“It’s just too good,” I say, my voice thick.
He steps out fully. “You good?”
“Yeah,” I say. The word is probably see-through, at this point. When he catches me in these moments, it feels like he sees me. Really sees me. It’s comforting and confusing. I don’t trust myself to speak and not say something stupid or desperate sounding, likeDo you see me?orWill you dance with me again?
I take a deep breath of air that smells like stale popcorn and polyester carpet, and push all my messy thoughts down.
Eitan sits next to me on the floor. “It’s okay to be sad,” he says softly.
“What do I have to be sad about?” Because, truly, what right do I have to be miserable? I’m alive. “Are you sad?” I ask.
“All the time,” he says, the words slow and considered. “I wish I was better at it.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Better at being sad?”
“Yeah. Sometimes being empty is easier than feeling sad.” Eitan rests his head against the wall. “I think about my dad every day. It’s the reason I started traveling in the first place. I wanted to go to all new places so that nothing would remind me of him. So that I could escape having to feel everything all the time.”
“I can understand that.”
“He would have liked you,” Eitan says. “He learned his English from old movies, so he loved finding women he could confidently describe as a ‘broad’ or a ‘pistol.’ Mom was a broad. He would have called you a pistol.”
“That’s a new one.” I laugh. “Do you—” I falter, and take a breath. “Do you mind talking about it?” I ask.
He tilts his face down so our eyes are almost level. “No, I don’t mind talking about it. With the right people.” His hands clasp and unclasp. “I was his full time caretaker for the last year of his life.”
My eyes widen. “Shit, that’s…hard.”
“I switched my job to be remote and moved back in with my parents.” Eitan exhales. “It was exhausting. Physically, emotionally. I was doing all the cooking and the cleaning because all my mom’s time had to go toward keeping her job and taking care of my little sister. The chemo kept him alive for a while, and I put us on a whole food, plant-based diet. It worked for a bit, but…yeah. Nothing worked, at a certain point.” He smiles softly, but it’s a smile made of sadness.
“So you’ve been on the subreddits.”
“Oh, I lived on those subreddits.” We laugh. “I read every miracle protocol, every semi-quack study that someone said had worked for a friend of a friend. But the cancer progressed. When he was in treatment, it felt like a battle. Like we were fighting for his life. But when he got the news that the cancer had still progressed, he decided to stop. He wanted to enjoy the days he had left. It was hard—” Eitan’s eyes are glassy. “I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to keep fighting. All he had to do was stay alive long enough for them to find a drug that could bethe oneto save him. But—” His voice catches. He rights himself, shaking his head. “It was his life, his choice.”
Suddenly, I’m on the other end of the equation, where someone is saying something that, to me, sounds tragic. But I don’t know if he wants to hear me say sorry. Pity is a barrier. It puts people on unequal footing.
“I was angry for a long time that there weren’t answers. There was no reason why the fasting and vitamin C worked for one person, but Dad’s tumors grew.”
“What stage was he diagnosed at?” I ask.
“He had symptoms for years that he wrote off, and the doctors misdiagnosed. He was young—forty-four. It took going to the E.R. to finally get diagnosed.” Eitan swallows. “I had been living in the city, so I wasn’t home as much. I didn’t know the extent of what he had been dealing with. We had to wait another week for the oncology team to confirm the full diagnosis. Colon cancer. Stage IVc.”
My heart aches at the pain in his voice. It’s the unspoken shadow that looms over both of us. The persistent whisper that this could all disappear as quickly as it came back: our health, our peace of mind, our prospects for a full life. The bridge being built between us is too heavy to bear. Its girders are sinking into the Dark Place, and I can’t break down again.
“Five year survival rate of 13%,” Eitan finishes, voice heavy. “He passed away four years ago on June 6th, actually.”
“Wait a minute. June 6th, as in…Izumi’s wedding?”
“Yeah.” He wipes his face. “It wasn’t my finest showing. Most days I’m okay, but those days are hard. It makes me a little…reckless.”
“I get it,” I breathe. “I have hard days, too.”
“Really? You seem so well-adjusted,” he says, fighting a smile.
I debate buying a ten-dollar tub of popcorn just to throw it at him. “I amverywell-adjusted, actually. I’m here. That’s all the Universe can expect of me.”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “That’s how it feels for me too.” Our eyes connect and I see the same thing that I saw in that bathroom, then again at the engagement party. I know what it is now. The aftermath of randomness, like a bootprint from being stomped on.
A loud crashing noise, followed by shouting, comes from the theater. We laugh at it, in sync. I decide that I like having inside jokes with him.
