by Lena Fox
I looked up at his eyes, so blue, and so close to mine. “Are we going to have sex on the beach?”
Blake pressed the tip of his nose against mine, then ran it up the length until his lips were there instead. “That’s up to you.”
He was right.
At every turn, I blamed not being able to stop myself, blamed being out of emotional control, but the truth was it was always up to me. I’d always made my choices. I’d always wanted him. And I wanted him now, too. I was choosing him. I was choosing this.
I would choose him, and I would make this right. I would tell him the truth. I would make this work. How could I do anything else?
His breath blew across my cheek, then our mouths met and held in a long kiss. I tasted salt on his lips and tongue, tasted the ocean and sun and laughter in that kiss. His hands slid under my back, lifted me up and pressed me into him. The sand shifted below us. It trickled past my heels, tickling my ankles. The blanket fell down around us, spreading beneath us and blowing up at the corners with the small gusts of cool wind. The full moon came out, shining down a bright silver light over our sand-covered bodies.
His fingers caressed my hair, ran through it. More sand sifted and slithered, yielding below our bodies as our flesh yielded to each other’s touch. When I sat up and took off my bikini top, he remained lying beside me and stroked his hand down my back, tracing the lines of my tattoo.
He hugged me, then pulled me back down onto the blanket beside him. My nipples tightened from the cold air blowing over them and then his mouth was on them, gentle but firm. Hot sensations crept along my spine. Excitement exploded within me and I wrapped my arms around his upper body, pulling him closer.
He kissed me again, making me dizzy with lust. My own mouth sought his. My tongue caressed his and asked for more.
His hands slid my bikini pants down to my knees and I shuffled them off the rest of the way. His finger pressed into me, slid all the way inside. I grasped at his shorts, finding them tacky with seawater, and I laughed as I struggled to pull them down.
Blake didn’t help. He pushed me back onto the blanket. He bit his lip and rolled his fingers within me, making my eyelids flutter closed.
I heard hook-and-loop tearing, and felt Blake get something from his pocket, then push his shorts down. The crinkle of a condom packet opening made me moan in anticipation.
“Georgie,” he whispered into my ear as he thrust into me.
He filled me completely, and made me feel whole. He moved slowly, his fingers circling and rubbing in time to his thrusts. I moaned, not caring if there was anyone nearby. Sweat appeared like dewdrops upon my body despite the breeze and the darkness, and I pressed my face up into Blake’s chest, wrapping my arms and legs around him, trying to fuse myself to him.
He groaned and I could feel his stomach muscles tightening. He withdrew from me, moving down my body so swiftly I didn’t know what he was going to do until his tongue pressed into my pleasure-swollen flesh. The feel of his lips sent shockwaves and shivers across my hips and down to my toes.
Ecstasy shot through me. My mouth opened in a frenzied cry as his fingers went back into me, pumping and driving as I whimpered and writhed, riding his face and fingers until my whole body tremored and seized up, pleasure smashing through me harder than the waves crashing against the cliffs.
He came back up, kissing a path all the way up my body. I could only lie there, still shaking with uncontrollable vibrations, as though he’d set off an earthquake within me.
He parted my legs and slid in on a tide of hot desire, all the way inside me so that I could feel the pressure of him in the base of my back. He still didn’t feel close enough.
The waves sang and sighed as they met the shore, and Blake and I matched that force of nature as our bodies met and sang together. As lustful sensation hummed through us with every movement. As love and need and sadness and beauty touched us with our every caress.
Blake clenched his teeth, clenched his whole body, as he growled and cried out with pleasure above me. I gasped for air. Tears ran down my cheeks, tears of joy and love, adding to the salt of the sea. Nothing had ever been so perfect.
If I had to die, and I knew we all did, at least I could do it having had this moment. The whole day had been perfect, even the rain at the beginning had made the sunlight seem that much stronger and sweeter.
