IT'S STRANGE HOW SUDDEN IT happens. I am standing beside my mother, laughing as we prepare a salad, and then I am falling to my knees on the kitchen floor, the pain in my head relentless, so massive I think my brain will literally explode. I almost want it to, just to relieve the pressure. I clutch my forehead and squeeze, nausea filling me, and weightlessness descending upon me. I vaguely note my mom calling my name, but I can barely hear her and I can't see around the agony in my head. Lights pulsate behind my eyelids. Hands are on me, a voice is screaming at me, just before it all goes dark.
I wake up in a white room with a beeping monitor and tubes connected to me. Although there is fog around my brain, at least the pain is gone. But the relief is short-lived with me sitting in the middle of the truth, unable to hide anymore. I panic. The stark whiteness of the room is like a stage and I am the spotlight, trembling with all I have tried to deny. I feel naked, exposed. I can't be here. This can't be happening. Not yet. I refuse to let this happen. I need to leave. If I leave, it isn't really happening. This is not my destiny. I don't accept this. No.
A sob escapes me as I grab for the wires and just as I am about to rip them from my skin, a hand stays me. I look up, the shell keeping me together finally shattering as his stricken eyes find mine. My hand goes limp, falling to my lap, as my truth stares back at me from the eyes of the man I healed only to wound again. Tears are streaming down my face and I can't even care about that now.
My heart is breaking. My heart, my heart is Rivers, and it is breaking.
He doesn't say anything. What can he say? He just looks at me like I am already gone, like I already left him, and he is unable to accept it. He looks lost. Knowing I am causing him this pain hurts me more than I can deal with. I didn't want to hurt him. I don't want to hurt him, but I am. I am hurting him because I was careless, carefree, and thinking of now instead of farther ahead. I dared to hope. I dared to be selfish. I dared to want a piece of him when he will eventually have nothing of me.
And now look at us, sitting in a hospital room watching one another like we don't know who we are staring at.
It is amazing how steady my voice is as I tell him, “I'm fine.”
Rivers slowly closes his eyes. When he opens them, there is raging light in the endless black depths, lightning bolts of fury aimed right at me. “You're fine? That's what you have to say to me? You're fine? Well, I'm glad you're fine, because I sure as hell am not fine. So you can be fine while I am not...fine,” he grinds out.
“Where's my mom?” I avoid his eyes and his words with my question and the way I fervently search the room. The apprehension is growing—this swirling mass that is called reality is shoving its way into my caricature of a life. I think, if she is just here, this conversation will not happen. I feel sick, so sick. I feel like all of my emotions are building and building and I am going to be ill from them all. They are going to smother me and I will be helpless to stop them.
None of this will happen if my mom would just show up. We won't have to talk about this. This isn't happening. I don't want this to be happening. I am on repeat and I can't shut it off. It is an unbreakable circle of pain and heartache and I am the band keeping it whole. Why can't I keep pretending this isn't happening? I want to go back, even to yesterday, when Rivers was smiling at me, happy, and didn't know I am broken even more than he is.
Everything will be different now. He'll look at me differently. He'll look at me like people look at him. But I never looked at him like he was anything less than complete, and I cannot stand the thought that I will see pity in his eyes after today. I would rather not see him at all.
“She went to get coffee. She's been pacing the floor since we got here and she needed a different scene. My mom's with her.” In the next breath, all the anger is gone from his tone and is replaced with overwhelming grief. Despair, so deep his voice cracks under the pressure of it, shows through when he asks, “Why didn't you tell me something was wrong?”
I go still, wondering if he knows any of what is truly going on, or simply that something is wrong. What is doctor/patient confidentiality in a matter like this? I was brought in unconscious. They have my medical history and diagnosis on record here, but I am a legal adult. Did I ever specifically say I did not want anyone to know of my situation if something happened to me? I can't remember. Of course they would want to know what the doctors could tell them about my condition, and what it means for me. Would they tell them everything? Taking a deep breath, I fiddle with the tube sucking oxygen into my nostrils each time I inhale. I don't think I can continue the charade, either way.
And don't I owe him the truth? This once arrogant boy, who is maturing into a decent and good man, who gave me purpose when his life was full of despair, and who gave me something to believe in when I was flailing. He gave me a reason to keep going. This being who was never more unflawed than when he thought he was irreparable.
He only had to fracture to allow me in.
“It's odd, but I think maybe I was there for you, but I didn't know it right away. That day was the first day I knew something was wrong. I'd just been released. I was numb, just sitting there, trying to come to terms with it all,” I whisper. I swallow and glance at him. “And then you were brought in, and when I saw you, everything sort of clarified for me. I knew what I had to do. It was weird how sudden it was. One minute I was hopeless and the next I found hope again.”
“What are you talking about?” Slow realization crawls over him like the icy waters of a cold, tumultuous sea of finality. His expression clears and just as quickly is filled with shadows once more.
“Wait a minute.” He stares at me, his eyes trailing over my features like he is reminding himself that he knows me, that he has seen my face before, maybe when he wasn't fully aware of it. And he had. “You were there that day—the day of my accident. I remember. You were sitting in a chair in the emergency room when they wheeled me in. You weren't there for me. You couldn't have been. Why were you there?”
I wonder if this is the time for my confession. I've been keeping it inside, refusing to face the truth, denying what is unmistakable even to myself because I don't want it to be real. But it is real and Rivers bringing up the day my world and his world collided and touched in more ways than the obvious, is looking at me with eyes full of unease. He has the right to know, doesn't he?
I turn away from the boy that changed so much because of me; the boy that changed me. I look at a painting of the calm waters of the Mississippi River across the room. The waves appear so still, and the picture is so deceptive. Just like me. Just like every breath I am given. What ones sees of me is not what truly is.
I lean forward to touch his ravaged cheek, the bumps and dips of it a work of art to me. I smile, but I know sadness seeps into it. “I didn't plan on this.”
He grabs my hand and holds it against his face, his brows lowered. “Didn't plan on what?”
I put my finger to his lips. He kisses it and a catch forms in my chest. “Just listen. This isn't easy for me to say. I need to take my time with it.”
He nods brusquely, his throat bobbing as he swallows. The intensity of his gaze singes me. I'm going to miss him looking at me. Although, how will I even know I'm missing it? My expression must reveal something of the pain this knowledge gives me because his hands cup the nape of my neck and he tugs me to him, his mouth hungry and urgent against mine. I let my mind slip away for a moment, feeling the sensations he evokes in me, feeling joy and happiness and wholeness I have only felt with a damaged boy. There are tears in the kiss, and as I pull away, I see there are tears on his face and feel my own. He knows something. Even if the doctors told him nothing, he knows anyway.
“I had...an episode. I didn't know what it meant. The pain was so intense—the headache was so bad I passed out. When I woke up, I knew whatever had happened to me wasn't normal. Sometimes I wish I hadn't decided to have it checked out. But I was scared, so I did. They did scans of my brain. The results weren't good. They wanted to do more testing, but I said no. They told me it was inoperable, so what was the point in taking more pictures and whatever else they wanted to do?
“If I hadn't passed out that day, if I hadn't gone to the emergency room at the exact moment I did, I wouldn't have seen you, broken and bloody, as you were brought into the hospital. I was sitting there, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now. Your mother and Thomas were in the hallway, crying and holding one another. I'm telling you now, Rivers, Thomas loves you. Maybe not in the way you want or need, but he does. He was scared, grieving. Maybe it was partly from guilt, but it was also because he cares for you. You don't cry for someone like that just because you don't want your mistake found out.” I inhale, looking away from his vulnerable face.
