This little story is for those who have ever loved with their whole hearts.

Feel Your Bones

JOHN LOOKS above the camera at me and says the words I long to hear. “And I love you.” His voice is hoarse. “You know that, right?”

I nod, trying to keep the camera from shaking. “I know,” I tell him, my voice almost even. I’ll have time to break later. Right now, he needs my strength. “Is that it? That all you want to say?”

“Yeah, Jackie. That’s it.” He looks exhausted, more so than usual. Dark bruising on sallow skin. Gaunt face. Eyes like burned coals. Talking for twenty minutes straight as he’s done into the camera is probably more than he can handle. “Put the camera down and come here. Need to feel your bones.”

I do as he says, as I’ve always done. Maybe it takes me a bit longer to get to him these days, but that’s okay. We’re not young like we used to be. Time isn’t something you can fight, no matter how hard you wish to. Never thought we’d be here, though. Never thought we’d get to be in our eighties. Eighty-three, to be exact. We’ve had a good life. A long life. A life filled with joy and laughter. Tears and sorrow. Celebration and horror and happiness and sadness.

A good life. A long life.

But it hasn’t been long enough. Not by a long shot. Not by a million years. It could go on forever and it still wouldn’t be long enough as far as I’m concerned.

I set the camera down on the end table and push my chair next to his bed. I ignore those blasted machines, their annoying beeps. Their animalistic hissing. The way they light up, the way the dials spin. I don’t even know what half of them do, though I know they haven’t done enough. We’re in a year I never thought could exist when I was younger, and these machines still can’t do enough. We can land men on Mars, but we still can’t do anything to help him. To help John. I don’t get it. I don’t understand. How could it have come to this?

I grunt as I scoot the chair as close as I can while still leaving room to sit in it. My knees knock into the side of his bed as I move to the front of the chair, but I ignore the flare of pain. It’s faint, almost negligible. When you get to be our age, you always hurt one way or another, so this ache is nothing new.

John watches every move I make, his eyes slightly glassy but aware. He watches me with such a knowing look. He’s always done that. Our whole lives. Everything I’ve done, John has seen. No one has ever looked at me like he does. No one has ever seen me completely, like he does.

No one else ever stood a chance.

This Whole Jackie Thing

I REMEMBER feeling his eyes on me for the first time. We were twelve. I turned around in my desk and looked back at the new kid, only to find him staring at me. He was bigger than me, bigger than almost everyone else in the class. Dark hair, dark eyes. Dark skin. Mexican, maybe. At least part. Enough that people would probably give him shit if he’d been any smaller. He had fine hairs on his forearms, and I wondered what they felt like, if they’d be soft. Next to him, I’d look like a ghost, all pale and blond. I was the light to his darkness.

I stared right back before baring my teeth at him in a low growl. I didn’t know what he wanted and thought it odd that he seemed so intent on watching me. In response, he smiled that little smile that I would come to know so well. At lunchtime, before I could even make my way out of the classroom, he grabbed me by the elbow and turned me around as our classmates left. Those eyes found mine again.

“I’m John,” he said, his voice deep for someone our age. He towered above me.

“I don’t care,” I retorted, uncomfortable at being handled in a rough way.

“Yeah, you do. What’s your name?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know.” His gaze never left mine, and I couldn’t look away.

“It ain’t your business.”

“Please.”

I frowned, but it didn’t last long. He said please, a word I didn’t expect him to know (much less know how to use) given his size. His fingers were warm on my skin, just enough pressure to make me feel him, but not enough to bruise. “Jack,” I said finally, only because I didn’t know what else to say.

“Jack. Jack.” He sounded as if he liked the way my name tasted on his tongue. “Jackie.”

I scowled at him. “No one calls me that.” And they didn’t. I may have been small, but I was scrappy as all hell. My bravado never amounted to much, but at least I tried.

“Jackie,” he said again. “Everyone else calls you Jack, right?”

I nodded, unable to ignore the way he brushed his thumb on the skin of my forearm.

“Then I ain’t gonna call you that,” he said seriously. “I want to call you somethin’ that’s only for you and me. Somethin’ between us, like a secret. Somethin’ only we’d know.”

“Why?” I didn’t understand why he’d want a secret for just us. No one had ever wanted to share secrets with me before.

“Because that’s the way it should be.”

“You’re awfully strange. You know that, right?” I didn’t look away. For the first time in a very long time, I was intrigued.

He smiled again. “Yeah, Jackie. I know.”

“You’re new.”

“No, really?”

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re a jerk.”

He shrugged. “I try not to be.”

“Where’s your lunch?” He wasn’t carrying anything in his hands.

“Don’t have one. Can’t afford it.” He didn’t look embarrassed at this, merely stating fact.

“Don’t your folks make you a lunch to bring?”

He shrugged. “Just me and my dad. Ain’t got nothin’ really to make.”

“Oh,” I said, unsure if I had the right to ask anything further. I didn’t know many other people whose parents weren’t together. My own parents loved each other so completely that it was impossible to ever think of them apart, even if they loved God and Jesus as much as they cared for each other and me. Maybe even a little more. I didn’t know much about broken homes. Not then.

But I worked up my courage and, truth be told, it was getting easier for me to talk to him, even after just a few minutes. Maybe it was the way he just stood there, watching me. Maybe it was the way he was obviously waiting of me to say something. I don’t know. Whatever it was, I gathered I could ask him just about whatever I wanted to and he’d answer. It gave me a weird little rush of power that I could do that with someone else, that he’d let me do that to him. “Where’s your mom?” I asked him quickly, as if getting the words out would make them less nosey.

John didn’t even flinch. “She left,” he said, as if it didn’t matter much to him. “Took off one day and just never came back. Don’t remember her. I was just a kid when it happened.”

I couldn’t even bother to correct him that he was still a kid because I was shocked that a woman, a mother could do something so horrific as leaving her family behind without so much as a good-bye, without crawling back at some point begging for forgiveness. My own ma wouldn’t have been capable of something so callous and harsh.

“You haven’t seen her since?” I asked incredulously.

He shook his head. “Nope. My dad said she was good for nothin’ anyway, but I think she just couldn’t handle it anymore.”

“Handle what?”

His jaw tightened slightly. “Don’t matter much, Jackie.”

“My name’s not Jackie.”

“Sure it is. It’s what I just called you, ain’t it?”

“How would you like it if I called you Johnny?”

“Don’t matter much to me. You can call me whatever you want.”

“You’re so weird,” I muttered.

He smiled that little smile. “I’ve been called worse things.”

I thought hard, but only for a second or two because the decision was easier than I thought it’d be.

“You want part of my sandwich?” I asked him, suddenly feeling a bit shy. I hadn’t had a friend, not in a long time. It would be best to make him my friend before anyone else tried to take him away from me, before they could spill their poison in his ears and drive him away. I wanted him to belong to me, but I didn’t know if it was my place to ask, especially since I didn’t know why I wanted him to be mine.

John shook his head. “You need to eat it. You’re a little guy.”

“I ain’t that little,” I snapped.

“Okay, Jackie. Okay,” he said, like he was trying to calm me down.

“And besides, you’re a big guy. You need to eat too.”

“I suppose.”

I felt that little rush of power again. “So you should have some of my sandwich, then.”

He seemed hesitant, but he didn’t let me go. “You sure?”

I rolled my eyes. “I offered, didn’t I?”

