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“From what I could hear,” he rasped, his breathing shallow, “Max is nuts about you but you don’t want that.”
“Right,” I said, not wanting to think or talk about Max when Larry was lying in a hospital bed looking likethis.
Especially when I was still so pissed at myself for falling. How the hell had I fallen into a pit of feelings for Max when I’d worked so hard to keep my feet firmly planted on solid ground?
“So are you not attracted to him, is that it?” he asked, raising a very overgrown white eyebrow.
“Oh, no,” I said, remembering Detroit. “Max and I have chemistry through the roof.”
“He’s an asshole, then? I kind of thought he would be, honestly; he’s too hot to be nice.”
“He’s actually not,” I said, thinking that it had to be a good sign that, though weak, Larry didn’t seem to be in any kind of pain.
“Is he a player?”
“No.”
“A pervert?”
“I get what you’re doing,” I said, smiling in spite of myself. “And I get it. But we can talk about Max after you’re home, okay?”
“We’re talking about him now, damn it, because there’s no time to waste.”
The tears returned, and I quickly wiped them away, not wanting to worry him.
“I can’t understand why you’d back away from a really good shot at true love.”
“Haven’t we talked about this?” I asked on a mirthless, sad laugh. “I thought you agreed with me that there’s no such thing.”
“I just wanted you to shut your face hole, so I faked it,” he said, closing his eyes. “The truth is that who gives a flying fuck if you’ve been hurt in the past? Who cares if you’ve been cheated on? You have togethurt to get to the good stuff, don’t you see?”
“No.”
“When you’re a baby, you don’t stop taking steps just becauseyou’ve fallen once, or you’d never walk. The falls help you learnhowto walk, for fuck’s sake, to make balance and gait adjustments. If you never fell, you’d do something outrageously stupid, like walk on your toes like a ballerina, which would result in you getting your ass kicked every day of your life for looking like a dipshit.”
“That... doesn’t make any sense.”
“But the first part did,” he said, and I nodded in agreement.
“Think about this. What if you could see into the future and know that Max was only going to live for two more weeks. Would you want to spend two weeks being his friend and holding your feelings at bay—wasting what you’ve been given, or would you want to spend every minute of every day loving him with every single part of you?”
I blinked back tears.Holy shit, was he right?
WasI wasting what we’d been given?
“And the truth of the matter is that if you fell madly in love with him today and threw all caution to the wind—and then he cheated on you two years from now—would it really feel that much worse than denying yourself the love and companionship you deserve? Than how you feel right now?”
“Larry,” I sighed, but couldn’t come up with more than that because for some reason, his words were making sense.
There was a knock at the door, and Rose entered, looking irritated.
“Rose,” Larry said, closing his eyes.
“Sit up, you damn liar,” she hissed, reaching out and delivering a firm smack to his shoulder.
“Rose! What are you doing?” I asked, standing up and stepping between Rose and Larry. “He’s supposed to be resting.”
“Resting what—hislips?” Rose looked pissed.
