Sloth

by Ella James

  He lifts his head. His are wide, intense. “Can you do that? Leave here after the donation?”

  I smile sadly. “You know I can’t.” I drift my fingers along his collar bone on the side where he’s still bruised from the wreck. “I’ve got a total Heathcliff thing going for you.” I stroke his neck. “Now I know you know that. You’re English and finance, aren’t you? R. said he was an English major.”

  He shuts his eyes. “Cleo, you aren’t Heathcliff. Don’t be. Please?” He peeks his eyes open and pulls me close enough to kiss me. But he doesn’t kiss me. His lips move against my chin, and I can smell the wintergreen mouth wash he’s been using. “You be Cathy. You be rational…and logical.” His voice is soft and low. I love the sound of it. The feel of his words against my jaw.

  “You know I’m the one who got your blow-up palm tree, right? And the bubbles for when the marijuana tincture gets here and you’re high? I’m not logical. I don’t want to be.”

  I squeeze him to me, nuzzling his scratchy cheek. He hasn’t shaved in a few days, and he’s looking rougeish. “Let’s lay down, okay?”

  His eyes slip closed just for a second, then he nods. He reaches around me for the chair, and I step out of his way.

  “Can I—” help, I’m going to ask. But he pulls himself up, wraps his hand around the IV pole, and steps over to the bed. I hang back and let him get settled on his own. It’s hard because I can tell he’s sore, and I feel so bad that I let him kneel there for so long.

  When he’s lying on his not-sore side, I climb up behind him and snuggle up against his back.

  Silence wraps its arms around us. I shut my eyes and focus on the heat of Kellan’s body. I promise myself he’ll be okay. All that stuff he said about me leaving... I tell myself it’s not some prescient feeling he’s having that things will go badly for him. He’s just showing me he loves me.

  I rub his back, so smooth and warm, still rippling with muscle, which feels more rigid than it ever has. “I’m really not leaving. I need you to believe that... and trust me.” Tears make my throat feel thick. I swallow. “I don’t want to be away from you.”

  I feel him stop breathing for a moment. “And if you stayed?” His voice sounds strong, more firm than what’s normal in the last few days. “If you stayed and... things end badly?” he says, quieter now. “How do you think you’d feel about it then?”

  All his muscles tense as he awaits my answer. I close my eyes and try to really go there. To imagine if he wasn’t moving and his skin was cold, and this would be the last time I would be with him.

  I swallow, because the first thing I think is, we would never get to be together in the long-term. Which makes it crystal clear what my heart wants. I press my forehead against his back. “It scares me... to keep saying this when I’m not sure how you feel. But I love you. I can’t help it,” I whisper. “I... need you. In this way that doesn’t make sense, logically. But feels natural to me.” My heart pounds, because it’s terrifying, being so straightforward. “But if you died? I think I’d get comfort knowing I was here as long as I could be. Kinda saw you through... and didn’t leave, you know?” Tears drip down my cheeks, trekking across my face toward the pillow. “I couldn’t leave you. I just can’t, so please don’t make me.”

  I guess he hears the tears in my voice, because Kellan takes the IV lines in one hand and, with a wince, turns over to face me. He frames my face with both his hands, even though I know it hurts to move the left one.

  “I didn’t think you’d come up here. I hoped you wouldn’t find out Ly was your recipient. But now—” he looks into my eyes—“I know I fucked you over. I should never have let things keep on with you. Selfish.”

  The low beeping that I’ve almost tuned out picks up, and I realize his heart is beating fast.

  “What were you really? You’re not selfish. Were you curious? Once you found out I was ‘sloth’... what was that like?” It’s a question I’ve been longing to ask him.

