Cancer can go suck a bag of dicks for bringing its shit into our world.
***
Standing behind Harley, I meet his gaze in the mirror. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Just do it.”
I tense my fingers around the weight of the clippers in my hand, and switch the gadget on. It vibrates loudly, and my bones ache with my white-knuckled grip.
“Do it, Rose.”
I run my hands through the length of his gorgeous hair. Hair that I’ve tugged in my fingers while his face was buried between my thighs; hair that for so long had been his crowning glory, beautiful—just looking at it made you want to slide your hands through it. For the longest time, Harley’s hair has been one of the things I’ve loved so much about him, and I think I am having a harder time with this than he is.
“Come on, love. Before I lose my nerve.”
“Right, sorry.” I smile, but inside I’m dying. It’s just a haircut, but it represents so much more. On the outside, he doesn’t look all that sick; he has deep shadows beneath his eyes from the lack of sleep, and he can’t keep up his fitness regime, not the way he used to, so in the six weeks that he’s been gone from my life he’s lost a lot of muscle mass, making his face look gaunt, but all this aside, you couldn’t tell that he had cancer by looking at him. So even though this is just a haircut, it’s infinitely more.
I raise the clippers to his head. He doesn’t flinch when the blades snip away the first few strands. He doesn’t even flinch when the entire back is done. Instead, he turns his head to the side and laughs because he looks like he did that one time in high school when the football team shaved one side of his hair off. He’d worn it like that for a whole week, just to show them how much it didn’t matter and how they hadn’t rattled him.
I lift the clippers again and begin on the front, and when it’s done he pulls me down on top of him and kisses me hard on the mouth. I set the clippers aside on the bathroom counter and run my hands over his freshly shaved scalp, marveling at the unfamiliar spikiness of it, and how it makes his face seem a little rounder, his stubborn jaw a little more prominent, and those beautiful eyes of his gleam.
He pulls away and whispers, “Still sexy?”
“Was there ever any doubt?” I kiss him on the lips again. The few spots where his head is missing hair give him a little bit of an edge. “I like it. All you need now are a handful of tattoos and you’d look like you were straight out of Prison Break.”
He laughs and shifts beneath me. I leap up off of his lap, frightened that I’ve hurt him. He stands, sending a torrent of long locks to the floor of his bathroom, and he lifts me onto the vanity, knocking off several bottles of aftershave and beard oil. I swipe at a strand of his hair that tickles my neck. His lips meet mine again, and I cup his face in my hands as he unbuttons my shirt and palms my breast through the lace of my bra.
Harley has said that the chemo only makes him weak in the days after his treatment, and though I want to reconnect with him so badly, I’m unsure if this is the right thing to do. I don’t want to stop, not if he’s fit enough to keep going, and not if it’s one of the last times … No. I will not think that way. Harley is going to beat this thing. He promised. Five, ten, twenty years from now we’ll be doing this very thing, when our skin is sagging and our faces are crinkled and weathered from a life well lived. He’ll take me like this, perhaps in the kitchen of our home, or on the floor, the bed—it doesn’t matter where.
“Hey, where’d you go just now?”
“I …” I swallow back the lump in my throat and close my eyes. It doesn’t stop the tears from sneaking out of the corners. Harley pulls away, and for a second I think he might leave, so I wrap my legs around his hips and grab his biceps, feeling the strong muscles that have already wasted away so much in just a few short weeks. “You had better fight this.”
He rakes a hand over his head, his brow creases with confusion for a beat as his fingers meet no resistance and glide across his now short hair. He swallows hard and glances at the remnants of his hair on the white tiles. “Rose ...”
“No, I mean it. I can’t …”
“No more,” he says cupping my face and leaning in to place a gentle kiss to my lips. “I need you here with me, not here with my cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
He dips his head, so he’s looking directly into my eyes when he says, “It’s okay. Just, can we just pretend I’m a regular guy and this isn’t a pity fuck?”
“This isn’t a pity fuck,” I say, confused.
