My chest tightened. Heat flooded my skin. Sweat slid down my spine. Breathing was hard, the motion of exhaling and inhaling difficult—as if my breaths just couldn’t get deep enough.
How could she do this to me?
I knew she would eventually want this, but the date was almost right after the group sessions were complete. I wouldn’t have any time with her. The only thing holding us together was this stupid fucking bucket list.
Lennon emerged from her room somehow even more beautiful than she had been two minutes ago. But I couldn’t hide my emotions that were written all over my face. It was despair laced with anger. Everything was bubbling up. It crept to the surface waiting to erupt.
“How could you?” I whispered, unable to hide the sadness in my voice.
Uncertain, she treaded lightly. “What…what do you mean?”
I slumped my head, knowing she knew what I meant.
“Were you going to tell me your death date was in six weeks?”
She froze. The moment I had said it out loud, she knew she had been caught. She also knew this conversation wasn’t going to just go away.
She knew she would have to address it.
She looked ashamed. “Yes, I have my date set.”
She couldn’t even look me in the eye. Her arms engulfed her body in them.
“Why are you even mad?” she questioned.
A hollow scoff came out. “You’re unbelievable, Lennon. I told you everything last week. Everything! I shared things that I’d rather not have shared. You think I like saying out loud that I could die any fucking moment? That I’m terrified? You think I love telling you about my fears when those same fears are your dreams?”
My voice cracked.
“You might want to die,” I continued sombrely, “but babe, I fucking don’t. I always wanted to live, but now that I’ve met you? Goddamn, I want to live even harder than I ever have before. Don’t you feel that way, too?”
Lennon opened her mouth to speak, but stopped. Then she went to speak again, her words meek. “I do. I do feel that way toward you Asher. But—but it’s not going to last. You know that.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “Why? Because I’m dying?”
She screwed her eyebrows in a scowl and then let loose.
“No, you fucking idiot! Because life is shit. People are shit. We’re only going to hurt one another eventually, and why would I stick around to find out how shitty it’s going to get? You may not hurt me now, or tomorrow, or a month from now, but eventually you will. Eventually you’ll grow tired of my bullshit, and you’ll fuck someone else, or hit me, or both, who fucking knows. But you will.”
There was a silence that filled the space between us, a painful tension. The accusation of what she had just said collided with me.
“How could you think that about me?”
“I think it about myself too, Asher,” she said in response. “It’s just who I am. I know if it isn’t you who hurts me, it’ll be me hurting you. Wouldn’t you want to leave this fairytale at its best part?”
She stopped because she meant it. That was the worst part.
“You knew that this day would come, right?” Her voice was now soft. “You knew this was the plan all along.”
I dropped my head once more.
“I know,” I choked out. “But I thought you’d—”
I couldn’t even finish my sentence.
“Change my mind?”
I nodded.
