4
When I return from my walk, Ben is up, sitting on the couch with a journal, a bit of color back in his face.
“Good nap?” I ask, dropping my keys and sunglasses in the bowl.
“If by good, you mean I didn’t puke in my sleep, then it was great.” He grins, and my heart seizes.
“How will I live without your terrible jokes?”
“Oh, I’ve left you about five hundred Post-it Notes in odd places. You’ll see.”
I flinch as I imagine roaming from room to room once he’s gone, plucking sweet notes from hidden places. My eyes instantly
fill with tears again. Banishing the image, I lean in from behind the couch to give him a soft kiss and slide my hands around
his neck and chest.
I eye the pen in his hand. “Making another master plan?”
He winces. “Sort of.” There’s a look on his face I can’t quite discern.
I crawl over the back of the couch and scoot in beside him, my knee touching his. “Care to elaborate?”
“You know the latest score I did for the Bond movie?”
I nod.
“Well, I was doing an interview, and the journalist got wind of my... struggles, and he asked if he could interview me.”
“So now you’re keeping a journal of your innermost thoughts to share with him?” I tease.
“No, more like questions.” He clears his throat. “He has a whole body of work on alternative therapies for cancer patients,
which I thought was cool.”
My gut clenches at the mention of alternative therapies. In the last few months, Ben has tried almost everything he can get
his hands on, but it seems nothing’s worked. “What would the interview be about? Your music? Or your health?”
“Maybe both.” He taps his pen to the page. “This journalist... He wants to do a feature on me for the New York Times .”
I nod again. Ben has been written up in major outlets over the years, though few of them have been so personal in nature.
“Well, that’s great, isn’t it?”
He reddens, which is unusual, as his go-to colors as of late are either ashen or pale. “Depends on how you define great. I think it’s great.”
I cross my arms. “What have you done?”
He shifts to look into my eyes, and I cave once his gaze connects with mine. There are whole worlds in those eyes, and I never
stand a chance once he locks in. “I may have told him about my crazy idea.”
I don’t even have to ask which crazy idea, because there is only one. Something akin to annoyance taps my shoulder, but I ignore it for Ben’s sake. “What
exactly did you tell him?”
“I told him that I wanted you to find love again.”
My nostrils flare as I wait. “And?”
“And then he had the brilliant idea to, um, write about it.” His eyes flick away from mine and back to the page. “To interview you too.”
I laugh and lightly shove his shoulder. “You are just so full of amazing ideas lately, Ben, it’s hysterical.” I hop off the couch and attempt to keep my voice light. “I’m sure that’s
when you told him that your wife would never, in a million years, entertain this insane idea, so boo-hoo for him and his readers.” I don’t know this journalist, but already I dislike
him immensely.
To detract from my annoyance, I busy my hands with pouring a Topo Chico over ice and hacking a lime into wedges. I squeeze
the juice into the glass and drink down the fizzy water in one long, greedy gulp. My throat burns. I feel desperate. Desperate
for Ben to let go of this ridiculous idea. Desperate for us to have one normal day where we can just be together without wishing
for a miracle to descend from the heavens and spare us both the inevitable grief and pain of when he’s going to collapse right
in front of me. This knowing that the end is coming but not knowing when is the real disease.
“So is that a no?” He cranes around to look at me. His eyes are pleading, and I can’t for the life of me understand why this
is so important to him.
“Yes, that is a no, Ben. I really want you to drop it, okay?”
He opens his mouth, then snaps it shut and nods. “Okay. I’ll tell him it’s off the table. The article can just be about me.”
A loaded silence blooms between us. We are not a couple with tension; we’ve been to the bowels of hell. We’ve faced a cancer
diagnosis. We’ve been cautiously hopeful, then come crashing back down when the doctors said that Ben will die, and soon.
There’s nothing we can do is one of my least favorite phrases ever, and as it throttles through my brain now, I suddenly understand why Ben wants this so very badly: because it is something he can do for me.
But I can’t. Even when I search the deepest parts of myself, even when I understand why he would be doing it, I know, without
a doubt, that my heart belongs to Ben.
I sidle up beside him again and tap his knee with my own. “How about our bucket list? Do you feel up to resuming it now that
I’m off for the summer?” Ben revised his bucket list when he received news that none of his treatment efforts worked. Instead
of big things, like riding an elephant or jumping out of a plane, it’s now full of smaller experiences, like helping a stranger
in need or conquering a fear.
