Let It Be Me by Becky Wade (top young adult novels .TXT) 📕

one that dulled everything. She enabled him to feel things.

“What motivated you to become a doctor?” she asked.

“The white jackets, terrible hours, and the pay.” He spoke the lie smoothly. “In that order.”

The tips of her hair slipped against the sides of her delicate neck. Her bottom lip was fuller than her upper lip. Light caught in her little gold hoop earrings.

Pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans, he made himself take a step back and dropped his attention to her appetizers. Raw vegetables, chips, and melon wrapped in prosciutto, pierced by a toothpick.

“I feel self-conscious eating in front of you,” she announced. “Aren’t you hungry?”

I am. For so many things. He shook his head.

“My melon’s cut in such a way that it forms an almost perfect rhomboid. You have the self-control to pass up rhomboid melon?”

“I do.”

“I do not.” She took a bite and he groaned inwardly. “Did you grow up in Misty River?”

“I was born in Chicago. My mom brought me to Georgia when I was five.”

“Was your dad in the picture?”

“No.”

“Not ever?”

“No.”

“What was your mom’s name?”

“Denise.”

“Why did Denise move you from Chicago to Georgia?”

He hated talking about his pre-Coleman childhood years, and yet he didn’t want to say no to her. About anything. “The spring before I started kindergarten, my mom felt pressured to make a decision about our future. She didn’t want to stay in Chicago, but she also didn’t want to move me around a lot after I was in school. She started looking for a new place to settle, where we could both be happy for a long period of time.”

“Why did she choose Georgia?”

“She loved nature and wanted a warmer climate. She applied for work up and down the southern section of the Blue Ridge range and got a job here.”

A bee buzzed close to Leah. Sebastian brushed it away.

“What did you think of Georgia when you arrived?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I liked it. On her days off, we’d go to the lake or a river or a waterfall.”

“What happened to her?”

A memory split into his head, and he saw his mother lying in front of him, with just days to live. When she’d gotten too sick to work, the two of them had moved into the apartment of the old lady next door, who’d been grumpy and, at the same time, soft-hearted enough to take them in. At first they’d shared her guest bedroom. But then, when Mom had worsened, hospice had placed a hospital-type bed in the old lady’s living room for her to lie in.

For her to die in.

Every day he’d taken the bus home from school, then stood next to that bed. The apartment smelled faintly of cigarettes, even though the old lady had quit years before. A dark brown recliner and a sagging corduroy sofa were lit by two ugly matching lamps on end tables. The white porcelain lamps had been painted with orange and brown flowers, and Sebastian hated them and every single other thing about the lady’s apartment and his mom’s health and his life.

“Were you nice to your teacher today?” Mom had asked, looking right at him with sunken eyes.

“Yes.”

She smiled affectionately. “No you weren’t. Did you try your best?”

“Yes.”

“No you didn’t.” Mom was still trying to tease him the way she always had. “I can tell that backpack you just set down is empty. You didn’t bring any books or your homework home.”

This ain’t my home, he thought.

“How do you expect to pass second grade?” she asked. “By learning through osmosis?”

He didn’t know what osmosis was. And he didn’t care about passing second grade. His mother was skinny and pale and getting weaker every day. Gut-wrenching fear had consumed every inch of mental space he had.

Sebastian refocused on the present, on Leah. “Ben’s told you my story, right?”

As personal as it felt to Sebastian, and as much as he wished he could protect it, his story was part of the public domain. Anyone who read the book or watched the movie about the Miracle Five could learn much more about him than he was comfortable with their knowing.

“I know that your mom died,” she said. “But I don’t know how.”

“A terminal illness she’d had since childhood.”

“I’m sorry. How old were you at the time?”

“Eight.” He could lose himself in Leah. He wanted to lose himself in her. “I went into the foster care system.”

“How many years after your mom died did you meet Ben?”

“Five.”

“And the Colemans became your family.”

“Yes.” That was the simplest way to communicate a complex answer. As a rule, Sebastian didn’t form attachments. One, he didn’t like to rely on people. Two, he didn’t want the fear and potential loss that came with loving people.

The Colemans were the only people he’d let in over the past twenty-four years. For them, his feelings ran deep, and his loyalty was unshakable. They were the closest thing to a family he had, but calling them his family made him feel like he was cheating his mom, his actual family member, of her due. Also, as much as he cared about the Colemans, he was always aware that he didn’t fully belong with them.

He was the one Caucasian guy in a big African-American family. The one member who’d entered their group as a teenager, instead of being raised in their ranks. As successful as he’d become, he’d always be their charity case.

“I owe them a lot,” he said.

Thoughtfully, she bit into a carrot.

He’d never forget the unselfish things the Colemans had done for him. Too many times to count, he’d entered Ben’s room to find the family’s army cot already made up for him. Camo sleeping bag. Down pillow covered in a clean white pillowcase.

They’d taken him with them in their van on trips. CeCe would bring a small cooler and pass back Capri-Suns and bags of pretzels during the long hours of driving.

They’d held parties for him when he’d graduated from high school, college, and med school. Each time, they’d stretched the