Chapter Eighteen
Everyone else had rehearsal for Las Palomas del Disco, so I was sitting on my bed surrounded by my spreadsheet, articles, and piles of the most depressing papers ever from the hospital. So you have cancer… Thrilling titles that made me start to regret my decision to drop out of the contest. But it made it easier to keep Jason at a distance if I didn’t have to actually see him. I replayed his sister’s words in my mind to remind me why I was doing this.
By eleven p.m., I was still wide-awake when my phone beeped. It was a text from Jason.
Are you awake?
Hi.
Don’t be scared, it’s me. Knock, knock.
There was a tapping on my window. Despite the warning, I bolted up in fear. A second later, connecting the sound to the text, I got up on my good knee to pull up the blinds. Jason was at my window looking adorably disheveled. Now my heart was racing in a whole different way. I unlatched the lock, and he popped his head and half his torso through the cheap, unscreened window.
“Hey,” he said, that simple word causing an earthquake ripple from chest to belly.
“You scared me. ‘Knock, knock?’ That’s a creepy, psycho-killery thing to text.”
“But it was coming from me. How’s that psycho-killery?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the psycho killer stole your phone,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“Good point. Next time I’ll call first so you can approve my voice. Oh wait, that wouldn’t work because you ignore my calls.”
Ouch.
“Can I come in? This window ledge is slicing my rib cage. I just need to say a few things, and then I’ll leave you alone.”
“Yes. But be quiet, our walls are binder thin, and Mom’s room is right there.” I pointed to the wall across from my bed and moved out of the way as Jason slithered in from the window.
He tumbled onto my bed, sending my stacks of paper everywhere and completely squashing the fourth-grade birthday present from Mom: a stuffed hippo that wore a leotard saying I love to dance. Righting himself on my bed, Jason removed Stanley from under the small of his back.
He eyed my white cotton duvet and all the pillows in shades of blues and greens. “Should I take off my shoes?” His face flushed. “Not that I have to stay. Long—stay long—I don’t. It’s just…I don’t want to get shoe prints…”
I nodded yes. This was so awkward.
As he slipped off his shoes he said, “Don’t ask how this went in my head.”
He smelled so good.
“Okay, let me get this out.” His gaze was steady and serious. “No.”
I waited for him to go on. He didn’t.
“No?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
“No. I don’t accept you pushing me away. You said it was because you couldn’t handle us while you’re going through all this.” He gestured to my leg and papers and crutches. “But I’ve been thinking about this—like, a lot. You overheard me and Olivia talking that day you came over, didn’t you?”
I avoided his eyes and bit the insides of my cheeks.
He huffed. “I knew it. But you must not have heard all of it. What I said back to her.”
“You said it would be cruel to break things off with me when I’d just learned I had cancer.”
He closed his eyes, puffed out his cheeks, and then looked at me again. “I said that for her. But I said more after that. Look, you don’t get to tell me how to feel or who to care about. If you tell me right now that you hate me and don’t like spending time with me, or that you really can’t handle being around me, I’ll go away and leave you alone. But you have to be honest. Because I’m here. And I want to go through whatever happens with you. Period. And it’s because I like you. A lot. I want to spend time with you, I want to be with you.”
I hunched and hid my face in my hands, overwhelmed by the cacophony of emotions inside me. He stroked my hair. He’d meant every word. I’d given him an out, and he didn’t want it. He was here because he liked me and didn’t want to give up on us.
Now it was up to me.
Pulling myself together, I sniffled and straightened back up, meeting his gaze. “I really like you, too, Jason. A lot, a lot. I just don’t know what’s going to happen. It all feels half-real right now. I’m on crutches, I have a scar on my leg, but that’s nothing compared to what’s ahead. So what does that mean for us? What if I have to get my leg amputated and—”
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but…”
“What? Just tell me.” I pulled a pillow into my lap.
Jason ran his fingers along my calf, sending tingles through my body. “You have gorgeous legs. Seriously gorgeous. But they’re not even in the top five reasons I like you. I hope—for you—that you get to keep your leg. But if not, I’ll crowd-source robotics-funding for a kick-ass, tricked-out, Transformer-level prosthetic. Okay?”
I laughed. “Okay. But we really don’t know what’s going to happen with me. What life will be like, what I’ll be like. So, let’s just agree to the now, not to the future. Deal?”