I want to tell him I love him. I love him so much. But I know it will be piercing to hear right now, although it will never truly be one hundred percent received with solace. With love, comes pain. But I do, I love him. And I know he loves me too. Even if we have not verbally spoken the words to one another, it is so clear to me. Every glance my way, every touch of his skin against mine, the way he responds to me without being aware of it, even the sound of his voice. I can see everything in a way I wasn't able to before all of this.
I love a boy I pulled from the dark and he loves a girl who will return to it.
“I was in the store a month or so later. I didn't realize it was your mom right away, but it didn't take long for me to realize who I was talking to. She offered the job. I accepted. I'd already known I wanted to help you somehow, I just wasn't sure how yet. It was sort of perfect, in a way.
"I made a choice. I could spend the rest of my time feeling sorry for myself, or I could help someone. Your mom...and you. I could live with the past hovering over me or I could step away from it and be the way I always wanted to be, the way I could have been if I hadn't let everything around me determine who I was. I could choose to be sad, or I could choose to be happy. Life—it's one choice after another. And how our lives are, that's our choice as well.
“Maybe if you hadn't been in that accident, you wouldn't have been able to know the real me. And maybe if I hadn't discovered there was something wrong with me, I wouldn't have been able to be the real me. I like to think, it had to happen this way for the two of us to find each other. Because even with all I grieve for, I cannot regret you. I didn't expect to care about you so much. I didn't expect to see past my misconception of you and be rewarded with knowing the real you. I had a goal, Rivers, and you ruined it for me, but I am so glad you did,” I whisper.
He is openly crying and I am crying with him. I think the sound of his anguish is even harder to take than seeing it, but both are equally ravaging to me. His tears are wounds to my heart and I am crying blood for him in return. I try to imagine a life without Rivers, and it guts me. And I know what he is feeling. It would be a world cast in gray, without the sun, without light, without warmth.
My mom and Monica find us together on the bed, our arms locked around each other like if we just keep holding on, we won't lose one another. Monica's mouth pulls down and her eyes water as she takes in the sight, quickly looking away as she inhales sharply. My mom's face crumples and she can't even walk toward us, her legs stiff and immobile. Rivers' mom puts an arm around her to gently prod her forward and they make their way to the bed in a shuffling gait. It makes me think of the first agonizing steps I witnessed Rivers take at the beginning of the summer and my arms tighten around him.
“The doctor will be in soon,” Monica says quietly, her eyes touching on me and resting on her son. “Rivers, let's go for a little walk.”
Torn between where he wants to be and where he needs to be, he carefully disentangles himself from me, giving my forehead a lingering kiss. He sweeps bangs from my eyes and smiles, his gaze steady and true. That smile tears me apart. I hear my mother's broken cry behind him and my eyes burn. He leaves with his mom, glancing back at me as he goes. His expression is panicked and desperate, like he is sure he isn't going to find me, but when our eyes meet, the lines fade a little from his face. Monica puts her hand on his arm and unconsciously rubs it as they walk from the room.
I have no choice but to face my mother now.
Looking at her is hard. She no longer resembles the young image I normally procure in my mind when I think of her. Janet Bana looks like all the years of heartache have finally caught up to her and lambasted her into accepting that life is cruel, that life takes more than it gives, and that it is going to steal from her once more.
"You know Henry Miller? He lives down the street from us."
She wordlessly nods.
I look down, staring at the stark white of the sheet peeking out from beneath the hospital-issued blanket. "I think about him a lot. All the time, lately. He lost his wife to cancer, his son to a hunting accident, and his daughter was murdered." I blink and release a set of tears. They slowly trickle down my cheeks. "How can one person be expected to go through so much? It's horrible. And he's so sad. He's in his eighties and it's been years since he lost them all, and he's still just so sad. I see it every time he sits on his porch. It radiates from him. Sorrow like that—there is no way to get past it." I wipe the tears from my chin. "I don't want that to be you." My eyes meet her injured ones. "I don't want you to have to lose everyone you love."
Her lower lip wobbles and she turns her face away, hugging herself against my words.
“Did they tell you?”
She wipes at her eyes, finally looking at me. I find it odd that she is standing away from me, like she has to distance herself from the pain being too close to me evokes in her.
“The doctor said he had to talk to you first.” The look she gives me is hard-eyed and searching. “He has records, Delilah. Confidential records on you. Records I couldn't see and records he wouldn't say a single word to me about. He's hiding something—something big, something terrible. I can see it every time he won't look at me, every time I catch that hint of resigned acceptance he tries to cover up. What is it? What won't he tell me?”
I look at the blanket covering my legs and squeeze it between my hands, then release it. “I—”
“Just tell me this,” she interrupts. She straightens her shoulders and looks at me with determination to stay strong in the set of her spine and the directness of her eyes. She wore that look a lot after she lost Neil. I used to think she wore it for herself, but now I wonder if it was for me. And now—as she wears the same look—is it for me as well? She is so much stronger than I ever gave her credit for. She always reminded me of something frail, but I understand now that I was seeing her wrong, like so many other things.
“Is it...” Her eyelids slide shut and she takes a deep lungful of air. She looks at me, not like I am her daughter, but like I am an equal, and it grieves me that it has come to this. I wanted her to remain oblivious. I wanted to spare her the pain until there was no way around it.
Her voice cracks as she asks, “Is it terminal? Are you dying?”
The tears that fall from my eyes are her answer and I see her sway around the blur of them, fumbling with a chair until she falls into it. She doesn't say another word. She sits in the chair and she holds her face and weeps; loud, broken, gasping sounds of grief that tighten my throat. I can't watch her, but I can't turn away. My mouth quivers and I stare at the ceiling as she cries, blinking my eyes against my own steady flow of tears.
Pressure forms in my chest and I wonder if this is what it feels like when your heart breaks, when the sorrow becomes too much and it has to go somewhere, so it flows into your heart and makes it ache, each beat of it agonizing to your soul. Your heart beats to keep you alive, your heart beats so you know you can still hurt. Because to have pain, is to live, and there is no life without it. The pain makes you know you're alive.
I guess as long as my heart keeps aching, I know I am still breathing.
She stands abruptly, moving toward me in hurried steps. Reaching down, she takes my face into her hands and kisses my cheek, pressing her tear-stained one to mine. “I love you, Delilah. You are my gift. You are my heart. And we will get through this.”
I try to nod, but I can't move from all the emotions slamming into me and over me. Relief, hope, loss, sadness. I whisper instead. And what I whisper is, “Yes.”
IT SEEMS ODD THAT OUT of all the rooms in the house, the one I feel like I need to be in is Neil's—or maybe that is exactly where I should be. The air is stuffy with the smell of a room shut up too long. I immediately go to the set of windows along the far wall and open the curtains, sliding a window open to let a cool breeze inside. The sun is down and the stars are out. I watch the black and white sky for a moment, and then turn away.
"I miss you, Neil, every day," I quietly tell an empty room. Is this what my mom will do? Sit in my room as she mourns me, talking to the ghost of a memory so she feels closer to me?
