Chapter 15
The backyard officially looks like a bunch of drunk fairies threw a rave.
I may have overdone it a bit with the string lights.
On my hands and knees, I smooth down the thick blue coverlet on the dry, brown grass nearest the maple tree, static from my gloves creating miniature trails of fireworks as they rub against the blanket.
Once it’s flat and to my liking, I lift my guitar off the ground and prop it against the trunk of the tree.
There’s a whistle from the back patio, and I look over to see Hailey waving and motioning to the picnic basket and the heavy comforter she sets down on the patio table.
She gives me two thumbs up and walks back inside the house.
I go over my mental checklist one more time.
I’ve got food, music, lights to give a romantic ambiance to the backyard picnic I have planned.
Even nature is cooperating. Not a cloud in the sky.
Tipping my face skyward, I easily find the North Star and the Orion constellation.
The lights from a plane flying overhead blink out a steady rhythm of white and red and I track its movement as it crosses the backyard until it fades into the distance.
Standing up from my kneeling position, a wave of dizziness suddenly hits me, and my arm reaches out to catch myself on the tree.
I’ve been getting dizzy spells the past few days and chuck it up to being pregnant.
Taking a few deep breaths in and out, I wait until my head feels steadier before walking over to retrieve the basket and the blanket Hailey delivered.
I go over the checklist once again, wanting to make sure everything is perfect and in place.
Setting down my bundle on the picnic blanket, I chant off the items one last time.
Food. Music. Lights. Picnic. And last but not least, the reason why I’m doing this—my hand nervously pats my back jeans’ pocket where a three-inch-by-three-inch square of glossy paper displays a grainy sonogram picture.
I’m seven weeks pregnant, give or take, and over halfway through my first trimester.
Which, when doing the math, confirms my worst fear and puts conception right around the last week of October.
When my memories returned. When I slept with Jayson that one night.
When Old Elizabeth took control and almost destroyed the new life I had been building.
Little peanut is already the size of a blueberry and has been renamed little gummy bear because I refuse to call the baby tiny kidney bean or little shrimp.
While videoing, Jayson almost dropped his phone when a clear image came up on the ultrasound monitor.
After that, the room became a blubbering mess of all of us crying.
Even Fallon. I made Jayson get video of that too.
Priceless. And potential future blackmail material.
The boys hugged and kissed me and exasperated the poor technician with a bunch of overenthusiastic questions.
I’m positive that she has never experienced anything like our group before.
Or maybe she has. Who knows how many pregnant, unmarried, still-a-teenager-but-almost-an-adult with a gaggle of excited guys she has seen before?
My initial excitement dampened after the ultrasound and the rest of the office visit went by in a blur because I shut down. Because I felt horrible. Because Ryder should have been there. Because I’ve been a coward.
Tonight, I’m determined to change that. I have to tell him.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been tying myself into knots, concerned over how this pregnancy would label me in the eyes of everyone else.
Terrified about how Ryder would react. Not wanting to give him one more thing he has to deal with when he already has so much on his plate, it’s spilling over.
Ashamed of myself for allowing it to happen.
Just another reminder that no matter how careful you are, things can always go horribly wrong.
If today showed me anything, it proved that I’m not alone in this.
My guys are incredible. Since our talk on Saturday, Hailey has been wonderful, too.
She’s so excited to be an aunt. The baby has given her a new purpose, a new reason to work hard to get better.
There’s only one, very important piece missing, and he just walked out onto the back patio.
Ryder’s eyes find me in the darkness, my silhouette illuminated by the strands of lights I have wrapped around the maple tree.
I used battery-powered LED mini string lights to make round balls and I hung them from the lowest branches of the tree.
It took me a few hours to get everything prepared, but I’m pleased with the overall effect.
The maple tree looks enchanted, like a winter wonderland, if a tree could be that.
“What’s all this?” Ryder asks, looking around the backyard at everything I’ve done. His hands are shoved deep in his winter jacket.
Nerves war inside of me. “Want to kill the patio lights so you get the full effect?” I suggest, but before he can go and do that, the lights go off. Hailey. Such a good sister.
Ryder chuckles and slowly approaches me, his copper eyes glowing in the near blackness.
I reach behind me and slide my hands into my back pockets, the fingers of my right hand caressing the smooth sonogram paper.
As he comes closer, I’m forced to tip my head back to look at him.
Even with all the winter gear I’m wearing, I shiver at his nearness.
“Somebody’s been busy,” he muses, his full lips quirking up at the corners.
“Romancing my boyfriend is one of the things on my to-do list for the day,” I tease back, enjoying the playfulness, something that’s been missing between us for weeks because of everything else going on.
Ryder huffs out a chilled breath. “Christ, Elizabeth.” He tips his head down until our noses touch. Quiet moments like this are the ones I cherish the most with him.
I raise up on my toes and sweetly kiss the side of his mouth, stubble from his jaw pricking my chin.
I rub my cheek across the roughness of his five o’clock shadow like a cat.
He breathes in deeply as if the weight of the world is suddenly lifted off his shoulders.
Finally, he reaches out and takes my hips in his hands, molding me to him with a firm grip.
Nuzzling my ear with his nose, he says, “Thank you for doing all this. It reminds me of the oak tree at your old house.”
It does? Well, crap. Not what I was going for. The oak tree represents me and Jayson. I was trying to create something new for me and Ryder, hence the hanging balls of lights, the picnic under the stars. My heart hangs heavy at my failure. I can’t seem to do anything right these days.
