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Chapter Ten


Jaymie

I finished eating, cleaned the kitchen, washed and put away the dishes, and then gave Nick fifteen more minutes - an hour in total since he had stormed out of the dining room. I figured if he wanted to talk about it that he’d come back downstairs and talk about it. I sat in the living room, the TV on but muted, watching the clock and QVC.

I knew how to calm him down.

I got up and went upstairs and knocked on the bedroom door.

Nothing.

“Nick,” I called. Still nothing. “Nick.”

The door opened and he stood in the frame with an unreadable expression. “Sorry,” he said, followed by a short sigh. “It’s just been a long couple weeks or whatever it’s been.” Nick leaned against the door jam, his hands on the wood, the veins in his forearms sticking out as he put his weight against his wrists. “I didn’t mean to act like a moron down there.”

“Well you did really good at it, for something you weren’t trying to do,” I said.

“It’s a talent of mine,” he said, “One of the lesser-known ones. Being a moron. Didn’t really brag about that one much to Tiger Beat back in the day, so few know how really good I am at it.”

I shook my head, “Nobody believed anything in Tiger Beat anyways. Not after we grew up.”

Nick smirked, “I can show you the Beanie Baby collection to prove it, if you want.”

“You don’t have Beanie Babies,” I said.

“I do,” he answered.

“Liar.”

Nick’s smirk grew. “They’re in Florida. I wish to fuck they were here just so I could blow your mind.”

“I think there’s something else you’d rather blown,” I said.

Nick’s smirk receded and he lowered his arms from the door frame slowly, shaking his head. “Not right now,” he said, and he turned and went into the bedroom, leaving the door open.

I stood in the hallway, stupefied for a moment, then followed him. “What?” I said.

Nick lowered himself into the chair in front of his desk.

“Seriously, Nick, what’s going on with you? In seventeen years, you have never turned down a blow job.” I raised an eyebrow and put my hand on my hip.

He closed his eyes. “I have a headache.”

“Okay. You’re seriously a woman recently.” I stared at him.

He opened his eyes and looked up at me. “Stop being a bitch.”

“I’m pretty sure turning down sex because of a headache is more of a bitch thing to do than anything I’ve done,” I snapped.

Nick licked his lips, angry. “Why’d you come up here for? To keep making fun of me?” He stood up. “I told you something real down there and you just blew it off, like you think it’s funny, like you think I’m not capable of falling in love and being married.”

“Because you aren’t,” I laughed, “Nick. This is you.”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, his eyes piercing, “I’ve done a fuck of a lot for myself, haven’t I? Look around you. This house? This career? It wasn’t exactly handed to me. I worked like a son-of-a-bitch for everything I’ve got. I can do anything I put my mind to and that includes marriage, okay? So don’t treat me like I’m some kind of unlovable asshole. It’s not true. I know it and you know it. I mean, you gotta love me, at least a little. Or else you wouldn’t be here.” He paused. “Right?”

I didn’t want to define what I felt about Nick. I spun away from him. “I’m not saying you’re unlovable or that you’re incapable of being married. I’m saying it’s not like you to want that. Nothing you’ve been doing lately is like you.”

Nick came around me so we were looking at each other again. “Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I can’t be like me anymore.” He stared into my eyes. “Jaymie, I don’t wanna be alone anymore. I need someone.”

My mouth felt dry. I’d wondered for years what would happen to me when this time came, when Nick grew up and realized that the relationship we had wasn’t enough for him. I didn’t have anywhere to go, I realized. I never did go to college, I never really made much of myself other than everything Nick needed me to be. In the real world, I was a broken shell of a person, void of experience, void of knowledge. Panic filled me at the thought of leaving, of having to rely on that world out there.

Maybe, I thought, I’d stuck around with Nick so long because I was afraid of facing reality.

Maybe it was time I did it anyways.

“Jaymie,” he said thickly, “I --”

“I’ll help you,” I interrupted him.

He blinked, “What?”

“I’ll help you find someone.”

“But that’s not --”

“It’s okay,” I interrupted him. “It’s okay. I think it’ll work. I can help you find the perfect woman for you. And -- and I’ll work on moving out. So you can -- be happy. With her.” I nodded.

Nick licked his lips, “You don’t have to move out.”

“Yeah I do,” I said, “I lived with my father and Pilates long enough to know I do. You don’t want me being all awkward and third-wheely while you’re married to some perfect dream woman,” I laughed. “Besides, imagine trying to introduce us? Honey, this is Jaymie, she used to be my fuck buddy? I don’t think that would help your marriage much.”

Nick laughed a little, and looked down at his feet.

“Besides, you’re right. You can do anything you put your mind to and you deserve to be loved the way you want to be,” I added. He looked up at me and I gently rested one of my hands on his cheek. “You’re a good man, Nick. And you’re going to live happily ever after.”

His eyes practically burned into mine. “I dunno about that,” he said thickly.

“I do,” I said.




Nick

On the computer on the desk behind Jaymie, I could see the web page of Google Images I’d been scrolling through when she’d come in. Pictures of MRIs and diagrams and bloody surgical pictures glowed on the screen as Jaymie leaned in and wrapped her arms around me, squeezing me tight, having just said pretty words about happily ever after.

I could barely breathe.

I was waffling again. I had been since I’d come up the stairs. I couldn’t do this to her. I couldn’t reel her in, attach myself to her, and… and die. To do so would be to be far too much like the tumor was doing to my brain.

Me, that’s me, I’d thought, staring at this particularly nasty diagram of a brain tumor which looked like some kind of horrifying alien monster, metastasizing itself to the inside of a perfectly normal human brain, all these stringy little arms curling and weaving through the folds of brain flesh. Me, the tumor, and Jaymie, the brain. The brain that deserves better than a fuck-up of a cell cluster ruining everything.

I closed my eyes.

She was right. Nothing I’d been doing lately had been like me because me had had all the time in the world. No deadlines. There was nothing pushing me out of immaturity, nothing forcing me to come to terms with myself, to experience life before I couldn’t anymore. But now there was this wall, this point zero that I was counting down to, like a spaceship aimed at the atmosphere, rockets firing, the countdown on.

It occurred to me that if it wasn’t fair to do it to Jaymie, it wasn’t fair to do it to anyone. Not that I particularly wanted anyone else. But anybody that I fell in love with, that I shared myself with at this point, would be forced to love something so temporary that it would be like running into a firing squad, infatuated with the bullets that filled the air… or into the maw of a great white shark, professing adoration for the gleaming teeth it would rip them apart with. Falling in love with the kill switch.

I had waited too long.

Houston, we have a problem, I thought.

Jaymie rubbed my back, then pulled away. She looked up at me, a smile on her face. “Now, Nick, I need to know something very important.”

“Yeah?” I croaked, my eyes still on the images on the computer.

“Are we still going to fuck each other? At least until you find her?”

I nodded numbly.

“Is your headache better?” she whispered.

“It’s as good as it’s gonna get,” I replied honestly.

“I think I know a remedy,” she said hoarsely, and she took a hold of my hands and pulled me around, pushing me gently into the desk chair and dropping to her knees in front of me, running her hands up my thighs to my belt. I reached over and shut the lid of the laptop, hiding the pictures I’d been looking at as she opened the button and unzipped my fly and pulled my jeans away, and my stomach turned with excitement and fear because this was as close to someone as I’d ever be. And even this, I realized, was far too dangerously close. After all, an indirect hit can sometimes cause more damage than a direct bullseye.

Even this would have to end before the end.