Blake and I tangled into each other, a pile of pleasure-soaked limbs. There was nothing uncomfortable about it at all.
“That was amazing. I don’t think we did it right,” I said breathily.
Blake lay tiny kisses all over my neck. “Bugger. Should we try again?”
I wiped the tears from my cheeks but couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.
“Thank you for today. I wouldn’t have had any of this without you.”
Blake squeezed me tighter in his embrace. “Can we call this a relationship now?”
“Yes.”
After lying like that a while longer, we got our clothes back on and finished packing up. Before getting into the car, I checked my phone for the first time all day and saw a missed call.
The hospital had rung. I listened to the message even though I knew what it would say.
My results were in. They needed me to come in and hear them in person.
“What was that?” Blake asked, as I put the phone back in my bag. I could feel the color gone from my face, the joy washed away, and I knew he could see it too.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
I couldn’t spoil today.
I asked Blake if he’d drive home, and then stared up at the stars the whole way.
Mom … please … please.
Chapter Thirteen
BLAKE
Georgina was silent the whole way home, and I was happy to sit in my own quiet contentment as I drove. It gave me time to think. And plan. Not just for the next item on her list, but for the future. My future. Our future.
I dropped her home and picked up my bike, and when I noticed a pawn shop still open late on the way back to my place, it seemed like a sign.
It took a while to find the things I was looking for back home. I’d put them in a safe place a long time ago, but safe really meant forgotten. Like I’d tried to forget that whole time. But I finally found what I was looking for, buried in the garage under motorcycle parts, in a document box filled with record label contracts. I popped the ring box open, checking the contents, and saw part of my past that made my heart clench. One engagement ring. Two wedding rings. I snapped it closed again.
Then I was back at the pawn shop, waiting for the guy behind the counter to notice me.
I cleared my throat. The dark-skinned man with short-cut, pure white hair looked up at me from his crossword.
“No loans,” he said in a tired voice.
“I was hoping you could give me a price on these.” I showed him the ring box, and he waved for me to hand it over.
He reached through the steel grid that fenced the counter off and took the box, inspecting the contents, then raised a skeptical eyeball at me. He pushed the box back toward me and crossed his arms. “I’m not after fake shit or lifted property.”
“They aren’t. They’re mine. They’re real.”
“Ha! Big young guy like you, coming in with merchandise like that? Come on.” He went back to his crossword, grumbling something about kids these days stealing to pay for their gym juice.
I sighed, and reached for my phone. It took me a while to load up my unused Instasnap account, and then find the photo I was looking for. “See? They’re mine.”
“Hey! Is that Sey Sey?” The old man started singing. “Without you, what is life for? Without you, what’s a heart for? Without you-hooo-hooo, I am undone.”
“Yeah.” Everyone knew that song. The words I’d written. The words Seyvia had sung.
The man looked closer at the photo. It showed Seyvia and I in a cheek-to-cheek embrace, our hands out, flashing our brand-new wedding rings. “Oh,
damn. That’s you.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re—?”
“Yeah.”
“Right. Okay then.” He shook his head, grumbling under his breath. He looked from the photo to the rings again. “I can’t give you what these are worth. Not even close.”
“Just give me what you can.”
He laughed. “I like you, kid. I’m trying to be nice here, but you’re the worst haggler I’ve ever met. Give me a minute.”
He checked his cash drawer, then waved as he got up and hobbled around to a locked office behind him. He returned with a two-inch-thick wad of cash. “If you’re happy to take this for these, you’re a fool.”
I chuckled. “Who’s being bad at haggling now?”
The pawn shop owner shrugged. “I’m not that cutthroat. You’ve already lost enough. You sure you want to be parting with these?”
There was only a moment of hesitation as I went over the thoughts and feelings that had brought me here tonight. I was ready—ready to say goodbye. “Yeah.”
He hesitated to hand over the cash. “You know, you’d do better auctioning them. I bet there are some fans out there that would die for these.”
