by Lena Fox
Blake caught sight of Julie’s emptied out room. “I heard about the accident. I’m sorry, about Julie.”
I couldn’t move for a full five seconds while I braced my emotions. I should have been grieving her, laying her to rest, not going on a date.
Blake moved a little closer to me. “You weren’t hurt badly, were you?”
His blue eyes looked so worried for me. All I had was a light bruise from my seatbelt and a sore shoulder. I would have taken any injury if it meant Julie could have survived. Guilt made me shiver and I chased it away. “No, not badly.”
I could barely talk to him. I could barely look at him. Having him so close was too much temptation when he was begging me for another chance. I should have been the one begging him, but I knew something he didn’t know: that we had no future together. I should have been begging him for forgiveness.
Blake wandered over near the roses. Their color warmed the whole room from their vase on the coffee table.
“Pretty roses. Do you like them?” he asked.
“Did you send them to me?”
He smiled and made shifty eyes. “No card, huh? Completely anonymous? How will you ever know for sure?”
I frowned at him as I clipped my purse closed. “You could tell me. That’s how I could know for sure.”
He rubbed his chin. “Nope. I’m pretty sure there’s no way you could ever know for sure.”
I was almost certain now he had been the one who sent me the flowers. But if he was trying to win me back, why not send a card? Why not admit to sending them? He was being weirdly coy.
We took my car and Blake drove. The sun had just set, and stars poked through the darkening blue-green sky like tiny fairy lights. The spiced cake and aged wood scent of Blake’s cologne drifted to my nose, and I closed my eyes, recalling the smell of it on his neck and the feel of his neck against my face as I buried it there. The feel of his chest under my fingers …
The memory was so vivid it made my cheeks flush with heat.
I had to get my mind off his body, and I had questions to ask anyway.
“I used to love the song that you sang for me today. I would dream of being in their music videos, and one of the boy-band members falling in love with me.”
“Is that right?”
“How did you know?”
“What makes you think I knew?”
The whole thing gave me a strange sense of déjà vu. Everything was so weird lately. Had he been conspiring with my dad? “Blake, it was … strangely specific. How did you know?”
Gravel rumbled under the wheels as we turned off the road into a parking lot. “Hey look, we’re here.”
“Perfect timing,” I said, loading my tone with sarcasm like a big loud sarcasm gun.
‘Here’ turned out to be a carnival. We got out of the car and walked up to the entry gate.
Inside, multi-colored lights twinkled and flashed, and the smells of hot dogs and popcorn filled the air, along with the screams of people on rides and laughter from those trying their luck at the sideshow games. It was raucous and magical and full of joy.
Blake went to buy tickets. I froze in place, as though my insides had turned to solid ice.
Blake returned, and frowned. “Are you okay?”
I could only shake my head.
“You don’t like carnivals?”
“No, I … I don’t know. I’ve never really gone to one. It looks amazing. Too amazing. That’s why I can’t. I can’t do this. Not tonight. How can I enjoy all of this, be here enjoying all of this? It’s not right.”
Blake put his hands on my shoulders. They moved me gently toward him, the solace of his embrace so close and tempting. I stayed frozen, refusing him. I didn’t deserve comfort.
“It was Julie’s funeral today.” Admitting it aloud felt like a hammer to my chest. “It was her funeral today, and I didn’t go. I was too scared, too much of a coward to be there with her family. I couldn’t even be brave enough to say goodbye to her properly. I don’t deserve to be here doing this now. Not when she’s not here anymore.”
My body tensed up, and my breathing quickened, guilt manifesting as a full-blown panic attack. Tears burned in my eyes and I pushed them back with the palms of my hands. “Shit.”
“It’s okay. I mean, I know it’s not okay, but it’s okay not to be okay.” Blake took me by the hand, and this time I let him lead me in through the entry, over to the side, out of the way of the passing crowds. “It’s not fair, what happened. But it wasn’t your fault, and you shouldn’t punish yourself for it. It’s okay to keep living. We can go in here, and have fun tonight, and we will take Julie, her memory, with us, okay?”
