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I looked the part, but I felt like a piece of glass, shattered and scattered all over.
“Not every night,” I said. “I have my dry spells. Like Tuesday.”
I didn’t know it then—I couldn’t have—but in that moment, the rest of my life, or what was left of it, began.
“Hey, it’s cool. I can’t do cocaine anymore either, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise for all the money I’m saving.”
“This happened last night. We got married at one of those drive-thru chapels, didn’t we…Johnny? Jordan?”
“Wait, don’t tell me…it’s definitely a J name.”
“I can’t be more than that, Kacey.”
Dying, I learned, is a not a team sport. It’s a solitary endeavor. Everyone I loved was standing on dry land, while I was alone on a boat as it slowly pulled away from the shore, and there’s nothing anyone could do about it but watch it happen.
Six months. My art installation was due to be finished for the gallery exhibit in October, five months from now. That’s cutting it close…
“You’ll be in my prayers, Jonah. Tonight and every night.”
No starting over with someone new because there was no time for someone new to become someone significant.
Jonah had some magic quality about him that let me feel like myself.
I’d always dreamed my true love would swoop into my life, sweep me off my feet in one heroic gesture.
“If you think that’s funny, the small furnace is called a glory hole.”
“But all the pieces of your talent—singing, guitar, songwriting…They’re scattered all over, like my installation. Or a constellation. Put them together…” Now he looked up, his smile gentle. “The whole might be pretty spectacular.”
“Fake salt. I’m going to use it on my popcorn too, out of solidarity.
“I was thinking about how we’ve both been hurt by people who were supposed to love us. I protect myself too.
“I hate that people leave when they’re supposed to stay.”
Every time I closed my fucking eyes, I missed her.
“I’m scared that I’m so busy being scared that I’ll never be anything at all.”
was breathing and pulsing and living. And Jonah was dying.
I just want to leave a part of me behind that means something.”
“You’re like Schrödinger’s cat. So long as you never get another biopsy, the lid on the box is closed. You could live a long time. Years, even. Happily in the dark.”
“You can’t fail me. I don’t expect anything from you, Kacey. Only friendship, as much or as little as you want to give.”
“That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility
“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
“That you can find beauty everywhere, even in the things that scare you the most.”
Somehow, some way, his lights will stay on, and I’ll never be lost in the dark.
I can’t take her down that road with me because eventually we’ll come to the place where I have to go on, and she can’t follow.
“Don’t thank me until you’ve crapped in the woods and heard mountain lions outside your tent. This is your initiation, kid.”
“You hit the jackpot,”
“I did,” he whispered. His hands took my face and he kissed me.
He kissed me as if I were something delicate and precious, something he cherished and held with reverence.
“It was your jackpot.” I was your jackpot.
“You don’t have to be sorry. Don’t apologize. That kiss was beautiful. Didn’t you feel it? It felt right and perfect, and it means something. Jonah…”
“Listen to me. I’m more afraid of not being with you than I am of being with you. Or of what might happen four months from now.”
“No. You’ve been a brilliant light in my drab, dark world. But if you let me kiss you again… If we start something right now, time won’t stand still. The end, my end, won’t be some nebulous thing off in the distance. It’ll race toward me, because…”
“Because why?” I whispered. “Because, Kace, the days will count down until there’s only one left,” he said through gritted teeth. “The one where I have to say goodbye to you.”
Seeing the stars reflected in her eyes… that would be amazing. A chance of a lifetime.
committed these moments to memory with the hope I might take them with me wherever I went next.
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” I looked at Kacey sitting beside me. She is not merely an ocean. She is an entire universe.
“I guess Chett’s not worth even a song. Ironic, since that’s why I came back to Vegas. To write about him.”
“I want to kiss you again. I want to kiss you so bad I can’t breathe. I want to be with you every second of my life but… God, Kacey, how much time is that? How do I put you through that?”
“Not yet. Not tonight. We might not have months or years, but we have moments. Thousands upon thousands of them. Let’s take each moment, seize it and wring it dry. Okay?”
She took me inside her, and as my body was wracked with pleasure, I felt the most bittersweet of emotions, soaring and plummeting at the same time: joy, that I had this woman in my life, and a profound ache that I had met her too late.
I would love you forever, Kacey, if I only had the chance.
“Did you guys hear that last night? Mountain lion. Loud one too.”
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They are in each other all along,”
“He won’t jump out of planes or visit far-flung places of the earth. He has no bucket list. He only wants to finish his installation. And I worried—we all did—it wasn’t enough. I have no doubt he’ll finish.
“You were in each other all along.”
