She rubbed her mouth. “Come in!”
Oliver opened the door. “I’m sorry, Mitch. We’d better head out so you don’t miss your train.”
“Okay. Be right down.”
We just stood there staring at each other. My stomach filled with dread as I heard him start his car outside to warm it up.
I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward me. Our foreheads were touching as I said, “I may be walking out of here, but there’s not a piece of my heart that’s coming with me.”
She had to practically push me out the door because I wouldn’t let go of her.
The train ride home was like a bad dream. Sounds were louder than normal. The voices of the other passengers were intolerable. I felt like a shell, so disconnected from the rest of the world, a fish out of water. It angered me that all of these people were moving toward something, while with each second, I was moving further away from the one thing that mattered to me. It felt wrong, like I had left not only my heart but my entire self back in Skylar’s bedroom. I had no clue how I was going to function tomorrow, knowing that she was getting more of that poison pumped into her.
When the cab dropped me off at home, I looked up into the darkness of Skylar’s empty bedroom window across the street and said a silent prayer before entering my house.
My mother was in the kitchen. “Mitch?”
Ignoring her, I walked upstairs in a daze. I had a hood on, so she wouldn’t have seen my head.
Seamus was unusually quiet when I opened the door to my bedroom. I was sure he’d start barking again the second he saw me. I opened the cage to make sure he was still alive, and he was just looking at me quietly. He looked how I felt. “Hey, little guy.”
He squawked once and tilted his head.
“I know. I miss her, too.”
When I leaned in to kiss the top of his head, he nipped my nose. “Ow.” I guess I had pressed my luck.
The urge to call Skylar was killing me, but I didn’t want to wake her because she had an early appointment tomorrow. I sent her a text instead.
I’m home. Well…“here.” Home is wherever you are. I feel lost without you. And I miss your lips.
I felt restless, like I needed to do something for her. I opened my laptop and started a Google search on Hodgkins Lymphoma. The statistics were promising, but of course, that’s never the information your mind zones in on. What stuck in my brain were all the potential long-term side effects of chemo, the possibility of a bone marrow transplant if the chemo didn’t work the first time around, the risks of radiation, the chance of secondary cancers developing later in life. The list went on and on. I was doing exactly what I urged Skylar not to: focusing on the “what ifs” and letting my fears take over because seeing her suffering had weakened me.
What put me over the edge was an article about a girl around Skylar’s age that recently lost her battle. The girl’s smiling face in the photo stared back at me, a reminder that nothing was guaranteed. I slammed the laptop closed. The reality that there was a chance Skylar could die from this was unthinkable. The mere thought was so painful that every muscle in my body tightened in an attempt to resist the unwelcome emotions that were rising to the surface.
My mother gasped when she entered the room to find my shoulders shaking as I bawled with my head in my hands. Everything I had been in holding in this past weekend came flooding out.
She ran her hand across my shaved head. “Oh, Mitch.”
“I can’t lose her, Mom.”
“Did something happen?”
I wiped my eyes, angry at my loss of control. “She’s just going through hell. It’s not fair. Her eyelashes are gone…her f**king eyelashes. It’s not about that, but she can only take so much. This is tearing apart her spirit slowly. I see that happening and can’t stand to see her suffering. I love her. I love her so much, and I was too much of a coward to tell her.”
“Why? Why couldn’t you tell her?”
“I don’t know. It’s like I associate those three words with bad things happening from when I was a kid. On top of that, I’m so afraid she’ll think I’m only saying it because she’s sick.”
“She needs to hear it. And if you don’t want her to think you’re saying it only because she’s sick, then you need to tell her exactly why you love her, why you’ve always loved her. It will give her strength. Don’t let what happened between me and your father make you afraid. I’ve watched you fall in love with that girl, and it’s real. Your father never loved me like you love her.”
She kissed my forehead before I suddenly walked toward the window, staring vacantly across the street at Skylar’s house. “I want to be alone, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I stayed awake that night, wired, drawing her a new comic in the Adventures of S&M series where S and M were bald bandits banding together to fight the evil C until it was destroyed.
At one in the morning, my phone rang. My heart pounded in terror when I saw her name.
“Skylar? Are you okay?”
“You told me to call you anytime, and I know you didn’t really mean one in the morning, but I just had a dream. I don’t know if it’s the meds or what, but it was so vivid. I almost needed to call you to make sure it didn’t really happen.”
For the first time all night, I relaxed enough to get into my bed. “A bad dream?”
“No. It was beautiful. We were…having sex, but it was more than that. It was what I imagined it would feel like. It felt so real, and I wished it were. It made me realize how much I—”
“Wait. Don’t say it. I love you, Skylar. I love you so much. I should have said it a million times before.”
“I was gonna say it made me realize how much I need to get laid, but that’s really…wow.”
“Seriously?”
“No.”
“You little shit.” I breathed into the phone. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mitch, so much it hurts. When I think about worst-case scenarios, out of everything, it’s being separated from you that scares me the most.”
The tears were burning my eyes. “Skylar, listen to me, okay? I need you to know that I’m not just saying this because I’m afraid or because you’re sick. I need you to know that I have loved you since we were kids when you called me out for acting like an as**ole and were the first person who cared enough to try and figure out the reason why. I love you because you know what I need or what I’m thinking before I even do. I love you because you make me laugh everyday, especially at myself. I love the way you look at me like I’m the only person in a room full of people. I love the way you smell and the way you whimper when my lips first touch yours. I—”
“Mitch…I already knew you loved me, and I knew how much it scared you to say those words. The way you look at me, the way your heart beats every time you hold me, what you did to your hair for me…actions speak louder than words, and you have been showing me how much you love me. That’s what matters.”
