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Chapter Thirty-Eight


Jaymie

It was still raining outside. I wished I’d remembered the rain when I’d stormed out the door onto the deck, but I’d been too angry and once I was out there I wasn’t going to go back in. I stood at the rail, staring out at the monotone gray ocean and the rain falling diagonally across my field of vision. Nick took a few minutes before he opened the deck door. “Jaymie,” he said from just inside, where it was warm and dry, “Come back inside.”

“No,” I said.

“Let’s talk,” he tried.

“I’m not talking to you,” I said.

“C’mon.”

“No.” Even though I was back-to him, I crossed my arms, just to punctuate the no.

He stood there a second. He sighed. I could feel him staring at my back. “Jaymie, you know I can’t go out there. If I caught a cold or something right now…” he let the sentence drop away, his voice tired.

“I am well aware you can’t come out here in the rain. Why do you think I am standing in it? I want to be away from you. Leave me alone.”

“Jaymie,” he pleaded.

“Nick, for fuck’s sake.”

“What? What’d I do?” he asked.

I spun around to look at him, wild eyed, “What did you do? What did you -- I can’t even.” I turned back to the ocean. “Fucking A. What did you do. Jesus.” I gripped the railing of the deck, my fingers tight to keep from shaking. It was damn cold out there. I gritted my teeth.

“You’re shivering,” he commented.

“I am not,” I replied. But my words trembled a little.

“Jaymie. Just come inside.”

“No.”

Nick let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Fine. You ain’t gonna come in like a reasonable adult…”

The sound of the door sliding followed.

I thought he went inside. Thought he closed the door.

Then, without any warning, I was swept up off the ground. I screeched, kicking my legs, and Nick, barefoot and in nothing but old sweatpants, carried me back into the house, my limbs flailing. “Put me down!” I screamed. He kicked the deck door closed and the wind and rain were left outside. “Put me down! What do you think you’re doing? You’re a bastard! Put me down!!!” But he didn’t until he got to the living room and then he deposited me on the couch unceremoniously.

I was dripping wet, my hair matted to my head. Now that I was back inside in the warm I felt even colder. I scrambled to sit up, though, and Nick sat on the coffee table in front of me. The ankles of his pants were soaked and there was water dripping off his scalp and off the end of his nose. I glared at him. “What the fuck did you do that for?” I demanded.

“What are you so angry for?” he asked.

“Because,” I replied.

“Because why?” he asked.

“Why’s it even matter?” I asked stubbornly, “Huh? Do my emotions really change anything for you? What’s the fuck it really matter what’s wrong with me? No one gives a damn what their hookers feel.”

“Hookers?”

I snuffed and crossed my arms and held my chin aloft.

“Is this ‘cos of the money?”

“You don’t pay people for having sex with you unless they’re a hooker.”

“That wasn’t -- ugh.” Nick leaned forward, covered his eyes with the heels of his hands and shook his head, “God damn it, Jaymie. How could you think that, after last night?”

“You said it was a mistake.”

“It was,” he answered.

“You know most girls would’ve dumped your ass the second you said you didn’t love them, that it was the tumor talking when you said you did. They wouldn’t have hung around and cleaned your house and fed your pets and done your laundry and cleaned your bandages and ---” I shook my head, “I must be the dumbest bitch in the whole world, to stay here when I know -- when a man tells you he doesn’t love you… you don’t stay, god damn it.” I stood up and paced away.

Nick lowered the hands from his eyes. He turned to look at me. “When in fuck’s name did I tell you that I don’t love you?” he demanded.

“When you came home from the hospital,” I said. “When we talked. You said you didn’t feel right saying it outloud ‘cos you still needed me, and I said it was okay, you didn’t have to say it, because I already knew. It was in your eyes for days.”

Nick’s nose flared, a pained expression in his eyes. “Jaymie,” he said quietly, “I never said the words I don’t love you.”

My brain raced. Hadn’t he?... but no, no actually, he hadn’t.

My stomach twisted.

“I said that I couldn’t say what I felt,” he said quietly. “I said it wasn’t fair to you to tell you how I feel about you.”

Was he saying…?

I could feel tears in my eyes.

“God damn it, Jaymie, I love you. I love you so fuckin’ much I can’t stand to tell you I love you because I’m afraid that when I die you’ll be broken and I don’t wanna break you.” He stood up, eyes fierce, straddling a line between love and anger. “So I made a choice not to say it.”

“Well maybe you should let me make my own fucking choices!” I bellowed. How dare he not tell me the truth, I thought.

My mind didn’t even process fully what he’d said.

“I didn’t wanna die and break your heart,” he shouted. And just like that, it was a fight. “I don’t know how you handle death! I don’t know what that would do to you, losing me. I didn’t wanna devastate you!”