He dropped his hand, and I almost begged him to grab me again. I didn’t know why, but I felt cold now that he wasn’t touching me anymore. “You did,” he said quietly. “You seem like a good guy. You a good guy, Jackie?”

I didn’t think too hard on that. “Yeah. I think so. Maybe. Are you?”

“I want to be,” he said, looking down at his big hands. “Don’t know if I am, sometimes. I got in trouble at my last school. A lot.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Fights and stuff. Sometimes I have an awful temper. I don’t want to. Some things just make me mad, I guess.”

“Oh.” I’d been in fights before. I always lost.

He looked nervous, averting his gaze. “Maybe you could help me be a good guy. If you want to, I mean. Is that okay?” He glanced at me quickly then looked away again.

“I guess.” I took a deep breath, because I knew I couldn’t keep this from him. “You should know people don’t like me much.”

“Oh? Why?” His words were simple and his tone light, but I didn’t miss the way his eyes narrowed.

“Dunno. Just the way it is. My dad’s the preacher, so people think I got religion. You might want to make friends with the other kids. People see us together, you’re gonna get shit.” Even though I didn’t want to, I gave him a way out, just to be safe. I wanted him to pick me, and I still wasn’t sure why.

John shook his head. “Doesn’t bug me.” He paused as if considering my words. “You got religion? God and Jesus and all that fire and brimstone?”

I tried to keep my relief from spilling over. “Don’t know. Don’t know if I care enough to know. Why should I care about God? I’m twelve.”

He laughed at this, a quiet huff. “I like you,” he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. I’d learn later that to him, it was.

Another thought caused me to glare at him. “You ain’t funnin’ me or nothin’?”

A quirk of his lips again. “No, Jackie. I ain’t funnin’ you.”

I waited just a moment more, but then said, “Okay. C’mon then, I guess. We can go sit on the football field, near the bleachers. It’ll be quieter out there. If we’re gonna be friends, then you’re gonna need to tell me about yourself. Just the two of us. Don’t really like anyone else, so we’ll need to find some things to talk about.” I didn’t tell him again that it needed to be this way because no one liked me, but I think he got it. It wasn’t that hard to get.

He nodded, his gaze never leaving my face. “Good. That’s all I’m gonna want, you know? Just the two of us.”

“And you’re gonna have some of my sandwich. I also got an apple and some cookies. You’ll have some of those too.” The tone in my voice left no room for discussion. I’d be damned if I let my only friend in the world be hungry, especially when I had enough for the both of us. It wasn’t right and I’d make sure he was fed.

“Sure, Jackie. Whatever you say.”

I hesitated. “This whole ‘Jackie’ thing?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m okay if you call me that, but only you. So don’t let anyone else call me that,” I said in a rush, feeling my face burn.

He grinned. “It’ll only be me,” he promised. “Only me. You’ll see. No one else will call you that like I do. No one ever will. You hear that name and you’ll know it’s comin’ from me.”

That caused my eyes to burn, though I couldn’t say why. Maybe it was his earnestness. Or maybe it was because I finally had a friend. Maybe it was a little bit of both.

He followed me out the building, like he was my overgrown shadow. I kept shooting little glances back at him, sure he’d disappear if I didn’t keep my eye on him. He was there every time I looked back, his eye catching mine, that little smile on his face. I tried to smile back, but I still felt awkward. He followed me, though, and without question, ate half my sandwich. Some of my cookies. My whole apple because I said I didn’t want it, but in actuality I was fascinated by the way his jaw worked, by the way his throat bobbed when he swallowed, the skin moving over muscle and bone.

From that day on, it was rare for us not to be seen together. John and Jackie, people said, some perplexed and unsure, some amused and smirking, some vicious and mean. It didn’t matter what they thought, though. Not really. I wouldn’t let it.

All that mattered was that John followed me out that day like he trusted me. And every day that came after, I made sure he had something to eat.

Just Hold On

SEVENTY-ONE YEARS later, he still watches me, following my every movement.

I sit down in the chair with a grunt. Once I’m settled, I reach up and lower the bars on the side of his bed. They clack down. I almost pinch my thumb, but I move it in time. I’ve done it enough to know how to avoid it. Once the bars are lowered, I scoot my chair just a little bit closer and reach up to take his hand in mine. His skin feels warm and dry, the fingers slightly gnarled. Arthritis got to him a little bit worse than it did me, but he’s still able to curl his hand in mine. Our fingers touch. It’s familiar, this touch. More familiar than anything else in my life. He’s been here, by my side, since the day I met him, an irrevocable force that has helped to shape and define me, to make me who I am. A constant.

My constant.

Just hold on, I think to myself. Just a little while longer. You can wait. He needs you now. You can wait until it’s done. Then, you can see. Then, you can go. You can’t let him do it on his own because of his soul. You have to protect it with all you have.

“Jackie,” he says, and I have to fight against trembling. My name on his lips has always been my faith. He’s always spoken it like it was the Word of God, with reverence, like I was something holy, like I was something divine.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember….” He stops as he coughs violently. It’s a horrible sound. A wet sound, like he’s drowning in his own lungs. He squeezes my hand tightly as we wait for it to pass. I press a button on the side of the bed, and the back end rises up, elevating him so he can breathe easier. There’s a rattle deep in his throat, but it eventually subsides. He brings up an oxygen mask that he puts over his nose and mouth. He breathes deeply and exhales. And then again. And again.

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk,” I tell him, though I know that won’t happen. John has a stubborn streak a mile wide. Always has. If he wants to say something, he’ll say it and there won’t be a single thing that will stop him.

He shakes his head. “I have things to tell you,” he says, gasping into the mask. “To have you tell me. I need to hear them. And so do you. Before—”

“Don’t you think I know?” I ask him. My eyes burn. “I know, John. I know everything. I know how you—”

“How long… till sunset?”

Please don’t make me look. John, please don’t make me look.

“Jackie.”

I look down at my watch. Oh God. “Two hours. We’ve got two hours.”

He nods. “You don’t have to do this, sweetheart. You could just leave it here for me—”

“Ain’t gonna let you do it,” I say harshly. “Ain’t gonna take that chance. I told you that. We don’t know what happens afterward. I can’t let you risk it. I won’t. Not another word on the matter. You mind me now.” This is nonnegotiable. I won’t let him take it for himself.

He’s starting to get upset. “Maybe we should—” He stops when a grimace of pain comes over his face. He hisses between his teeth and grips my hand even tighter as a tremor rolls through him.

I sit forward and bring his hand to my lips. “Just hold on. John, just hold on, okay? I’m here. I’m here. It’ll pass. I’m promise you, it’ll pass.”

“Hurts, Jackie,” he says through gritted teeth. “This one hurts. Oh, Jesus, this one hurts.”

Anything. I’d give anything to take this away. I’d do anything to have his burden placed upon me and not on him. If I could take on his pain, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I have to distract him. “Do you remember the first time we kissed?” I ask him as he starts to sweat.

He nods tightly. “Tell me. Please.” He closes his eyes, his brow furrowed. His hand starts to shake as the tremors get worse. I can’t begin to imagine the pain he’s in, and it’s almost too much for me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find my voice to speak. Please, he said. I push through the fear and dig deep. Because when John says please, I’ll move Heaven and Earth to get him what he asks for.

