Chapter 6 #2
The room’s temperature suddenly drops. Until now, that was never on the table.
They’ve fought and screamed, sure, but Kyle has always insisted they stay together, begging, bargaining, digging in his heels.
In the flash of a second that it takes for her to answer, she considers their marriage honestly.
The pride on his face when he sees their kids.
His warm hand reaching over for hers in bed the night before a premiere, knowing she can’t sleep.
He’s her person. Even now. She can’t imagine telling anyone else what the doctor just told her. He’s still her person.
She lifts her eyes to meet Kyle’s. “Would I be here, going to this hack of an intimacy coach, telling her what turns me on week after week, if I just wanted you to leave?”
Relief floods Kyle’s face as he smiles. Geneva lunges out of her chair, her massive sun bobbing on her chest as she leaps across the room and engulfs Ingrid in a hug.
“Oh, Ingrid!” she announces. “I’m so moved, I’m going to let that hack comment go! That was a major breakthrough! Get in here, Kyle.” Kyle walks over. Geneva embraces the two of them, promising, “We’re going to get you and Kyle back to hemorrhoid-level intimacy soon, just you see!”
—
When they get outside, Kyle takes Ingrid into his arms. A tender and slow hug that, for once, he doesn’t try to turn into anything sexual.
“I love you,” he says.
Ingrid clings to him. Suddenly the weight of the day smothers her like an avalanche. She tries to fight it but her arms shiver underneath her blazer. She starts sobbing.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Kyle says. He spots a nearby empty café table and guides Ingrid toward it. They sit down. Ingrid dabs at her eyes.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this until we got home,” Ingrid says, summoning her strength. “But I have cancer.”
Kyle’s hands turn ice-cold in Ingrid’s. He doesn’t talk. Doesn’t blink. It’s as if his blood supply has been cut off. Ingrid feels mildly bad that she might have overdressed it. Should she have said precancer cells?
“We’re going to fight this together,” he says when he can finally manage to find his voice. “Did they say which kind? Is it…ovarian like your mother?”
“Well, it’s not full cancer yet…” Ingrid says.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“It’s preliminary. You know Dr. Hayes. He’s always ahead of the curve. He found these weird precancer cells in this high-tech test, but the good news is there’s a treatment.”
Kyle lets out a breath, visibly relieved.
“Whatever it is, we’ll do it,” he says. “Doesn’t matter what it costs. I’m serious. We’ll take my entire settlement! I don’t care!”
Shortly after Kyle got laid off, their lawyer, Joel, was able to extract a $3 million settlement from the firm for wrongly firing Kyle.
Joel reasoned that sure, Kyle had expensed hooker fees, but other bankers at his level had expensed far worse and gotten to keep their jobs.
But Kyle was approaching sixty, and that gave the firm a convenient excuse to get rid of him, which was illegal.
To this day, it’s still mind-blowing to Ingrid that Kyle could get $3 million for being fired at almost sixty after trying to expense hookers when women in Hollywood are told to their faces that they’re too old and can’t even extract an apology.
But money’s money, and the settlement means Kyle doesn’t need to worry about finding another job.
And now here he is, offering to give her all of that if it means saving her life.
Ingrid’s stunned by Kyle’s commitment. He’s in this with her. She wraps her fingers around his neck and pulls him in for a kiss.
Kyle moves his head closer to Ingrid’s. The two of them kiss, whisper-soft at first, but then deeper…
their lips exploring what they can’t with words…
a silken longing that could break the sky.
“I’m so sorry I caused you so much pain these last few months,” he says.
“I just want us to be happy again. You’re the love of my life. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Come on,” Kyle says, taking his wife’s hand. “Let’s go home.”
—
Kyle makes dinner while Ingrid tells him how the blood therapy with this new machine would work.
“All these male tech billionaires are doing it. I’d be the first female,” Ingrid says proudly.
“Ten transfusions? That’s it? And they would get rid of these mutations?
” Kyle asks, cutting up celery. Since losing his job, he’s been taking cooking lessons from their housekeeper, Dolores.
Ingrid’s grateful for his cooking, though she really wishes he could help her with the other stuff, too, like paying the bills and restocking cleaning supplies and talking to their son about not driving around on a moped in Thailand. The list goes on and on.
Ingrid takes a sip of her wine, thinking of how the transfusions might change all that. Would they give her more energy? More mental bandwidth? She thinks of herself in her twenties in New York…working in publishing…all those boxes of galleys she moved after work—my God, she’d had endless energy.
“That’s what he says. I’d be shaving off ten years from my age, essentially!” she says.
“So who would do it?” Kyle asks. “Are you thinking…Cassie?”
Ingrid shakes her head so fast, a little bit of the wine spills. “No.”
“You’re worried she’s going to get it,” Kyle guesses, putting his knife down. Gently, he asks, “Can she…they…whoever you choose…get…the cancer?”
“First of all, there’s nothing to get. These are precancer cells, if they’re even that.
Dr. Hayes says there’s a good chance they’re just regular cells.
” Ingrid has no idea what she’s saying. But it all sounds possible.
“And it’s not like this young person’s going to have the same predisposition to cancer that I have from my mom. ”
Kyle looks relieved.
“So you’re thinking of finding…a stranger.”
“Exactly,” Ingrid says. “I’ve already put in a call to Joel.” Their lawyer was surprisingly optimistic, but then again, nothing ever really fazes the guy. “He’s on it.”