Blinking my eyes, I take a stabilizing breath of air. This room reeks of sorrow, of a life taken too soon, of dreams never known, and laughter forever silenced. For weeks after he died, I was in here on a daily basis, sitting on his bed, falling asleep among his blankets at the most random times. I missed his smell—dirt, sweat, and laundry detergent—so badly that I went to his room to procure anything that reminded me of him. My mom would find me in his room and quietly pick me up and take me out. It must have hurt her so much to be in here, to find me in here.
I didn't understand that he was truly gone, I couldn't comprehend that I would never see him again. Part of me thought if I waited long enough, he would come back. Because, really, how can someone just be...gone?
The room is still painted sky blue with sports paraphernalia and airplane models on the walls and hanging from the ceiling. His clothes were donated to a secondhand store along with his toys, but there were some things my mother could not bear to part with, like the Spider-Man shirt I hold within my hands, and the trinkets in the room that were dear to him. I found the Spider-Man shirt on my mother's bed after Neil's funeral. She never mentioned me taking it—she never said a single thing about it. I wore it to bed every night until I outgrew it.
And one day I realized that my brother was gone forever, and I never came back in this room after that. I began to call my mom by her first name, and I grew a shield around myself, a shield that was never fully taken down until this summer—until now.
Funny how we all finally decide to start living only when we irrevocably know we are dying.
I carefully lie down on the bed, holding his shirt to my chest, and close my eyes. Contentment flows through me and over me like a warm blanket, filling me and slowing my breaths. I drift away to the sight of golden eyes twinkling like glitter and an infectious laugh, only awakening at the shifting of the mattress as my mom lies beside me, wrapping me in her arms and in the security of her love, before I sink into the darkness once more.
THE BRAIN TUMOR IS INOPERABLE because of its stellar location inside my head. The risk of trying to remove it would be too great to me—there's the tiny matter of major blood vessels that surround it. Basically, chances are I would bleed to death. Radiation was suggested to try to minimize its size, but most benign tumors regrow. Do I want to live for the duration of whatever time I have left of my life sick? No. They said it could be hereditary, but as I have no knowledge of who my father is, that means nothing to me. It was suggested I go to a support group, but I decided to find my own form of therapy. I guess I did that when I saw Rivers and his mother. When they started talking about experimental surgery, I left. Until yesterday, I never went back.
Maybe I am being unreasonable, but if I can't decide when I get to die, I can at least decide how. Just as I can decide how to live while I still have that option.
I looked it up online, trying to see if there was some way to naturally get rid of it. I knew I was searching for impossible answers when I did so, but I had to at least try. Maybe my affinity to burn in the sun, and thus stay out of it unless slathered in sunscreen, was to blame. Vitamin D is necessary to remain healthy. Maybe I ultimately killed myself or helped the process along in some way. Maybe it was something I did or didn't eat. Maybe I wasn't active enough, maybe I was too active. Maybe something with my chromosomes changed and messed it all up. Who knows. And really, does it matter?
Each year, more than one hundred thousand Americans are told they have a brain tumor. It is not clear why many of these tumors occur. Those that originate in the brain, primary brain tumors, may be due to genetic or environmental factors. Others, called secondary brain tumors, are the result of cancer that has spread from other parts of the body. Benign brain tumors, while slow growing and non-cancerous, may be inoperable. And unlike benign tumors in other parts of the body, benign brain tumors often recur. The tumor in my head is benign, but for whatever reason, it is also aggressively growing, and one day, it will be too much for my brain to take—and it will kill me. I know all this because I googled it. Google has helped me these past few months in ways nothing else could.
I'm not saying I just accepted it. I didn't. I mean, when I saw Rivers brought into the emergency room, I found a purpose to not fall into a hole of despair, but I already had it set in my brain that I wanted to fight. Only I didn't know how. So I decided that living as much as I could while I had the chance, was the way I could fight it. And I have. I am not sorry for that. But I am sorry for the people I will be leaving, and I am sorry for the pain I will indirectly cause them when I go.
I sit on a threadbare blanket on the porch with my knees up to my chin, staring at the white house with tan shutters across the street, my eyes focused on the sunflowers reaching toward the windows. I feel like that plant right now—proud and strong for months and then wilting and dying before it should be time. It could happen at any moment. Today. Tomorrow. One day, I will have a headache so bad I will lose consciousness, and I just won't wake up.
Pain forms a fissure in my heart, growing as I remember the shattered look in Rivers' eyes yesterday. I put my cheek to my knees and close my eyes. I didn't plan on falling in love with him. It just happened. I wasn't even aware of it until it was too late. He wrapped himself around my heart without me realizing it. I couldn't have stopped it any more than the current beating of my heart.
He shows up with a baseball bat poking out of the top of a red backpack slung over his shoulder. A stillness spreads through me as I take in the sight of him. A dingy white cap is pulled low over his eyes and my pulse speeds up in response to how darkly handsome he is. He climbs the few steps to reach me and then stands looking down at me. It's the hat, and the look on his face, that affects me the most. His face is determined, his stance telling me to not even bother arguing with what he has planned.
Lips pressed into a firm line, he lifts one eyebrow. That's it. That's all he does. As though he expects me to just blindly follow him without knowing what we're doing or where we're going. Well, I will. Because with him is where I want to be, and he seems to know that.
I get to my feet, fold the blanket up, and set it beside the door. And I wait.
"Hey."
I smile faintly at this adopted form of greeting we seem to have deemed as ours. "Hey."
He hops off the last step of the porch with the ease he used to move with and my heart clenches, but it is a good hurt. His body has always moved with grace, even the disjointed form he had at the beginning of the summer.
“You're getting better,” I tell him, nodding to his legs. “You've improved a lot in just one month.”
“My legs getting better isn't what's changed me this past month,” he replies. He doesn't even pause to ask, “Know what I did last night?”
I swallow, feeling the sting of tears in my eyes. I blink around it. I cried enough yesterday at the hospital. After my discharge, I wasn't sure when I would see or talk to him again or what to expect. I certainly didn't expect this. I was scared he would stay away and I was scared he wouldn't. I'm not even sure how I should act or how he thinks I should. Obviously he must want me to play ball. He's watching me expectantly.
“Decide to play baseball today?”
“I bawled my eyes out. Pretty much all night.” Rivers walks backward down the sidewalk, his eyes never leaving me. “Know what else I did?”
I frown as I slowly follow him, uncomfortable with his behavior, pain going through me at his words. “No.”
“I thought, I just found her and she's going to leave me.”
I look down at my toenails presently painted pink.
“I cried some more.”
My head jerks up and I put a hand across my stomach, hurting from what he is telling me. I open my mouth to tell him to stop, but he narrows his eyes at me, effectively halting me.
“I decided I had two options. I could be angry, I could give up, I could feel sorry for myself.”
“That sounds like three options.”
Ignoring that, he continues, “Or...I could be glad I got to know you, continue to be glad I am knowing you, and make the rest of this summer and whatever time we have, the best you've ever had. Guess which one I chose?”
“Baseball?” I wipe tears from my eyes.
“Yep. Baseball.” He closes the space between us, the bag dropping to the ground, and takes my face into his hands. “I'm going to make the time we have together unforgettable. I'm going to fuse you to me, so that there is no way of knowing where the separation between you and me begins—or even if there is one. I'm going to fill this summer with us, so that when you look back on it, all you remember is me, and when I look back on it, all I remember is you. I'm going to put as much life into now as I can. Like you did for me. Now it's my turn.”