“Devastate me?” I cried out, “Because I’m so fragile that losing you would devastate me? That losing you might break me?”

I’d expected him to shout back at me. After all, that’s what he normally would’ve done. I expected the fight to continue because usually once we got going we didn’t stop for hours. But instead he stared at me, a flabbergasted look on his face. He lowered down onto the coffee table again and looked down, away from me. It took me a moment to realize that he was upset - not in the angry way we had been, but in a sad way. He took a deep breath, “I dunno,” he said, “Would losing me be devastating to you?”

I suddenly felt like shit. “Of course it would,” I said, recognizing a truly hurt look in his eyes. I walked back over and sat on the couch in front of him. I put my hands on his knees. “Nick. Of course it would be devastating, and of course it would break me.”

His jaw trembled slightly.

“Aw, honey…” I grabbed his hand. “Nick. Of course.”

“I didn’t wanna -- I just -- Nobody else…” His face was crumpled. I squeezed his knee gently. “I just wanted you to be okay after I’m gone and I ain’t here no more to take care of you.”

“Okay? If you died?” I shook my head. “Nick, I would never be okay if you died. I mean I would have to learn to let go eventually, but I wouldn’t just be like whatever about it... whether you’d said you loved me or not. I’d be broken whether you said it or you kept it secret from me all the days you have left.”

“But ain’t it harder?” he asked.

“It’s harder not being able to say it,” I whispered.

Nick looked up in my eyes. “So you… you still… yanno? You still love me? Even though I’m bald and dying?”

“Nick, I thought we covered this before? I reached up and ran my hand over his head softly, catching rain drops that were still dripping from his eyelashes. “Nick, I love you even if you looked like Mr. Mulder, remember?

“I love you,” he said quietly.

And that time the words sank in.





Nick

It was like having a billion pound weight lifted up off my chest. As soon as the words had slipped my mouth, knowing they were words she wanted to hear, I could feel the pressure inside me just seep out. It was so much easier to breathe when Jaymie knew. And hell, yeah I was scared still, but somehow things didn’t seem as impossible. Living for eighteen months didn’t seem far fetched and strange.

We hugged, acting strangely calm for a couple that had just said the long-awaited I love yous. We didn’t rush upstairs and hump like rabbits, we didn’t even make out on the couch. Instead, we both just calmly got up and started getting ready to get our errands done. I pulled on a pair of thick white gym socks and kicked on a pair of Adidas sandals and Jaymie scrunched up her nose when she saw the footwear choice I’d made.

“Seriously?” she said.

“What?”

“Socks and sandals?”

I shrugged.

I changed into a pair of sneakers.

We went to Jason’s office again and even though I’d told Jaymie I was going to take care of her, I still made her stay out in the car while I went inside to talk to Jason. She read an ebook on the ipad in the car while I was inside and when I came out she smiled and closed the little magnetic lid. We went to the grocery store and bought stuff to make food that might be considered okay by my family and I waved a box of condoms at her before dropping it into the basket.

We were unloading our grocery bags into the car when a girl approached me. “Excuse me?”

I looked up.

The girl’s face registered surprise. She cleared her throat. “Are, um, are you --” her eyes were riding on my used-to-be-a-hairline, “Are you Nick Carter?”

I wanted to say no. I could feel her eyes burning through my skull, taking in the scar on the side, the little purple dots that indicated where the radiation needed to point in order to effectively melt away the cancer cells.

I nodded. I couldn’t even say the word yes, I was too embarrassed.

She looked like she’d been about to ask a question, but held it back. Like something more important than what she finally did ask: “Can I have your, um, autograph?” she held up a store receipt and a marker.

I took her stuff and signed it.

“Thanks,” she said.

Then she left. She didn’t ask for a picture. I kinda had a feeling I knew why.

“Well. That was weird,” Jaymie commented. She was used to being basically invisible to fans, or else only noticed for being a good candidate to actually shoot the picture. Jaymie was a pro at shooting cell phone pictures of me with fans.

“Girl gets kudos for recognizing me at all,” I said as the car door closed.

But I’d be a liar if I said that I felt good about it.

I held Jaymie’s hand that she left resting on the center console as she drove home and I stared out the window, realizing how differently people were gonna look at me once they knew. I pictured telling the fans what was happening, pictured their reactions. Twitter was going to explode, I thought. My fingers squeezed Jaymie’s tighter.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Uh huh,” I replied. But I wasn’t. Not really.

I fell asleep that night with Jaymie laying in my arms and I tested out our new, allowable words in the dark of the room under the glow of a nightlight in the bathroom. “I love you,” I said.

“I love you, too,” she answered and she snuggled closer.

She couldn’t get close enough.