| |
I negotiate my foot through the narrow opening of a brand new pair of skinny jeans, pulling them over my slimmer hips, realizing how much things have changed. This time last year, I was employed, engaged, and fifteen pounds heavier, eating potato chips out of the bag while I watched TV. Now, I’m jobless, single, and somehow managed to become one of those alien creatures who forgets to eat sometimes. I will never give up lifesavers or chocolate, but I’m on board with this whole healthy eating as a lifestyle thing. It feels good to be active again, and I’m really starting to see some changes in my body. I turn sideways to admire my flatter stomach before driving over to Will’s house.
I tried calling, but for almost a week, he wouldn’t answer. Standing on his doorstep, I hear the muffled shrillness of the doorbell coming from inside and strain my ears for the sound of footsteps. Just as I reach for the doorbell one last time, the door abruptly swings open. Will’s eyes are bloodshot and his T-shirt and pants are wrinkled, as if he’d slept in them, which is odd for someone who makes a habit out of ironing his jeans. He doesn’t seem surprised to see me.
“She told me she called you,” he says with a resigned look on his face.
I was taken aback when Will’s mom calling, appeared on my phone. She wasn’t my biggest fan when we were together, so I had no reason to stay in touch with her but never deleted her number. I was envious to learn Will managed to stay in North Park. That is, until I see the twenty-something, bare chested guy on the couch, wearing rumpled sweats and eating a giant plate of spaghetti with his dirty house slippers propped up on the coffee table. Roommate. He glances in our direction, then turns his attention back to the TV. Will leads me past the messy kitchen with a sink full of dishes to his bedroom and closes the door. The small room is so cluttered with boxes, I can’t move until he clears a path to his bed and gestures that I should sit down.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yes, I’m fine,” he says to me without making eye contact. He runs his hand over fresh stubble sprouting from his head. “I had to shave it for the biopsy.”
That explains the beanie he was wearing when I saw him. When he sits next to me, the large, angry, C-shaped scar on the left side of his head just above his ear comes into view, causing me to take an involuntary inhalation of breath.
“Will, I ran into you last month. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s not an easy thing to say.”
“I guess not,” I reply, staring down at my hands in my lap.
When his mom told me he had brain cancer, all the blood rushed to my head and my stomach instantly churned to the point of nausea. He’s young and healthy. It can’t be true. I shook my head in disbelief as she went on to tell me the good news is that his chances of survival are great because he’s young and in good health otherwise, and his cancer is operable. The last thing she said before we ended the call was, “He needs you.”
“It’s treatable. I have to have surgery to remove the tumor, then go through chemotherapy and radiation. I’m supposed to get everything started next week.”
“But of course I would want to be there for you. I tried calling.”
“I didn’t want to involve you in this, and, as you can see...” he says, gesturing at the clutter surrounding us. “I’m moving. I’m going back to Columbus. I’ll live with my mom while I undergo treatment. There’s nothing you can do.”
Leaving? His mom never mentioned that. Knowing he was still around somehow eased the transition from engaged to no contact, so it’s weird to think of him really being gone.
“I’m finally going home. I’ll be less than three hours from Anderson,” he says somberly. A tear barely escapes the corner of one eye before he wipes it with the back of his hand and turns away from me.
I have never seen him cry, not once in the seven years we were together, and it breaks my heart to see him doing it now.
“Your mom has to work. Is she still at Value Save? Who will take care of you?” Will has no family, and his mom is a cashier at a discount chain store. She can’t be making much money. From what I understand, she barely gets by. His dad left when he was four and his mom raised him alone. I still don’t know the whole story behind what happened to his mother’s family. I don’t think he does either, but he’s an only child and there are no aunts, uncles, or cousins to speak of.
“Yes, she does, but we’ll figure it out,” he says.
I feel terrible. I want to wrap my arms around him and pepper his face with kisses to try to make it better, but we’re no longer together and there’s no kiss that can save him from the battle that lies ahead. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. I reach for his hand, and bite my lip to fight the tears that want to fall. I don’t think I’m allowed to cry in this situation.
He’s not my fiancé , and I’m not the one with cancer.
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?” I ask.
He looks around the messy room. “No. Not unless you can make all of this stuff disappear.”
“I can,” I say, anxious to do anything to help. “I have a small storage unit. I can store some boxes for you, if you need me to.”
“But I don’t know if I’m coming back.”
The finality of those words rocks me to the core. When I jogged away from him on the beach that day, I didn’t know if or when I’d ever see him again. I was fine with that, but now that he is gravely ill, never seeing him again takes on a whole new meaning.
I stay awhile to help him organize and pack his room, because I’ve always been better at that stuff than him.
“I want you to have this one,” he says, placing the Softly for Digging DVD in my hand. It was hands down our favorite horror movie. We watched it over and over again, then went to the theatre on opening weekend to see the remake. I grasp the case with both hands, clasping it to my chest. I hold his gaze with mine.
When it’s time for me to go, I linger in his doorway, not sure what to say. See you later, feels flippant and, good bye, too final. “Take care of yourself, and don’t be a stranger.” That doesn’t feel right either.
He extends his arms, gesturing for a hug, and without hesitation, I step forward, leaning into him with all my weight.