He presses his forehead to mine, taking slow, deep breaths. After an emotion-charged moment—a moment where I have a hard time breathing and his chest is heaving as he struggles to do the same—he pulls away. “And we're going to play baseball.”
"I didn't know you could play with just two people."
He hesitates, then states, "You can't. There are two teams. And they're waiting for us at the park."
My first instinct is to ask who, my second is to say no, and then I decide to just say yes. "Okay." I take a deep breath. "Let's play baseball."
He lowers the bag, removes a pale pink baseball glove from it, and hands it to me. "You can't catch any balls without a glove."
It's ridiculous how this small gift makes me want to tear up, but it does. It's my first gift from Rivers—the first gift from anyone other than my mother, really. She was an only child and her parents passed away when I was young, so it's always just been us since Neil died. My chest squeezes at the looming day when it will only be her.
"Thank you," I tell him softly, holding it close to me.
He nods, not looking at me. "You need tennis shoes."
I look at my bare feet and grin, wiggling my toes. "I'll be right back."
He explains the basics to me as we walk. He tells me to hit the ball and run, to make it to home base when I get the chance. Anything personal is kept out of the discussion—anything that has to do with yesterday and the future is left unspoken. I know I can't pretend anymore, and I know we will have to talk about it, but right now, I am all right talking about baseball.
I repeatedly catch him watching me as we make our way to the park. I'll glance up and his dark eyes are staring into me with yearning, grief, and pain in them. It is almost as though he is searching for the disease inside of me, and that he wants to find it and sear it from my brain with his eyes alone. The stricken look on his face is easily masked, but I continue to find glimpses of it each time I look up sooner than he gauges I will. And it breaks my heart, but I smile to cover it up. I feel that I will be smiling a lot in months to come.
The park is only a few blocks away from where I live. This is the park I found the dying bird in—this is the park my brother died in. My footsteps slow as I take in the group of people I've been associated with most of my life, but still don't really know. Most of them are tossing a ball back and forth, some are talking, a few are looking our way.
This is the park I will play baseball in.
"Do they—" I start, unable to continue around the lump in my throat.
He shakes his head, shadows flashing across his face. "No. They just know we're playing baseball. No one's going to say anything mean to you either, because if they do, I will pound them so bad into the ground that they will remain flattened there for all eternity," he declares heatedly.
I laugh at the glower on his face. "My hero."
He puffs his chest out. "That's right." He turns to the crowd. "Let's play ball! Del's on my team. Who else?"
The sun quickly heats my skin, a layer of sweat adding slickness to my hands. I go up to bat, my hands shaking with nervousness. I swing and strike on the first two balls, glance over to see Rivers watching me from the sidelines, and blast the bat into the third ball, sprinting and whooping as I head for first base. Cheers are called as I run and I grin, exhilaration lightening my step and giving me energy to keep going. I make it to first and bounce up and down on my feet, posing to head for second base when permissible.
I get out on third base, and I can't even care. I skip back to the bench, beaming at the congratulations I get from my teammates. I briefly wonder if I could have had more of this if I'd opened up during school. I sit down and open a bottle of water, guzzling it down. Rivers walks up to the plate and my stomach dips. I see the tension in his face and body, and realize how difficult this is for him.
He's doing this for you.
He is too. He's around people he hasn't seen since the beginning of summer, playing a sport he may or may not be able to play, and it's for me. What if he can't run? Can he? I don't know. Sure, he's walking almost as normally as he used to, but that's different than running. He is putting himself directly into a position to publicly fail to prove something to me. What is it?
I get to my feet, moving to stand behind the fence, fitting my fingers through the brackets of the chain-link as I stare at his back. You can do this, Rivers. I know you can. As though he hears my thoughts, he looks over his shoulder at me, the intensity of his gaze stealing my breath. He presses his lips together and turns away, assuming the batting position. He swings and misses. His form is perfect, but his movements are slower than they need to be to hit the ball. He swings again and I can feel the frustration radiating off him in waves of discord, reaching out to those near, causing an uncomfortable shifting in those around him. I chew on my lip, wanting to help him somehow and not knowing how or even if I can.
"Peanut butter!" I blurt out.
Eyes turn my way, but the only ones I care about are dark brown and slowly find mine. He frowns at me and I shout it again, pumping the air with my fist. He stares at me for a moment in befuddlement and then shakes his head as he laughs, giving me a thumbs up sign as he turns back to the game. My face burns as I take my seat, not looking at anyone.
"Peanut butter?" George Ronald asks, red eyebrows lifted in his freckled face.
George is short, skinnier than any eighteen-year old boy should be, and a science nerd. I know he isn't good at sports, but I have to give him respect for being here.
"Yes. He has an unhealthy obsession with it," I lie.
He shrugs. "Okay."
I hold my breath as the ball shoots through the air, squeezing my hands into fists in my lap. "Come on. You can do it. Come on. Hit it. Hit the ball."
He not only hits the ball, he slams that ball over the fence located way behind outfield. I jump to my feet, screaming in jubiliation. Apparently my love for sports has finally bloomed. I understand now. I can feel the thrill of winning pulsating through me, the excitement I have for Rivers proof I have now converted into a fan of baseball. He doesn't even have to run. He can walk and make it. He just hit a homerun. He watches the ball until it lands, and then he looks back and grins at me.
And he runs.
His gait is not as smooth, nor as fast as it once was, but it is still a sight to behold. He makes it home and doesn't stop running until he is to me, sweeping me into his arms and spinning me around. I let my head fall back and laugh, holding my arms out wide.
"We did it," he whispers against my neck, kissing me senseless to the catcalls of the other team members.
We did. We did it. For each other—and we will continue to do so. This is what it is about; this is why he did this. He is my tether to this life and I am his.
DEATH DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE.
It takes young and old alike. It takes good people, bad people. It is vicious and it is peaceful. It comes to you in the night, it comes to you in the sunshine of day. It takes you in the form of drugs, murder, disease, and tragedy. It doesn't care what dreams you have, what goals you have set. It doesn't care who you love or who loves you. It doesn't care who you leave behind and it doesn't care who is torn apart when you go. I guess at least it's equally terrible for all.
Death is not kind, to summarize.
I am dying. I say it out loud, feeling my throat tighten. I say it again. I whisper it. I think it. I stare into my eyes through the reflective glass of the mirror and say it once more. I don't think I will ever truly be able to accept it one hundred percent. Until I take my last breath, I think a part of me will continue to hold out for hope. I don't have it in me to just give up.
“I am dying.”
Tears burn my eyes and an emptiness floats through me. I touch my face, my hair, I hug myself. It is hard to believe I will be gone one day soon. My voice forever silenced. My eyes forever closed. My heartbeat stilled. How does that happen? How does a person just stop existing? It doesn't seem possible. No one would ever suspect there is a tumor growing inside my brain, a tumor that is steadily removing my life essence from me. I look like an ordinary, healthy, young woman. Nothing about my features hint at the destructive tumor taking over my brain.
Diseases are like that—they destroy you from the inside out, never showing the inevitability of them until it is too late, until it has gone too far.
Looking at my reflection, it is hard to imagine it is there. There are no signs of it in my visage. A lot of the time I can pretend it isn't true, but then I feel it—a twinge of impermanence, a tug of fatality, a whisper that my time is numbered and that it is running out. More and more I am feeling it. Death is quietly telling me to prepare those around me, that it will be here for me soon. And that is what I have been doing, or trying to do, even though I have continually mucked it up.
