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To think there’ll be a time when I won’t be able to see her, sitting right there in front of me, so beautiful it feels like my heart is being torn out of my body. The world creates beauty like this, and then takes my eyes away from me.
The cruelty of it is ripping me apart.
She puts her glass down. “Anthony?”
“My eyes are getting worse.”
“Oh. It’s progressing?”
“Quicker than the doctor had thought.”
It’s there, then. The look of pity and sorrow in her eyes. I can see it and it hurts like a freight train. That I’m the one causing her this. That I’m someone to be pitied. Both and neither, all wrapped up in one.
“Do they have a timeline?” she asks.
I shake my head and look past her to the beckoning sunlight beyond. “Nothing concrete, but he said a couple of years, most likely. Could be two. Could be eight. But it’s not decades, at least.”
“I’m so sorry, Anthony.”
The soft-spoken words grate. I don’t want to be someone she’s sorry for. I want to be someone she can trust, someone she can turn to. A man she can see a future with.
Fuck, I haven’t let myself think of the future in a long time. But I want it now, with her. I want it so bad it’s like acid on my tongue. And I can’t have it.
“It might be easier for you if we end this now.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“It might be easier for you if you don’t get too invested in this before I’m out of the picture. Ending it now as opposed to in a year or two.”
“Anthony,” she says, with infuriating calm, “you’re not dying.”
I have to smile at that. It’s humorless, like me, like the pathetic existence I have to look forward to. “I might as well be. My way of life is dying. My career. My interests.”
“You bought the house in Montauk as a getaway,” she whispers.
“Yes, well, I suppose I should start learning where everything is. It’ll be a prison soon enough.”
She shakes her head. “Is this why you told me once you had no interest in relationships? In love?”
The words slip through my teeth like nails beneath a tire. Puncturing something on their way out. “I’m not going to be a burden on anyone, Summer. I refuse.”
She pushes her chair back and stands. “You wouldn’t be a burden. Anthony, you can’t possibly think that.”
“I can’t possibly think that? So you’ll never get tired of me not being able to navigate the house we live in? Never resentful that I can’t take you places? That I’ll slow you down, hinder your trips, stand in the way of all those dreams of yours. Your bucket list, Summer. I won’t be able to tell you if your haircut looks good, let alone hike with you to Machu Picchu.”
There’s a stunned look on her face. She hasn’t considered this, then. Good. I’ve had enough time to consider it for the both of us.
“There are ways,” she murmurs. “Ways to learn to live with it. Guide dogs, white canes, braille… I know this won’t defeat you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’re stronger than this, Anthony. You’re the strongest person I’ve met.”
I shake my head at her. “You don’t understand.”
She buries her hand in Ace’s fur. He’s pressed against her leg, looking between us. “I don’t. You’re right. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be here, because I do, Anthony.”
“You want children,” I say. “It’s on your bucket list.”
