The Devil Wears Black by L.J. Shen

CHAPTER NINE

CHASE

I hooked Dad’s right arm, propping him on my shoulder. Julian took his left side. We zigzagged across the living room unevenly, the height difference between Jul and me making Dad sway unconsciously between us like a rag flapping on a clothesline.

“Let’s take him to my bedroom,” Julian groaned, his knees buckling under my father’s weight. We dragged him through the hallway, Mom and Katie on our heels. I heard Amber cracking open a bottle of liquor and Madison asking Clementine enthusiastically to show her her book collection.

The hallway was never ending, stretching for miles, and I pushed away the thoughts of Dad dying in my arms tonight. The pictures on the walls blurred. When we got to Julian and Amber’s bedroom, we rested Dad on top of the bed. I dialed Grant’s number. Fuck his date with Layla. I paced back and forth as Katie tried to pour a little water between Dad’s dry, colorless lips. He regained consciousness, but that meant jack shit after his head had collided with his plate and he’d passed out on the table mere minutes ago.

As if remembering herself, Mom rushed back to the living room to fetch the medicine bag she’d brought for Dad (because carrying a medicine bag everywhere was now a thing). It was a big black device that had all kinds of oxygen masks and an array of orange pill bottles.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” I muttered, my phone plastered to my ear, pacing back and forth in a room I never wanted to be in. Grant picked up on the second ring. I rehashed the events in a clipped tone.

“Put Ronan on the phone, please,” Grant said, annoyingly composed. My four-year-old self wanted to throw sand in his eyes. What are you so calm about? My dad is dying.

Mom handed me the medicine bag. I unzipped it. Katie propped Dad’s back against the headboard, a thin veil of sweat coating her forehead. I hurried to help her, pinning my phone between my ear and shoulder.

“Just tell me what to do.”

“Chase, I can’t.”

“I’m your best friend,” I hissed through clenched teeth, recognizing how childish it sounded.

“You could be the pope for all I care. You need to put your dad on the phone. He is the only person I can discuss his meds with, unless I get his verbal permission.”

We both knew Dad wouldn’t grant me permission to discuss his health while he was still in a position to make his own decision. He was stubbornly proud. Reluctantly, I handed Dad my phone. His fingers curled around the device shakily. He began to sift through the medicine bag in his lap as he hmm-hmmed to the phone. Ranitidine, slow-release morphine, diclofenac, methylprednisolone. Hospice medicine, designed to make him comfortable, not better.

Katie galloped to the en suite bathroom, and I heard her retch as she threw up. It was too much for her. The realness of losing him.

Dad popped a few pills, drank more water, and answered various questions Grant had asked him. I didn’t think it was standard procedure for a doctor off duty to sit around and listen to his patient’s slow breaths for twenty minutes, but he did. Dad put Grant on speaker, and Katie got back to the room.

“Hey, Mr. Black, remember when Chase and I watched The Shining while we had a sleepover and I pissed my pants and you helped me clean it up? Bet you never thought things would turn out this way, huh?” Grant laughed. Dad did too.

I silently thanked the universe for gifting me a doctor best friend and not a douchey Wall Street broker of the variety I’d gone to school with.

“How could I forget?” He chuckled. “You’ve come a long way.”

“Well, it has been a few years.” I heard Grant grin.

Dad hung up and handed me the phone back, his stern father voice giving me whiplash. “Grant’s going to drop by at my house in a little to make sure my head is okay. He’s a good friend. Make sure you don’t lose him or Madison. They please me.”

“Really?” I cocked an eyebrow. “You just passed out, and that’s what you want to talk about? My friend and girlfriend?”

“Fiancée,” Julian corrected with a bleached smile.

Right. I needed to ink this onto my wrist in order not to forget. Julian was a skilled chess player. But he was also a predictable player, and his favorite method was to capture the pawns before going in for the kill.

In this case, Madison was the pawn, but I’d be damned if I’d see her knocked over by Julian as an afterthought.

“And yes, surrounding yourself with good people is the key to happiness. I found out about it the hard way. Now, I don’t know what Clemmy was talking about out there”—Dad pointed at the door—“but you cannot lose this woman. She is too good to let go.”

“What makes you say that?” I ran a hand over my jaw. I wasn’t disagreeing with him. But I found it hard to believe we appreciated the same things in Mad. Frankly speaking, her great ass, fuckable mouth, smart-ass observations, and eccentric tendencies.