When I was a child, I liked to create. I was told by many I was unique. I liked that word. I liked how it was spelled and I liked how it sounded on my lips. At a young age, I decided I wanted to be that. It helped that I had the right personality for it.
It could be with paint, fabric, Legos, my hair—anything. Colors called to me, clashing designs, and the need to make something original out of something plain and uninteresting. Hence my inclination to dye my hair different colors and wear clothes not generally worn by the students of Prairie du Chien High. Interior design was what called to me the most, when I decided I needed to be responsible and make a college decision.
I'd decided to attend Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design just a few nights before I ended up in the emergency room. I don't know if I believe in kismet, but it is sort of ironic how life works out, and death. All of my plans altered in one afternoon, all of my goals stamped out, and just as suddenly, another opportunity appeared with a new life and new plans. I do think I was there to see him. What would I be like now if I hadn't found a ray of hope in a smothering hole of despair? It came in the form of Rivers Young. He was my light and I was his. I pray that light continues to burn long after I have been snuffed out. Because, all of this, this dying business, it has to be for something. And I have told myself it was him. It is him. I made it be him.
I wonder if I will see my half-brother Neil. When I close my eyes for the last time, will he be waiting? Or will there be nothing at all? I like to think I'll be with him, in some form. He was my best friend, the one I looked up to, until he was abruptly snatched away with a playground fall hard enough and at just the right angle to snap his neck. I went through the pain of losing a loved one. I know how hard it is. I saw my mom go through losing a child. And now she will lose one more.
Death came for Neil at such a young age—he was only eight. Maybe it felt bad for me so it decided to come a little later. I shake my head, knowing my thoughts aren't making a lot of sense. I wonder if that is from the disease spreading through my brain, or if it's just because I am dying and I know it. I was told it would start to affect my thoughts and motor skills as it grew. It scares me. I don't want to turn into someone I am not. I don't want to lose myself, not until all of me is gone.
When I go, I want to go as me.
Eighteen years. Eighteen years I was given. Did I make the most of them? Of course not. Not until I found out about the tumor. We always think we have more time and that is the wrong way to think, because time is something we never have enough of.
I imagine my death will be uneventful. I'll pass out or fall asleep and I just won't wake up. So for me, it won't be too bad, but what about the ones I'll be leaving? What about Rivers? What about him losing you? The thought is enshrouded in a powerful ache that throbs where my heart is. I turn from the mirror, leave my bedroom, and walk down the stairs of the home I used to avoid and now understand.
One day my ghost will linger here as well.
I find her in the living room, an open photo album in her lap and multiple others sprawled out on the floor around her. Her hair is pulled away from her face in a loose ponytail, cutoff jeans and a pale blue top adding to her seemingly young and vulnerable stature. She looks up when I enter, and tears are shimmering in her eyes. I pretend I don't see them, smiling brightly as I sit beside her on the floor. She immediately reaches out for my hand and holds it. I can see her struggling to be strong. So I tell her she doesn't have to be anymore.
“It's okay to cry, Mom.”
A broken sob leaves her and the hand clutching my wrist begins to shake. “If I start, I don't think I will ever stop.”
“You'll eventually get tired of it and find something else to do.”
She laughs, wiping tears from her eyes. “Want to look at them with me?”
I glance down and see a photograph of a toddler and a chubby baby sitting on a brown couch, both brown-haired and golden-eyed. My heart squeezes. “So we can both become blubbering messes?”
“Do you have better plans?”
I scoot closer to my mom until my arm is resting against hers. “I really don't. Let the waterworks begin.”
We start with Neil's baby album. He was an ugly baby—all rolly fat with smashed in facial features and a bald head—and I tell my mom so, which makes us both laugh. We laugh harder when she agrees. I make a comment about mothers supposedly thinking their babies are beautiful no matter what and she says that that is a lie, but they do love them no matter what.
“He made up for it as a two-year old,” I murmur, staring at a little boy standing in a sandbox with the sun haloing him and dirt covering any piece of skin not clothed. A wide grin shows gaps and teeth. I can't help but smile back.
“He did. He was such a shit though,” she muses. I look at her in surprise and she laughs again, shrugging. “He was. He used to scream every time I bathed him. He liked being dirty. He liked to eat dirt too. I would find dirt in all his orifices." She pauses. "He refused to eat anything but peaches and peanut butter sandwiches until he was six.”
"He loved peanut butter almost as much as I do," I muse, feeling a sweet clenching in my chest—the bittersweet memory of a young boy with a contagious laugh and fierce stubbornness.
I touch the shiny cover of the film, thankful for this moment and the way my mother is opening up to me. She used to keep this part of herself locked away. I am guilty of this as well. I didn't talk about Neil because it hurt and that was wrong. I don't want the same to happen with me after I am gone. I don't want to be thought about, but never spoken of. I want to be remembered, not hidden away like a dark, sad secret. I don't want the ones that love me to hurt when they think of me—I want them to smile.
I take a deep breath and look at my mom. She looks back, silently waiting.
“I don't like to think of myself as a coward, but some things even I shy away from—most notably, the subject of Neil, and the strain between us.” I swallow. “I should have talked to you. I shouldn't have pushed you away. I always thought I had forever, that I had time to fix us, but I have realized that none of us have that.” I inhale slowly. “I don't want to go and I am sorry that I am. That sounds so lame, but I don't know how else to say it.”
Her lower lip trembles and tears are trailing down her porcelain cheeks. “You make me so proud, Delilah. You always have. Even when I didn't understand you, I admired you. You're so brave, such a brave young woman.” She takes a stuttering inhalation of air. “You're not supposed to be trying to make me feel better, you're not supposed to be comforting me. I should be the one to do it. I'm the mother—”
“You're the mother who lost a son and will soon lose a daughter,” I remind her quietly. “I'm not happy about this. In fact, I'm a little hateful, a little depressed, and yes, selfish. I want to have my life. I want to have my wedding and my kids and my career. I want grandchildren. I want ice cream and movies and music. Peanut butter. I want the sun and the stars, sunrises and sunsets. I want the scent of rain around me and the cold of winter, the warmth of a blanket. I want love and laughter. I want to create something amazing and have it be in someone's home. I want to grow old and fat and say whatever the hell I want without caring how others react. I want that sense of entitlement to be bat shit crazy that seems to come with old age.
“I want so many things that I will never have, but...” I wipe tears from my eyes, seeing them mirrored in the blue eyes focused on me. “But I have so much now. I have to remember that. You're the one who has to keep living. You...and Monica...and...and...Rivers.” Pain lacerates my heart and I talk around it. “You're going to need each other. You're going to have to be strong for each other. Promise me, okay? When one of you falls, the other two will be there to help them back up.”
“I want the same for you. I would give it to you if I could. I promise you. Of course I promise you,” she says, enfolding me in her arms. “You're just starting to live. This isn't the way this is supposed to happen. I'm supposed to go first. I'm not supposed to see my children die.” Her voice cracks as she tightens her hold on me, her tears wetting my shoulder.
I am openly crying as I confess, “I always thought you were comparing me to Neil, that you were trying to use me to fill the hole he left within you instead of really seeing me, but I realize now that that was never true. You were trying to hold on to me because you couldn't him. You were trying to keep me safe because you weren't able to with him. You can't control the world around you, Mom, but you can take comfort in all that you have. You have me, always. And Neil. You always have us. Don't forget. I'm not really going away.”