“Well, maybe not for you …” He trails off with a grin, and I make a shocked face and slap him on the arm. He flinches and then he leans across the small bathroom, pulls the shower curtain back, and runs the water. “I need us to be here, with one another. I need you to pretend I’m not sick, and that I’m still the guy who had a starring role in all your wet dreams.”
“You ass. I never fantasized about you.”
“You didn’t?” He makes a face. “Jesus, that stings like a bitch, Rose, because I spent every day since my teens jacking off into my sports socks as I thought about your glorious ass bouncing around on my dick.”
I slap him again, but this time he catches me mid spanking and runs my hand down his body, shoving it into his pants where his erection presses into my palm. He waits until I meet his gaze before saying, “I need this to be about us.”
I nod and slide down off the counter, forcing him to back up a step or two. I pull off my top and let it fall to the floor, and then I step out of my jeans, kicking them into the cabinet behind me. I lift his shirt, and together we pull it over his head and toss it onto the floor with the remainder of his hair. I slide my hands up around his neck as he pulls me into him, and Harley shoves down his jeans, shuffling us toward the shower recess where I help him step out of them. He backs me into the shower and warm water covers us both. Grabbing the shower head, I hose him down, rinsing the hair from his body, running my hands over the smooth expanse of his chest.
He’d told me his body hair started falling out within the first few days of chemo. I’ve always preferred a little chest hair on men, not a full-out rug or anything, but Harley had always had chest hair and I’d loved running my hands over it when so many other guys waxed it all away. Harley losing his hair is in no way unattractive to me. I’ve always wanted him, no matter if he gained a hundred pounds or lost all his hair to chemo. I guess that is the definition of true love, isn’t it? To love someone exactly as they are, faults and all.
But Harley never had any faults in my eyes, though he does have awful taste in stand-in brides, and he is stubborn as an ox. Once he gets something in his head, there is no swaying him. Kind of like right now, as he pulls me closer and dips his head to kiss my neck. He cups my breasts and takes my nipple in his mouth.
I can already see the fatigue in his eyes, but I don’t try to stop him or sway his actions. Instead, I place the nozzle back in the holder and turn the shower off. Taking his hand, I lead him from the bathroom without bothering to dry off. He palms my ass as I walk across the expanse of his apartment. I’m sure there’s hair stuck to the bottom of my feet, but I don’t care. I climb onto the bed and wait there on all fours, my ass in the air, ready and waiting. Harley groans and slips a finger along the crease. He hovers over me, his erection jutting up against my lower back as he whispers in my ear, “Not that I don’t love this view, but I wanna see your face.”
I crane my neck back and kiss him. Slow, deep kisses, as if we have all the time in the world. Harley flips me over, slides his hand beneath my back, and moves us up the bed, his hips coming to rest between my thighs. He trails his lips over my neck, kissing my breasts, tugging one of my nipples between his teeth. I slip a hand between us and guide him into me, agonizingly slowly, inch by inch, until his thick cock fills me and he’s buried to the hilt. He rocks inside, hitting the very end of me, and I pepper his face and neck with kisses as he keeps this slow and tender pace. I don’t know if that’s fo
r me or for him, or because he’s tired, but I don’t care because each time with him is different and new and nothing has ever felt as good as having Harley inside me, as giving myself over to the man I love.
When we’re both spent and he’s soundly sleeping, I climb out of the bed. I don’t want to leave the warmth of his embrace, but I don’t want him to have to face another reminder of the way his body is changing when he wakes, so I pad softly into the bathroom and pull together a few strands of his glorious hair. I take an elastic from his bathroom cabinet and tie it off, setting it aside to slip it into my purse when I’m done here. It might seem creepy as fuck, but that hair is as much mine as it is his, and though I love his new shaved look too, this is a part of Harley that I'm not willing to let go of just yet—maybe not ever.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Rose
I walk into the oncology ward holding Harley’s hand and see the sick faces smiling back at us. He doesn’t belong here. He’s not sick like them, my mind tells me. This must be some kind of cruel joke.