“We were fifteen,” I manage to say, though my voice is rough. “It was summer. We’d gone down to the lake to fish, but nothing was biting that day. We didn’t care, though. We were lying on our backs, looking up at the sky, finding shapes in the clouds. It was such a pretty day. Such a beautiful day. And I remember thinking—”

We Dreamed Out Loud

I REMEMBERED thinking that life couldn’t get any better than that moment. I had no worries in the world; well, none that were pressing anyway.

My best friend was by my side. I could feel his arm brush against mine every so often as we watched the sky. We were young and strong and oh so alive, our entire future stretched out before us. Nothing could stop us, and I was sure nothing ever would. We were making plans for the years ahead, spilling out secret dreams and wishes that we couldn’t share with anyone else.

In the three years I’d known him, John had become the most important thing in my life, and I couldn’t imagine a life where he wasn’t by my side. He’d always be there, I knew. I was certain. My parents had their faith in God. I had my faith in John.

So we dreamed out loud. Dreams only for us to hear. We dreamed big and wild, knew it was all inevitable, that it would all be ours one day.

John wanted to build a big cabin for the two of us, out in the middle of the woods, where we’d live and never have to see anyone else unless we wanted to. We’d hunt for our food and have a garden with carrots and cabbage. There’d be a big apple tree, the branches hung low with Granny Smiths, tart and crisp. In the summer, we’d sit on the porch and watch the trees, bees floating in between the butterflies on the flowers. In the winter, when the snow fell heavily, trapping us there, he’d build a fire in the fireplace, and we’d lie in front of it, watching the flames chase away the shadows. It’d be cold outside, but we’d be safe and warm.

Just him and me, he said.

We’d stay there in this cabin because that was where we’d belonged and no one could ever tell us what to do. No one could ever tell us no. We could stay there, he said, for the rest of our lives and all would be well because he would have everything there he ever wanted.

I told him I wanted to be a detective, a private investigator. Jack Ford, PI. I’d solve crimes and smoke cigarettes. I’d know some rough characters and get in fights and battle my own inner demons while wearing a black fedora. I’d drink whiskey out of a flask and get the dame. I’d always get the dame in the end. John could be my partner, and we’d have adventures that’d make this small life seem like nothing. We’d break up crime rings involving international jewel thieves. We’d solve murders. We’d catch the bad guys in the act. We’d never have to come back here, to this place, because we’d be something. We’d make something of ourselves. Everyone would know our names, and we’d be famous. I laughed at the idea.

John didn’t laugh with me. “That what you want?” he asked finally, not looking at me. “To get the dame?”

I shrugged, not understanding why he sounded so deflated. “I guess. I don’t know. That’s how those stories go, right? The cabin is a good idea, too. I’d live there with ya. We could even make snow shoes, like the Eskimos did. Set traps for rabbits and squirrels. You’d have to be the one to clean ’em, though. I don’t think I want blood and guts all over me.”

He pulled his arm away so it didn’t touch mine anymore, and I hated that he’d pulled away from me. I hated that we weren’t connected. If I was being honest with myself, it was really because his skin wasn’t against mine.

Lately it seemed we’d found ways to touch each other more and more, and even if I didn’t really know what it meant, I knew I didn’t want it to stop. It felt wrong when he wasn’t touching me. As if I was only half a person, missing part of my soul. That was how it always felt when we were apart from each other, as rare as those times were. But it was somehow worse that we’d be right next to each other and I still felt that same way, that I wanted more. That I needed more.

“Maybe,” he said. He brought his other arm up, covering his eyes in the crook of his elbow. His hand stretched toward me, fingers dangling. “Maybe not.” He sounded funny.

I turned on my side, facing him. “What?”

“What?”

“You mad?”

“No, Jackie. I ain’t mad.”

“You sound mad.”

And he did. John rarely got angry; the few times I’d ever seen it had either been directed at his asshole father or at Carl Morley, a snake of a teenager who thought I was his personal punching bag. Well, he’d thought that until John broke his nose. Carl didn’t come after me after that. No one did. Not with John around. John was right when he’d told me he had a temper, but I’d kept my part of the bargain over the last few years and kept him grounded. For the most part.

He snorted. “Okay.”

“I don’t know why you’re—”

“It’s okay, Jackie. Don’t worry about it.”

“That just makes me worry about it more.”

“That’s ’cause your brain never shuts up. I ain’t mad at you.” He still wouldn’t look at me.

But his distance was okay for the moment. I was fascinated by his fingers, long and slender, the way the sunlight hit them, casting shadows onto his ear. I could see fine hairs on the back of his hand, thick blue veins that interweaved, mapping the whole of him. Fine bones against calloused, tanned skin. Fingernails bitten almost to the quick, a habit he would never break. Lines buried deep into his palm, the lifeline like a canyon that split his hand in half.

Everything about his hand was lovely, seen in a light I’d never thought possible. My breath caught in my chest and grass poked against my ear. I wanted to touch his hand. I wanted to feel it under mine, our fingers pressed together. I wanted to trace his skin. I wanted to know it like I knew my own. I’d had these thoughts before, but never as strong as right then.

I knew what God and the Bible said about such feelings, and I suppose I should have felt ashamed, but this moment wasn’t about God. This wasn’t about the Bible. None of that really mattered much, at least not right now. This moment was about me and John. And that was right. It was always right when it was the two of us, so how could something like that be a sin? How could him and me be wrong?

He sighed, but it wasn’t from contentment. It wasn’t a happy sound. It was resigned. It was fatalistic. It was accepting something that could never be. It was closing a door and locking it, the key disappearing so that it could never be opened again.

I wanted to shatter that door into a million pieces, so it could never be closed.

I didn’t stop myself. I couldn’t.

I reached up and grabbed his hand, grasping it tightly, tugging on it. I heard his sharp intake of breath as I pulled on him. I rubbed our hands together, sliding my fingers between his. He pressed his thumb deeply against my palm, a sharp pressure that grounded me through the fog that had fallen over my eyes.

He rolled to his side, mirroring me, and our hands fell between us, still joined, pressing against the grass. He watched me, his eyes wide but careful, almost wary. I catalogued everything: The chicken pox scar on his chin. The freckle below his left eye. His nose, slightly bent from when his father had broken it the year before. The part of his lips in a cautious smile. The one tooth, endearingly crooked.

This was the face I dreamed about with increasing regularity. This was the face I knew so well. It’s just John, I told myself. That’s all this is. Just John.

But I don’t think our faces had ever been this close before. Not as we looked directly at each other. My skin felt warm. Just John. Always John.

I squeezed his hand. And then again. And again. And again until he squeezed mine back and his head was only inches from mine, his breath on my face and—when did he get so much closer? How did he get closer without even moving?

I could feel the stretch of the muscles in my neck and realized it wasn’t him moving at all. It wasn’t him getting closer. It was me. I was moving. I was straining toward him. His eyes grew wider every second that passed and just before it happened, they fluttered shut and a soft breath escaped him.

The kiss was chaste, the first time. A mere brush of my lips against his, a momentary connection where I thought stars had exploded across the sky and all the world would sing because nothing had ever felt so right. Nothing had ever felt like so much fire bursting within me. If this was sin, then I wanted to revel in it. If this was against the Word of God, then I’d go to hell. I’d bow at John’s feet in veneration, uncaring if it was blasphemous. If I had any fear, it didn’t last long. The same with any doubt.

