Chapter 22
“Can I ask you somethin’ personal?”
I cast Matt an annoyed sideways glance on the back porch. We’re pairing wine with chocolate pie. “Why stop now?”
He chuckles, grins—but then goes surprisingly serious. “It might be none of my business.”
“Again,” I say, “why would you quit prying into my private life at this point in our friendship?”
He looks amused, cute. When I was younger, I couldn’t have dreamed a man in his forties could still ever look cute, but Police Chief Cordray seems to pull it off with regularity. Once more, however, his expression turns somber. “Guess I was wonderin’ about ... cancer.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“You told me it’s completely gone now, right? I mean, guess I don’t understand how that stuff works exactly.”
His concern tugs at my heart when I least expect it.
Sometimes I forget that people don’t know these things, and that they care.
So I take a sip of wine and say, “I think it all works differently for different kinds of cancer, and for each individual person actually. But they tell me there’s a ninety percent chance mine will never recur, so I’m truly in good shape. ”
A visible relief washes over him that I’m not wholly ready for. “That’s great, Jessie. I’m really happy to hear that.”
“Thanks,” I tell him, not quite meeting his eyes, even now still not quite ready for his care, or the fact that it might be affecting me emotionally.
“Can I ask you somethin’ else?” he asks.
“Could I stop you if I tried?”
Another soft laugh from him that reaches my solar plexus. Yet then ... “I know the last time we talked about this, you seemed uncomfortable, and I’m not tryin’ to be nosy, but we know each other better now, and ... I just still wonder what was it like for you? To go through it.”
Yes, I was uncomfortable back then, worried about things like pity.
But even now that those issues have fallen away, it’s hard to answer—because he can’t know what a big question he’s asking.
The truth is, if you’ve gone through the big C, you understand, and if you haven’t, you can never understand.
When I don’t reply right away, he says, “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
But I quickly tell him, “It’s okay.” And it is.
“I talked about it a lot on my social media, because I wanted to demystify it and wanted people to know it’s not always a death sentence.
And I wanted women to be proactive in detecting breast cancer since, if you catch it early, they can usually treat it.
But what it’s like is ... well, that’s different for every person, too.
And for me, it was ... hard.” My voice has gone softer than intended.
He responds gently as well. “I bet you wished you had your mom and dad around.”
I hold in my gasp but feel it in my chest. I’ve never told anyone that. I’ve never said those words. And no one ever said it to me, either—until now. But the truth is ... “The whole time. I wished every day that I could just call my mom and have her come take care of me. Like moms do, you know?”
He nods. “Yeah.”
“You know what they say about cancer,” I go on.
“If the disease doesn’t kill you, the treatment will.
In my case, the chemo was rough. And I’m grateful that both my brain and body seem to have bounced back for the most part.
It leaves some people in a fog for a long time.
For me, things got better once the chemo ended, but I still don’t always remember things as well as I used to.
” Yikes, did I just say that? Out loud? To him?
I’ve thought it before, been aware of it, but I haven’t voiced it, even to myself really, because I don’t want it to be true.
“Well, I’m glad it’s over for you and that, like you said, you bounced back.”
“The radiation was easier on me,” I tell him. “Some people have a tough time with it, but I did well. I moisturized twice as much as they told me to. I exercised twice as much as they told me to. And that seems to have worked for me.”
He’s smiling softly. “I’m glad.” Then he adds, “Thank you. For tellin’ me this stuff. I thought you’d probably wanna slap me.”
I tilt my head, give him another teasing look. “And yet you asked anyway.”
“Glutton for punishment, I reckon.” He swallows a sip from his wineglass, then leans back in his rocker. It’s dark out, the air is cool and summer sweet, and fireflies blink on and off in the distance. “I think you like me more than you used to.”
“It would be hard to like you less than I did at first,” I retort.
He laughs and offers up, “Maybe I’m just an acquired taste.”
“Perhaps so.” I don’t look at him, though. Because I’m wondering where this is going.
“Know what I like about you ?”
I flit a glance his way, then back to the fireflies. The moon casts a ribbon of light on the lake in the background. “What’s that?”
“That you’re not as tough as you act.”
“I’m plenty tough,” I insist.
“I know you are,” he appeases me. “But at the same time, you’re not, and sometimes you even let me see it.”
I’m completely honest when I say, “Something I’m suddenly regretting, Chief Cordray, now that you’re feeling the need to shine a light on it.”
He ignores that, however, and tells me, “I love that you quit wearin’ a hat when it’s just me and you. I like bein’ able to see your face.” His voice goes deeper. “Your eyes. Your neck. Your mouth.”
Oh boy. I feel that in inconvenient places. But I quickly regroup. “If there’s something you’re getting at, or some point you’re attempting to make, make it.”
His laugh tells me I’m making my point—that I’m not always soft and it would be a mistake to think I am. “I guess what I’m tryin’ to say,” he replies, “is that if I like you and you like me, sometimes I wonder why we’re just sittin’ here drinkin’ wine when we could be doin’ other fun things.”
