Page 47 of Living at 40

[Logan]

For the first time since we started this crazy venture, I don’t follow Autumn into her room but kiss her in the hallway outside her bedroom door before holding it open for only her. Her expression is puzzled. Her eyes seek mine with one question, but I simply shake my head, offering a weak smile. The beginning of the end is coming, and I need to pull myself away from her. Something happened while we were making out. Something inside me broke while my fingers stroked inside her.

I felt myself slipping, falling, drowning in love with her and the desire to keep her. But that wasn’t what she wanted from me. I’d never measure up, and while I teased her with my ridiculous secrets about men, I wasn’t kidding.

We were simple creatures, and all we really wanted was to be loved. We wanted to be the center of another person’s world, but Autumn didn’t want to orbit me. She wanted a baby. That little, beautiful human being we hopefully created would be her sun. A baby was what she wanted to feed her need to nurture without all the craziness of a man taking from her.

The others were all fools.

I was an idiot.

Closing the door to my own bedroom, I fall onto the bed, heart heavy and head muddled from the wine, the taste of her on my tongue, and the scent of her on my fingers. She surrounded me in all the places it would hurt most, and I would take the punishment as it was the first time in years my heart thumped this hard. Making out with her was almost worse than making love to her. The patience to go slow. The desire to speed up. The contradiction was the thrill, just as it was with any woman—the contradictory sex—frustrating and fascinating. Despite all the confusing thoughts circling my head, though, I only wanted to think of her because too soon, thoughts were all I’d have.

+ + +

Wine headaches are the worst, or so I thought until Friday night arrives. It’d been a day of rain and gloom, which adds to the lingering sense of ending. Autumn had to work, and I’d spent time playing board games with crabby kids and sore losers. Mason can be the worst when someone purchases Sears Tower in an older edition of the game Chicagopoly. After the kids have all gone their separate ways for bed or movies, depending on their ages, Ben asks us to meet him in the sitting area off the kitchen.

I’m tired and want to call it an early night, climbing into bed behind Autumn and falling into her as we soak up the last hours of this vacation. I have no way of knowing if she’s pregnant or not. She explained to me how the timing was right, and we were playing a bit of Russian roulette in hopes something happens. Thinking of her with another man, working at becoming pregnant with someone else, makes me sick to my stomach. I don’t want her to move on, which doesn’t feel fair of me to ask. We made no promises to one another. I’m going back to Indiana on Sunday. She’ll stay here. Life will go on.

“So, you’re probably wondering why I’ve asked you to hang out again,” Ben states, his voice uneasy as he rubs his hands over his upper thighs. He’s sitting on an overstuffed chair that holds two people, and Anna sits beside him. One hand of hers is stroking up his back, and another wraps around his wrist.

While those words in that combination should mean nothing other than sounding too formal, there’s a quiver to Ben’s voice that has the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. He swallows, and I can almost hear the roll of his throat across the room where I sit beside Autumn. We sit closer than necessary for such a large couch. Her thigh presses against mine, and I want to wrap my arm around her shoulder, tucking her into my side, like Anna is doing with Ben in a sense. I fixate on how the wife of one of my best friends strokes up his back and tightens her hand on his arm. She’s staring at the side of his face, as if holding her breath, hanging on the precipice of what he might say next.

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m going to blurt it out and then go backward.” His voice cracks, and his lids blink a few times rapidly. He swallows once more before speaking. “I’m dying.”

A deafening silence fills the room, and I’m not even certain I’ve heard him correctly. He must be joking, and I begin to smile, ready to say as such to him. You fucker, that’s hilarious.

“Aren’t we all,” I snap, chuckling to myself, reining in my sharper retort. We’re forty. We’re entering a crossroads in our lives. Over the hill is what people used to call this time period.

Heaviness falls among us despite my joke. Anna closes her eyes, and Zack sits forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. He swipes both hands over his mouth. Noticeably, two people not reacting. One is Autumn who sits perfectly still beside me. With her thigh pressed against mine and her hands folded in her lap, white-knuckled and stiff, I know that she knows whatever the fuck Ben is talking about. She’s his sister. My head swivels from her tightly clasped hands to Mason, who also sits still with his head lowered and his fingers clutching the cushions on either side of his thighs. That fucker also knows what’s going on.

“Am I the last to know?” I blurt, but Zack’s quick neck crane in my direction informs me he had no idea either. My heart races while my hands turn cold. “What’s happening?”

“I’d been experiencing some stomach trouble, and I attributed it to stress. The doctor told me I was suffering from acid reflux, but the pain was getting worse, and I just wasn’t feeling right.” Ben’s expression pinches as he waves a hand over his midsection. “I kept ignoring it. Taking more antacids. I didn’t have time to slow down, as the doctor suggested. I worked out and sometimes thought maybe the pain was from intense ab work. Maybe I was pushing myself too hard.”

Ben takes a deep breath, glancing at Anna as if she can confirm all he says, or maybe he’s looking at her as his strength, the center of his world, the woman who takes care of him.

“I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.”

Zack presses just the tips of his fingers over his lips while his elbows still balance on his knees. I remain slouching into the couch cushions as if they support me, propping me upright. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know enough about this disease.

“The mortality rate is high. I’ve already had some rounds of chemotherapy, but it didn’t work to reduce or destroy the cancer cells. Typically, once cancer latches onto the pancreas, it isn’t letting go.” Ben bitterly chuckles, and I wonder if he’s quoting what he’s been told.

“How long?” Zack asks, the question choked out of him.

“They’re giving me less than a year.”

“Fuck,” I hiss and notice Mason closing his eyes. I can’t look at Autumn. I can’t process that she hadn’t told me. My best friend is dying, and she didn’t mention it.

“This is why you’re moving,” Zack states, calm, conscious, and controlled. He’s listing things in his head, sorting the reasons outside of our best friend having a life sentence on him. “But why here? Wouldn’t you get the best medical care in Chicago? This is a small town. This is a resort area.” His voice is slowly rising, struggling with the tension.

“We discussed it.” Ben looks at Anna, finally placing a hand on her knee and squeezing. “And I don’t want the best medical care. I want the best life.” He turns from his wife to us. “I want to spend my time in a place that makes me happy. I want to come home.”

It’s strange to think Ben considers Lakeside his home. He’s been living in Chicago almost twenty years, giving up his father’s business to start his own and be near the woman he loved.

“Do the kids know?” I ask, recalling that moving in and of itself seemed like a big change. They were giving up the familiarity of a house, schools, and friends, but now they’d live in a new place, starting over, and eventually losing their dad on top of it. Instantly, I think of Lorna and my own mortality. I wouldn’t want to leave her behind, yet the natural course of life says I should go first. I will go first but hopefully not at forty. Hopefully not while she still has so much life to live. I want to be there for all of it. Dances and dates. Wins and losses. High school. College. Jobs. Love. Motherhood. I want to be a grandpa someday, and I realize I’m so far ahead of myself, and my friend will miss out on all of it. He’s going to lose everything, including his life.

“They know I’m sick. An internet search could give them answers, so we had to be honest, at least with the boys. They know I don’t have much time. Mila only knows I have cancer, and it’s not contagious. We haven’t discussed death as much with her. We don’t want her to worry before it’s time.”