Cursive - By Phoebe Lane Page 0,64

I actually grew up thinking everyone did, but then I started getting these looks…" she trailed off, examining his face. "Yep, that look right there; the one that you have on your face. That's when I realized that I was the weird one."

"You were weird as a kid?"

"I guess I wasn't too bad, unless you count nerdy as weird. My nose was always inside a book, or I would be off in my room writing stories," she said, and sipped her coffee.

"So this writing ambition isn't new?"

"I guess not," Aislynn said, getting lost in a memory. "I used to steal my mom's JC Penney catalogs—remember the ones that had a thousand pages and looked like phonebooks?" Jace nodded. "I would find all the pictures of the things I was writing about, and then put them all together into a book of visuals to go along with the story. I'd clip pictures of the house, the furniture, the clothes…even the wedding dress the princess would wear to marry her prince."

"You mean to tell me you were making graphic novels as a kid? That's impressive," he said, and Aislynn grinned sheepishly.

"My mom almost had a coronary the first time she went to browse the catalog and found the pages all cut up," Aislynn said with a smile.

"Do you still have them? The books?"

"I have no idea where they ended up. She probably threw them away when I moved out of the house. She was never big on holding on to sentimental stuff," she said, her mood becoming somber. Jace reached across the table, squeezed her hand, and then kissed it softly.

"Ready to go back to bed?" he asked, and Aislynn nodded.

Jace picked her up from her chair, carrying her over his shoulder, her front facing his backside. He had been carrying her all over the house so that she could fulfill her "no touching the floor all day long" goal.

"I think I like this view," she said, pinching his ass with her hands.

"Me too, babydoc," he said, and spanked hers playfully. "Me, too."

"Jace?"

"Hmm," he responded, his face buried in her lap as Aislynn played with his hair. They had spent the last hour in bed watching a movie.

"Why did you hesitate yesterday when I told you I wasn't on birth control?"

"Argh!" he said, getting up and sitting across from her. "Nothing really gets by you, huh?" He pulled at his hair, first with one hand, and then with both. He was obviously having a hard time saying whatever he needed to say.

"What is it?" she asked, now kind of regretting the question.

"You remember how we had agreed to 'one story at a time' after I told you about Chloe?"

It only took a second for it to click in her head. "This is about your ex-girlfriend?"

Jace took a moment, multiple deep breaths, and one last tug at his hair before he started explaining. "Her name's Lia. I dated her after Chloe. I had just finished my treatments when I met her. She wasn't exactly relationship material, but I was still so messed up in the head with everything that had happened with Chloe, that I ended up dating her for a while."

Jace's leg bounced up and down, which Aislynn figured was a nervous tic.

Why is he so anxious?

"She showed up one day and announced that she was pregnant, and that she wanted us to get married," he said, the tone of his voice grave.

Wait, what?

"Oh…wow…"

"Yeah. Well, it's more complicated than that."

His leg bounced even faster, and Aislynn had to put her hand on it to make it stop. After a few seconds, his shoulders relaxed and his jaw unclenched. It was like her touch had an instantaneous calming effect on him.

"When I was first diagnosed with the lymphoma, they found nodes both in my chest and in my pelvis. Besides the chemo, I had to have a lot of radiation…in both of those areas."

Aislynn's mind raced as flashes of medical data, textbook pictures, anatomy class, and statistics ran through her head. She couldn't help but gasp when all the pieces came together, and she finally understood what Jace was trying to tell her.

"Oh my God, I can't believe she did that!" Aislynn said, her hand covering her mouth.

"Because of what I had just been through with Chloe, I had never told Lia about the cancer. She had no idea that I had just gone through chemo and radiation and that, because of it, I was…sterile." Jace looked up at Aislynn, trying to gage