The tumult within me calmed in just a few short seconds before it turned into something else entirely and began to whisper to me. It said yes. It said thank you. It said this is how it should be. How it will always be.

It was chaste, that first kiss. But the ones that followed were not. As soon as our lips broke apart, and we stared wildly at one another, something snapped and I let go of his hand and cupped his face, pulling him back to me again. It was awkward. Too much, too fast. Our noses bumped, our teeth knocked together. There was too much saliva, and I felt assaulted by his tongue as he pushed it past my lips, tangling it with my own. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t focus on doing anything right; the only thing going through my head was more, more, more.

And he gave me more. He gave me all of him. He gathered me up in his big arms and pulled me to him, crushing our bodies together, holding me close like he thought I’d disappear if he let me go. Like I was something precious.

I made little noises that I couldn’t keep from crawling up the back of my throat. He growled at me, low and throaty. Those sounds went straight down to my sex, but that seemed dangerous, something that I wasn’t quite ready for, something I couldn’t even begin to grasp. But he never pushed. He never pushed for more than we were already doing. It was enough, for the both of us. More than enough.

Eventually, he pulled back, breathless, eyes wide, his lips swollen and wet. I panted at him, unsure of what to do, of what to say. Unsure if I’d just made a huge mistake and he’d never speak to me again. If I’d be alone forever, because I’d never have someone like I had John Kemp. I’d never find someone again who understood everything about me, who could know all of my secrets. Someone who had my back just as sure as I had his. Someone I loved above all others. I darted my tongue out to try and catch a taste of him on me, even as I began to crack.

“I-I’m sorry,” I whispered as I shook.

I was terrified. I was sure he was about to look at me like I was disgusting and he was about to run. I knew he’d kissed me back, but now he would reel from me, and I wouldn’t blame him. He must have thought I was some kind of abomination. That I’d forced my will upon him, making him give me what I wanted. How could I have thought that was okay? What in God’s name had possessed me to think I could kiss my best friend and not have there be repercussions?

“Please don’t go.” I sounded like I was begging. I probably was. “Please don’t leave me. Ah, Jesus. Christ. Oh, John, don’t leave. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

He trailed his fingers along my face, wiping away the tears that had started to fall. “Jackie,” he said. “I ain’t gonna leave you. How could I? I’m nothing without you. I’d be lost. It’d be like being in the dark without a light. I ain’t gonna do that. I can’t.”

“You promise?” I cried at him. “You promise me, John Kemp!”

There was fire in his eyes. “I promise you, Jackie. I promise you with my whole heart. Every piece. Every part. I’ll never leave you. Not now. Not ever. I been waitin’ for you to do that. I wanted to do it for so long. I just needed you to look at me like you’re looking at me now.”

“How am I looking at you?” I asked as a breeze blew through our hair, as the waves of the lake lapped gently, as a bird chirped somewhere in the trees. I knew, but I needed him to say it. I needed to hear it from his lips.

“Like I’m everything,” he said quietly, grazing my jaw with his fingers.

And that’s because he was. He was looking back at me just the same. Like so much heat. Like so much fire. Like I was all there was to him and all there ever would be.

He and I knew then that things would never be the same.

They’d be better.

That God-awful Paisley Couch

“AND THEN you kissed me again,” I tell him now, squeezing his hand as his tremors subside. “You kissed me again like the world was about to end and it was the last thing you ever wanted to do in your life. You kissed me and then you laughed. We both laughed so loud and hard because how hadn’t we done that before? Why’d it take us so long? Why didn’t I see what you could see?”

“I wanted you,” he whispers. I take a soft towel with my free hand and wipe it across his brow. His skin is hot to the touch. “From the first moment I saw you. I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand it. But I saw you and I knew you were gonna be mine. Ain’t no one else in the world but you, Jackie. Don’t need nobody else. Never have.”

I know this. I do. John would have been content long ago if we’d done exactly what he’d wanted when we were kids: build a cabin in the middle of nowhere and let the world pass us by. John didn’t have much use for other people; his daddy made sure of that, having beaten the shit out of him on a regular basis since he was old enough to remember. It got to be that I’d check him daily for new bruises, sure that one day John wasn’t going to come to school because he’d gotten hit upside the head and killed.

And then it happened. About a year after that first kiss. He didn’t show up to school, and I panicked. I was so scared. I didn’t think I’d—

“Jackie.”

I shake my head, clearing the cobwebs in my head. I look up into my husband’s eyes.

“Where’d you go?” he asks. His voice is weak. He shouldn’t be talking so much. He needs to save his strength for—

Oh. Oh, heart. Oh, love. I don’t know if I can do this. How did I think I could do this? Even for you. Even if I promised. I just….

“Just thinking,” I say, trying to ignore my thoughts. “All these memories. Everything we have. It’s like digging through a box of pictures.”

He nods and I can tell he’s pleased. “If the box was the size of a warehouse. Two warehouses, even.”

I laugh quietly and reach up to slide the oxygen mask back over his nose and mouth, trailing my fingers along his cheek. “Yeah, John. That’s what happens. That’s what happens when you spend your entire life with just one person. The box gets bigger and bigger. It never bursts. It just grows.”

He threads his thin fingers through mine again. “Our entire lives.”

“Yeah. Our entire lives.”

“Because there was nothin’ about my life I can remember before you.”

“I know. Me too.” I could remember life before John Kemp. I just choose not to.

“Sunset’s gettin’ closer, Jackie.”

“Yeah.” I look away.

“Do you….” He squeezes my hand.

“What?”

“Do you have any regrets?”

My gaze snaps to his. “About what?”

“This. Me. You and me. Do you ever wish things had been different? You could have gotten married. Had kids. You could have had a family.”

“You are my family.” I sound slightly hysterical, but I don’t know how to stop it. “I made a home with you. I made a life with you. I only ever wanted you, John. I didn’t need anything else. I never wanted anything else. So, no. Not one regret. Not once. Not ever.”

And that’s the truth. As much as he and I identified ourselves as bisexual, there’d never been another in my heart.

People had come and gone in our lives. There’d been women I’d been attracted to. Other men, too. And there was one that caused us a bit of trouble. I never acted on it, not really, though I’d felt like a horse’s ass for even looking, because John didn’t. Not once. I know because I watched for it. I asked him about it one night, feeling brave as we lay in our bed in the dark. He’d told me that he didn’t need to look anywhere else or even at anyone else because he had all he really needed right beside him. I didn’t look after that. There was no need.

“No regrets,” I repeat.

“Yeah, me either.” He sounds satisfied.

“No?”

“No, Jackie. No regrets.”

“Not even that god-awful paisley couch you bought and brought home without my permission?” I tease him, surprised I’m able to do so.

He smiles. “In our first apartment. You came home and you were so mad.” His eyes light up. He grips my hand tighter.

I snort. “It was an ugly couch, John.”

“One that we kept for twenty years.”

“It grew on me.”

“You loved it.”

I lean down and kiss his hand. “John?”

“Yeah?”

I take a deep breath and let it out slow. I have to tell him before it’s too late. “You remember when you didn’t show up to school that one day? We were sixteen and—”

“Oh yeah. I was hurtin’, huh?”

“Yeah. Because of what he did to you.”

He chuckles. “Never seen you so angry. You were spittin’ at me.”

“Someone had to. Someone had to keep you safe.”

He watches me. “And you did, didn’t you? You kept me safe. You did what no one else could. Didn’t you?”

