“Yeah,” he said on a sorrowful sigh. “It’s been hard but not as hard as on my family.” He swallowed his emotion back, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I’m the man of the house, Junebug. Have been for as long as I can remember.” Jesse looked up at the brightening sky. “I had a plan, a dream I was determined to make come true. I was gonna go to UT, play for the Longhorns, get drafted to the NFL, and become the nextPeyton Manning. I was gonna buy my mom a house and send my sisters to college and just…live, you know? Give my mom and family everything they deserved.”
He exhaled and his breath shook. “Now, she’s stuck with thousands of dollars of medical debt that she can’t afford and is unable to leave her job to see me through this trial.” A tear fell from his eye and just about broke my heart. “She doesn’t deserve this, Junebug. None of them do.”
Tears pricked behind my eyelids as Jesse let me see though one of the cracks in his ever-cheery demeanor. I wiped the tear from his cheek with my thumb, then held his cheek, my palm to his damp skin. “Not once, when you were talking just now, did you mention yourself.” Jesse searched my eyes. “You’re a good man, Jesse Taylor. And one way or another, the world will see that. I promise.”
Jesse smiled through his sorrow, and I thought for a moment that he would kiss me. But instead, he asked, “What about you?”
I leaned back against the chair and faced him. “I’ve been fighting it for a couple of years,” I said. “Diagnosed stage two, but the chemo and drugs didn’t work on me.” I tapped my bad knee. “The leukemia gathered in my knee for me.” I remembered the day I felt so weak that my parents took me to be assessed. “I was riding at the barn and didn’t have the strength to pull myself up on the horse’s back. Then, as I tried, I cried out when an excruciating pain sliced through my knee. It was crippling and I couldn’t walk.”
“Hello, AML,” Jesse said.
“Hello, AML,” I repeated. I looked at Ginger. “I didn’t get a place here at first,” I said.
Jesse placed his thumb under my chin and pulled me back to face him.
“Someone didn’t make it, and I got their place,” I confessed. My voice trembled when I thought of the person who shouldhave been here but had passed away before they could. I lifted my hand and held Jesse’s wrist. “I nearly never got this chance.”
“You were meant to be here, Junebug,” Jesse said, his voice strong. “I don’t know why, but I believe it with every cell in my body—including the too many white cells that just won’t fuck off.”
I laughed though my tears, my throat sore but heart dancing with Jesse’s always-needed dose of levity. I kept laughing until my chest ached. It felt good. Jesse studied me like I was a precious painting. I sobered quickly when he said, “I have something for you.”
“You do?” I asked, surprised.
He reached under the egg chair and pulled out his pad of drawing paper. It wasn’t until now that I noticed the smudge of charcoal on his hand. He opened the pad, and I gasped, as staring back at me was…me.
“Jesse,” I whispered, as the most realistic drawing of me lifted off the page. It was after I’d held Ginger’s face in my hands, after I’d had my eyes closed as I pressed my forehead to his. My hand ghosting along his blaze. It looked serene; it looked… “Beautiful,” I said, wanting to run my fingertips over the intricate charcoal details. I faced Jesse. “Jesse…you are so talented.” I shook my head, awed at what I was seeing. “It’s so realistic, it looks like a black-and-white photograph.”
Jesse shrugged off my praise. “I had to draw you,” he said, and my heartbeat raced at his confession. “When I saw you that day with Ginger, before we started our treatment”—Jesse’s eyes lost focus, and I knew he was picturing the scene in his mind’s eye—“you looked perfect.”
Jesse pulled it from the pad and handed it to me. “For you,” he said, and I took off him like it was priceless—and it was to me.
“Thank you,” I whispered, unable to speak any louder. “I’m honored.”
When I looked back up at Jesse, he was wearing an expression I couldn’t decipher. He shifted forward, and I held my breath,
“Junebug,” he murmured, eyes flicking from my eyes to my lips, then back again. “I really want to kiss you.”
Nerves spread like a flood over my body, filling my veins and making me lightheaded. “I’ve never been kissed before,” I said, hating how childish that made me feel.
He moved in closer, and I placed my hand on his chest.
Jesse stilled, like I was rejecting him. “I’m sorry,” he began to say, moving back.
“No!” I said, and Jesse sat back in our chair, waiting for me to speak. “Do you think this is too fast?” I asked, stalling from what I really wanted too, from feeling his lips against mine, from showing him my true self—including the parts of me I thought were stained. I’d thought about what this moment would feel like many times. Now that it was here, my nerves were holding me back from finding out.
Jesse studied me and, without humor or his usual levity, said, “I might only be seventeen, Junebug, but I know what it’s like to have little time left. And as much as I want us to come out of this place in remission, cancer has taught me that nothing in life is too fast. Time is relative. How I feel about you…” He paused, and I could see him trying to find words. “It’s not about time. It’s not about what right or wrong. It’s about connection and wanting to be with you every day.” He shrugged. “Does it feel too fast to you?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. Jesse was right. When you’d been told you were dying, a catalogue of missed opportunities played in your head like a movie, showing you things you wished you’d done earlier, making you mourn things you might never get to do. Cancer taught you that death waits for no one, and you had to cling to life’s joys while you could.
“Okay,” I said, and I curled my hand on Jesse’s chest, into his long-sleeved top. I was sure I felt his heart beating fast underneath.
“You sure?” Jesse said, leaning in close.
I nodded, keeping my eyes open until the very last moment, just to be sure this was really happening. Jesse’s woodsy scent wrapped around me first, then his soft lips pressed against mine.In that moment, against the backdrop of the Texan sunrise on an idyllic ranch, I let the warmth of Jesse’s affection cocoon me.
It felt like magic.
All that I had dreamed was nothing compared to the real thing. Jesse’s hand moved to the back of my head, gently holding me against him. I held on tighter to his shirt and embraced every single second of this kiss. My heart swelled, my stomach danced, and my soul sang with joy.
