Chapter Thirty Luke
Chapter Thirty
Luke
I hadn’t meant for us to have sex, though I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t been in the back of my mind as I set up Frappie’s.
Mostly I just want to see Sera happy, like she is right now, tucked next to me beneath the blanket, going on and on about the colors in the film and wondering what Paris would look like in the rain.
Her skin is cool to the touch but heating me up all the same.
When the movie ends, Amélie getting her own love story after helping everyone else, I reach for my phone and start another one.
Jeux d’enfants. All I know is that it’s about childhood friends falling in love.
It’s all in French again, and I wasn’t able to find the subtitles, so we’re a little lost. Neither Sera nor I are really paying attention, though.
Her hands are wandering across my chest, sending little shocks of electricity coursing through me.
I turn on my side and trace her cheek, her nose, her eyebrows as she wiggles them at me and laughs.
I dip my hand lower and follow her collarbone, the thin line of her scar, where she was opened up and gifted me my life.
I press my palm to her chest and feel her heart beat as though everything is fine, keeping the secret of her time left from us.
I’d call EBE a traitor, but Sera wouldn’t like that.
“She’s gotten us this far, hasn’t she?” she asks, like she’s reading my mind.
I kiss her chest and whisper a thank-you and silently beg her to hold out because I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it if she doesn’t.
We ignore the movie and mold ourselves together again.
I feel the nostalgia creeping in over everything.
Her diagnosis is like a high-pitched ringing in my ears, always there, always threatening to drown all the goodness out.
I try to just stay present with her eyes holding mine, her lips on my ear telling me that everything is perfect.
And I believe it when she says it, sure that nothing has ever felt so good, so right in the universe as it does right now. Desperate for her to stay, for it all to stay just like this, like one long, perfect kiss.