Free Dropping Gloves by Catherine Gayle

here with you staring at me like that all night.”
    “I meant about Katie.”
    Hell if I knew.

    In order to keep my mind occupied while I was waiting on the results of my latest barrage of tests, I had decided to go house hunting. Mom and Dad wanted me to just move back into their house, now that I didn’t have any good reason to go back to LA, and especially now that I did have a good reason to stick around in Portland. If I was going to have to go through cancer treatments again, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to do it under anyone but Dr. Oliver.
    That didn’t mean I wanted to live with my parents and have my mother hovering over me constantly until I was cancer-free again, though. It only made sense, she said, because I was already living here at least temporarily. I hadn’t forgotten what it was like, going through radiation and chemotherapy and all that jazz. I remembered everything about it, not the least of which was the emotional toll it had taken on my family. I needed at least some space of my own, some distance between us without completely going away, if I was going to get through it again without going completely berserk. I wanted to be able to hang out with my mom when I felt like crap but to not have her watching me so she could pick out every minuscule change I went through before I noticed it. There had to be some sort of balance there, and I intended to find it.
    I had more than enough money set aside that I could get a reasonable place of my own without it hurting my bank account, whether I was going to be working in the near future or not, so I didn’t see any reason to put it off. Chances were pretty high that I’d be starting some treatment plan or another pretty soon, and once that happened, I would have a lot less energy for things like house hunting.
    When I headed into the kitchen for breakfast, Dad was there eating a bowl of oatmeal and some fruit, but this time he didn’t have his iPad playing video. I’d been at my parents’ house at breakfast more than enough times since Dad had started coaching to know that he always watched game footage on his iPad over breakfast, but the tablet was nowhere to be seen.
    By the time he and the team had gotten in after their loss against the Stars last night, I had long since gone to bed. I’d still been awake, though. I’d heard him come in, his footsteps careful in the hall as he made his way to my bedroom and opened the door. Katie? he’d whispered. You awake? I hadn’t answered him, lying there with my eyes closed, hoping he would close the door and make his way to his own bed.
    He hadn’t done that. He’d crossed over to me and sat down on the edge of the bed, and he’d kissed the back of my head. I could tell he was crying. That was what I’d been trying to avoid, the reason I’d pretended to be asleep. I wasn’t ready for all this again—to have everyone hovering and crying all the time. That didn’t help me. It just made me feel as if I was the one responsible for everyone’s lack of emotional well-being. I had hoped he would wait until the light of day before starting, but my hopes were in vain.
    He’d stayed there for a few minutes, stroking my hair, and then he’d sniffled and shuffled out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. Only after he was gone did I allow myself to break down in tears. I hated crying. I really fucking hated it, and I’d allowed it to go on so long that I ended up with a massive headache that kept me awake for hours after he’d left my room.
    And now, here he was, looking up at me with red-rimmed eyes over his breakfast, and it took everything in me not to break down again. We’d talked on the phone some in the last couple of days. He knew everything I knew at this point about my test results. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much. It was just enough to know there was something to worry about but not enough to know how worried we should be.
    “What time did you get in?” I asked,