Her grip on me becomes painful as we both cry, but I don't mind. We are a mother and a daughter knowing their time together is almost at an end. It hurts. The pain is filling me, pulsating through me. I will cry this night with her and then I will smile for her after today. I will be brave for the ones I love.
I pull away and clasp her hands between mine. Her face is red, her eyes bloodshot, and grief hides the beauty of her features. “Can you promise me one more thing?”
She nods abruptly.
“When you look at your flowers, can you think of me?”
“Oh, Delilah,” she weeps, covering her face as her shoulders shake from the force of the sobs leaving her. She grabs me and unceremoniously pulls me to her, brushing hair from my face and kissing my temple. “Yes. Yes. I will do that. I will look at my flowers and think of you.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Not a lot of talking happens after that, both of us too sad to do much of anything except cry and look at memories of lives forever captured within the pages of a photo album. I am seeing myself, knowing this is how I will be soon—just a face in a picture.
“YOU MIGHT AS WELL HAVE a drink with me. It seems silly to make you wait.” She blinks as pain filters through her eyes, like she is only now aware of what she just said—I won't be around to drink when I am legally able.
Her face crumples and I pat her hand. “Stop it, Mom. Don't be a sad drunk. No one likes them.” I take the glass from her and swallow some of the pale yellow liquid. “Lemonade and vodka?” I guess.
“Yeah. I decided coffee just wasn't going to cut it tonight.” She gets up and mixes another drink, returning to the table and setting it before me.
I sip it, liking the tangy bite it has.
“Do you know what I keep thinking?”
“That drinking and thinking is a bad idea?”
She shakes her head, swiping tangled hair from her face and behind her ears. “I keep thinking that, if I'd bothered to know who I was sleeping with, maybe none of this would be happening.”
“Oh, Mom, don't think that way.” I reach across the small table and squeeze her hand.
“I can't help it. What if it's genetic?” She blinks her eyes and tears fall from them. “What if your father has it or someone else in his family? Maybe they could have checked for it sooner. Maybe it could have been operated on before it got to the point where it couldn't be. If we'd only known, maybe none of this would be happening.”
“And maybe it would have been, regardless. Thinking that way doesn't make a difference in any of this. It is what it is.”
She snorts and takes another drink. “Delilah, stop sounding like the adult. You're making me look bad.”
I get up with my glass and walk from the room. I come back holding a portable CD player my mom likes to drag into the backyard when she's gardening. It's old school, but effective for what she needs. Drinking to dull the pain is okay and everything, but there has to be a limit, and there has to be music and dancing involved to keep the heaviness out of the room.
“What are you doing?”
I hit play and turn the volume up. 'I Can't Change The World' by Brad Paisley flows from the speakers. My mom is a country music nut. I enjoy certain country songs, but I am more drawn to fast music with unexpected beats and bass, music that physically moves me, although I like anything, as long as it touches my heart or gets my body moving. But this is what my mom likes and tonight is her night, so I pull her up from the table as we sing along with Brad.
It isn't that I've never had alcoholic beverages before, but the times have been infrequent and never with my mother. I suppose all sorts of rules need to be broken in instances like this. Mothers and daughters become drinking buddies, enemies become tolerable, strangers become lovers. One drink becomes two and we dance to Taylor Swift's 'Mean'.
The music and drinks continue to flow as we decide to do makeovers. My mom forms my shoulder-length hair into messy curls, I paint her nails black with pink dots, and we talk about boys. I talk about Rivers and she talks about Neil's father. I wonder where he is. I wonder if he misses his son as much as my mom does. I wonder if he still loves her like she still loves him. Was the pain of losing Neil the last nail to fall from the woodwork of their connection? Love comes, it fades, it goes, but it always has the power to return. I don't even know if she realizes it, but her eyes light up and her voice softens as she talks about him.
"You know the Willow tree in Mr. Miller's backyard?" I mention at some point during the evening. My eyes are tired and sleep is calling me, but I feel like we need to talk about this. It's important to talk about Henry Miller, his loss, and even his tree.
My mom leans her back against mine, my eyes in one direction and hers in another. "Yes. You and Neil used to love playing on it. I can't count all the times you two would sneak off to it without telling me."
"He never cared. Henry." My voice is soft.
"No."
"He used to sit on his back deck and watch us with a smile on his wrinkly face. He never said anything other than hello and goodbye, but I liked him. There was soundness to him, like he was an unbreakable foundation in an always changing world. Of course, back then I just thought he was neat because he had a Willow tree." I take a deep breath, closing my eyes. "There's something magical about that particular kind of tree. I wonder if Henry realizes that. I wonder if he had it put there for his family that he lost. Those trees cry for the dead. It's like their branches try to sweep up all the pain and loss in the world and hold it to them so that it does not touch us. I wonder if he thinks the same."
She shifts her position until her side is to my back, placing an arm around me and resting her chin on the top of my head. "That sounds nice. I'm sure he does."
"I think you should talk to him."
She pauses, and then nods, her chin rubbing against my hair as she does so. "I think I will."
The hours sweep by, turning the evening into late night, and when we finally fall asleep in a pile of blankets and pillows on the living room floor, I feel closer to my mother than I ever have before. I sleep with her herbal scent around me, at peace with tomorrow and whatever it will bring.
I awaken to my mother shaking my shoulder and telling me to get up. “Rivers is here.” Her tone is firm, but I still catch the hint of sorrow in it. She's wondering how many more mornings we have together.
I glance at her as I get to my feet, rubbing my forehead. “He said he wouldn't be over until later today.”
“I think he wanted to surprise you.” She tries to smooth my curls that have turned into a natty mess. I let her, smiling at her when our eyes meet. Her hand slowly falls away and she gives me a tight hug. "Better hurry. He looked anxious."
I race through the living room and up the stairs to the bathroom where I quickly brush my teeth. I don't even bother to look at my hair because I know if I do, I won't go downstairs until it's into some form of control and that would be wasting time better spent near Rivers. I sprint back down the stairs, take in the raised eyebrow my mom gives me from the kitchen as she says, "Tick tock," and come to a stop in the small entryway.
Running my fingers through my hair as I move toward the door, I give up trying to detangle the curls when my fingers get caught in the locks. I open the door to sunshine and a gaze immediately set on me. My pulse picks up and flutters form in my stomach.
Dark eyes hold me in place and I put a bright smile on my face. "Hey. I thought you had stuff to do this morning."
"I talked to Thomas last night."
"Oh?" That wasn't what I thought his first words would be to me. I was thinking something more like a hello, a comment on my bed head, maybe even declarations of love. "Is everything okay with you two?"
He shrugs, looking down. Then he grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me outside and to him. His arms wrap around me as his cheek rests on the top of my head. His heartbeat thunders in his chest and I place my ear to it. "I missed you," he says into my hair.
That's better. My smile deepens. "I missed you too."
Rivers pulls away, studying my head. “What did you guys do last night? Exploratory hair fashion?"
"You talked to Thomas about what last night?" I ask, deciding not to answer his question.
"We have a cabin in the woods."
"Isn't that one of those scary movies you made me watch that really wasn't scary?"