Ryder doesn’t notice my little freak out.
He cups my face and kisses me, over and over again, until every single one of my worries melts away.
I love the way he kisses me. Soft and exploratory at first, then deeper and commanding until my muscles are liquid and my skin is flushed.
Kissing Ryder is both soothing and thrilling, like getting a comforting hug right before you parachute out of an airplane.
“Dance with me?” he asks.
Thanksgiving was the last time we slow danced. I had thought to myself then that I would have so many more Thanksgivings to dance with him. So many more memories to make.
I nod my head, not able to put words to voice. I fold my arms around his neck and nestle my face in the crook of his shoulder, the padding from his jacket making a perfect pillow for my head to rest. He buries his face in my hair that I left loose tonight and runs his fingers through the ends.
We rock side to side, the quiet night our song. Since it’s winter, there are no insects buzzing about, no frogs croaking to find their mates. An occasional car engine rumbles as it drives down the street, but the stillness of the frosty night dampens the sound so it’s barely audible.
“Everything go okay today?” I ask him as we end our dance. Other than a few sparse texts, I didn’t hear much from him today.
Ryder sinks to the blanket, pulling me down with him. He drags me between his outstretched legs and pulls me back to his chest. I reach over and shake out the thick comforter with one hand and drape it across us.
“I don’t want to talk about it, if you don’t mind. I feel like all I do is talk about it.”
Unwrapping a cold fried chicken leg from the picnic basket, I hold it up to him and he takes a bite. I take the next bite. Daniel outdid himself again.
Licking grease from my lips, I ask him, “What would you like to talk about then?”
He finishes off the chicken, picking every piece of dark meat from the bone.
I’m ecstatic to see him eat. He hasn’t had much of an appetite lately and it’s beginning to show in the looseness of his jeans.
I also notice little things like how he now has to buckle his belt in the seventh hole instead of the fourth.
“What do you do want for your birthday?”
“That’s a loaded question,” I playfully remark. “Never leave that type of question open for a girl.”
“I’m serious,” he counters.
“I just want you,” I reply honestly.
Ryder makes a raspberry sound and waits for me to give him a real answer. I really don’t want anything. Then I think of my YOLO list.
I twist in his lap so I can see him better. “Are we talking anything? Anything I want?”
“I’m not Fallon, so I can’t do anything over a hundred dollars or something that requires a private jet.”
Smacking his chest, I frown. “Ryder, you know that stuff isn’t important to me.” I’m a bit offended that he would insinuate that it was.
Yes, Fallon flying me all over the world and allowing me to have whatever I wanted was awesome, but I’m working hard to figure out a way to pay him and his father back every penny.
After mentioning it casually in conversation at Thanksgiving, I’m seriously considering Mr. Montgomery’s offer of working as a paid intern at MP.
I haven’t made a final decision about it, but it’s nice to know that I have options if I decide not to go to CU because of the baby.
Ryder squeezes me and kisses the tip of my nose. “Babe, I was joking.” When I don’t answer, he tries again. “Elizabeth, I swear I was just messing. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Prove it.”
He gives me an interested tilt of the head. “Okay.”
“Next Friday, I want to race you at the Fields.”
His deep, belly laugh has me smiling. “I think I may regret ever teaching you how to drift. I have a feeling I’ll be watching your taillights in the distance.”
My eyes flash with humor. “Scared to find out?”
“If I said yes, would you still love me?”
“Ever damn day for the rest of my life,” I tell him.
Ryder’s expression turns somber. “I want that, Elizabeth. I know we’re still young, but I want that so freaking much. A life with you. A future. But it’s something I can’t promise you anymore.”
In an instant, our playful banter and laughter transitions into something gloomy. I shake my head vehemently and straddle his lap, wrapping around him like a koala.
Ryder whispers into my hair, his body trembling slightly, “I hate being afraid.”
My hands clutch him tighter, but I wait to see what he says next.
This is the first time he has opened up to me.
Whenever we’re together, he wants to pretend that everything is normal and fine.
I’ve allowed him that facade, not wanting to add more stress to an already impossible situation.
He has enough to deal with without me nagging him to death over how he feels every second of the day.
“I’m so scared,” he next confesses.
I know you are, I want to say. I’m scared too. For you. For me. For the baby. I need to tell him.
“Ryder, I—”
“I don’t want to die, Elizabeth,” he chokes out and hearing him say it stops me cold.
He’s ripping out my heart and doesn’t even know it. “No.” Just no. Hell no. “No, Ryder, that’s not—”
“The doctors keep trying to convince me to be optimistic. That everything will be fine. The chemo will work. The graft will work. The cancer will be eradicated. I’ll have the rest of my life to look forward to.
But then they throw in all the things that could go wrong.
All the risks and possibilities for failure.
One second, I’m flying high and the next, a nuclear bomb is dropped on my head.
It has me all twisted up inside and I don’t know how to feel. ”
I pull back, grabbing his face to force him to look at me. My sweet, amber-eyed daredevil. The boy I have loved since I was nine. One of my best friends. The person who is my home.
“You fight,” I urge him, steely determination in my voice. “You don’t stop fighting. You don’t give up. I won’t let you give up.” I throw myself at him, crushing our mouths together. “I won’t let you. I’m here. Let me be here for you.”
Our kiss turns frantic. Our hands frenetic. We spend the rest of the evening wrapped in each other’s arms under the star-dappled maple tree as he tells me everything, knowing that I am there to catch him if he starts to fall.