I put my hands over my chest, taking steadying, slow breaths. The Ferris wheel turned slowly in the distance, the seats swinging together as lights created rainbows of color around the circular frame. I could imagine Julie’s big brown eyes staring up at it, her cute-yet-stoic expression showing the smallest smirk of joy. I could see her perfectly in my mind. Julie was still with me, just as my mom was still with me. That was where they existed now—in the love and memories of the people still here, still alive. And against all odds, I was still alive.
I already knew I needed to keep living as long as I could. It was harder, with the loss of Julie weighing on me, but Blake had just given me the reminder I needed. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I’m not sure this is quite the angst-free evening you planned.”
Blake shrugged. “Angst can come along too. You can’t shut off your grief any more than you can shut yourself off from fun. Kind of sums up life, right?”
I nodded, a half-smile forming. Blake took my hand, and we ventured into the carnival.
Our tickets came with wristbands that gave us access to all the rides. We rode the tilt-a-whirl twice. The dizzy, spinning swirl of it seemed to throw the weight of emotions free from my mind, and I would have ridden it all night, but Blake dragged me off to other rides, trying one after another. While I queued for the bumper cars, he left me for a moment to go and talk to a family having birthday cake. Maybe he knew them. The line started moving again and he hurried back just in time. I actually laughed when Blake barely squeezed into one of the little cars but couldn’t fit in enough to press the pedals and just spun in circles at the side of the track.
Contentment filled me as we climbed onto the Ferris wheel. It spun us high into the sky and stopped when we were at the highest point. As the cars swung softly over the scene below, Blake put something into my hand—a half-used birthday candle.
“Hold still,” he said, and flicked on the lighter he held, lighting up the candle. The tiny flame swayed in the gentle breeze, but stayed alight. “For Julie.”
A tear splashed from my eye, onto my lap. I cradled the candle as though holding Julie’s soul there in that precious little light. “For Julie.”
I’m sorry I didn’t come and say goodbye today. I’m sorry we didn’t have time to become the great friends we could have been. I’m sorry you died.
The Ferris wheel started up again, and I held the candle close to me. “Goodbye, for now,” I whispered, and blew the candle out.
Mom, take care of Julie for me.
We rode the wheel down, and I watched the ground rising up toward us. The operator was sending people away, saying there’d be no more rides tonight, and sadness crept over me. It was getting late, and soon all the lights would go out and this night would end. And one last night was all I’d allowed myself with Blake.
We meandered through the sideshow, and Blake pulled me over to a game where enormous teddy bears, and stuffed multi-hued unicorns, and purple dolphins hung around a wall of balloons. A range of smaller prizes, tiny, cheap plastic things, were piled in trays below. “I think you need one of those.”
“A badly rigged game?”
“No, a unicorn.”
I laughed. “No way you can win that. I’m pretty sure they’re just for decoration. No one ever wins
those.”
“Challenge accepted.” Blake went to the guy standing behind the booth and passed over cash. It looked like a lot more money than the prices on the sign, but before I could call him out on it, he grabbed the darts and started hurling them at the little balloons tacked by their mouths to a corkboard. He actually managed to pop a few.
“We have a winner,” the guy intoned, grinning under the gaudy red and green lights. “Pick out whatever it is the lady wants, sir. Take your pick.”
Blake took the unicorn. He handed it over, and I could barely get my arms around it. The sheer size of the toy made me laugh. It was so impractical, and so adorable, it filled me with joy.
“Oh god. It’s so cute. But it’s got some kind of … evil magic! I can feel myself regressing … It’s turning me into a twelve-year-old. Oh no, I think I might squee!” I hugged it tight, mashing my face into its plush muzzle. Looking back at Blake again, I smiled and put all my heart into my words. “I love it. Thank you. For everything.”
