For Shits and Giggles [2024]

Chapter 40

Maybe this is how it should be, she thought, maybe this is what I deserve.

After Santiago left, Gracie sat in the hospital bed for a full fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of no moving and very slow breathing. She stared down at the hydrangeas that were now destroyed in her lap. All of this felt deserved, like retribution. How could she deserve a love like Santiago's when she'd desecrated the love of Fior and Felix? How did she deserve friends like Paola, or Henry, when she'd betrayed Fior's friendship and trust with such recklessness? She didn't. What she deserved was this— emptiness, nothing.

But she'd been close. I almost had him, Gracie thought, feeling her eyes water for the first time in those fifteen minutes.

I almost had Santi, he was finally mine. Felix gets to keep his marriage, Felix's forgiven... but I'm not? It's not fair. It's just not fair.

Still, she knew what she had to do. There was no going back now. Even if no one wanted anything to do with her—and rightfully so—she would still give up her eyes. In a way, it was for them. An atonement for all the hurt that she'd caused. She could save them from this.

However, she was mostly doing it for herself. So she could get out of here and never look back, just like she wanted. So she could shed her life and her sins and start over somewhere new. Start over.

Her mind wandered to Santiago again. Santiago who was always there to rescue her. And not just her, anyone who needed a hero, there he was. Ready to save the day. He didn't deserve this kind of hurt. She didn't want to start over without him. But there was no saving her from this.

She spent days like this. Alone in her hospital room, jumping at every bird landing on the windowsill in hopes that it was her Santi. She looked down at the phone in her hand. Nothing. No missed phonecalls, no texts, no visitors; only nurses to bring her food and slow, groggy trips to the bathroom. Sometimes she would take a walk down the hall, only to sprint back to her room seconds later just in case Santiago had decided to come back. She broke down sobbing each time she opened the door to her empty room.

Gracie barely ate in the days leading up to her enucleation. All she did was sleep and wait. The first night was the hardest (she'd sobbed so hard she threw up). On the third night, she overheard the nurses talking just outside her door, "Before the Tree we'd put a patient like that on suicide watch... no point now I guess."

"Maybe she should kill herself," the other nurse laughed. "It'd probably fix whatever's wrong with her."

But there was nothing physically wrong with her. All that ailed her was a broken heart and a bleak future without her friends or the love of her life. So she waited patiently for her surgery date, it was the only thing she had left to look forward to.

After her enucleation, adjusting wouldn't be impossible. Plenty of people lived full, successful lives without their eyesight; even after losing their vision later in life. Being blind didn't scare her nearly as much as living the rest of her life in this town, cursed forever. But the way Santiago gazed into her eyes; the way he looked at her like nothing but their love mattered— she didn't want to lose that. Or maybe she already had.

She'd miss the way the right side of his lip curled slightly more than the left, and that his teeth were too sharp for his mouth, and the way he narrowed his eyes when he found something too stupid to believe. She would miss the stolen glances across the room, or how he'd signal to her with his eyebrows, as if they spoke their own language. He'd stick his tongue out at Camilo's jealous rants, knowing it would make her laugh quietly to herself.

So much of their relationship had been nonverbal, their eyes a primary vehicle for communication. It would have been easier now that they could touch. With Camilo out of the way, they could kiss, embrace, and profess their love with more than just their eyes. They could scream it from the rooftops. But still nothing would ever compare to the intensity behind his gaze. The way he could read her mind through her eyes. Somehow, he always knew how she felt, cursed or not.