Page 63 of Enchanted

I hummed. “It’s not that I’m not a fan…more that I don’t really have anyone to go with.”

“But you did back then?”

My throat bobbed as the stars grew foggy. “I did, yes. I had…god, just the best group of friends. But after I met Dave, we drifted apart. My fault, not theirs. Never thought I’d be the kind of guy whose life revolved around his boyfriend, but apparently I am.”

Rami stayed silent, so I rambled on. “Didn’t help that we moved to LA not long after graduation. The gaps between our phone calls became longer and longer. And you know what? I was glad.”

“Why glad? Because you felt guilty about how things were changing?”

“That was definitely part of it. But mostly…I think it’s because I kept lying to them. I made it sound like I was living the best version of my life. Like I was happy. Like everything was perfect with Dave.”

“But it wasn’t.”

I shook my head. “No. Far from it.”

Rami was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, Ethan.”

That had me lifting my head. “What are you apologising for?”

There was an emotion shining in his eyes that I couldn’t quite place. “I’m just picturing you in a new city, in a new country, far away from everyone and everything you know, thinking you were making the best decision but realising that wasn’t the case. It… Fuck. I hate to think of what you went through.”

“You might want to buckle up for this next part, then,” I said heavily. “Because that’s the high point of the story.”

Now Rami was the one staring at the stars above us. “Fuck. Okay. Hit me with it.”

Despite the conversation, I found myself smiling softly. Rami was one hell of an empathetic man if he felt this strongly about someone he barely knew.

“Fourteen months ago, I had a seizure.” My mind flashed back to that time. The confusion. The fear. The utter panic. “At the time, I didn’t even know what was happening. I was on a shoot, the first one I’d managed to secure in months. Barely got ten shots off before everything went black. Next thing I knew, I was in the back of an ambulance being carted off to hospital.”

Rami’s head lowered to meet my gaze. “Epilepsy?”

My throat bobbed. “A brain tumour.”

He went very still.

“Everything happened very quickly after that.” My shoulders tensed as memories continued to assault me. “When they finally had a diagnosis…well, it was as bad as it gets. Stage four cancer in multiple organs. They gave me eighteen months.”

Rami didn’t speak, but his eyes were burning as he watched me talk.

“We flew home almost immediately.” I skimmed my fingers over the surface of the water in the hope of distracting myself. “Dave quit his job. We gave up the lease and came to London.”

“You needed the NHS,” Rami murmured in understanding. “And London has the best cancer hospitals in the country. You decided to fight it.”

“Yes,” I said simply. “Do you think that was wrong?”

“Fuck no. Whatever you choose to do in that situation is the right decision. You have to be brave to have treatment or to choose not to. If anyone judges you for whatever you opt for, they aren’t worth having in your life.”

“You’re right,” I said in surprise. “I never looked at it like that, but I will in future.”

“In future? Sorry, I’m a little confused. You don’t…you don’t seem sick now. Are you?”

“That’s the strangest fucking thing,” I confessed. “A few weeks ago, I had chemo. Afterwards, I was expecting all the usual side effects, but there was nothing.”

“Is that not a good thing?”

“It’s a weird thing. It threw me. I convinced myself that it meant I was having a final rally or something. That the treatment had stopped working entirely and death was waiting just around the corner.”

Rami rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I’m guessing that wasn’t the case?”