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Chapter Twelve
Finley
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Ilay on my side facingAbel, watching the moonlight glitter across his handsome face as it peeks in through the blinds. I can’t tear my eyes away, no matter how desperate they are to close.
I pretended to be asleep for the better part of a half an hour before Abel finally dozed off next to me roughly an hour ago. Despite how exhausted I felt, and still feel, I didn’t want to lose a single moment of what little time I had left to exist with him.
Last night was the best night of my life. A life I’m not quite ready to let go of yet.
Ten hours, that’s how much time had passed from the moment he sat down next to me at the bar until the moment he drifted to sleep with me in his arms.
Ten hours...
Such a small piece of time and yet it feels like those ten hours changed everything. My life went from something I wandered through to something I felt like I was finally living.
I’ve spent my entire life looking for this type of feeling, this type of connection to another person. I never thought it would happen so fast. That a mere attraction would morph into something as strong as love. But it did.
It sounds insane. Hell, everything about last night and this morning has been insane. But that doesn’t make how I feel any less true. It is true. I feel it in every cell and vessel in my body–so strongly that it’s a wonder my heart doesn’t implode from the weight of it all.
Sadness and dread pool in my stomach.
I’ve always felt like something was missing in my life. That if I just kept going, kept fighting, eventually I would find the meaning for all of it. And now, now that I feel like I’m finally where I’m meant to be, I can’t stay. I can’t reach out and take the life I’ve always wanted because that life is no longer in the cards for me.
I try to picture how Abel will react when he wakes up and finds me gone.
We didn’t exchange phone numbers. He doesn’t know where I work or where I live. Hell, he doesn’t even know my last name. It will be like he spent the night with a ghost, because once I leave that’s all I will be to him. A ghost. Some girl he spent one crazy night with.
I hope it meant as much to him as it did to me. I hope he thinks about me often, and when he does that amazing smile of his slides across his face. I may not be alive to see it, but I hope I impacted his life even a fraction of how much he’s impacted mine.
I reach out and trail my hand lightly down the side of his face, closing my eyes as the scruff on his cheek tickles my palm. Tears prick the back of my eyelids and before long they are rolling down my face.
I’m on the verge of falling apart as everything I’ve pushed down over the last few hours comes boiling to the surface, made worse by what I know I have to do next. I have to say goodbye.
I can hate that I’m sick, hate the cancer that threatens to take my life before it’s even really begun, but I can’t hate what it brought me to.
If I wasn’t sick, if dying wasn’t something I was facing, I may have never had the courage to explore this with Abel. I wouldn’t have been in that bar, and even if I had been, I never would have been brave enough to leave with him. Dying has a way of putting things into perspective and because of this; because I thought there was no possibility of tomorrow, it allowed me to be myself in a way I don’t think I’ve ever been with another person.
I blink rapidly, trying to clear my vision. If I focus on the positive, on what this night gave me, then maybe I can do this. Maybe I can say goodbye and be filled with happiness over what I got to have versus the sadness of what I’m losing.
But this is so much harder than I had anticipated. I knew this night would end. I knew I’d have to say goodbye. I just didn’t realize how impossible it would feel when the moment finally arrived.
Letting my hand fall away, I gently push back the covers and roll to the side, carefully sliding out from underneath his arm. The second my feet hit the cool hardwood all I want to do is crawl back into bed with Abel and never leave. The urge is so strong that I have to physically force myself toward the door, collecting my clothing on the way out.
I turn for a brief moment, soaking him in one last time. The curve of his back. The messy way his hair falls against the pillow. The slight part of his lips as he breathes. My heart physically aches at the thought of never seeing him again.
But why can’t I?
It’s a question I hadn’t asked myself until this very moment. Why can’t I see him again?
Being sick doesn’t mean certain death. There’s still a chance I can fight this. Still a chance I can survive. And isn’tthisworth it? Isn’theworth it? Yesterday I was ready to lie down and accept my fate. But today... Today is a new day.
It really is a testament to how much can change in the course of only a few hours. Take my surgery for instance. The few hours the procedure will take will determine whether I live or die. So many hours pass by with little to no meaning. And yet others are life altering.
I will see him again.
It’s a promise I make to myself. A silent promise I make to him. One day. Maybe a year from now, maybe five, I will find him again. When the cancer is gone. When my life is mine again and doesn’t belong to a faceless disease. I have to. This can’t be the end.
