“There’s nothing you can do,” I finally utter.
“Evan…” Alina stops and takes a deep breath. “Evan, do you have cancer?”
“Me? What? No! Not me!”
“Who has cancer, Evan?”
My chest starts to heave visibly as my diaphragm starts doing flip-flops in my stomach. I can’t inhale all the way, and my breath comes out in choppy pants.
“Rin…Rin…Rinaldo.”
“Oh, no.” Alina steps forward and reaches for my hands. I just stare at them as her fingers wrap around mine. “Evan, I’m so sorry. Is it bad?”
Bad.
Such a simple word, but it carries so much weight. Is it bad? Yeah, it’s bad. It’s really fucking bad.
I stare at her, and it feels as if everything around me is crumbling. If I were to look down and find my skin peeling away from the rest of my body, I wouldn’t be surprised. My shoulders slump, and my knees start to buckle.
“He’s going to die, Alina. They say he’s going to die!” I drop down in a crumpled heap on the hardwood floors. I jar my knee as I fall, but I don’t care about the pain shooting up my leg. It doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters.
Alina is there on the floor with me, wrapping her arms around my head and holding me to her chest. The last thing I deserve at this point is to have her comforting me. I want to push her away, but I don’t. I grab onto her as if my life depends on it.
Maybe it does.
Rinaldo had been threatened many times before. I’d always been there; I’d always put myself between him and whatever adversary was out to get him. I’d eliminated them all, but how do you put a 50-caliber slug into a killer like cancer?
“He’s going to die.” I can barely hear my own voice muffled in her hair. I tighten my grip around her, crushing her against me, and I press my forehead against her body. Her hair falls from her shoulders, surrounding me. I drag oxygen into my lungs, and it spurts out again, sounding like a truck running over those hiccups on the side of the highway. “I can’t stop it. There’s nothing I can do to stop it!”
I hold her tighter, as if I could transfer the tightness in my chest and gut into her body to somehow alleviate it. I can’t breathe.
“I can’t…I can’t do anything!”
“It's okay, Evan. Just let go.”
My whole body is shaking, and it takes a second to even realize I’m sobbing into her chest. I should be embarrassed, but I can’t manage to feel anything but loss.
He’s not even gone yet. What am I going to do when he’s gone?
Tightening my hold, I squeeze my eyes shut to try to block out everything that’s running through my mind, but the images come anyway. I see myself at his hospital bedside, watching him grow weaker and weaker, hearing him beg for more morphine to stop the pain, and then finally giving up completely. I see a casket with Lele dressed in black, standing beside it and holding a tissue to her face. I see Lucia beside her, trying to offer her some comfort, but unable to say anything that makes any difference. I see Nick off to the side, unable to mourn with the rest of his family.
And then there’s me, stoically carrying the coffin along with the other pallbearers—out of place and knowing there is nothing I can do to fix it all. They put him in the ground, and he’s gone. Completely gone.
I don’t know how long we’re there on the floor of my kitchen, me sobbing and Alina holding me. Eventually, she coaxes me off the floor and leads me to the bedroom. She undresses me and sits me down on the bed. I stare dumbly at the floor as she goes across the hall to the bathroom, returning a minute later. She looks at me a moment, then takes my arms and lays me down. She climbs in beside me and then pulls the blanket around us both.
I’m exhausted, mentally and physically. Alina wraps her arms around me and holds my head to her shoulder. At this point, I should be accustomed to the lavender scent on Alina’s skin, but it hits me every time she joins me in bed. I can’t help but close my eyes, inhale deeply, and coil myself around her. It smells right. It feels right.
Turning my head to look at her, I watch her face carefully. Her look is still a bit guarded, but she stares into my eyes as her fingers stroke the hair at the back of my neck.
“Where were you earlier tonight?” I ask.
Alina rubs a little deeper into my neck and licks her lips before she answers.
“Working,” she replies quietly.
“Who were you with?”