But it’s not a joke; there’s nothing funny about cancer. Though it seems Harley doesn’t agree, because as he walks into the room, he kisses an unenthusiastic nurse, and trades insults with the tall male nurse about Ole Miss’s latest ass-whooping from the Tigers. He introduces me to them both and they share a mildly surprised exchange, but I’m guessing they’ve talked about me and they’d thought that maybe Harley was making me up.
There are several stations set up around the room with recliners and TVs and privacy screens, but no one is in them. The patients all seem to be sitting in a circle on big wingback chairs with IVs in their arms and mobile drips and monitors by their sides. When the nurse tells Harley to go take a seat, to my surprise he doesn’t move into one of the makeshift booths, but to the middle of the room with the other patients. It’s like we’re back in high school again—he’s the star quarterback loved by everyone and I’m just, well … me. He knows everyone. Everyone knows him, and apparently everyone knows me too, judging by the way they greet me … and use my name while doing it.
Harley fist bumps a kid who’s probably no older than sixteen. He has a gaunt face. He’s ashen, and far too skinny with not a single strand of hair on his shiny, smooth head. “Nice hair.”
Harley smiles sheepishly and runs a hand over his shaved head. “Thanks. I heard the Chemo Cut was in for the winter.”
The boy’s eyes settle on me, and then his gaze rolls appreciatively over my body, coming to rest on my boobs. Seriously? “Dude, you weren’t kidding,”
“Told you she was hot,” Harley says with a grin. “Now pay up.”
I watch on in horror as the kid lifts a gangly arm and grabs his wallet off the table next to a pile of old Rolling Stone magazines with yellowed, doggy-eared pages and ripped covers. He fishes out a twenty and hands it to Harley. My eyes widen. He did not just take this sick kid’s money?
“Aww, you gonna cry, pretty boy?” Harley taunts, and I smack him hard on the chest. He glares at me. “Ow. What the hell, Rose?”
I just glare back, and give him an are you freaking kidding me face. “I bought you something,” Harley says, and pulls a long black case from his back pocket. It must have been hidden beneath his sweater, because this is the first time I’m seeing it. There’s a logo on the front—TAINT, written in a white, bold brush font surrounded by splatters. The kid’s face drops, his jaw going slack and his eyes growing wide as saucers.
“No fucking way! No fucking way!” the kid shouts, and the nurse that Harley kissed with a sweet face and—ironically—a very unsweet expression moves away from the nurse’s station.
“Language,” she says in a booming voice.
The kid covers his face; he still hasn’t taken the box from Harley yet. “Carissa, fuck me, do you know what this is?”
The woman in question walks toward us, and the kid snatches the box from Harley, running a reverent hand over the outside of the case before snapping it open. “Looks like drum sticks to me, honey. Ones I’m going to shove where the sun don’t shine unless you keep it down. People are trying to stave off death here.”
“Holy shit, they’re signed.” He glances at Harley, who’s grinning his Pan grin. “Fuck dude, they’re signed by Zed Atwood himself,” he crows. “The Grim Reaper can take me now and I wouldn’t give a shit because I got to hold Zed fucking Atwood’s sticks in my hands.”
“Mmmhmm,” she says, and turns her back on him. She points to Harley as he sits in an empty seat across from the kid. “This is your fault.”
He winks. “Just trying to brighten your day, Carissa.”
“Oh, honey, the only thing brightening my day would be getting rid of the lot of you,” she says, and I gape at her in horror. “I’ll be back in a minute with your pre-med cocktail.”
I sit down hard on the seat beside Harley, and he places his large hand on my thigh and gives a reassuring squeeze. The male nurse comes and takes Harley’s blood and tells me he’s checking to make sure all his white blood cell counts are stable, then Carissa returns with a mobile monitor and a drip attached to it. I stare at the bag; there’s a label with Harley’s name on it and the prescribed drug, and for a moment I feel as if all the air has been sucked out of the room. I can’t breathe, and I can’t leave, so I look away as the nurse inserts the line into Harley’s arm and presses a series of buttons on the machine.