Blake took the unicorn for me, since it dragged along the ground when I tried to carry it. Happiness made me feel light and warm and full of beautiful heartache.
Our walk back to the parking lot was slow. Neither of us seemed to want the night to end. We squeezed the unicorn into the car and it filled the entire back seat.
We didn’t get in the car ourselves right away. We just stood there, apart from each other. Blake seemed to be waiting for me. Waiting while I fought my ongoing battle of denial.
“I’ll drive you home now,” Blake said.
There it was—the end of the night. My body and mind went into a panic. It was too soon. This was our last night. I wanted it to go on as long as it could.
“Can you drive me back to your place?” I asked.
Blake took a step closer to me. “Yeah, of course. If that’s what you want.”
His face was so close to mine, dangerously close. I wanted to close my eyes, just lean into him and let him give me that long and lingering kiss that I had been thinking about ever since we’d split up.
“I loved tonight, today—all of it. It was the most amazing day I have ever had. Nothing between us is going to change. I still don’t want a relationship. I only promised you one more night. But the night isn’t over.”
Chapter Five
GEORGINA
I shivered, partly from nerves and partly from the cold of Blake’s house as we walked inside, well past midnight. A chill had set in, making stepping into the unheated rooms feel like stepping into a freezer. It was like a sign, the cold, trying to drive me away, telling me what I was doing was wrong. Me being there, being with Blake at all, was sending him all the wrong messages and making it harder and harder for me to turn away.
It wasn’t the cold that made goosebumps break out up my arms and down my back. It was being close to Blake—close enough to touch him. Everything about him tugged at my heartstrings, and at my body. It was infuriatingly ironic that I had this amazing guy, the guy I would have made up out of thin air if anyone had asked me to create my perfect man. And I couldn’t keep him.
Blake asked me a question, but I didn’t hear it. I was staring at the sofa and remembering the night I lost my virginity to him, and how tender and indescribably special it had been. I wished I could go back to that moment and change it all, say to him, ‘I don’t care about The List—all I want is you’.
Because it wasn’t just the cancer holding me apart from him; it was all the things I had done. I wasn’t ashamed of my list. I just regretted that those things, some of them, anyway, had hurt him, and badly. I had behaved horribly.
When I wrote out that list I’d had nothing to lose. Then that all changed. Blake cared about me. He kept trying to prove it to me and I just kept wondering what it was he saw in me.
My old enemy, insecurity, had come back to haunt me. It was funny, in a way, because Blake and my list had made me feel so confident. Right then, though, looking at his gorgeous face I felt like the same girl I had been back in high school—chubby, bald, sick, and lonely. I felt like the same girl who’d cried in the bathroom because a boy had pulled her wig off in the middle of class, the same girl who’d thought she’d always be alone.
What would I look like a year from now? Would Blake love me if I had chemo and lost all my hair? If I lost both of my breasts? I mightn’t even still be here for him to love. That’s why it has to be only one more night.
My mom had written something on a napkin before she died, a single line in flaming red Sharpie. She’d had a very bad day, or so my dad said, and she’d scrawled out the words, ‘Pain is too beautiful to hate when it comes with the gift of one more day’.
I’d kept that napkin and held onto it through my own treatment, although I’d never fully understood it. Now, maybe I knew exactly what she meant.
I just wanted one more day. Just one more day with Blake. Or one last night.
I was truly, deeply, painfully in love for the first time in my life, and I couldn’t bring myself to hate that.
I am in love …
I hadn’t admitted it to myself before. But I could feel it was true.
Blake was staring at me, concern written in every angle of his beautiful face. He was probably wondering why I hadn’t answered him, why I was just staring at him with an intensity that could bore through steel. In response to the question I never heard, I stepped forward and pressed my mouth on his.
Blake put his strong arms around me, and I felt a deep, long sigh escape his lips. His body held mine up, his hands stroked my hair, and his lips brushed against my ears and my neck. He felt so good there, so right.