Okay, I’m pretty sure he’s talking about fun things that happen in a bed, and no matter what I might feel when he flirts with me, I wish the conversation hadn’t gone in this direction.
I thought he knew where we stood—I thought we were friends who drank wine and soaked up the summer nights and that was our thing and we were both cool with it.
“I’m in no place for an affair, Matt,” I bluntly inform him.
He takes that in and finally says, “I’m not sure what that means. ‘In no place.’”
Oh brother. I really have to clarify this?
Well, fine then. “I’m recovering from cancer.
I’m trying to start feeling normal again.
I hope at some point I can begin to feel .
.. a little bit pretty again. It’s, frankly, a weird place to be.
” Crap, I’ve been far too open. Stupid wine.
So I move on. “And sex just complicates things. I mean, I just started liking you—why would you want to mess that up now?”
The words pull a small grin from him. And a slow-in-coming reply. “Okay,” he finally says. “I get it. We’re just back porch drinkin’ buddies.”
He sounds like he actually understands. Which is a relief. “A wine-drinking buddy isn’t a bad thing,” I point out.
“You’re right.” I watch then as he drains his glass, sets it on the table, leans over to pat my knee with one hand, and says, “But this wine drinker’s gonna toddle off to bed now.” He pushes to his feet.
“Because I turned you down?” Maybe he is disappointed, pouting.
“Just tired,” he replies. But he looks kind of sad, and I fear I’ve truly hurt his feelings.
“I hope you understand,” I tell him as he steps down off the porch.
When he came on to me after we first met, turning him down was a matter of common sense and not being into meaningless sex with a stranger.
And now it’s something ... closer to self-preservation.
But I don’t quite care to confess that. “I’m really just not in the right . ..”
“Place,” he finishes for me. “Yeah, I know. You said. It’s okay, Jessie.”
I want to say a million things. I want to tell him how broken I feel physically.
How even though I walk around acting normal, I don’t want a man to see me naked right now, skinny and covered with fresh scars, both outside and in.
How even though I let him see me without a hat, I still don’t feel attractive and that seems like a big part of sex to me.
How I’m not good at truly letting go and surrendering completely to the experience because I have control issues, and the few times I’ve really done that, I’ve ended up hurt by putting trust in the wrong guys.
And yet I can’t tell him any of those things—I’ve told him far too much already.
So I stay quiet, sorry that an otherwise nice night is ending this way.
He’s halfway across the yard when he stops and looks back, shadowy in the light from the porch.
“Just so ya know, you’re plenty pretty, and I know you’ve been through somethin’ hard, but I wish you could see yourself the way I do.
” With that, he turns to go again—but comes to a halt once more, spinning back to face me, even more of a shadow now.
“And if we had sex—I know we’re not gonna, but if we did—it wouldn’t make you like me less.
You’d definitely like me more. I’d make damn sure of that. ”
After which he really leaves—I hear his back door close a minute later. I sit with my final sips of wine, listening to crickets and tree frogs, digesting his words.
I wish you could see yourself the way I do.
If we had sex, you’d definitely like me more. I’d make damn sure of that.
I blow out a breath, toss back the last of the wine. Now I’m tired, too. Tired and trying not to feel those last words of his too much. Even so, they settle down inside me, in ways both troubling and comforting.
I carry in the wineglasses and empty plates, lowering them into the sink. Then, despite that it’s nearly midnight, I take a shower in the pink-tile bathroom, perhaps needing to wash some parts of the evening away.
After drying off, I go to the mirror to apply my scar cream.
It’s the usual routine, done in front of the mirror because the port scar is pretty high and it’s easier to find in the mirror than looking down.
Though I still don’t spend much time looking at myself in the mirror these days, at my face. But for some reason, just now, I do.
I wish you could see yourself the way I do.
I smile at myself. It’s a fake smile, a practice smile, to see what it looks like.
But it ... helps fill out the thin face with no hair falling around it.
I’ve not sure I’ve done that since losing my hair—smiled at myself in the mirror, allowed myself to see that my smile is still there, and it is still pretty.
I was blond as a child, and after my hair darkened in my teenage years, I started getting blond highlights, and eventually went all the way blond after college.
Now it’s as brown as can be. And it’s getting a little longer, enough that the curls frame my head more.
It’s only a slightly bigger helmet than I had a month ago—but it’s thicker, maybe even thick enough that my scalp wouldn’t sunburn without a hat. Maybe.
I look at my eyes. Matt once told me they show up better without all that hair. No denying that they look much bigger—at first I felt like one of those tiny stuffed toys with the too-big sad eyes—but maybe it’s okay. They’re bright, wide, hazel—and my eyebrows are coming back in a little fuller.
I don’t look the same as I did before, and maybe I never will—who can say? But maybe, just maybe, I’m starting to see what Matt sees, because right now, at midnight in the middle of nowhere, I don’t mind very much. In this moment, I’m okay with being just the way I am.