Wi-Fi?”

“This is secondhand … from me,” said Kyle. He tapped the top of the laptop.

I frowned.

He shook his head at me. “And don’t worry about the Wi-Fi. Because there’s no way I’m leaving here if you don’t have Wi-Fi, so there’s nothing you can do about that.”

I let out a sad sigh. “I’ll have your mom take it out of my paycheck.”

When Sue heard I wanted to switch my major to English, she offered me a copywriting job for her shop’s blog. It was kind of a trial thing, I think. She had real writers and real editors that would be double-checking my work, I was sure. But I was so excited about it. And I decided I was going to kick ass at the first real job I’d ever had. Not only because it was for Sue, but because she was actually paying me, and because it was all online, which was exactly the kind of job I needed in order to keep up with school and to be there for Charlie if Mom fell off the wagon.

So, Kyle was right. I did need a computer, and I did need Wi-Fi. I had been squirreling away babysitting money, so I could get them on my own without asking him. But the MacBook he gave me was much nicer than anything I would have been able to afford, and I was once again feeling guilty and very thankful at the same time.

The look Kyle was giving me told me no money would ever be coming out of my paycheck for this.

“Well, thank you,” I said. I put the laptop next to me and pulled Kyle into a hug. “I’ll pay you back someday, I promise.”

Kyle leaned in, pushing me over. My head hit the pillows. “How about you pay me back now,” he said with warm kisses on my neck.

I sighed dreamily. Kyle was leaving in a week. I had one more week with Kyle.

He could have anything he wanted.