Jason cocked his head and opened his mouth as if to speak, but then closed it again. He simply nodded then, finally, said, “Sure. Deal.”
He leaned over and kissed me. It was a long, body-altering kiss that turned into fluttery kisses. After a while Jason pulled back a little and said, “This is even better than it went in my head.” He smiled. “I have another thing to say.”
“What’s that?” I hugged the pillow closer.
“I think you should do the standup contest for Comedy Hub.”
My head about spun off. I threw the pillow up into the air as I whisper-yelled. “What? Why? Where’s this coming from?”
“You know the number one place it’s coming from is Talent Coordinator Hana. She really gave me the sales pitch at rehearsal tonight. But also, your ‘cancer and sugar’ line to Marissa has popped into my head a bunch since it happened. So that’s number two. And number three is probably my wanting to live through you vicariously. My mom and I would think of the cheesiest jokes to entertain her through treatment. Maybe we could work on your set together?”
I picked at the edge of my journal, which peeked out from under a pillow. There were some jokes I’d jotted in there. Well, I don’t know if I’d call them jokes yet, but premises, nuggets of things I found so absurd about all this that they deserved a punchline.
Looking back up at Jason I asked, “What were your mom’s favorite jokes?”
He shook his head and gave a breathy laugh. “The worst kind. Knock-knock.”
He paused, looking expectant.
“Oh, we’re really doing this? Okay, who’s there?”
“Alma.”
“Alma who?”
“Alma hair keeps falling out.”
My mouth gaped with a shock-laugh. “That’s terrible.”
He grinned. “I know. There’s more. Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?
“Not my knockers anymore.”
“Awful. Did she come up with that?”
“Yep, and she had a big fit of giggles after it. Really cracked herself up with that one.” He had a small smile and his gaze went far away.
“That’s impressive she could laugh at it.”
“Yeah, she was amazing.”
I put my hand on his knee and held it there as we sat in silence.
He said, “Quinn said you wouldn’t be having chemo?”
I nodded. “No, it’s so deep in me, chemo would kill everything else before it even started on the tumor.”
It was his turn to nod. He was slipping into memory-land, and I wasn’t sure if I should help him dig deeper or pull him out of the depths. As he seemed to get further away, I decided on out. Thinking of the jokey improv game One Eighty-Five, my head reeled with ideas. Cancer, chemo, tumor…
“One hundred eighty-five tumors walk into a bar. The bartender says, ‘What can I get you?’ The one hundred eighty-five tumors reply ‘one hundred eighty-seven shots.’ The bartender says, ‘But there’re one hundred eighty-five of you.’ The one hundred eighty-five tumors reply, ‘We’re drinking for tu-mor.’”
A slow smile morphed across his face. “Was that a tumor math pun? Owen would love that.”
“Yeah, but these are all tragically cheesy jokes and I wouldn’t do any of them for the show.”
Jason brightened. “So, you’ll do it?”
Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. “Yes. I mean, what I have I got to lose? A leg?”
“Yes! No, I mean, no, not the leg. But yes, that you’ll do it. Now I’ll get my sign-on cut from Hana.” He rubbed his palms together greedily.
I gave him the Ice Princess glare I usually reserved for Craig.
Jason laughed and threw a pillow at me. I threw one back. He threw another one, and I caught it. He pushed his hands back on it, and we shoved the pillow back and forth between us, laughing, until I leveraged up on my good leg and pushed the pillow with my body weight and toppled him over. I buried my face in the pillow between us to stifle my giggles.
“Ellie, are you up, sweetie?” Mom called from the hallway.
I reached across the bed and switched off my lamp. We froze. There was a soft knock on my door. “Ellie?” Mom whispered, waited. “Get some sleep, my love.”
The lights in the dining room were on. Now that we’d woken her, she was going to be up researching for a while. Crap.
Jason tickled my ear with his whispery words. “Let’s just lay here until she goes to bed, and then I’ll sneak back out, ’kay?”
Smothering a giggle from the tickles, I nodded a yes against his shoulder. We shifted so I was laying on my right side, and he spooned around me, hugging me tight.
His hand moved down my left thigh until he got just above my knee. “Is it here?” he asked, meaning the tumor.
“Yeah,” I answered quietly. He didn’t say anything as he nestled against my neck. He held me there, wrapped in his arms, the warmth of his hand emanating into the spot on my thigh.
And that’s where we slept all night.