"Yeah. Anyway, the cabin is about ten miles outside of Prairie du Chien. We have about a hundred acres of land we inherited from a distant relative of my mom's. Most of it is woods. I guess that's why we originally moved to the area, but Thomas didn't want to build on the land, so instead we found a house in town. There's a cabin there that we would stay in every once in a while as I was growing up. We'd hunt the woods and fish in the creek near it. I can't remember when I was there last. It's been a couple years. The point of all of this is that I talked to Thomas last night about me moving out there."
Rivers inhales deeply, his eyes moving away from mine as he says, "I want you there with me. I mean, you don't have to live there, but I'd like you to stay with me for as long as...as long as you want. But if you want to sort of move in, that would be okay with me. I mean, I want you to, but if you don't, I understand. I know you'll love it out there. Nothing but trees, green grass—and bugs, but I can't help that. Sleeping without you beside me...it's...reprehensible. I went out there this morning and got it cleaned out. I thought it would take longer than it did. There's running water and electricity. It's small, but it's in good shape. It can be ours, for however long we want or need it to be. And—"
I shut him up with my mouth to his, effectively cutting off his indefinite rambling. A zing goes through me at the touch of his lips to mine, a tremble forms in my legs, and my stomach dips. He ends the kiss only to suck air into his lungs, and then we're kissing again, his hands molding to my back and lower, pulling me against him so all of me touches all of him.
"I'll go pack now." I turn to the door, tugging at his hand when he refuses to move. "Why aren't you moving?" I ask as I face him.
He opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. "I don't know. I just thought that would be harder than it was."
"You underestimate your power over me." I smile as our eyes connect. "Are you apprehensive now? Maybe you don't think you can handle me."
His eyes narrow and he finally moves. "I think I'll be okay finding out." He runs his fingers down my back as we walk through the doorway and I shiver. "In fact, I think I'll be okay even if I can't handle you." Bringing his mouth close to my ear, he whispers, "I'm sort of counting on it."
I swallow with difficulty, knowing it is beyond time for us to move past the point of what we are to delve into what we need to be. I also know, with absolute clarity, that it will break me, but in the most wonderful of ways.
"One condition," I tell him, lifting my eyebrows.
His answer is swift and firm. "Anything."
I blow out a noisy breath. "You cannot—cannot—treat me like an invalid. You do and I go. Promise."
Rivers takes my hands within his and declares, "Delilah Marie Bana, you have too much life in you to ever have me mistake you for being anything other than one hundred percent functional."
I sigh, but it is a sigh of tranquility. Then I grin. "Did you totally just hear me sigh? I'm sighing for you."
"You act like you haven't been doing that all along."
The scent of baking cinnamon hits me as I step into the house and sorrow forms around the edges of my excitement. My mother and I are finally bridging the gap between us and now I am going to blow it apart once more with my distance. This time it is a physical instead of mental distance, but does that really make it any less painful? My mother needs me too. And I need her.
As though Rivers senses my thoughts, he enfolds my hand in his and squeezes, giving me support without saying a single thing. I tell him I need to talk to my mom for a minute and he nods, releasing my hand and moving into the living room. I watch him, the embodiment of all that I treasure, and I turn away, toward the woman who gave me this gift of life I cannot keep.
Her back is to me, and even so, I can see the stiffness to it that tells me she knows something is up. She wipes her hands on a dish towel and places a pan of dough in the oven, finally turning to look at me. Her smile is brave, but I still catch the hint of melancholy in her eyes. They are darkened by it. "You're going to stay with Rivers," she states softly.
"I am." I hover by the doorway, looking at the one person I have looked up to, resented, loved as long as I have been alive, and miss even as I am in the same room as her.
"You'll call me?" She blinks her eyes and lowers her head, the trembling of her shoulders betraying her valiant effort to remain dry-eyed.
"I'll do better than call you. I'll visit." I smile as she looks up. "I can't promise every day, but every week. And you'll come see me too. We should plan something now, in fact. How about this weekend? We'll invite Monica over too. I'll cook supper." My smile widens. "Not anything with peanut butter, I promise."
"I would love that."
"I'll have Monica pick you up since she knows the way. I'll tell her four on Saturday?"
The sadness fades as brightness takes over her face in the form of a smile. "Yes. I look forward to it."
I cross the room to give her a hug, pressing my forehead to hers before letting her go. "Don't worry about calling me or visiting too much. There is no such thing as too much."
Her voice cracks as she replies with, "Right. Like fun and booze."
"Exactly like that."
She moves away, turning back almost immediately. Her eyes trail over my features, as though she is trying to memorize me as I am right now. "It is so hard to let you go, knowing...knowing what we know. But I also know I can't keep you here and I wouldn't want to try. You deserve to be happy and positive and you need to be with Rivers too. I just wanted to tell you that."
I take her hands within mine, squeezing them. "Thank you. I love you."
"I love you too. Go on. I'll see you soon. Oh, and take some cinnamon bread with you before you go."
"I will."
Rivers meets me at the bottom of the stairs and wordlessly lifts his eyebrows. I shrug and head upstairs with him following me. He sits on my bed and examines my room as I find my black and white polka dotted luggage I plan on taking on my Amtrak trip.
"The Brewers game is next Sunday."
I fall onto the bed beside him, pulling him down with me. "I can't wait."
"You know, before I would have thought you were speaking with sarcasm, but I know you really can't wait. All it took was one baseball game."
"All it took was one awesome baseball game. And you."
"I just made you go."
I shake my head, brushing strands of hair from my face. "No. You played baseball. You ran. You did that for me."
"I did, yeah. I also did it for me. I needed to try it. I needed to prove to myself, and everyone else, that I could do it."
"I know." I touch his cheek. "Thank you for not treating me differently, for not acting like I am about to break."
"How can I do any less than you have done for me?" He faces forward, briefly closing his eyes. "I keep telling myself it isn't real. I keep telling myself it is impossible that one day you won't be here, smiling at me, teasing me, making me feel like I am someone special with just one glance of your golden eyes my way."
"You are someone special."
"I only feel that way with you," he insists.
I partially sit up, resting my chin on my hand as I look down at him. "Then you need to change the way you think about yourself."
He rolls his eyes and pulls me back down, wrapping his arms around me to keep me next to him. "You should have been a motivational speaker, you know that?"
"Well, I am multi-talented."
He strokes my hair and my eyelids turn heavy. "I'm not going to treat you like you're helpless. You didn't do that to me and I'm not going to do it to you. But I also refuse to accept what life has decided to give us. It's crap. Pure crap." Sighing, he releases me. "Come on, let's get your stuff ready."
THE MOON IS OUR SPOTLIGHT and we are the performers. Around us is a barrier of tall pine trees, the stars are our blanket, and we are safe within our dark world. Nothing can touch us. Nothing can take me away. The cabin is along the edge of trees to our right, alight with the soft glow of a single lamp in its window, and beyond it is a forest of life.
And we dance.
With our bodies, hands, and mouths, we say what is needed. With every touch, I tell him I love him. With every kiss he places on my lips, he tells me it back. I close my eyes, rest my cheek to his heart, and inhale deeply. It doesn't matter that our movements are a touch uncoordinated. I find the limp in Rivers' gait the purest form of elegance. When his expression shows a hint of frustration, my smile dispels it. He is beautiful to me. Perfect. I whisper this into his ear and his arms tighten around me.
