He shifts uncomfortably.
“Do you…you want to go for a walk?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I, um. I’m worried I’d attract attention. Having your hood up over a hat isn’t exactly the most inconspicuous thing you can do, especially in the middle of June.”
“Oh, right.” Because, if he walked openly down the street, we’d have a mob of suburban moms and hormonal teenage girls trailing us.
And that’s not a joke. This is a neighborhood where people are always looking out their front windows for something interesting.
“Um.” I gesture at the door to our backyard. “We have a privacy fence.”
“That works.”
I pause as we stand up. “More coffee?”
He nods. “I could almost drink it out of the pot.”
I smirk. “In that case…” I reach up into the cabinet over the coffee maker and pull down Dad’s joke mug. It’s big enough to hold a whole pot, and it saysnow THIS is a real coffee mugon the side. “Will this work?”
He takes it from me and pours the rest of the carafe into the giant mug. “That should do it.” He immediately frowns. “I should have left some for your parents, though. Shoot, I’m sorry. I can pour some back.”
“IT’S FINE!” Mom calls from upstairs. “I CAN MAKE MORE!”
“And this is why we’re going outside,” I murmur.
He just laughs. I lead him to my favorite spot—the bench swing hanging from the thick lower limb of our two-hundred-year-old spreading oak tree. It’s shady, cool, quiet, and the world feels a million miles away, here under the tree.
I only freak out a little when we’re both sitting on the wobbly bench swing. It’s not very big, so we’re close. Hips touching, shoulders brushing.
He smells good. Coffee, deodorant, something else indefinable but essentially and primally male. I want to bury my nose in his chest and inhale. That’d be super weird, though, so I don’t.
He sips. “You okay?”
I nod. “Mmhmm.”
He’s quiet a moment. “Jolene—”
“Call me Jo. Only my grandma calls me Jolene.”
He nods. “Okay.” Another quiet moment. “There are some things I want to say, but…I’m not sure where to start.”
“Should I get some of the obvious stuff out of the way? The awkward questions people always want to know but don’t know how to ask?” I sip lukewarm Irish Breakfast. “I have leukemia. It’s terminal. Which means there’s no cure. I’ve had it since I was eight. I went into remission when I was nine and a half, and it came back when I was eleven. I went into remission again at fourteen. It came back when I was fifteen. The next time it came back, two years ago, it came back…worse. More aggressive. It spread until there was nothing they could do. About two months ago, my oncologist told me there was no point in any further treatment, because it wouldn’t help. I’ll live for another…month, maybe more. There’s no way to know, exactly. When they say time is short like that, they’re just guessing. Stage four is…tricky. I could live another six months, another year, or I could die next week. Or tonight, in my sleep.”
I sigh, and keep going.
“No, it’s not contagious. Some people still think that. I don’t know how I got it, and neither does anyone else.” I play with the string and tab of the teabag, dunk the teabag a few times. “Yes, it hurts. Some days, I can’t get out of bed. Other days, like today, I’m mostly okay.”
He’s quiet a long time. “Are you scared?”
I look up at the canopy of leaves. “Um…sometimes. If I really think about…actually dying? Yeah. Of course. But I’ve had this basically my whole life. I’ve always had to face the reality that I may not—that I likely wouldn’t survive it. Especially because it kept coming back, you know? But day to day? Not really. It’s all I’ve ever known. I don’t really remembernothaving cancer.”
“I don’t know what to say. Like, I’m sorry? I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that.”
I smile. “What is theretosay? But you know, I really appreciate you saying you don’t know what to say. A lot of people just sort of…say something dumb and pitying. I hate pity.”
“What about compassion?”
“That’s different.” I eye him. “Are you here because of pity?” I twist on the bench to face him, to see his reaction. “I’m sorry about the video, Wes.”