“She is smart, sassy, loving, and easy on the eyes.”

Okay, maybe we did see the exact same things. They just sounded a lot less filthy coming from him.

“She respects your family. She works hard for what she wants. She always has a smile on her face, even though I’m sure she didn’t always have it easy,” he elaborated.

“Dad.” Julian sat on the edge of the bed, taking Dad’s pale hand in his. Sometimes I forgot Julian wasn’t my brother. He felt like my brother. Until Dad had announced I was his successor, anyway. From that point onward, Julian had been quick to point out he was only a “mere” cousin. In fact, he called him Uncle Ronan 90 percent of the time these days, even though he knew it ripped my father to shreds. Julian patted Dad’s hand awkwardly, like it was made out of slime. He couldn’t fake his way to a genuine feeling if he had a How to Be Human for Dummies manual right in front of him.

“I think maybe it’s time for you to take care of yourself. Spend more time at home with Lori.” Of course, Mom was Lori now. All the sleepless nights she’d spent hugging him tight when he’d had nightmares after his parents had passed away. All the birthday parties she’d thrown for him. All the tears she’d cried when he was hurting. “Maybe it’s time to . . . retire,” Julian finished, his forehead crumpling in fake concern.

“Retire?” My father tasted the word on his tongue for the first time. He hadn’t missed a day of work in fifty-five years. I doubted it ever crossed his mind. Working made him happy. He didn’t know himself outside the context of work. “You want me to retire?”

“Nobody wants you to retire,” I hissed, pinning Julian with a death glare. “You must’ve misheard. That’s what happens when people talk with a mouth full of shit.”

“Chase!” Mom gasped.

“He is struggling.” Julian straightened his back, jutting his chin out. “What if there’s a power outage in the building and he is in the elevator? What if he falls? What if he needs his meds and there’s no one to give them to him? So many things can go wrong.”

True. I can accidentally push you out the window, for instance.

“Julian, shut up,” I snapped.

“The shareholders are going to ask questions soon. It’s a two-point-three-billion-dollar company, and it is being run by someone who is not well. I’m sorry—I’m just saying what no one else is brave enough to.” Julian held his hands up in surrender. “It is ethically wrong to hide this kind of medical condition from the board. What if—”

“Shut up, Jul!” Katie barked, bursting into tears. It was not unlike my sister to cry. It was unlike my sister to be confrontational. Then again, Dad had gotten sick, and all of a sudden this family had turned into Lord of the Flies. And Julian, the classic middle management guy—good at nothing other than possessing a staggering amount of confidence—was the man who’d decided to replace him, no matter the fact the role had been promised to me. Katie stabbed me with a look. “I’ll take Mom and Dad home.”

“I’ll take them.” I picked up Dad’s medicine bag, hoisting it over my shoulder.

“No, they can stay here. I . . .” Julian put his hand on Dad’s arm. We both shut him up with a glare.

“I’ll handle this,” I assured my baby sister.

“C’mon, Chase. You came here by train. I have my car, and I wanted to crash at theirs, anyway. It’s close to the half-marathon starting point.”

I nodded, torn between joining them and getting Madison home. But I knew Dad didn’t want an entire production—it would only make him feel more vulnerable if we all escorted him back home—and besides, I wanted to wrap things up with Mad. It was probably the last time we were going to see each other.

She is too good to let go,my dad had said.

Too bad I couldn’t keep her.

I spent the ride back to Madison’s apartment counting the reasons why she shouldn’t be with Ethan Goodman in my head. I stopped at thirty when I realized that there were at least a hundred more in the pipeline and that I was too proud to say jack shit about it to her, anyway.

Madison alternated between glancing at me with concern and munching on her lower lip.

It was disgustingly hot and packed in the subway. Every single motherfucker inside was either sweating, holding a greasy takeout bag, or both. A baby whined. A teenage couple made out on the seat in front of us, partly masked by the backs of two men in suits who were standing and reading on their phones. I wanted to get out, take Madison with me, hail a cab—an Uber Copter if I could—and go back to my Park Avenue apartment, where I’d put Elliott Smith on blast and bury myself in my ex-girlfriend.

Which, there was no point denying at this stage, was what she was to me.