With a tight smile, I turn my attention back to the kid. He strokes the beaten wood of the drumsticks Harley gave him, and his eyes become rheumy.
“Styx, dude,” Harley says. “You know the rules.”
He nods, and he looks Harley dead in the eyes when he says, “You’re pretty fucking cool, man.”
Harley nods, as if this was something he already knew, but there’s a tightness to his smile, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he clears his throat. “Rose, this is Styx. He’s been bugging the shit outta me since my first cycle of chemo.”
“We’re chemo buddies,” Styx says. “It’s like fuck buddies, only not gay.”
“Just as messy though, right?”
“Only when Jan’s here,” Styx says, tilting his head toward the elderly woman beside him, who I’d previously thought was sleeping, but quickly realize isn’t because she sticks her middle finger up and closes her eyes again.
The boys laugh, and Styx’s gaze lands on me again. “I hope you jacked off into a cup before you started chemo, dude, cause your babies would have been like little fucking cherubs or something.” I stare at Styx, unable to believe I heard that right. “What is she, mute? What’s the matter, darlin’? Cancer got your tongue?”
I glare at Harley. “Is this kid for real?”
“Styx? Yeah, he’s kind of a douche.” He laces his fingers with mine. “I should have given you a heads up.”
“Nah, you’re just jealous you ain’t all up in this, pullin’ bitches and livin’ the high life.” He laughs, making a lazy hand gesture that encompasses all of him, and then that laughter quickly erupts into a fit of coughing.
“You okay, dude?”
“Yeah,” he says, and then grabs the bucket at his feet and vomits into it. His body’s reaction is so violent I almost don’t know what to do, so I sit here with my hands over my mouth in shock as the male nurse comes over and pats him on the back. Styx flinches away from his touch, and the nurse holds his hands up and checks the drip. “Okay, rock god, you’re done anyway. Let’s get you back to your room.”
Styx nods but doesn’t say anything. He just leans back in the chair as the machine beside him is turned off and the line is gently pulled from his arm.
“Rock on, fuckers! See you next time ’round.” He waves the box of drumsticks in the air at us, and the nurse wheels him from the room.
I glance at Harley’s solemn face and burst into tears. He cups my chin with the hand that doesn’t have the line in it and tilts my face up towards him, gently shaking his head. “No, love. There’s no crying in this room. This is the only place w
e get to come and be with other people who know what it feels like to fight this war. There’s no crying in here, only assholes, laughter … and sometimes vomit.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this,” I say and run through the same doors that Styx just exited. I know Harley can’t follow me because he’s hooked up to an IV, and I know I’m being selfish, but I can’t help it. I can’t watch him go through this. I can’t watch a sixteen-year-old kid have the life drained out of him and stand there joking as if it isn’t happening.
Sick to my stomach, I collapse against the wall, and a beat later Carissa finds me. “You okay, honey?”
“No!” I sob, covering my face with my hands because I feel like a complete pussy. “How do you do that every day?”
She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Girl’s gotta earn a paycheck.”
“It doesn’t get to you?”
“Every single one, but that room is the only place they get to walk into and not be crushed by pity. That room is their safe haven. It’s the one place they can go to know that they aren’t alone, and that everyone in there knows what’s going on inside their head. It’s why Styx does his chemo without his parents. It’s why Harley’s been coming here by himself since his cycles started. Because there’s no one to comfort. The fact that he’s sharing that with you now is huge, so you got two choices, girly—either you dry your eyes and get your ass in there and give him hell for trying to die on you, or you wait out here until he’s done.”
I nod and swipe my hands under my eyes to dry my tears, and I follow her back inside.
When I enter the room, it’s quiet. Harley looks lost in thought, and Jan still has her eyes closed. I take the seat beside him and he grabs my hand and squeezes. I squeeze back, hard.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just …” I glance at Carissa, who leans against the nurse’s station again, watching me with one eyebrow raised. “I’m just hoping you’ll hurry up so I can go get a Big Mac.”
Harley & Rose Page 23