I was sure there were, but I had been hoping to part with these rings in a way that would see them just disappear into the system. I didn’t want the media or anyone to know I was selling them. I didn’t want some online auction going viral, digging up the past, and making ugly speculations about my life after Seyvia. It had been years; I was allowed to move on. I hoped this guy would just take the rings at any price, and then not turn around and auction them himself.
I’d said these rings weren’t fake, but in some ways, they were. Getting married—it was never my idea, or Seyvia’s. It was a plan from her PR people.
They had known that Seyvia was getting too wild. Dangerously wild. But they didn’t care about her. They just cared about her brand. They wanted to take it in a new direction, something more wholesome. So it was decided Seyvia and I would get married. The childhood sweethearts, still so in love, making long-term commitments. It had worked for them and their plans.
I didn’t object, not really. I’d loved Seyvia. I’d thought she loved me. I’d always planned to marry her, just maybe not that soon, that young. I’d thought we had all the time in the world, that we were going to be together forever.
I didn’t even get to choose the rings. I didn’t get to propose. It was all done by Seyvia’s PR team, from the cut of the obscenely-large diamond to the celebrity-filled wedding extravaganza, to the careful photo shoot of the honeymoon.
My love for Seyvia had been real. But these rings were fake and meant nothing to me. I didn’t need them anymore, but maybe the cash I got for them could be used for something that was real.
I didn’t plan to rely on songwriting royalties my whole life, and they weren’t enough anyway. Thanks to us being young and taking a bad deal, the amount I got from them only just got me by. The payment from the rings, and the cash from my night as a stripper, would help me finish Georgina’s childhood list, and maybe help with the start of something new. That would be enough. After that, I had a whole life ahead of me to build my own career, to follow my own goals.
The guy looked at my expectantly. “We good?”
“Thanks, mate, we are. It’s a deal.”
We exchanged cash for rings, and I said a silent goodbye to that part of my life.
The man hid the rings away under the counter. “Anything else I can help you with tonight? I need to clear out guitars. Maybe I can throw something in for you to help make up the difference.”
“Yeah, actually. There is something I’m looking for.”
Chapter Fourteen
GEORGINA
It felt so good having told Blake the truth. He took it well, as we sat for lunch over a huge fisherman’s basket. It towered between us, salty and surreal. How was anyone, or how were any two people, supposed to eat all that?
“You have something on your chin,” Blake said, and reached across the table.
The candles flickered as his wrist passed through the flames. It was dark, for lunchtime. The tiny points of light shimmered and danced, and then his thumb pressed against my chin.
Something slid down my face and I looked down, expecting to see a chunk of tartare sauce or lettuce lying on my blouse. Instead, a black slug-like shape lay there. As I watched, it began to crawl toward the buttons of my shirt. Panicked, I grabbed it. It was slimy and fat with blood, and it burst between my fingers. Another one poked its head from the collar of my shirt, its grotesque little body giving off a sickly shine in the dim light.
Crying out, I leaped up from the chair and ripped my top open. Black creatures, part slug, part snake, crawled all over my chest. I stared at them, at my bare flesh, terror freezing me in place. Then panic slammed into me like a freight train, and I flailed and screamed as I tried to scrape them away.
“Let me help you!” Blake shouted.
I turned to him, frantic and horrified. The repulsive things were everywhere. They had wriggled down into my pants. I could feel them sliding down my upper thighs, invading the backs of my knees, and worming their way under the thin skin near my ankles.
I sobbed. “Get them off! Get them off me!”
His hand touched my shoulder and my skin split open, tearing like tissue paper.
Instead of blood, more of the slugs poured out, a whole tide of them. They chittered and bit and dug nastily into my flesh, opening it farther and letting the ones still hidden beneath escape. I was torn apart in a flood of darkness.
I jerked up in bed, my mouth wide open and a scream trapped in my throat.
