I lean toward her. “How do you?—”
“I studied geology, you know. My mother wanted me to study literature. Or art history. Something suitable for a wife.” Louise laughs, one of her throaty guffaws. The sound warms me as much as the blanket I’m sitting beneath. “I told her, ‘I’ll impress my future husband with how much I know about rocks.’”
I snort.
“But enough about me. My life is boring. Yours is the one we should be talking about.”
“My life is also boring.”
“What about that young man?” Louise asks, sensing Eitan’s presence in my mind. “Tell me what’s happening there.”
My skin heats, remembering the sensation of Eitan’s hands, vivid as if he were beneath me in this folding chair, wrapping them around me.
Maybe we should take a step back.
I blow out a raspberry. “Nothing.” Her glare is skeptical. “Really.”
“Boys like him don’t come around all that often.”
Celeb guest shot!I roll my eyes. “You mean fraternity brothers? They’re a dime a dozen.”
“You’re deflecting,” Louise says flatly.
I shift in the polyester seat of my chair. “Well, anything thatwashappening is done now,” I admit. “It’s for the best. It probably wouldn’t have worked out. This way, I didn’t get my hopes up for too long.”
Louise scoffs at me. A true scoff, like she’s Donald Duck. “Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for any of us, Gem.” Louise’s hand finds mine, gently wrapping around it. “Don’t waste it.”
Her words are a tranquilizer dart, lodging any other sarcastic comments about Eitan in my throat. “It just wasn’t in the cards.” I turn back to the sky.
“There are some things we have control over, and some things we don’t have control over. Getting cancer is random—out of our control. No matter what the organic food industry would have you believe. But being honest about your feelings? Leaving it all on the table? That’s in your control. In fact, it’s all we can control.”
“I’ll remember that,” I say slowly, “for the next person I meet.”If that ever happens.
Louise squints at me. “It’s tough, Gem, when the magic fades away and all that’s left is love. Bedrock. When all’s said and done, you’re going to remember the times you stuck by each other. The moments when something really bad was happening, and you found solace in each other. When you didn’t turn away.”
I pick at my nail, trying to ignore the gaping wound of only ever being turned away from someone, or turning away, when something really bad was happening. “I’ve managed just fine on my own,” I say, the words sour.
“You think I don’t see you, but I do,” Louise says, uncharacteristically somber. “You think the world can’t lose faith in you if you lose faith in the world first.”
It’s abstract, but the proximity of her comment to the gaping hole in my chest is enough to make me shift in my seat, unable to find a comfortable position.
“But when you close yourself off to the world like that, you let the fear take over.”
Instantly, my hand wants to feel the lump again, to try to catalogue reasons I am right to be scared by it. Fear is all I feel. It consumes me like wildfire, razing everything.
“How am I supposed to benotscared?” I whisper.
Louise adjusts in her wheelchair to take a good look at me. “Tell me, Gem, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“My cancer metastasizes and I don’t make it to 40,” I say softly, hesitantly. It feels like bad luck saying that out loud, given my ultrasound. Like if I say Beetlejuice three times, a bone lesion will appear.
“Well, I can tell you, I’m dealing with the metastatic part, and it’s a pain in the ass, but life goes on just as it always has. Always will. One day I won’t be here anymore, and that’s the way it is.”
“That’s the scary part,” I clarify.
“I don’t think it’s that scary. Death is a part of everyone’s journey.”
“You’re not scared of not being here anymore?” I ask, my voice small.