  He shuts his eyes and squeezes my hand. “I loved you too. Before we even spoke. Just watching you.” His eyes open and focus on my face. “I didn’t know it at the time, that that’s what all the interest was. If you tripped on a fucking crack I wanted to go help you. You smiled at someone, I wanted that for me. I would watch your hair...” he works his fingers through it, “and I would want to touch it. See how soft it was. After a while, I realized I didn’t like it, knowing I couldn’t have you. Or anyone, because it wasn’t fair. To let anyone get close to me...” He leans his head down to my chest and hugs me carefully. “The whole thing... started getting to me. I told myself I was pissed off that you were threatening the business. All the charitable deliveries, they depend on the sales. I thought I just needed to get you under heel. But I think even then I knew it could go more places than that.”

  “We were meant to meet each other.”

  HE LOOKS AWAY FROM ME, and I can sense a wave of pain come over him. I can tell because his body tenses, and after a few seconds, he draws a deep breath.

  His eyes shut, and slowly open. “You know, to meet you I have to be sick.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Both times I met you, it was because of cancer.” First because I donated to Lyon, the second time because Kellan was here getting diagnosed with his relapse when his dealers had a dry spell and noticed me.

  He lays back against the pillows and pulls an arm over his eyes. “You know, sloth is a sin,” he says softly.

  “I prefer to think of it as an adorable animal.”

  He peeks at me from underneath his arm. His eyes are dark. “I knew in March.”

  “That you had relapsed?”

  He blinks. “Not ‘knew.’ ‘Thought.’”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” he says bitterly. “I like numbers, remember?” He lets a sharp breath out. “I didn’t like the odds.”

  I feel his jaw clench. “I drove off the bridge.”

  Tears drip down my cheeks. “That hurts a little, not gonna lie. It makes me sad that you felt so backed into a corner. I wish you had talked to me.”

  He gets off the bed. Starts pacing. “I didn’t want you to be here. I didn’t want this.”

  “You want me to go?” My heart pounds.

  “Yes—of course I do.”

  “You didn’t say that when I got here.”

  “A moment of weakness.” His features tense, but that doesn’t stop a single tear from falling down his cheek. “I hurt... worse than ever, the bone pain... the wreck. All I could think of was your hands. I couldn’t live without your hands on me. I knew I couldn’t.”

  I STEP AWAY FROM CLEO. I can’t think straight so close to her... so I grab a TwoCal Arethea left on the bed side table and walk around to the recliner, where I sit and take a long, disgusting swallow.

  “Why’d you come here? Really?” My voice sounds hoarse.

  She’s sitting cross-legged on the bed now. Her eyes flash in my direction. “I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else getting to be near you when I couldn’t. I wanted to comfort you.”

  I swallow and look down at my knees. I don’t know what to tell her. How hard I should try to drive her away. Really hard, my conscience says. I take a breath and blow it out. “You know I’m going to get really sick. Sicker than this. A lot sicker.”

  She nods slowly. “I don’t want that, but if happens, I can handle it.”

  She doesn’t know. She’s only had a taste of this, a few days.

  When I look up again, I find her looking curious. “Did Whitney stay here with your brother, just like this?”

  I nod, trying not to let her see that it bothers me to talk about him. “She would hold his hands while someone pushed a catheter into his cock. She would let him vomit all over them both. She’s a freak. She’s a med student now.”

  “Maybe I’m a freak.”

  My stomach twists. “I don’t know why you would be.”

  “Because I love you.”

>   He swallows carefully and looks back at me. “Cleo, it’s a burden. If you don’t feel that way... you haven’t been here long enough.”

  “It’s not a burden. How could helping you get better be a burden?”

  He clutches his forehead, his fingertips digging into his blond hair. “You gave me love...” he rasps, “and all I can give you is pain.”

  I close the gap between us and wrap both arms around his narrow waist. I lay my cheek against his chest. “That’s not true.” I look up at him. “You give me you, and that’s a gift. You can give you talking to me. I want to know everything there is to know about you, Kellan.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Lie down with me. C’mon... Pretty please?”

  I take his right hand, tugging him along with me, and hold his IV lines while he lies on his side. I watch him shift his left shoulder a few times, then—when I think he seems comfortable—I climb beside him and urge him onto his back.