My heart gave an anxious flutter, like it had broken free from my body and fled like a frightened rabbit. This will only hurt him more when you leave him again, the dark voice inside me said. I closed it off. I’d been clear with Blake that this was our last night, and when it ended, we were over. Even if it hurt him. Even if it hurt me.
I ignored the churn of my belly that rose every time I thought of Blake being hurt, and lost myself in the taste of his mouth, the feel of his hands pressing against my back, and the spicy smell of his skin.
Nerves shook my hands as I led Blake to his bedroom then to the bed. It felt like my first time all over again, scary, intense, and full of wonder. Blake seemed hesitant, but I didn’t let him stop to ask me if I was sure. With breathless confidence I took control, showing him this was exactly what I wanted.
I undressed before him as he watched, slowly dragging my shirt off, then peeling down my jeans. I pressed my chest to his as I undid my bra, then turned away to take it off and bent low as I slid my panties down. He placed his hands on the cheeks of my ass as I straightened up again and moved away from his hot touch.
It left him panting, desire clear in his eyes as he looked my naked body up and down. Then I knelt before him, treating him like the Norse god he was. I lifted the hem of his shirt, dropping tender kisses across his abs as I unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly. I could feel the hardness of him as I freed him from his clothes. My whole body felt heated through as though by an internal wildfire, the coldness of the room forgotten as lust rampaged through me.
I used my mouth on Blake as I had seen in the videos I’d once watched. I started slow, exploratory licks and strokes that elicited moans and gasps from Blake. My lips tingled as they slid across his skin and I plunged his shaft deeply into my mouth, suddenly desperate for him, trying to drink him in like he was my only source of water in a parched desert. He grasped at my head, his fingers tangling into my hair as he groaned through gritted teeth.
I writhed with longing as I sucked and massaged, enjoying the way he shuddered in my mouth, how he cried out my name.
“Fuck, Georgie, you’re the sexiest thing I have ever seen,” Blake rasped out from a hoarse throat. He withdrew from my mouth, kneeled with me on the floor. He whipped his shirt off over his head and kissed me hard as he pushed his jeans down a bit farther, grabbed a condom from the nearby b
edside drawers, then pushed me back on the carpet. There was a growl in his voice and a sharp intensity in his gaze, but when he entered me, it was perfect—slow, sensual, and caring in a way that brought tears to my eyes.
I tempered myself, fighting against the urge to slam Blake into me, to fill myself with him in ramming, passionate desperation. I moved slowly to make every second count, make this night last as long as it could.
Blake seemed to have the same idea, and we washed against each other like a constant tide, each careful thrust matched by a soft and deep kiss. Each movement sent soft pleasure sparkling up from my tailbone to the base of my neck, gentle and warm and slow. I grew drunk on that contentment, letting it roll on and on, never wanting it to stop.
Caught in a haze of desire, we moved from the floor to the bed. I moved on top of him. He shifted behind me. Each change in position came fluidly, prolonging the cloud of passion we floated on.
It was so sweet, making love with Blake like that. There wasn’t the urgency that came with ticking an item off a list, just the pleasure of our bodies becoming one, of both of us trying to make the experience last forever. Every part of it, from the first kiss to the last, to the slow-building climax that took my breath away, and the way Blake then curled around me with one hand wrapped around my hip and his body snuggled into my back, was incredibly touching and tender. It was the perfect night. The perfect final night.
The warmth of sunlight had begun to show through the edges of his closed curtains when we drifted off to sleep, his mouth pressed close to my ear.
“I have another present for you,” he muttered just before he nodded off.
Nothing could have been a bigger gift in my life than he had been. When we said goodbye, I knew I would love this time we had together, forever.
Chapter Six
GEORGINA
I cracked my eyes open, blinking at the sunlight and the casual chaos of Blake’s bedroom. My heart dropped. Morning had come. The last night was over, and it was time to leave and never see Blake again.