“I feel like I won’t be able to breathe until you come home.”
That day would be farther away than I could ever have anticipated.
***
After her first round of chemo ended, cancer gave us a short break.
At the end of that stretch, my prom rolled around and what was supposed to be the most special night of our lives, was anything but.
She had looked so angelic in a white strapless dress. Her friend Nina had come all the way from Boston to help her get ready.
Everything was fine up until we danced to a certain slow song, and then her mood dramatically changed for the rest of the night.
After the prom, on the way to an after party at a hotel, she made a confession in the limo. She hadn’t wanted to ruin our night and had been holding back some news. That morning, her doctor had told her that tests showed a recurrence of the Lymphoma.
It had felt like my tie was choking me, and I remember having to undo it because I felt like I was gonna hyperventilate.
Not again.
I ended up taking her home, and it turned out to be one of the worst nights of my life.
The next phase was the lowest point in her cancer journey. A higher level of chemo was followed by a bone marrow transplant, which meant weeks of isolation and a long recovery.
By the grace of God, her tests following that procedure were clear, and it seemed to have been a success.
All in all, from the time she was first diagnosed, it took nearly two years before we would have her back for good.
The months following her return home were the best of my life. Like a spring flower blossoming after a long season of rain, at 18, Skylar emerged from that hell somewhat changed but stronger and more beautiful than ever.
CHAPTER 13
SKYLAR
In some ways, recovering from cancer is like coming home from war. You’re never fully able to leave it behind because the threat of getting called back always seems to loom. Regardless, you have to move on with your life.
It also changed me. Material things were now insignificant; just being alive was good enough. At the same time, I was learning to live again, to develop a routine that didn’t involve treatments or the resulting side effects. You get your life back, but you don’t really know what to do with it. In a bizarre way, the cancer had become my normal, and freedom was now foreign to me.
Since my father had arranged for tutoring on the days I felt up to it, I hadn’t really fallen too far behind while in Brooklyn. When I returned home, I was able to continue in the middle of my junior year at St. Clare’s.
Mitch was a senior now. Despite his support over the course of my illness, any development of a physical relationship had been on hold. We were almost never alone during that time. Either that, or I was too sick to even look at him.
Now, it felt like a giant pause button had been lifted on us. At 19, Mitch was so physically attractive that it was almost painful to be around him without touching. His body was ripped, and his hair had grown back longer, wavy and beautiful again. He still often piled it under that familiar Yankees cap but now sported a constant five o’clock shadow to complete the look. His skin had also tanned from working a new side job cutting lawns.
As for me, my hair was now shoulder-length, and I had gained most of the weight back. Still, even with our newfound freedom, we were taking things slow. Mitch hadn’t made any moves even though I knew he wanted to, and that frustrated me. He was handling me with care because of my recovery, but that wasn’t what I wanted. It was what he thought I needed. But what I needed was him—in the worst way. His eyes always brimmed with desire when he looked at me, and I could feel his resistance running thinner each day. It was just a matter of time.
***
“When exactly are you planning on telling her?”
My mother and I were supposed to be at Mitch’s for dinner at six, but I had arrived early. While in the midst of a private conversation, Mitch and Janis hadn’t realized the living room window was open. I leaned in closer to hear.
“I don’t know.”
“Mitch…this is big. You shouldn’t keep this from her.”
“I don’t want to discuss it right now, Mom. You know how I feel. Stop pressuring me.”
The dialog stopped, and I assumed Mitch had gone upstairs.
My chest tightened in anxiety as I rang the doorbell.
Janis opened the door. “Oh…hi, honey. You’re early.”
“My mother wanted me to put this chicken pot pie in your oven, so it would be nice and hot when we sat down.”
“Sure, come in.” I smelled a hint of gasoline and knew it was from Mitch who had just returned home from cutting someone’s grass. She took the pie from me. “Mitch is upstairs.”
I ran up and heard the shower running in the bathroom off the hallway, so I waited in his room.
Pandora radio was streaming from his phone, and Seamus was bopping his head to Rapper’s Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang. That was his new thing. He was really into music—that and whistling at me lately.
When the door opened, Mitch was wrapped in nothing but a small, white towel. “Whoa. I didn’t know you were here. I almost walked in stark na**d.”
My mouth watered as I marveled at how my childhood friend had transformed into an Adonis. The towel hugged his round ass perfectly. Droplets of water ran down his cut, tan chest. His wet hair was slick back and sexy.
He raised his brow at me, his voice low and intentionally seductive. “Like what you see?”
I cleared my throat. “Actually, I do.”
Lay off the truth serum, Skylar.
He smiled mischievously and licked his lips. “Good to know.” He grabbed a shirt from the closet and threw it on the chair. “You’re about to see a whole lot more if you don’t turn around.”
My gaze lingered before I reluctantly turned toward the window. I started to obsess over the conversation on the way in until his voice snapped me out of it. “Safe.”
He was still shirtless when I turned back around. This was not safe at all. His white underwear peeked through the top of his pants, and when I looked down, I noticed a thin trail of hair leading down to the arousal straining against his jeans.
He walked toward me, pulled me up into a standing position and leaned into me, his hot erection pressing into my stomach.
Our lips were almost touching. I was throbbing between my legs when he gripped some of the material of my skirt, and his hot breath tickled my mouth. “I like the way you were looking at me. Actually, it’s made me a little crazy. It’s like you were eye-fucking me. It makes me want to just—”