  I lean over him, dragging my fingers down his cheeks. “Close your eyes. Focus on my fingers.” I kiss his chin, but keep on tickling his cheek. “Is your father your only living family?”

  “No.” He works his jaw. “I have a brother. Barrett. He’s a Ranger, special forces. Just retired.”

  “You don’t like your father much, do you? I remember that from R.’s letters.”

  His eyes come, hard, to mine. “Lyon had a heart attack because the chemo was too harsh. He wanted to withdraw from the trial we did but my dad pushed him to stay in. Bullied him.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I hug him and wrap my arm around his hips. “That sounds like an awful time.”

  “I got treatments out of this hotel, The Carlyle, and after hours I would go to bars, and drink and smoke. Fuck. I had a girlfriend, sort of. But I started... needing sex. I had a central line like this—” his hand hovers above his chest—“so I would tie them up and fuck them from behind. Some of them knew me from the televised games. They would do whatever I asked.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek and try to picture this—my Kellan younger, and so lost. “That must have been hard.”

  His forehead furrows.

  “I mean clearly you were in denial, right?”

  He quirks one brow. “It was definitely hard.”

  “Where was Lyon during that time?”

  “He was inpatient. He had a bad reaction to the chemo from day one. It made his heart fuck up.”

  I think on that. I try to picture younger Kellan out at bars, while his twin was sick. I think of Kellan holding the counter in his kitchen, chewing a Xanax because he missed his brother so much. I meet his gaze. It seems to shove at me.

  “I could have stayed with him.” He grits his teeth. “I didn’t. He was by himself. Whit had no idea. After the night on the yacht—after we found out he had it—he broke things off with Whitney and he left the team. People found out about both things, but no one knew why or what happened. Some fuckhead made a crack about him, how he wasn’t good enough to hold his spot on the team, and I kicked his ass outside a bar one night. So when I got my diagnosis, coach used me as an example.” Kellan’s teeth come down atop his lower lip. “It was different with me than with Ly. The whole thing became more of a secret.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I wanted football for a career. We thought I would do the treatment, then come back. If no one knew, I’d still get scouted just the same. Now they would find out—they look at your medical records—but I’d still be in the running. I could still move forward.”

  It didn’t happen that way. I don’t know the whole story, but Kellan’s chemo consent forms say that this will be his seventh cycle. My stomach aches.

  “Anyway, that didn’t happen, did it? I was fucking bitter after he died. I was here for a while. So that’s when I asked for your info. I was going to write you and say ‘fuck off, he died anyway,’ but I don’t know…” He shrugs. “I guess I couldn’t.”

  I smile softly. “No. You couldn’t.”

  “I wrote you more letters.”

  “What do you mean?” My head goes cold.

  He rubs his eyes, looks into mine. “I wrote to you all the time from my family’s cabin. I was so fucked up. My head was fucked. I was up there by myself, until they brought me Truman. I started telling you things, talking to you like some kind of fucking freak. That’s how I ended up in Georgia. Figured at least one good person was there.”

  “Wow.” My eyes water. “I didn’t know that. Can I…sometime can I see the letters?”

  “I brought them for you.”

  Wow. That really…makes me feel good. And more secure. As if he really does care for me. Love me, even.

  “I’m surprised we met.”

  He nods. “The you being a dealer part of things—that was just some crazy shit. Coincidence.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that...”

  “WHAT MAKES THE DESERT beautiful,” said the Little Prince,

  “is that somewhere it hides a well...”

  –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

  Today is Kellan’s last day of chemo. Yesterday after we talked, we had our best evening here so far. Arethea gave us a chess board, and Kellan was a total shark, acting like he felt really shitty and then checkmate-ing my poor, sad self in no time flat.

  We played three more times before bed, and every time, he kicked my ass. And then the lights went out and we had the best night. So much better than I ever would have thought would be possible in a hospital.

  It wasn’t just what we did—although that was pretty damn good too—it was the time after. Kellan stretched out on his back and pulled me to his chest, and wrapped his arms and leg around me and played with my hair. And as we fell asleep, he made the ASL sign for “I love you” with his hand... and followed it with the sign for “I’m sorry.”