Breathe. Breathe.
I finally gasped air in, and that air was chased by wracking sobs.
There was a quiet knock on my door. “You okay?”
One of the twins. I didn’t know which one. I could barely know anything over the racing of my heart. I forced my breathing back under control. “I’m fine.”
She hovered there for a moment, her shadow visible under the crack of the door, then she left.
I wasn’t fine.
I felt chilled right to the core of my soul. A pit of nausea consumed me from within.
I rolled over and cuddled Julie’s narwhal plushie tight. My head ached at the base of my neck. It’s an aneurism. It’s brain cancer. You’ve waited too long. You’re riddled with cancer. You’re dying.
I grunted and rolled over onto my other side, pulling the covers over my head as though that could block out my anxiety. A bright point of pain burned in my left calf. It’s bone cancer. It’s a blood clot. You’ll be dead before morning.
My heartrate sped and my mind blurred. I wondered if this was what dying felt like. Just STOP. You’re imagining it. It’s just a panic attack.
A strange half-sob, half-sigh strained out through my teeth as I tried to breathe normally. If I could count to ten, and was still alive, I was probably okay.
Counting soothed me, and I started drifting off. Then the sensation of losing consciousness made my body sure I was dying, and jump started my heart again with all new terror.
There was no way I was getting back to sleep.
Even without the bad dreams.
I could still feel the black slugs squirming inside me.
I flicked on my bedside lamp and sat up. Beside me lay my little black journal, open to The List.
After getting home from the beach, I’d snuck in past the twins, sleeping on inflatable beds in Julie’s old room, and went straight to get out that list.
I hadn’t had sex on the beach with Blake to tick off an item. I did it because I wanted to; I wanted to be with him in that perfect moment. But I still came home and scrawled a line across the goal, like some kind of junkie getting a fix.
Now it sat there taunting me, unfinished. Just one item left.
Still shaking from the dream, I wrapped myself in my robe and went into the kitchen. I grabbed a tin of minestrone, emptied
it into a bowl, and heated it in the microwave. The soup was weak and thin. A limp noodle floated belly-up in the orange-red broth along with peas that had lost most of their color drifting past soggy carrot pieces. It looked as sick as I felt.
I wasn’t even hungry—just too afraid to go back to sleep. Too afraid I’d never wake up again.
I didn’t need a psychology degree to know what I’d been dreaming about. The nightmare disturbed me more than I would have liked. I wanted to be tougher than this.
Everything seemed so hopeless, and I wished I had never even gone for the test, that I didn’t have to face getting the results. It was all so real now. It was just horribly, terribly, irrevocably real. This was happening, and I’d tried to hide all the things I felt about that by running full-tilt at the most base, primal lusts of life. Except things I had never planned on happening had happened, and things I had never imagined feeling were making me open up and feel them. I hadn’t planned on falling in love.
When I had been sick the first time, I’d worked my way through the seven stages of loss. It was healthy, according to my doctors, to know what my odds were and to come to grips with the fact that death was unavoidable, even if I managed to cheat it that time around. I had simply accepted that I probably wouldn’t live long enough to have the life I always wanted before cancer came knocking on my door.
Why did I just accept that? Why hadn’t I fought harder, sooner? Why hadn’t I gotten more done? I was pissed off. I was so damn mad I wanted to toss everything in the kitchen out the windows and onto the street. I wanted to kick holes in the walls, tear the bland framed art that had been there when I moved in off the walls, and break their thin glass with my fists.
I dumped the soup in the sink and went back to my room, back to the unfinished list. Staring at it, I could feel my lips twitching in anger. I was so close. So close to being finished. I couldn’t leave it like that with this sickness that I knew was inside me, eating me up. If I just went to sleep again, and never woke up tomorrow. If tonight was my last night … I couldn’t get so far and then give up. I couldn’t wait a second longer with my time ticking closer and closer to the end with every breath.
