Page 155 of While I’m Still Here

Marcus's answer is immediate. “No.”

Something about the way he says it stops me laughing. This isn’t the usual Marcus refusing to participate in one of Danny's stupid ideas. This is something else. His hand moves through his hair again, and suddenly I understand.

“Danny,” I say quietly.

Danny lowers the clippers, and Marcus looks away, looking almost ashamed. Then he says, “I never thought I'd be bald again.”

My chest tightens. Marcus keeps his eyes on the floor when he continues. “When it started growing back after chemotherapy, I used to check it constantly. It was ridiculous. I'd run my hand over it every morning to see if I could feel a difference.” He gives a small laugh, but there isn’t any humour in it. “I hated being bald. Not because I thought I looked bad. I hated looking in the mirror and immediately seeing cancer. Before I said anything, before anybody knew my name, I looked ill.”

I stare at his hair. I've only ever known Marcus with it. I've seen photographs of him during treatment, but photographs are strange things. They flatten a life into before and after. I hadn't thought about the months between those images. The first shadow across his scalp. The first time he could pinch a tiny piece between his fingers. The first haircut after treatment.

Every centimetre growing him farther away from the man sitting in a chemotherapy chair, and Danny just asked him to cut it off.

“Don't,” I say. Marcus looks at me. “Seriously. Don't do it.”

“I know I don't have to.”

“Then don't.”

I stand from the chair, the towel sliding from my shoulders. “Colin and Danny are idiots. We've established this. You don't have to prove anything.”

Danny, remarkably, doesn't object. Marcus looks at Colin's newly shaved head, then Danny's, before his eyes settle on mine. “I spent two years thinking I'd never willingly see myself bald again.”

My throat tightens. “Exactly.” Marcus strips off his shirt, revealing his old scar as he reaches for the clippers. “No,” I tell him, reaching out to stop him, but his fingers close around them. “Marcus.”

“I know what it meant when I lost it,” he says quietly. “I know what it meant when it grew back.”

“Then keep it.” He looks at me for a long moment, and I mean it. I don't want cancer taking something from him again just because it's taking something from me. “Please keep it.”

Something shifts in his face then Marcus looks at the clippers in his hand. “When cancer took my hair, I had no choice.” His thumb moves over the switch. “Growing it back felt like getting something back from it.”

I nod, already crying again. Marcus raises his eyes to mine. “This isn't cancer taking it. This is me choosing.” He switches the clippers on, and my hand flies to my mouth. “Because I love you, Bea. Every piece of you.”

Marcus hesitates for half a second before pressing them to his forehead, then pushes back. A dark strip of hair falls onto the kitchen floor, and we just watch. Marcus stares at himself in the mirror for a second, and I see something flicker across his face. Memory, maybe. The ghost of another room, another mirror, another version of himself who never imagined he would stand in my kitchen years later and do this willingly.

Then he makes the second pass and the third. By the time he's finished, there is hair scattered around his shoes, and Marcus is bald again. For a few seconds, he doesn't move.

His hand rises slowly and runs his palm over his scalp. His eyes close and I understand the size of what he's done. Colin and Danny shaved their heads because they love me. Marcus walked back voluntarily toward something he once couldn't wait to escape.

For me.

I cross the kitchen before I can think about it. Marcus opens his eyes as I stop in front of him, and I lift my hand carefully to his head. My palm settles against his bare scalp.

Marcus's breath catches, then his hand comes up and rests against mine. Same warmth. Same strange rough softness. I start crying. “Matching.”

His mouth finally moves into the smallest smile. “Unfortunately.”

“No.” I shake my head, keeping my palm against him. “Not unfortunately.”

Marcus looks at me, but I don't have a clever thing to say, and for once, neither does anybody else. So I wrap my arms around him. “I love you too.”

Marcus holds me tightly, his face disappearing against my bare head, and within seconds Colin's arm comes around me from one side, and Danny presses in from the other until all four of us stand in the middle of my kitchen, surrounded by four different shades of hair.

Mine.

Colin's.

Danny's.