  “Kellan—no. You’re not sorry. No sorry.”

  He sighed, but I got him to agree. We fell asleep with him more in my arms than me in his. Arethea and Dr. Willard lowered the dose of steroids he got through an IV overnight, so he slept better.

  He woke me up with a cinnamon roll he ordered for me from a nearby bakery. Unlike back at his house, I noticed when he didn’t have any breakfast besides a few sips of the TwoCal.

  All morning, he talked to me and touched me and looked at the quotes I wrote inside another batch of origami sparrows. When the PT person came and made him do a leg workout, he didn’t complain. When Dr. Willard came in with a bowl of rice and awful gravy, Kellan downed most of it—and then lounged on the bed with a can of Dr. Pepper.

  We watched the first episode of Orphan Black sitting side by side, shoulder-to-shoulder, and then Kellan fell asleep against my shoulder.

  Nice, right?

  But not nice. Because about this time, the room phone rings. The transplant unit’s mail person tells me I have a package.

  Gotta get it fast. It’s marijuana tincture from Manning.

  I slip my Ugg mocs on, strap on a face mask, shimmy my hands into gloves, and hunt down Arethea. Then I walk to the opposite end of the BMT ward, get my package, and notice a homey little sitting room, where I decide to stop off and call my mom.

  She knows nothing about my situation. Just that I came to New York about a week ago. Now that Kellan and I have talked more, I’m feeling braver, so I drop into a leather wing-backed chair and dial her number.

  And, surprisingly, I get her.

  More surprisingly, instead of telling her a half truth, I tell her the whole damn story. It takes almost an hour and a half, and just as I get up to go—eager to see Kellan again—the phone rings. It’s Cindy from Be The Match, telling me what I already know: my recipient is at Sloan-Kettering Memorial. I guess some of the stress is definitely starting to ease up now that Kellan’s talking to me some, because I chat with Cindy for a few minutes, telling her how he and I met each other.

  I hustle down the hall, worried about how long I was away, and telling myself I should obvio
usly chill out. The first few days were bad, yes—apparently Kellan had radiation before I arrived the day I got here—but it’s going better now.

  So of course, as I open the door to our room, I can hear the awful sound of retching. I race to the blue-tiled bathroom and find him lying on the tile, unable to even lift his head as spasms wrack him.

  “Kell... oh shit, baby. Come with me. Let’s get you to the bed.”

  I try to help him up off the bathroom floor, and have to page Arethea because he’s so damn big. The two of us help him toward the bed, but we’re not even out of the bathroom before he stops to curl over the sink.

  The retching is relentless. There’s nothing in his stomach now but bile, which hurts his throat. Arethea starts another anti-nausea drug and gives more Zofran, too, and brings wet rags and stickers we put on his wrists.

  But nothing really helps. I find myself holding poor, exhausted Kellan by the shoulders, bracing his head against the bed rail as he gets sick so many times, he actually starts to drop off to sleep between dry-heaves.

  I clean his face and throat and hair. Arethea brings another bag of the offending chemo—“The last one,” she offers sadly.

  Kellan rouses around midnight. When he tries to talk, his eyes spill tears.

  “I’m so sorry, baby...”

  I’ve spoon a tiny slip of ice into his mouth, then drop the spoon in my lap.

  “Holy shit. I’m such an idiot.”

  The package I originally left the room to get is the marijuana tincture, one Manning told me Kellan made himself, for chemo patients.

  I call Arethea in, propose a plan, and when she doesn’t come back for an hour, I know I’ve been given my signal. She asked Dr. Willard, who felt bad would come of it. It’s permission, if not an actual endorsement.

  I give Kellan two droppers full and after that, he sleeps.

  He wakes up early afternoon on the official “rest day,” and blinks at the ceiling. I can tell he’s high, and not from Morphine or one of its derivatives, but from good ole fashioned reefer.