I look down at our hands, unable to meet his eyes. I know what he’s asking me, but I don’t know if I have the courage to say it, even after all these years. Part of me knows he understands what I did to keep him safe, but it hasn’t been something I’ve wanted to think about. “John….”

“Tell me. Tell me, Jackie. Tell me before the sun goes down. I know what happened. I know what you did, but you tell me. Tell me how much you love me.” There’s no anger in his voice, no recrimination. There’s only understanding, as there’s always been.

And of course he knows. Of course he knows what I did. How far I went to make sure no one could ever harm him again. How I never once worried about my own mortal soul, only his mortal life. We’d never talked about it, but he knew just the same.

John Kemp knows everything about me. But he needs to hear my confession, just the same. I have to say it, before I can’t.

Bowing my head, I confess the depths of my love for him.

Thou Shalt Not Kill

I KNEW something was wrong when John didn’t meet me in front of the school like he always did. Rain or shine, in sickness or in health, John was there in front of the school, sitting on the curb, waiting for me. He always arrived first, no matter how early I got there. I asked him once how he was always able to beat me, and he’d just shrugged at me, saying I was a slowpoke.

It wouldn’t be until years later that I’d find out John would often leave his house at three or four in the morning, doing his homework in front of the school by streetlight or moonlight. He couldn’t do it when he got home. There were chores to be done. There were beatings to be suffered.

But I didn’t know that on this day. All I knew was that for the first time since I’d known him, John wasn’t there.

I tried to push it away, knowing there was a first time for everything. Maybe he was just running late. Maybe he was really sick and had to stay home. That rational line of thinking lasted through my first class. By the time the second period rolled around, I was starting to worry. By the third, I was starting to panic. By lunch, I was sweating and planning on ditching the rest of school and riding out to his house to make sure he was okay, because I was absolutely convinced he wasn’t.

The bell rang and I headed for the football field, pretending to go to lunch, sure I could slip out the gate there without getting caught. I’d hook around back to the side of the building and get my bike and haul ass the four miles to John’s ramshackle house. I told myself I was probably overreacting, but that did nothing to stop the dread from filling me up, unsure of what I’d find when I got out there.

His daddy, the few times I’d seen him, scared the shit out of me. He was so big and so angry. John never really knew what happened to his mom; he’d been told only that she’d left when he was just a baby. It’d been just him and his dad as far back as he could remember. We never talked about it much, but I was sure his daddy had beat his mom enough that either he killed her and buried her body where no one would find it, or she just got fed up one day and left, leaving her son in the hands of a monster. I didn’t know which I thought was worse.

Things weren’t always bad, John tried to tell me. His daddy was a good man, some of the time. He could be all right when he wanted to be. But it was those other times, when he was so far gone in drink, that he stopped being a good man. That he stopped being just “all right.” It was those times when he was drunk and raised his fists at John that he became a bad man.

It was the times I’d seen John with a black eye or bruises on his chest and sides that I wanted his dad to become a dead man. There were a few times when it took all John had to hold me back from riding out to his house and kicking the shit out of his dad.

Anger isn’t a rational thing, especially when it’s well on its way to fury, and it didn’t matter to me that Wayne Kemp was three times my size. It didn’t matter he had fists the size of Christmas hams. It didn’t matter that he outweighed me by two hundred pounds. All that mattered was that he’d dared to lay a hand on John and I wanted him to feel the same pain he caused his son. I wanted him to scream.

I wanted him to bleed.

I felt cold even as I stepped out into the sunlight, making my way to the bleachers. I kept my head down, not wanting anyone to see the fear on my face. Someone might’ve asked questions. Someone might’ve tried to stop me. I couldn’t let that happen.

I made it to the football field without being noticed. The bleachers were empty, as they usually were. I sat down on the bottom bench, looking back toward the school, checking to see if anyone was watching me.

A few minutes later, right before I was about to head for loose part of the fence the teachers didn’t know about, I heard a soft voice.

“Jackie.”

I turned around and craned my neck. Through the slats in the bleachers, I saw John staring back at me, his face in shadows. I glanced back to the school. No one was watching us. I grabbed my backpack and ran around the side of the bleachers and headed underneath, where John waited.

“Where were you?” I demanded as I got closer. “I was worried! You ain’t got no right to scare me like that!”

“I’m sorry, Jackie,” he said quietly, looking down at the ground. He turned slightly away, as if upset, but I saw the way he was holding himself and I knew. Right then I knew. “I didn’t mean to worry you. Just took me a bit longer to get here today. Tried to go as fast as I could. Just wanted to get to you.” His breath hitched in his chest.

I reached out to him and gently took his arm. He tried to pull away from me, to keep me from seeing the extent of the damage, but I was insistent. When he finally looked down at me, I moaned, unable to keep the sound from crawling out of my throat.

There was a vicious cut on his right cheek, bright and swollen. His right eye was covered in a darkening bruise. His bottom lip was split. I could see by the way he held himself that there were further marks on his body that I couldn’t see, hidden underneath his clothing. But what got to me the most was the clear outline of fingers embedded into his throat where a large hand had been wrapped around him, choking him, cutting off his air.

Anger boiled through me, hot and roaring. Not at him, though.

Never at him.

“What happened?” I growled, unable to keep the fury from my voice.

He shrugged, trying to avoid my eyes. “Wayne came home drunker than usual. Had pills too. Lots of pills, though I don’t know how many he took. I got up to get ready this morning and he was just getting in.”

“Why didn’t you just stay out of his way? Better yet, why didn’t you just come over to my house? You know my parents are gone for that church retreat for the next two weeks! You could have come to me!” I had to keep myself from shouting at him.

“I tried,” he said gruffly. “I wanted to. I was on my way out the door even before he threw his first punch. I was just gonna come to you. To make it better. Jackie, I promise I tried.”

I took his hand in mine, bringing it to my lips and kissing him, not even caring if someone else saw. It seemed unlikely we’d be seen, with how hidden we were, but it didn’t matter anyway. “Why couldn’t you leave?”

His expression tightened when I looked back up at him. “He called… bastard,” he snarled at me. “That fucking bastard called you names. He asked if I was going to the little faggot’s house. He laughed and he called you a fucking faggot, a little bitch boy. A Jesus freak. So many other things. I didn’t… I couldn’t walk away from that. I wouldn’t. I won’t. No one gets to call you things like that, Jackie. No one gets to run you down. Not while I’m here.”

I was chilled. “What did you do?” I whispered.

“Told him to shut up. Told him he ain’t ever allowed to say your name again. Told him I’d kick the shit outta him if he ever said your name again. If he ever called you names again, it’d be the last thing he did, I’d make sure of it. Then he hit me. Kicked me. Choked me. And I hit him back. For once, I hit him back. He got a few licks in, but not as many as I did him. I ain’t gonna stand and let someone talk like that about you, Jackie. I won’t. I don’t care what you say or nothin’. No one, and I mean no one, will ever talk that way about you while I’m here.” He glared at me defiantly, as if expecting me to contradict him.

“Did you kill him?” I asked shakily.

His eyes widened, and then he grimaced. His face must have been hurting something awful. “No. Didn’t kill him. Wanted to. Wanted to so bad, but I didn’t. Left him on the floor. I don’t know if I knocked him out or if he passed out from all the booze and pills, but no. Wouldn’t do that, Jackie. Even if I wanted to.”