“My Funny Valentine” comes on through the speakers. Kyle smiles and reaches for her hand. Ingrid closes her eyes.
“Remember the first time I played this for you?” Kyle asks, taking the wineglass from her hand. The two start slow dancing.
Ingrid nods. It was in his apartment in New York on a rainy night.
He was supposed to be just a fling. She’d just gotten out of a relationship.
She and Dillon Davis, another book editor at HarperCollins, had called it quits.
Dillon couldn’t handle her sniffing out more bestsellers than him.
Ingrid was done with publishing. She was leaving for LA in six months.
She had a dream to conquer the film world.
Kyle did not fit into her master plan. He was just supposed to feed her dinners.
But something about a finance guy who liked Chet Baker, who didn’t mind listening to her talk about books all night or having a long-distance relationship, and who wasn’t threatened by her ambition…
that last part was particularly intoxicating.
As she dances with her husband, she thinks of how nice this is. The two of them having the whole house to themselves. Maybe this is the do-over they need. A chance to put the past behind them and begin again. Fresh. Reborn by the miracle of modern science.
“Imagine if it worked,” she says, pressing her cheek to his chest. “To be ten years younger and have all that time back…”
“We could finally travel!” Kyle suggests. She can hear his heart pounding faster. “You could come with me skiing!”
Ingrid chuckles. She’s never been a big skier. All that schlepping and equipment, just to freeze on a hill. Still, she knows how much her husband loves it.
“You can ski while I read in the lounge,” Ingrid offers.
“For pleasure,” Kyle adds.
“Right. I won’t be so chained to my job. I’ll only take on projects I really care about.”
“We can go to Thailand, spend some time with Connor!”
“Maybe I’ll finally drive Cassie to school now that she’s in college,” Ingrid laughs.
“She OK, Cassie?” Kyle asks. Ingrid had told him about her daughter’s TA drama on the way home from the intimacy coaching. She texted Cassie in the car—call me if you want to talk more! She got no response, which hopefully means Cassie’s over it and has moved on to some new drama.
“She’s fine,” Ingrid assures him.
“Are you sure?” Kyle asks, his face clouding with worry.
Say what you will about Kyle, but he is a wonderful dad. Endlessly patient. Maybe a little too attentive when it comes to the kids’ needs, but that is a weird thing to be bothered by as a mom.
“Yes.”
“By the way, we can’t say anything to the kids about this.”
“God no.”
“Where are we going to find this person?”
“Depends. How much are we willing to offer them?”
“Like I said, I don’t care how much it costs. Take my entire settlement—three million,” Kyle says automatically. “Sell the house if you have to!”
The thought sends a shiver down her spine.
Sell the house? No way. They spent years renovating it to perfection.
Kyle worked so hard selecting every single plank of wood and slab of tile.
Their fabulous five-bedroom, four-bath home perched high up in the canyons was part of the glue that held them together. They could never part with it.
“We are not selling the house,” Ingrid says definitively.
“Ingrid, we’re asking a lot,” Kyle reminds her. “This young woman…even if she doesn’t get cancer…she’s still taking a huge risk. The only way this works is if we compensate her generously.”
Ingrid falls silent for a second. Up to now, she’s been too mesmerized by the possibility of reversing her age to truly consider the ethics of it.
It suddenly makes her stomach wallop, the idea that in this world now, you can buy a young person’s youth.
Is it right? She thinks of herself in her twenties. Would she have sold her blood?
“Are we going to tell them about…the cancer?”
“Again, it’s not cancer,” Ingrid says. “It’s just not! All I have are aged cells. I don’t want to misrepresent it as something it’s not.”
Their eyes meet. She knows her husband well enough to know that her answer is not sitting completely right with him. But she stares back at him with both a plea and a warning. It’s my body. You don’t get to tell me how to do this.
“OK,” Kyle says.
“As for the amount, we’ll take your settlement and start from there.”
“Absolutely,” Kyle agrees.
Three million dollars, she repeats to herself. Enough to set a young person up for the rest of their life. Would she have jumped on it in her twenties? Yes. Yes, she believes she would have. What twenty-year-old would pass up the opportunity? It could completely change their position in this world!
She interlaces her fingers with her husband’s. “Thanks for not hesitating.”
Kyle leans down and kisses her. “We’re a team, remember?”
—
That night, Kyle reaches for her in bed. She feels the heat between her thighs as he pulls her toward him.
It makes her heart writhe with longing. She can feel him missing her right back, feel his body searching for her. His deep desire turning into urgency, the corners of his eyes glistening in the light.
She reaches up with her hand to rub the tear away and kisses him.
“I’m right here,” she assures him.
“I know,” he whispers back as his tongue parts her tingling lips.
He kisses her with the hunger of someone who might never kiss again.
Someone whose heart might break if she pulls away.
He starts peeling at her silk slip. She feels his hands on her breasts, her hips, her butt.
Without breaking eye contact, she takes his fingers and slips them in between her legs.
His eyes flash with surprise at her wetness.
“I want you inside me,” she commands. “Now.”
Slowly, he enters her. He lets out a deep groan, his eyes searching hers.
For the first time in months, it does not feel like knives stabbing into Ingrid.
It feels like the all-consuming craving of two people who may never see each other again.
As Kyle whispers Ingrid’s name, tremors shoot through her.
They make love, turned on by their shared ecstasy that they’ve escaped fate.