Page 16 of While I’m Still Here

“I didn’t write down the date, Bea.”

“You make spreadsheets for Christmas.”

“That’s different. I refuse to buy people the same present ever again.”

“You once made a spreadsheet comparing broadband providers,” she says.

“Bea.”

“Seven fucking years?”

“Yes.”

She looks genuinely offended. Of all the reactions I imagined, indignation wasn’t particularly high on the list. “You absolute prick!”

I rear back. “Excuse me?”

“I have cancer.”

“I’m aware of that, yes.”

“I could die!”

“Also painfully aware, but I need you not to say those words to me.”

“And you’ve been sitting on this information for seven years?”

“When you put it like that, it sounds bad,” I say, scrubbing at the back of my neck.

“It is bad!” She’s staring at me now, cheeks flushed, eyes enormous. Then she reaches across the space between us and hits me with a cushion.

“What the fuck?” I swear, raising my hands to ward off the incoming cushion again.

“Seven years!”

I grab the cushion from her before she can swing it again. “I was trying not to ruin our friendship.”

“Well, excellent work, Fletcher. Instead, you waited until I had murderous tits.”

“I didn’t exactly put this in my calendar.”

“You could have told me!” she shouts.

“I am telling you.”

“Now you are!”

“Yes, Bea. Now.”

“Why?” she asks.

That stops me, because beneath all the outrage, I hear the question she’s actually asking me. Why now? I loosen my grip on the cushion and peer over it at her. “Because this morning I thought I had all the time in the world to eventually grow a pair and tell you.”

Her face softens. “And now?”

“Now I know better, you violent thug.”

She laughs, and then it fades out. “I don’t want you saying this because I have cancer, Colin.”