When we finally got out of the train and I walked her to her apartment, I realized it was probably the last time I was going to visit her street. Goodbye hung in the air, fat and looming and un-fucking-fair. But what could I do? She wanted marriage. She was obsessed with weddings—designed wedding dresses for a living, had flowers everywhere—and I thought marriage was the stupidest idea mankind had entertained. Never had I seen such a popular idea being utilized over and over again despite garnering such poor results. Fifty percent divorce rate average, anyone?

Nah, marriage was not for me. And yet . . .

The morning walks with horny Daisy.

Our arrangement.

Our banter.

Our Post-it Notes.

I’d grown to not completely hate all of that. Which was more than I could say about my interactions with most people.

“Are you okay?” Mad finally winced when we were at the stairway to her apartment building. The entire journey had been silent. Of course I was fucking okay. Everything was fine. The only thing that bothered me (remotely) was the idea of Ethan hopping up these stairs tomorrow after his half marathon. How he was going to fuck her. Bury himself in her sweet, warm body, which always smelled of freshly baked goods and flowers, and fuck. I started imagining her doing all the things she’d done with me. The vein in my forehead was ready to pop.

Mad surprised me by taking my hand, squeezing it in both her small palms.

“I want to tell you that it gets better, but it really doesn’t. The only good thing about this situation is that experiencing the death of someone close heightens your senses.”

“Heightens my senses?” I asked sardonically, feeling my nostrils flare. I’d once eaten an ortolan while covering my head with a napkin to heighten my senses. My senses were higher than the Empire State Building. They didn’t need a pick-me-up.

Madison brushed her thumb along my palm, making a shiver roll down my spine. “Death is no longer an obscure idea. It is real and it is waiting, so you grab life by the balls. When you go through the horror of seeing someone you love die and still manage to wake up the next day to tie your shoelaces, to shove a tasteless breakfast down your throat, to breathe, you realize survival trumps tragedy. Always. It’s a primal instinct.”

I watched our entwined fingers curiously, realizing we hadn’t held hands while we were together. Madison had tried. Once, a couple of weeks into our hookup. I swiftly untangled myself the first chance I got. She hadn’t tried since.

Her fingers were slim and tan. Mine long and white and comically large against hers. Yin and yang.

“How did you concentrate on anything other than your mother dying?” I asked gruffly.

She smiled up at me, her eyes shining with fat tears. “I didn’t. I faked it till I made it.”

I bowed my head down, plastering my forehead to hers, breathing her in. I closed my eyes. We both knew there was not an ounce of romance in that moment. It was a pure this-planet-is-crazy-and-the-human-condition-is-trash moment. It was an end-of-the-world moment, and there wasn’t anywhere else I’d rather be.

Our hairs touched, and I felt goose bumps on both our arms wherever we touched. I didn’t want to let her go but knew with every fiber of my body that I should.

For her.

For me.

I couldn’t pinpoint when, exactly, it turned into a hug, but before I knew what was happening, she was leaning into me, and I was leaning into her, and we were swaying in place like two drunks in a sea of summer lights.

She looked up, and her smile was so sad I wanted to wipe it off her face with a kiss.

“You’re brave,” she whispered. “I know you are.”

She knew I was? I didn’t know why, but that made me angry.

“I just wanted to . . . ,” I started, the words dying inside my throat.

Fuck you one last time? Know if you really are having sex with that idiot? Burn down a pediatric practice?

In the end, I didn’t say anything. Just wondered, why couldn’t she be like me? Like Layla? Why couldn’t she want fun and casual and un-fucking-complicated?

“Goodbye, Chase.” She squeezed my hand one last time. She forgot to give me back the engagement ring. I didn’t ask her for it, because (a) I didn’t care about the damn ring, and (b) I knew she’d have to contact me again in order to return it. For all her faults, Madison was the furthest thing from a gold digger I’d ever met.

I leaned down and kissed her temple, letting my lips hover there. She took a step back and went inside.

I watched her disappearing behind her building door.

She kept glancing back.

I kept thinking she’d make a U-turn, like in the stupid movies she’d always tried to convince me to watch. Run back out, jump into my arms. We’d kiss. It would rain (even though it was summer). I’d hoist her up in the air, and she’d wrap her legs around my waist, and we’d go upstairs and make love, fade-to-black-style.

But after a few seconds of staring at me through the glass window of her entrance door, she shook her head and took the second flight of stairs.

I turned around and stumbled back home by foot, pressing my hand against my face, trying to breathe her in from the time she’d rubbed my fingers against her collarbone in the elevator.

Her scent was gone.