“Because it’s wrong?” Please say because it’s wrong. That’s the only thing that’ll make sense. That’s the only thing that’s right.

He shook his head as he leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “No, ’cause it could take me from you. That won’t happen. I won’t let it.”

As much as his words should have terrified me, they didn’t. As much as they should have given me pause and made me take a step back, I didn’t. I wasn’t scared of John, only scared for him. He’d done what he thought was right, all in the name of protecting me, and he knew I’d do the same for him.

“C’mon,” I said, tugging on his hand.

“Where we going?”

“Home. My house, so I can take care of you.”

“You got class, Jackie. Can’t miss it. You gotta go to class so you can graduate and get the hell out of this town. Get away from this place.”

I tugged harder at him. “We’ll get away from here,” I reminded him. “One day won’t matter. Maybe two.”

“But if your parents find out—”

“I ain’t scared of my parents,” I retorted, even if that was a bit of a lie. “They ain’t here. Don’t you argue with me, John Michael Kemp.”

He looked contrite, knowing I only said his full name when I was upset, as if I were his parent or something. I thought he might push it a little more, but he sighed and looked down at our joined hands.

“You were right to come here,” I told him quietly. “You came to find me because you knew I’d take care of the rest. You’re always watchin’ out for me, John. It’s my turn to do it for you.”

He didn’t argue.

I didn’t think he’d be able to ride his bike, not with the four miles it took him to reach me, so I walked our bikes to my house while he trudged along beside me. We didn’t say much on the way. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I had murder in my heart. Vengeance. Anger. It was sin, I knew, but since I was apparently already wallowing in it, a little bit more didn’t seem to matter. It should have made me feel cold. It should have made me want to back down. It should have scared the holy hell out of me that I could feel such pulsing fury ripping through me.

But it didn’t. All I knew, all I could think of, was that someone had tried to hurt what was mine. Someone had dared to lay a finger on John when all he wanted to do was protect me.

It didn’t lessen, this anger. It didn’t lessen as we got home. It didn’t lessen as I stripped off his shirt and pants, trying to keep from crying out at the bruising that spread across the skin of his back, his side, his chest. It didn’t lessen as I kissed each and every mark as tears fell from my eyes. It didn’t lessen as I put him in my bed, brushing my lips over his forehead, and he immediately passed out, giving in to his exhaustion. He was finally somewhere safe, where he wouldn’t have to worry anymore, where he wouldn’t have to be afraid. No, the anger didn’t lessen a bit.

If anything, it grew.

It grew as I watched the boy I loved asleep in my bed. It grew as I brushed the sweaty dark hair from his brow. It grew as I took a wet cloth and brushed it over the crusted cut on his cheek, the dark red smearing against the white of the washcloth. No one would ever talk about me the way his father had. John wouldn’t allow it. No one would ever touch me because John was there.

And I would do the same for him.

My daddy wasn’t aware that I knew about the handgun in the box in the back of his closet, seen one day by accident. He didn’t know that I knew there were bullets in his nightstand drawer for that very same gun. I thought he was ashamed at having such a thing, at the very least wary of it, given he was a man of God. I didn’t know if he had it for protection, or just because he was a man and a man should always own a gun. I didn’t know. Right now, why didn’t matter.

I wasn’t thinking much as I rode across town, trying hard not to stare at the white pillowcase in the wire basket on the front of my bike, knowing what it held inside. I felt light, like I was floating, a faint buzzing in my ear. I was awash with a cold fury and I wasn’t thinking about much of anything at all. Just about John. How I could make it better for John, make it okay for John. Before I knew it, I’d arrived.

Wayne’s old truck was parked in front of the house.

House may have been too strong of a word. It was really more of a shack—four walls and a roof overhead. The inside was small and sectioned off by paper-thin walls, dividing into two rooms, a bathroom, and a small kitchen. I’d only been inside once or twice, given that John was embarrassed by it.

I told him repeatedly that he had no need to be that way, that I didn’t care where he came from. He didn’t want my pity or my charity. When I gave anything to him, it was never about that. It was about me taking care of what was mine, and I made sure we were clear on the matter.

I would take care of what was mine. John would never be hurt again.

I unwrapped my daddy’s gun from the pillowcase, leaving my bike propped up on its kickstand. I wrapped the pillowcase around my neck, but didn’t cover my face. I was just going to scare him, I told myself, but I wanted him to see who it was. I was just going to scare Wayne, tell him he better stay away from John or the next time I came here, I’d shoot him. I’d shoot him dead and I wouldn’t feel wrong about a thing.

Or, a voice whispered in my head, you could just shoot him now. Who’s to say that this won’t happen again? Who’s to say the moment John has to come back home, his father won’t beat him again? Maybe even worse? Maybe he’ll kill him this time. Maybe John will go home in a few days, and Wayne will put his hands around his throat again and choke him until all the air is gone from his body and his heart has stopped in his chest. You’d never see him again and you’d think back to this moment, this single moment when you could have stopped all the pain. You could have stopped all the hurt.

But it’s wrong, I thought. Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not kill? It laughed at me. Will thou stand by and let John be killed? Will thou do nothing?

I didn’t knock. I pushed open the door.

The air felt hot inside the shack, stagnant and thick. I took a step in, my eyes bulging as I looked around the room in darting glances, my hands shaking, the barrel of my daddy’s gun tapping against my thigh. My finger tightened against the trigger until I forced myself to loosen my grip.

“Wayne?” I croaked out.

Nothing.

He wasn’t on one of the dirty twin beds pressed against the far wall that he and John slept on. I was hyperaware of every little shuffling step I took, every little creak and groan of the shack. I couldn’t hear any other movement aside from my own, though my ragged breath was like a tornado in my ears. “Wayne?”

Nothing.

Maybe he’s gone, I thought. Truck’s out front, but maybe he just up and started walking.

I took another step.

Maybe he’ll just keep walking, never stopping once to look back.

Another step.

Maybe he’ll never look back and will never come back, and John and me won’t ever have to worry again, and we’ll live together and we’ll grow old together and I’ll love him until the day we die. No. Beyond that. I’ll love him forever.

Another step around the broken recliner, and I—

My foot hit something on the floor. I looked down.

Wayne Kemp lay sprawled out on his back on the floor. For a moment, I thought he was dead, but then his chest moved ever so slightly. A shallow inhale, a light exhale. A pause that seemed to last for ages. Then another breath in, and another out. Each exhale brought a heavy stench of liquor.

He had a dark bruise on his cheek where it looked like he’d been struck by a fist. Other than that, I couldn’t see any signs of injury, and I wondered if John had hit him with something else. Then I saw an empty bottle lying flat on its side near his outstretched hand, an amber drop of whiskey hanging from the open mouth of the bottle. Little white dots littered the floor around him and, as I took a step closer, I heard a crunch underneath my foot. I looked down as I moved my leg and saw I’d stepped on one of the white dots, turning it to powder.

Pills. Pills lay scattered all over the floor, amidst small shards of brown glass that had once been a prescription bottle. I didn’t know what kind of drugs they were, and it didn’t matter.

The only thing that mattered was when my eyes drifted to Wayne’s hands and I saw the dried, crusty blood that covered his split knuckles. Knuckles that had been split when they’d slammed into John. Blood on his hands that probably came from John. All I could see was the blood and how big his hands were, how they could so easily have wrapped around John’s throat and squeezed and squeezed until John couldn’t breathe, until the life was slowly choked out of him.

