“Hey.” Ryder pops out of an alcove leading to the kitchen area. He pecks my lips. “I wasn’t sure you were coming.” He glances at a wall clock.
“Sorry, I forgot to let you know about my appointment.” I pinch his chin and tug on his bottom lip a bit. “I’m still getting used to sharing everyday things with you again.”
“Get used to it, Tweets.” He picks up another box of the marble chess boards and follows me toward the back of the room. “Everything good, though?”
“Oh, yeah, it was a cancer check-up. I’m down to going around every three years.”
Ryder comes to a stop, his face pales a little. “And?”
There is a wash of deeply rooted fear in his eyes, and I’m a terrible person for thinking his stark concern is endearing.
“Still clear. I’m doing all I can to make sure it stays that way, Ryd.”
He clears his throat and nods. “I . . . I mean if you ever want, I’d come to those appointments with you.”
I grab a bag of foam pads that will be placed around each game table to help avoid issues from standing on the hard tile in this room. “Yeah? You didn’t handle the first one all that well.”
“Cut me some slack,” he says. “They made it sound like they were cutting out all your organs.”
I shove his shoulder, laughing. “They did not.”
“To me, that’s what it sounded like.”
I smile, uncertain if the memory is a good or bad thought. More like bittersweet. Ryder had gone to my pre-op appointment—well, he’d waited in the waiting room and heard the information secondhand from my dad as my mom texted him from the appointment room.
Odds are my dad described the surgery to remove my cancerous ovary in a convoluted way, leaving Ryder to assume my intestines were being cut out. Scan after scan, test after test, affirmed it was the best choice, but my heart broke when it was shown the second ovary seemed to barely function, but at least it could stay put under close supervision.
Being so young and talking about freezing eggs, fertility prognosis, and the risks of not doing the surgery were knives to my heart. I’d barely begun to live, and I felt like a huge piece of my future was teetering on the line.
“You basically choked me when you saw me come out of the office,” I say.
“No, I hugged you.”
“Oh, that’s what it’s called.”
Ryder sets a chess set box on top of one of the square tables and starts placing pieces. “I was scared a lot back then. I calmed down after you explained things.”
“True.” My shoulders slump as the bitter parts of that day, of that whole time in life, add pressure to my spine.
Ryder must notice. He pinches my chin between his finger and thumb and draws my mouth close to his. He holds me there, suffering, while I wait for him to finish the job and kiss me.
“And not once,” he whispers, “did I think I didn’t want you because of what had to happen, and how it might make having kids harder.”
“I wish we’d had these conversations back then.”
“We were kids, Tweets, trying to figure out what was going on. Not sure we could’ve thought things through like this.”
I hold his face in my hands and pull him in for a kiss. Longer than I’d planned, but I’m not complaining. Ryder abandons the box of chess pieces and parts my lips, tasting me, holding me closer.
“Ugh.” A deep grunt snaps us apart. “I didn’t realize I’d be dealing with catching you two all over again.”
I laugh when Josh and my dad stand in the doorway, tool belts on, drywall in their hair.
I squeeze Ryder around the waist. It’s as if all the missing pieces to our puzzle are fitting back in place.
All but one.
Ryder