There comes a point where the sweetness of the moment turns into something more. Our kisses are more urgent, the clothes between us are too heavy, and I step away. The flash of disappointment in his eyes is clear to see, but fades as soon as I grab the hem of my top and tug it off, throwing it as far away from me as I can. I laugh at the look on his face.
"Surprised?" I reach around me and unhook my bra, slowly sliding it down my arms, and let it drop to the cool grass.
He sucks in a sharp breath, his eyes going black.
"I guess so." Next come my shorts.
When I reach for my underwear, Rivers says in a harsh voice, "What are—"
I step out of them, whatever he was going to say dying on his lips as he stares at me. I think I catch a curse word, but his lips are on mine before I can ask. The tremble to his hands as they trail over me makes me smile, the raggedness of his breathing turns mine just as disjointed. I feel his heart thundering. I feel the way he wants me. I am alive in him, in this moment.
"You won't forget me." I'm telling him, but I am also asking him.
He steps back, his hands falling from me. A minute passes like this, with him wordlessly watching me, and I in turn watching him. Even now, he is forming me into a memory so he cannot.
"I am incapable of that," he solemnly says.
I reach for his shirt, kissing the bare skin it regrettably covered. Within seconds, his clothes are in a pile and he is against me. When the heat of him becomes flush with me, I cannot breathe. Every nerve-ending of mine is standing up, bristling with desire. I need him. I need him in ways I cannot name.
He grabs me and pulls me under him as we fall to the ground, cushioning my landing with his arms beneath my back. My hands are all over him, feeling the corded muscles of his back and chest; my lips tasting his salty skin. His mouth burns a trail over my collarbone and down my stomach and moves on to my neck, my body shivering despite the heat of the night. He pauses above me, his eyes scalding mine as they ask a silent question. Instead of answering him, I push against him, a low moan leaving him as our bodies connect. My breath hisses through my mouth at the feel of him. I move my hips and he responds. It's fast, frantic, and shatters me.
And it happens again.
And again.
Slower each time, but no less passionate. He devours me, he loves me, he ignites my fire and puts me out. It is exquisite torture. And when we are finally sated, we lie in the grass as I silently replay each magnificent detail, a smile of content on my lips. This is what it's supposed to be like.
“I want forever with you,” he whispers into my ear, his body naked and still wrapped around mine. Enough time has passed for our breathing to even out and my heart to steady in its beat, but I cannot let him go yet. He apparently has the same idea, his limbs still intertwined with mine, his arms around me, his chin next to my cheek.
I smile into his flat chest, my hand running up and down his arm, liking how his muscles tense and the skin pebbles beneath my fingers. “You'll have me for forever. No matter what, I'll still be in your heart. You know that. That's how I'll live.” I set my palm on the place above his beating heart and feel it pound. "You'll live for me," I whisper, kissing the spot my hand just moved away from.
"Are you afraid? Because I'm terrified."
I move to sit up and he grudgingly allows me to. “I don't want to be afraid. I'm trying really hard not to be. It wasn't exactly easy at first, but now...it is so hard knowing this is all temporary. And you know what's really stupid of me?” I take a shuddering breath and tears form, trailing down my cheeks in rivers of despair. “I still have hope. There is still some part of me that thinks the doctors were wrong and that I am not dying.” I stare at my clasped hands.
Rivers puts his boxer briefs on, handing me his shirt. I put it on, enveloped in the scent of him, and wait until he is sitting before me to continue.
“I was so angry at first, so angry. I didn't understand. I couldn't believe it. Why me? That's what I kept thinking. And why my brother? And why...why...my mother? She is a good person and she doesn't deserve this—not any of this.” I look up with burning eyes and meet his stricken gaze. “But even in the corner of my mind and heart, there was you. I saw past my pain and saw yours instead. And it helped me. Don't you see? All of this, everything I've experienced with you this summer, has made me able to cope with it. And you, all of you, are going to get through this,” I tell him in a voice thick with sorrow, but also conviction.
"My accident...the start of the summer—it all feels like it happened a really long time ago. I don't even remember why I was feeling sorry for myself." His eyes dim. "I was feeling sorry for myself, and there you were, with...this. I'm such a jerk."
I laugh softly. "You didn't know."
“I don't believe that this is it,” he mutters. “That just...it can't be. There has to be another way, there has to be a way to fix this.”
“There isn't. Remember what you told me? I couldn't fix you and you can't fix me either. The chance that I would survive an operation of this magnitude is microscopic, and even if I did survive, there is no guarantee I would be me.” I press a hand against my beating heart. “I don't want to live half a life. I'd rather live a full one now, while I can.”
“You're giving up.” His voice is accusatory, but I see the laceration of anguish in his features.
I shake my head. “I'm not giving up. This is my life, for however long it lasts. My life, my choice. Giving up would have been staying in my house for the duration of the summer, for the rest of my life, really. Giving up would have been feeling sorry for myself instead of choosing to help you and your mother, to not decide to take this heartache and make something good come out of it. I'm not saying I haven't had my moments. There were times when I tried to hide away, but I couldn't do it, not for long. There will be more moments when it gets to be too much and I can't deal. But I refuse to give up. I haven't yet. I won't. I never did, not really. Giving up would have been pushing you away instead of jumping at the chance to love you.”
He goes still, his eyes flying to mine.
The smile that touches my lips is large and sad. Joy and sorrow—my two constant emotions lately. “You have to know. I love you, Rivers. Desperately. Undeniably. Wholly. Without regret.”
He averts his eyes, standing and turning partially away from me. “I don't—I can't.” He grabs his head and spins away, his back lifting and lowering with his breathing. His eyes are filled with tears when he turns back to me and says, “You love me? I'm going to be the one left behind, still loving you, long after you're gone. I'm going to be the one missing you. I'm going to be the one looking for you, reaching for you, and never again finding you. I love you, Delilah. I love you to a catastrophic depth that I didn't even know I was possible of having. I am filled with you. And...” He tries to speak, but his throat bobs as words fail him.
“I don't want you to regret loving me, or to be sad about it. This is why I didn't tell you sooner, why I didn't know if I could tell you. I didn't want my condition to change how people acted around me. I didn't want people to feel sorry for me, or themselves. I just...I wanted to live like a normal person while I still could, and you let me. I will forever be grateful that I got the chance to know you, and to love you. I realized you were so much more than I originally thought you were. And I fell in love with you, every part of you. I am so glad I got the chance.”
I touch his tear-stained face, my heart swelling. “I can't regret this summer, not even if it only happened because of this illness I have. Without this disease and without your accident, we would not be where we are right now. And I can't take it back, not even if it meant living the rest of my life, because that life would have been without knowing you, and that, that would be the real tragedy here. Can you just love me back? Knowing what you know about me shouldn't change anything, because really, no one knows when their last day will be, right? So let's think of this as both of us having an indefinite number of days, months, or years left on this earth, and let's make the most of what we get.”
He crushes me to him and I wrap my arms around his trembling body. I press my ear to his heart, hearing the thundering beat of it. I kiss the spot above it. I kiss his neck. I kiss his lips. They taste of salt and sorrow, love and fear. He breaks away, resting his forehead to mine.
Taking a deep breath, he slowly nods. “Okay. I can do that. I'll love you. I'll keep loving you, for always. I'll love you even when you can't love me back. I love you,” he murmurs. “I love you. I love you. I love you, Delilah. Desperately. Undeniably. Wholly. Without regret.” Each declaration is marked with a kiss to my forehead, my nose, my cheek, and my lips.