My hand tightened on the gun.

I moved over to stand above him, staring down at his face.

I raised the gun.

He opened his eyes.

They were bleary and unfocused, wandering over my face, not paying any attention to the gun in my hand. “What…,” he started and then stopped. His tongue darted out, scraping over dry and cracked lips. “What is going on?” His voice was a deep rumble that sounded so much like his son, I had to fight the shudder that rose through me.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked him quietly.

“You’re… you…?”

“Yes, me.”

He frowned as he tried to focus, and I recognized the moment when he truly saw me. He narrowed his eyes and tried to sit up. “What the fuck are you doing here?” His words were heavily slurred, whether from the pills or booze or both, I didn’t know.

“You touched John,” I told him steadily. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Fuckin’ queers,” he muttered, rubbing his hands over his face. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” He tried to get up but collapsed back onto the floor with a groan. He reached for the empty bottle next to him and tipped it up to his lips, grunting when nothing came out. He tossed it away from him and it bounced along the floor but didn’t break. For a moment, it looked like he passed out again, his eyes rolling back up into his head. Then he started mumbling words I couldn’t make out and rubbed his hands along the floor, knocking the discarded pills around.

“You don’t touch him again, you hear me?” I said, raising my voice. I brought up the gun, ignoring the way my hand shook. “You stay away from him or I’ll kill you.”

Wayne closed his fingers over a pill on the floor. “Leave me the fuck alone,” he mumbled at me. “Get out of my house.” He brought the pill to his lips and dry swallowed it. He found another and swallowed it down. And another. And another. “It’s all gone to shit,” he said, sounding delirious. “It’s all gone now. She ain’t comin’ back.” Another pill. Another. Another. “She ain’t comin’ back here, and I don’t care. I don’t care about it anymore.”

I lowered the gun.

It’s still a sin if you do nothing. You might not be pulling the trigger, but it might as well be you. It still counts in God’s eyes if you do nothing while he kills himself.

I thought of John’s misshapen face, the way he’d held his side. I thought of the bruises and the breaks I’d seen over the last three years. I thought of all the hurts that had come upon him all the years I hadn’t known him. I was just gonna come to you, he’d said. To make it better. Jackie, I promise I tried. And he did try, but this animal had held him back.

John may have been bigger than me, he may have been the stronger, but he needed me as much as I needed him, maybe even a little more. He needed me to make things okay, to chase all the worries away. He needed me to stand up for him when he couldn’t stand up for himself.

He needed me to end all his hurt.

Another pill. And another. And another.

Eventually, finally, Wayne Kemp stopped swallowing pills, his hands twitching at his sides. His body was still for a moment, but then he started to seize, his legs jittering across the floor, his thighs hitting my shins. I took a step back as he quaked, his eyes rolling back in his head. I thought about leaving, but I couldn’t find the strength to head for the door. The room felt hotter than it had when I’d first arrived, and a stench filled the air as he vomited, covering his face in rivulets of brown liquid. Half-dissolved pills stuck to his cheeks. His forehead. His hair. There was a thick choking noise as he tried to expel even more, his head turning slightly to the right, bile spilling out onto the dirty floor.

And still I didn’t move.

It was quiet then. After a time, the vomit started to congeal on his face. His chest rose up. His chest collapsed down. Up. Down. Up. Down.

It didn’t rise again.

The world had taken on a dark haze. I found myself walking to a cracked and splintered chest of drawers near the bed I knew as John’s. I unwrapped the pillowcase from around my neck and opened the top drawer, grabbed all the clothes I could, and shoved them inside. I looked over my shoulder every few seconds, sure Wayne Kemp was not dead. Afraid he’d rise up behind me, puke dripping down his face as he raised his hands to put them around my neck, calling me a fuckin’ faggot because I’d sinned.

I’d sinned against God and I was damned for it and he would choke me. He would shove pills down my throat until he dragged me to hell.

But Wayne never moved.

It wasn’t until I was outside that I realized I’d been holding my breath and it exploded out of me. I gasped in as much air as I could. It felt clean. It felt dry. It felt normal. The day was bright. Birds sang from distant trees. A car rumbled by on the road. It was a ’53 Hudson Wasp. The only reason I knew that was because I’d seen one brand new on a lot the year before and had gone crazy over its sleek shape, its whitewall tires. Everything felt normal. Sane.

I got on my bike and rode away from the dead man.

John was still sleeping when I peeked into the room on my way to my parent’s bedroom. I unloaded the gun and put the bullets back in the drawer. The gun went back into the box. The box went back into the closet. I closed their bedroom door behind me before returning to my own room.

John stirred when I climbed into the bed next to him.

“Hi,” he said quietly, pressing his forehead to mine.

“Hi,” I whispered back, seeing his father’s face in my mind. I leaned forward and brushed my nose against his, trying to get as close as I could. “Feeling better?”

He nodded, his eyes open, watching me. “Always better here.”

“It’s always gonna be this way, okay? Always.”

“You swear?”

“Yeah.”

“Say it, Jackie. Say you swear.”

“I swear, John.”

“You swear it’s you and me?” He looked fierce.

“I swear. I swear it on all I have.”

“I woke up and you were gone.”

I waited.

He touched my cheek. “Where’d you go, Jackie?”

“Went and got some of your clothes.” I couldn’t look away.

“Wayne?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You love me, Jackie?”

I did. I loved him with my whole heart, though I hadn’t yet told him. Not in so many words. I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. I didn’t know what we were, exactly. We hadn’t done much other than kiss and rub up on each other since that day by the lake, but I knew he owned me more than anyone ever had. I think I loved him from the very first day. So I told him so.

His eyes brightened. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too, Jackie.”

I didn’t feel cold anymore. “I know,” I told him, but it was still good to hear.

“So, if anyone asks, you were here with me then, okay?”

I hesitated.

He shook his head. “No. You don’t get to tell me you’ve loved me since the start and not agree with me on this. Ain’t how these things work, Jackie. You mind me now. You were here with me the whole time, you get it?”

I nodded.

“Say it!” he snapped, shaking me a little. His eyes looked crazy, like the thought of me getting taken away from him would break him in half. I realized then that he knew what’d happened to Wayne. Not the specifics, but he knew.

“Been here with you, John,” I said roughly. “Been here with you the whole time. Took you home ’cause you were hurt and stayed here the whole time.”

He stared at me some more, making sure I was telling him the truth. He must have been satisfied with what he saw because he calmed down, pressing himself up against me again. I felt his lips on my cheeks, and only then did I realize I was crying.

“I love you,” he said. “Always have. Always will.”

Then he kissed me again. And while all was not right in the world, it was a little better.

The police came later to break the news that it looked like Wayne had killed himself. They took one look at John and knew he’d been beat by his daddy and thought it was out of some kind of guilt that Wayne had swallowed a bunch of pills. My parents were called home, and they took me to see John in the hospital where he’d been taken. He had three fractured ribs and contusions on his vocal cords.

There was no question where John would go when he got out. My parents were good Christians, and good Christians believed in helping those less fortunate. They looked at John with pity in their eyes, telling him the Lord worked in such mysterious ways. He would live with us, they said. He would live with us because it would be the charitable thing to do, especially given that my father was a man of God. He would be expected to go to church every Wednesday and Sunday, but at least he’d have a place to sleep at night.

