this. I’m scared that I’ll never play football again. I’m scared of my next round of chemo. I’m scared that I’m always going to be sick.” He throws the towel on the counter. “I’m scared out of my mind and I don’t know where the hell to go from here.”
I don’t either. And I don’t know what to say to him to make things better. There’s nothing that can make it better. We just have to live it.
“This is your life now, Mikey.”
“I know.” He lifts up a pot from the sink by its handle and crashes it back down. “You think I don’t know that? That this is my life?”
I press my fingers onto the granite counter. “I don’t get it either, Mikey. I don’t get why some people get to skate through existence and never have anything bad happen to them, when others get it in abundance. I don’t get it.”
Mikey laughs one hollow snicker. “Look who I’m talking to. Your life sucks just as much as mine. You freaking got plowed into by some drunk on your way to see me at the hospital. I wouldn’t say life’s been too kind to you either, Mags.”
I shrug my shoulders up to my ears and keep them there. “I don’t know,” I begin. “I think it could be a lot worse.”
Mikey flattens the towel onto the counter and starts stacking the clean dishes on top of it. “Things could always be worse. But when it’s your life and you’re right in the middle of it, it’s hard to keep that perspective.”
“You’re right,” I agree, joining him at the sink. I hand him another recently washed pan and he sets it onto the towel. “It’s much easier to see things from someone else’s point of view.”
***
Me: When can I see you?
I try not to stare down at the phone balanced on my bathroom counter and instead focus on applying my eyeliner, but it’s like my eyes are magnetically pulled to it. After several looks back and forth from the mirror to the cell, it vibrates loudly and I abandon my makeup routine altogether.
Ran: Well this is a first, Maggie. YOU requesting to see ME.
Me: Can we go for a walk? No bikes, no vehicles.
Ran: Dang it, Maggie. You’re not even going to play hard to get? This is no fun.
Me: I never promised to be fun. Just complicated and occasionally not nice.
Ran: Occasionally? If that was occasionally, I’d hate to see what frequently looks like.
Me: When are you free?
Ran: I work at 6. I can be at your house by 3.
Me: Looking forward to it.
Ran: See, you’re making it hard to determine if these are compliments or not by the way you word things.
Me: I thought we were done with all that counting compliment stuff.
Ran: I’m still working up to my kiss.
Me: You’re going to have to work pretty hard.
Ran: Not a problem, I have an incredible work ethic.
Me: See you at 3.
Ran: See you then.
Ran shows up on my doorstep at three o’clock sharp and greets me with a smile that unbuckles my knees. I’m glad I’m bracing myself against the doorframe, because my body wants to slide to the floor. I pull myself together.
“Ready for our walk?” I say, slipping into the sleeve of my jacket as I latch the door behind me.
“Been counting down the minutes.” Ran’s hands are shoved into his pockets as we pace the set of concrete steps toward the sidewalk. There’s a chill in the air that burns my ears and I shrug my shoulders to push my scarf up higher to cover them. “Do you have a destination in mind?”
“Not really,” I admit. I ball my fists together and blow into them to bring some amount of warmth to my already numb fingers. Ran slips his hand out of his pocket and wraps it around my right one. When I look over at him, the look on his face feels like he’s asking permission, so I grab on tighter to let him know it’s okay. That this is okay, because for the moment, I think it is.
“Is it fine with you if we head somewhere then? It’s only about a mile from here.”
I nod and squeeze his hand. His fingers are long, but not delicate or slender. They hold an appropriate amount of roughness in texture that you’d expect from a guy, but the way his fingers slink with mine feels tender and warm. And the way he rubs the pad of