Chapter 24 （Chemo）Therapy #3
“So, you're doing well?”
He looks at me and nods. “I am. I'm at least fifty percent better. Maybe sixty after tonight.” He smiles at me, but my own smile still won’t come. It’s odd to feel both tied to and disconnected from a person. Hard to know how to act around them.
“How are you?” he asks. “You seem sad.”
“It’s been a rough few weeks.”
He takes a breath to power his next words, but I’m still not ready to hear them, so I speak instead. “I mean, I’m fine. I was sick last night when you called, but I feel better today. It’s good to see you like this. You seem a lot stronger.”
“The power of pharmaceuticals.”
“Yeah. No kidding,” I agree.
“Listen, I know you broke up with Tristan.” He effectively blindsides me with his subject change.
“I don’t think we should talk about that,” I say quickly, my unease growing.
“Archer, please let me say this.”
I’ve been leaning on the concrete wall, propped up on my elbows. When he starts to talk again, I put my face between my upper arms and breathe into them—my version of a brown paper bag, and only slightly more subtle.
“What I did wasn’t your fault. I need you to understand that. It wasn’t his fault either. I have some pretty fucked up genetics, you know?”
“Connor, stop…” I can’t.
“I was jealous,” he says. “Jealous of him because you loved him, and I was jealous of you because he wanted to be with you more than he wanted to be around me. Which is understandable now, but at the time, I couldn’t see it that way.”
“Please.” I raise my head to look at him. His eyes are cast down, a shadow of shame on his face. “Tristan and I…” I stop myself from saying we were a mistake. It seems like too big of a betrayal, so I don’t say any more. I press my lips together and shrug. “I’m okay.”
“He's loved you forever,” my brother tells me, his voice soft and light.
“I know.”
“He still does.”
“Then help him move on.” The letting go of Tristan for the second time has been a process, at times torturous and painful, but always devastating and miserable.
It isn’t a relief or a load off my shoulders.
It sucks. Every day. But the path I’m on now is a healthy path.
I can see that, especially tonight, as I stand next to my brother, who once risked a flu and my mother’s wrath just to put a cool cloth on my head.
I can do this for him today. I can give him back what he needs—the friend who saved his life.
The one I suspect he might be head over heels for, too.
Connor moves closer to me. His arm touches mine, from shoulder to elbow.
Our hips meet. He turns his face toward mine, having to duck a little to see all of it because that’s how far down my head is bent.
“Archer,” he says with his soft voice floating on the wispy breeze.
I like the sound of my name coming from his mouth without any bitterness behind it.
You could maybe even say I love it. “He doesn’t want to move on. ”
Talking about Tristan with the guy I stole him from is more than I prepared myself for today.
In my weaker moments, it’s a struggle not to find Tristan, not to get down on my knees before him and beg his forgiveness—to get him back—again.
My need for him never gets smaller or easier to manage.
My desire for him is always a bright flame burning in the far reaches of my memory where I keep it behind a firewall so it can’t burn me anymore.
I turn to look at my brother, determined not to get overwhelmed by my own doubt and regret. “I can’t do this.”
He looks taken aback.
“I don’t mean this—this,” I say, gesturing between the two of us. “I mean let’s just be you and me. We skipped that when I came home, and I want to at least try. I know I owe you about a thousand apologies.”
“My apologies would cancel yours out, so let’s not, okay? We both fucked up. I’d rather wipe the slate clean and start fresh.”
That sounds too good to be true, but I’ll take it. “Me too.”
“So, the reason I called was…” He gives me a nervous glance. “My therapist wants to have a session with you and me both.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” he says with a scrunched up face.
“I mean, sure. I love therapy.” I finally manage to smile at him, and he smiles back at me like he has a future. Like we both do.
“I’m gonna hug you again,” he says. “Is that okay?”
“That depends. Is it gonna make you cry?”
He nods, but the tears are already there. I’m the one who hugs him this time. He’s not nearly as tall as I am, and so I hold his head against my chest and let my shirt get wet. The way it feels to be allowed this close to him? It feels like coming home.
Not like to my childhood home, but like home—where my heart lives. I kiss the top of his head, and I hang on.
Sometimes the only way to let the pain go is to hold on to the good things so tight that the bad things can’t find a way in.
And sometimes the only way to find happiness is to march straight through your sadness.
To fight the thing trying to kill you, even if it means losing something you hold dear.
Basically, it’s chemotherapy.
It’s ugly and it’s brutal, but at the end of it—if you’re lucky—you get to live.