That night, I lie in bed, tossing and turning all night, unable get the word cancer out of my head. I finally fall asleep, but nightmares interrupt my sleep throughout the night. They all include Will. He is thin and frail in a hospital bed, reaching out to me, or he’s swimming upstream, with a bloody bandage plastered to his head, and sharks circle him. He calls out to me with his eyes, then a pack of sharks drag him to his death beneath the water. When I startle awake, I realize I failed him, and for what? A job I hated. To live in a city I can barely afford? I’m overcome with guilt, because instead of going home to pursue his education like he should have years ago, he’s going home to pursue cancer treatment. Who knows, maybe if I’d allowed him the chance to pursue his goals, he would have been happier. I wouldn’t have been miserable at Silver. Maybe both of us would have been better off, had I not been so selfish.
The next morning, I can’t focus on anything besides Will. The terrible image of him dying in a hospital bed, alone, haunts me. I know he has his mom, but for seven years, I was also his family. He has no one else. I’m exhausted from lack of sleep, and there’s an unbearable weight pressing down on my shoulders, causing an ache in my heart that won’t go away.
I hop in the shower, dress, rake a comb through my hair and drive over to Will’s apartment. Unlike yesterday, he’s surprised to see me on his doorstep. When we get to his room, I say, “I’m coming with you,” without hesitation. The brief flash of hope in his eyes tells me it’s the right thing to do.
My recent focus on dream chasing is a wonderful diversion. I’m finally doing something that makes me look forward to waking up in the morning, but the reality is that I’m unemployed and won’t be able to pay rent if I don’t find a decent paying job really soon. My credit card bills have reached gargantuan levels, and I’ve opened two more just to keep my head above water. Acting is really the only thing keeping me here, but it shouldn’t be. No matter how much I want it, or what I do to try to achieve it, I could still walk away from Agency Day empty handed. In fact, the odds are that I will, and I could be staring at another dead end.
“You have your job. You have your own life. You didn’t want to leave it before, when we were together, so why would you want to leave it now?”
“Will, I don’t work at Silver anymore. I’m going to run out of money soon anyway.”
“Wow. You finally did it. Good for you,” Will says.
I shake my head in confusion. “Good for me? You were all about Silver Insurance. You wished you had a good job like I did. Remember?”
“Being faced with your own mortality has a way of changing things. If you hated it as much as you say you did, it’s not worth it. Life is too short,” he says, fiddling with the edge of one of the boxes on the floor.
“That’s exactly why I want to be there for you. If I don’t, no matter what happens, I’ll regret it. When you asked me to go with you before, I was scared. I didn’t trust you...”
“You had every right not to. I was a screw up,” he interrupts. “Just like you have every right not to ever want to speak to me again after what I did. It’s too much to ask. You don’t have to do this.”
“I know that, and you don’t have to ask,” I say, touching his arm.
“I’m scheduled for four cycles of chemotherapy over twelve weeks. I’ll probably have radiation after that...it could be a while.”
I consult my mental calendar. At that rate, I’d consider myself lucky not to miss Sarah’s wedding, and without knowing exactly how his treatment would pan out, Agency Day would be out of the question. My heart sinks, but I won’t let it show on my face.
“I’m in,” I say, because he needs me. He won’t want to admit it, but I know he’s scared and I also know there really isn’t anyone else. If they didn’t need help, his mom wouldn’t have contacted me.
He leans in for a hug, and his arms feel familiar and foreign at the same time; the way the room from your childhood feels after you move out and haven’t been home for a while. I breathe in his scent as my face nestles into the curve of his neck.
The old Alexis with no dreams feared change so much, she remained in misery at a job she hated for four long years. The new Alexis—who isn’t afraid to take chances—finally has a dream that makes her heart sing, but decides in one day she’s willing to walk away from it.
Suddenly, he pulls away and looks me in the eye. “What exactly are you running away from?”
“What do you mean? Nothing. I just want to help. I still care about you, and there isn’t anything keeping me here.”
“Lexi, something doesn’t add up,” he says, shaking his head. “You finally quit working at Silver? I never thought I’d see the day. No matter how many times I said you should quit if it was that awful, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t even look at other jobs. And now you’re willing to up and move to a place you were so dead set against before with a man you’re no longer engaged to? And the weight loss. You’re smaller than you were when we first met. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing—you look good—but something’s up. Something about you has changed, and change is not in your vocabulary.”
He knows me so well, it’s scary. I’m a terrible liar, so when he continues to grill me, I reluctantly mention Chloe Dillon and Agency Day.
“I mean, it’s no big deal. It’s just that, I took these wonderful classes. Acting is just...” I trail off, clasping my hands to my chest because it’s so hard to put into words how it feels to transcend flat words on paper—to become the words. “...it’s just incredible and intense and fun. I started to feel different, then it was all over. I had a little taste of what it’s like to be passionate about something, then I couldn’t deal with work anymore. I just couldn’t. I wanted something else for myself. Needed something else. When I’m acting, I change. It’s like this rush of energy...but it’s all so hopeless, really. Hollywood...the whole bit. So if you need me, I’m there.”
He’s quiet and I don’t know what else to say. The silence sits between us, questioning and insistent, until Will finally speaks.
“I’ve never heard you talk about something like that. Well, except gymnastics. Your eyes...they light up.”
“I’ve never been good at anything before,” I say.
“There are so many things in life that you only get one shot at. Don’t miss out on it.”
“You didn’t get your shot. Video Game Design was your dream, long before this became mine,” I say softly.
“Maybe I didn’t want it bad enough.”
“But, I have no idea what I’m doing,” I sputter. “You’re sitting right here in front of me, but that...well, I can’t even tell you what it is, what it’s going to be, or why I want it.”
“Sometimes that’s how it is,” he says, giving my shoulder a squeeze, “but I don’t want to be the one to prevent you from figuring it out.”
My options were clear. I could run away and tackle his problems, or stay here and tackle my own.