He looks like he’s about to say something but doesn’t. Instead, he snaps the journal shut and tosses it on the coffee table
with the pen. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess we should, shouldn’t we?”
I grip his hands and force him to look at me. “Look, I love you so much for wanting to make sure I’m going to be okay, but
you’re it for me, Ben. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you, and I never will again. That’s just a fact. Okay? But that
doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the gesture. And,” I add, just to lighten the mood, “if the universe wants me to be with someone
else, then I’m sure some hot guy will fall from the sky.” That gets a grin. “But until then, can we drop it?”
He processes what I’m saying and finally sighs. “Yeah.” He hoists himself off the couch with as much effort as a heavily pregnant
woman and grimaces as he stands. His entire body aches, all the way to his bones. I’m not sure he can even make it around
the block, much less embark on a bucket list adventure. But I know Ben well enough to know that he understands his own limits.
“How about I start dinner?”
“Sure. I’m going to take a shower.” His voice is flat and small, and I feel terrible for bursting his bubble.
As I chop vegetables and heat the broth, I think about my newfound freedom this summer. A heavy, dark cloud trails that excitement.
Of course it does. But I have to start organizing my life for what comes after . Who I will be after . How I will spend my days after .
I glance around our tiny, comfortable condo and wipe a few tears that have carved wonky lines down my cheeks. We were so excited
when we bought this condo; it symbolized our new marriage and a fresh start. Instead, it’s been a container for bad news,
endless tears, and illness.
A few minutes later, Ben emerges in some version of the same outfit he always wears: loose-fitting pants and a T-shirt. I
turn the soup to low and grab his shoulders. “Hey, you.”
“Hey.” He stares into my eyes, but they are dim, sad.
“Let’s go for a walk. Get some ice cream?”
There’s a hint of a smile as he points at the stove. “But you’re making soup.”
“So? We’re adults, aren’t we? Who says we can’t have dessert before soup?”
“If you’d told me I would be pushing forty, eating all soft foods, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
“If you’d told me I’d have to talk the lit and fit Ben Foster into going on a walk around the block to get ice cream, I wouldn’t
have believed you.”
There. The spark ignites, and he goes to retrieve his shoes. When he stands after tying the laces, he smiles. “Race you there?”
“Only if you use those dorky speed-walking arms.” I mimic a speed walker, and he erupts into a genuine laugh.
“You can do that... on the other side of the street. While I’m winning.”
It used to be the joke between us, how he was so obsessed with winning the obstacle course race where we first met that he
literally knocked me over and didn’t look back. At the time, I’d been doing Tough Mudders for a year and traveled to Chattanooga
for the race. If I hadn’t caught up to Ben that day, we could have lost out on the chance to get to know each other. Luckily,
because of my hypercompetitive streak, we were literally thrown together at the finish line, right as I passed him to win. And now here
we are, at another finish line.
“See you there, loser.” I racewalk out our door to the elevator, hips swiveling, arms pumping.
He calls from the doorway, unable to run to catch up.
“Yeah?” I turn, and there are tears in his eyes as I jog back to him. “You okay?”
I scan his body to be sure. Instead, he crushes me in a firm hug and digs his fingernails into my back.
“I’m so in love with you, Harper.” He cries softly into my neck, and I hold him as tears slide silently down my cheeks and
drench the neck of his shirt. I’m transported back to the bliss of those early days of falling in love. We didn’t waste time
playing games as we might have in our twenties, but it was still exciting. We were two people who had been waiting for the
right person, refusing to settle. And then there he was, literally knocking me off my feet. Once we began to date, everything
crackled with possibility. Everything was an adventure. Everything, after so much time, finally made sense.
“I love you too. So much.” I’ve never meant the words more. I squeeze him back, though not as hard as I’d like.
Finally, he pulls away and smooths the tears from my cheeks. “Also, you should never come back to check on the person who’s trying to beat you,” he whispers. Then, to my shock and delight, he races past me toward the elevator, faster than I’ve seen him move in months.
He stabs the elevator button. It opens, and he steps on. He peeks his head out, his tear-streaked face raw and beautiful.
“You coming?”
I nod and swallow my grief. It grows like a pit inside me, bigger and heavier by the day. “I’m right behind you.”