What We Leave Behind by Rochelle B. Weinstein Read Free Book Online Page A

admiration, possibly love.
    I said, “I think it’s his girlfriend.”
    “No way,” he said, “definitely her dad.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “Didn’t you hear what he just said?”
    It bothered me to admit, “No.”
    “He said, ‘Don’t worry, honey, it’ll all be okay.’”
    It seemed that maybe the young girl had heard us. She looked our way, catching Jonas’s green eyes in her own, holding them there for a second. She seemed calmer, more relaxed.
    “And that makes him her father?”
    Jonas turned back to me. “Didn’t you see her reaction?”
    I was baffled how he had become super spy in a matter of moments. It took me years to perfect such skills. “That’s all you could come up with?”
    “Don’t you remember being a kid…” and he stopped himself. When he saw that I didn’t find the dig at my youthfulness remotely funny, he continued, “You know, when something bad was happening and everyone would try to tell you it would be okay, and you just refused to believe it, dragging the agony around with you because you knew no matter what they said, it would never get better?”
    I half nodded, recollecting more than a few occasions where that was the case.
    “It wasn’t until someone like your dad told you it was going to be okay that you believed it.” He stole another glance at them. “Look at her, look how she’s listening to him, look how she believes him. Only fathers have that kind of influence over their little girls. It’s definitely his daughter.” Then he finished off his analysis with a triumphant bite out of his burger.
    I was amazed, stunned into silence, something that happened to me infrequently. I found myself achingly sad for my mother, the woman who tried her best to give me the kind of reassurance and comfort that only a father was capable of giving. And now I sat before this boy who could express the words that my heart had felt for so long, but couldn’t pronounce. I looked at Jonas, this time through different eyes. He was in front of me, and we were talking, and we were close; but there was something else connecting me to him, something deeper and greater.
    I said, “Maybe you’re right,” but it sounded more like defeat.
    “This is part of your problem, Parker. You spend way too much time nosing into everyone else’s business.”
    “It’s just a game, Jonas, consider the entertainment value.”
    “You keep telling yourself that.”
    “It is,” I said.
    “Right. Let’s get out of here.”
    When we got up from the table, Jonas pushed the chair out of the way so I could get by.  He kept turning to make sure I was following closely behind him, and I was, but all I could think about was how I’d been so wrong about my assessment.
    That afternoon was the beginning of a friendship with the distinct trappings of something more. Romantic tension threaded its way through our conversations, capable of tying us up in invisible knots. We ignored it. We chose to talk about everything else in the world—his father’s illness, our future plans, hopes, dreams, the trivial day-to-day nuances that quietly and patiently began to build our foundation.
    I thrived on the days I’d see Jonas. The hospital became our little nucleus of a world, the one inhabited by just the two of us. In between tending to my patients and filling out medical forms and claims, stolen moments abounded, thick with deep innuendo, heavy debates about what if and what could have been, a world not bound by his being twenty-two and my being almost sixteen. There were silent moments and unspoken thoughts, times I knew we were relating on a level greater than that of any words we might have spoken aloud. Our conversations were deeply moving and intoxicating.  When we weren’t being sarcastic and sharp-tongued, I’d listen to Jonas speak about something with such enthusiasm, it pained me not to reach over and touch him, to emphasize that I understood how he felt. Then there were the occasions