When we part, his contented little sigh makes me smile again.
“I’m not good at expressing my feelings,” I start saying.
Feelings, schmeellings. He’s ours. The end.
Thank you for sharing, Bez, but Lori deserves more than that.
He blows a raspberry. I ignore him.
“I wrapped caution tape around my heart. I never thought I’d find someone who could win me over and accept my multiplicity. And then you came with all your incongruities, all your facets, your sassiness, crazy talk, and stubbornness.”
“I am the stubborn one?” He sniffs.
I kiss his nose. “You enraptured us with your acceptance and your love. Being drugged sped things up. But you and us were inevitable.”
Tears fall down his cheeks onto my chest as the most beautiful smile curls his lips. “Bloody hell, you win the express-your-feelings award.”
“We did? And what’s our prize?” Bez growls, our hips thrusting upward against Lori’s ass.
He flings himself at us, molding his mouth to ours, kissing us with rough desperation.
Sometime later, we are lying on the bed. Bez is sleeping. I can’t. I feel love welling up in me, bursting out of my pores. It sneaks past my sorrow and into my heavy heart, filling it with light.
The shadows are still there, though. The doctors have no idea why Meg is in a coma.
Her lupus has given her ups and downs through the years; I thought it was simply a difficult period. We all did. She never talked about it. Always diminishing her condition, not wanting to burden us. Maybe I took my stubbornness from her.
“Did it hurt?” I ask Lori.
“Huh?” He sounds sleepy, who wouldn’t be after three orgasms?
“When your gran died.”
He doesn’t tense against me, but I feel a change in him. “It felt like tearing my heart out of my chest. The bleeding hole is still here,” he whispers. His voice sounds strangely empty.
“Tell me.”
He pulls back and sits, hugging his knees to his chest. I shift until my back is against the headboard and wait for him to keep going.
“I have a dark spot on my soul, can’t you see it?” His voice quivers. “I killed her,” he brokenly says. His grief-stricken eyes make me feel helpless. “Guilt rattles me every single day. It’s a beast that can’t be tamed.”
“What happened?” I want to touch him, hold him, protect him from everything painful in the world, but he doesn’t look like he’d accept it right now. I need to let him come back to me.
Bez is awake now, alert once again. He felt my worry for Lori.
“She had lung cancer. Loved her cigars. I still remember the bitter smell of them. Strange how a memory can be comforting and painful at the same time.” He pauses, swallowing. “The doctor gave her only three months to live. The first was rough, she worsened quickly. She was in so much pain. Gran had always been a very independent woman, full of life, walking her path with her head high. It was harder for her, not even being able to go to the bathroom by herself.” Lori wipes a tear with the back of his hand.
“One night, her heart stopped. The paramedics were able to revive her, and she stayed in the hospital for a couple of days. I could see something had changed in her. Her fighting spirit was gone. She signed a DNR, and when I took her back home, she…she told me she didn’t want to die in a hospital, to be put to sleep until her death occurred. She didn’t want me to wait next to her, day after day.” His smile is heartbreakingly sad. “So, she got a medication from a nurse. A medical aid in dying, it’s called. Which, as you know, is illegal in Illinois. I tried to stop her, but when she made a decision, she rarely changed her mind. The next day, she said it was a good day to die, but she couldn’t inject the medicine. Her hands were trembling. So…” His voice breaks into sobs, and he pushes his forehead to his knees.
I’ve heard enough. I slide my arms under him and scoop him up, positioning him on my lap. He wraps his arms around my neck as he keeps crying unconsolably.
“Shhh. You did good, Lori,” Bez uses a soothing voice I’ve never heard from him before.
“I should have stopped her. Should have tried to change her mind. I was so weak, so stupid.”
“She would have found another way, another day. She would have been alone. Instead, you were there. You were not weak, you are the strongest person I know,” I tell him.
“I can’t even go back into her house. I see her everywhere, in the pots she bought from a stupid commercial on TV, in the ashtrays she made herself, in the books she loved to read. It hurts so damn much.”
