slow and fast coming.
“Don’t just stand there, boy. Come in. I don’t bite.” He coughed. I took a few steps in, feeling overwhelmingly inadequate for the first time in my life. He had days, maybe. Hours, more like. And still, the world turned. We took Booger Face to the movies. We went to work. We lived. Every moment I lived away from him felt like betrayal.
He propped himself on the headboard, reaching for his nightstand and picking up a rolled cigarette. I arched an eyebrow as he grabbed the lighter next to it.
“Getting high?” I asked sarcastically.
“As much as I can with the state of my lungs. Medicinal cannabis. Does wonders for the pain.” He lit up, inhaling deeply until it hit the spot. He coughed the smoke out. I sat beside him. “Maddie seems in good spirits,” he remarked.
“Are we really going to talk about Maddie?” I picked up the jar of marijuana next to his nightstand, examining it.
“No, sorry. Let’s talk about my favorite subject—my dying.”
“Touché.” I scratched my stubble. “Yeah, she is doing fine. She’s worried about you, though.”
“Are you romancing the poor girl?” He cocked his head sideways, taking another hit. It was surreal to sit here with him smoking pot. All he needed now was a backward ball cap on his head and a Pornhub Premium subscription, and he’d be every guy I’d known in college.
I chuckled. “She’s not that unfortunate yet, but I’m working on it.”
“Slowly.” He tapped the ash into an ashtray.
“Let me worry about the pace. You worry about cramming as much fun as you can into the next few weeks. Look, I want to iron things out about the whole Julian crap at the office. We never really got to talk about it.”
Dad waved me off. “No need. I knew, subconsciously, that this was going to happen at some point. The two of you needed to figure it out, and you did. The balance of power. Julian tried his luck with the leader of the pack and did not succeed. He is now tending to his battle wounds, and you’d be wise not to poke them while they’re still fresh. As I mentioned before, I see him as a son. Clementine is my granddaughter. Nothing will ever change that. Biology could never rival familiarity. But I will tell you this, Chase. Out of all my children, I see the most of myself in you.”
When he finished talking, he took a greedy, hungry breath, like he couldn’t stand the strain on his lungs of uttering a few sentences together.
“Thank you.” I bowed my head.
“It is not a compliment,” he deadpanned, surprising me. I looked up, frowning. He sighed, took another hit, and talked with the joint clasped between his fingers.
“I’m stubborn and pigheaded and extremely unreasonable at times. I love your mother, but I am the first to recognize I’ve put her through hell with my radical moods. I have no manners to speak of, and I’m sarcastic even when the time doesn’t call for it—which is always. I want you to promise me something.”
I hoped to hell he didn’t mean to warn me against being sarcastic. I’d need to cut off half of my brain and my tongue to be on the path toward not making a dark joke out of everything.
“Hit me with it,” I said guardedly.
“Give love a chance. It is rare and raw and completely life changing. A girl like Madison doesn’t fall into your lap every other day. If you miss your chance with her, there’s no guarantee another girl who is tailor made for you will just walk into your life. I know Amber hurt you, bad. You didn’t love her, though. You wanted to get settled and get the romance thing out of the way. I saw the way she looked at you. I saw the way you looked at her.”
I knew what he meant. I’d looked at postcollege Amber like a new, shiny, limited-edition car. She’d raised my stock and seemed like a good addition to my life at the time. I looked at Madison like she was a piñata full of surprises and orgasms I wanted to burst. With my dick-shaped bat. She kept me on my toes and made me second-guess what she was going to do or say. And I had ended up watching Me before You. Guess what? Louisa Clark was hot as hell.
“Open up your heart. Life is shorter than you think. And when you’re in my position, bedridden,