John didn’t cry at the loss of his father, nor did he ever accuse me of doing anything wrong. The abuse he’d suffered at the hands of Wayne Kemp wasn’t a secret, and if I hadn’t so adamantly insisted I’d been with him that afternoon, I’m sure others would have taken his stoicism as guilt for a crime he hadn’t committed. Some people still whispered, though, that they thought it odd a boy didn’t cry at the death of his daddy, regardless of what’d come before. Surely that meant something, they said.

John didn’t cry simply because he didn’t think he had anything to be sad about. His father was gone and all John found, in the wake of the destruction that was his childhood, was relief.

It was on that first night in his new home, as my mother turned off the light and shut the door behind her, that he let that relief show. As soon as Mom’s footsteps moved away from the door, he rolled over in the bed (our bed, I thought in wonder) and curled himself around me, bringing my back to his chest, his mouth near my ear, squeezing me tightly against him as if he hoped I’d disappear inside of him and we’d become one person.

“You’re home,” I whispered to him in the dark, meaning this house. I trailed my fingers over his arms.

“You’re home,” he whispered back, meaning me. He kissed my hair.

And then we slept.

The Sun Stretches Further

“JACKIE?” HE asks me now.

“Yeah?”

“Wasn’t sin.”

I look up at him, using my free hand to wipe my eyes. “What?”

He has that small smile on his face. “What you did ain’t a sin.”

“Let a man die in front of me,” I say gruffly. “Could’ve stopped him. Didn’t do nothin’.”

“You did, though. You protected me.”

“Yeah. Don’t know if that makes it right.” I look away, unable to meet his eyes.

He sighs through the oxygen mask and begins to cough again. I hold his hand tightly, waiting for it to pass, knowing there’s nothing I can do to stop it. At least not this little thing, this cough that racks his whole body. I can stop the rest, though.

And if the sunlight coming through the window is any indication, it’s almost time for me to do my job as a husband and a friend.

“It was right,” he finally says, his voice weaker from the coughing. He shouldn’t be talking this much, but I can’t bear to stop him. Not when we’re so close to sunset. I can’t. Selfish, but I don’t care. I need to hear his voice. “It was right because you saved me, Jackie.” A deep breath into his oxygen mask. “Who knows what would’ve happened had I stayed?”

“He was your father.”

“Sure, Jackie. But fathers can be monsters too. You scared away the monster.”

Tears burn my eyes. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I didn’t have a home before you. You made one for me when you looked at me the first time. Your mom and dad may not have ever known about us, but I loved them like they were my own. And you gave them to me. You gave me everything, Jackie. How could I blame you for anything when you’re everything?”

Over the years, the horror of what I’d done had lessened but never left me. Nightmares still came every now and then: Wayne reaching out for me while half-digested pills fell from his frothing mouth. But they’re few and far between now. His face has faded into nothing but a blur.

I don’t know whether my soul is damned or if I’m in danger of hell, but I take solace in the fact that Wayne couldn’t ever touch John again. My actions that day had been unspoken between us until now. What had happened on that day so very long ago. My confession is out now, and I know I would do it again if I had to. I would do it all again, regardless of the consequences. Maybe I am hell bound. But, it doesn’t matter.

If God in his infinite wisdom can forgive me for that day, then maybe he’ll forgive me for what I have to do today. A release. A gift for my man.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks me, only because he knows my every thought. “I won’t make you do this. I can do it myself, Jackie. Just gonna need your help a bit, but I can do this myself.”

My gaze snaps to his. “No!” I say harshly. “I told you, John Kemp! I told you that you ain’t allowed to go this alone. You know I won’t take that chance!” Regardless of my beliefs in my own soul, regardless of my beliefs in the Word of God, I have convinced myself I know what happens to a soul from suicide. Limbo. An abyss. I won’t allow that to happen. Not to John. Not ever.

The sun stretches further.

“We’re close,” he says, taking a sharp breath.

“I know.” Strength now. Show your strength now. You can’t let him see. “It’ll be okay. I promise.” I sound stronger than I feel.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. I promised I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you, didn’t I?”

He watches me with warm eyes, and it almost splits me right there. I almost break and spill forth all of my fears, all of my anguish. My sorrow. How lost I already feel. How my heart is already shattering, how I’m losing a part of myself. Without him, I’m not complete. Without him, I’m not whole.

But I don’t. Somehow, I hold on. Somehow, I stay intact. For now.

“You promised,” he whispers. “You promised it would be you and me forever.”

“Yes. Oh, God yes. Forever.”

And I had promised him. After I thought I’d messed things up for good, that I’d never see him again, he’d found me and I promised him forever.

“Tell me. Tell me the story, Jackie.”

Lord, give me strength in this, my hour of need. Please help me find the power to do what I will. Forgive me for doing what I must. Protect him, watch over him. Care for him like I do. Cherish him like he’s the greatest thing in the world. Because he is.

Sunset edges ever closer.

And I tell him the story of us.

Tonight and Always

“DO WE have to stay long?” John grumbled at me, following me up the path to the brightly lit house, like a beacon in the dark.

I rolled my eyes as I glanced back at him. “John, we’re graduating high school. We should be out celebrating with everyone else. When else are we ever going to do this again?”

He winced slightly as a loud burst of laughter came through the window. I saw beer cans sitting on the porch railing, jocks in their letterman jackets nearby, their girls tucked deftly at their sides. Cars were parked up and down the drive. Horns honked, people shouted. There was electricity in the air around all of us, knowing we were so close to the end of one life and on the cusp of another. I was wrapped up in all of it. So much. Too much.

“Just like it when it’s you and me,” John said quietly.

I fought the annoyance that threatened to rise. He didn’t deserve me snapping at him, not for telling me the truth. From the beginning, John had made it clear he didn’t need anyone other than me, but I wasn’t built like him. As lonely as my life had been so far, and as much as John had brought to me, I still craved others, to talk with them, to laugh with them. The latter part of my high school years had seen me turn into someone different, someone I hadn’t been when I first met John. I was more comfortable in my skin. I was happier with who I was. I didn’t take shit from anyone. I had friends. I had respect. I had a place.

But I also knew that it was all because of John. Everything came back to him, which was why I didn’t let myself get angry with him. I couldn’t. It wasn’t fair to him. All he ever wanted was me. How could I get mad at him for that?

So instead, I took a quick look around, making sure no one was paying attention to us, and grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the dark around the side of the house. Once I was sure we were alone, I pressed him up against the brick and mortar, rubbing up against him as I flicked my tongue, licking into his mouth. He groaned softly and put his hands on my hips, pulling me closer, grinding against me. His erection was evident against my own. The kiss was getting sloppy, but I didn’t care. I never cared about that with him.

I broke the kiss, panting, leaning my forehead against his shoulder. He curled his arms up around me, sliding his fingers in my hair. I made a decision. “Tonight,” I told him, nipping at his neck.

He hissed. “What?”

I pulled back, looking into his wide eyes. “Tonight,” I said again. “I want to. I need you.”

He searched my face, his hands stilling in my hair. “You sure, Jackie?” he asked slowly. “You said you wanted to wait until we got out of the house. I don’t even know if we’ll know what to do.” It didn’t stop him from pressing against me again, grinding his hips into mine.

I reached down between us and squeezed his dick through the rough denim, chuckling quietly at the way he groaned and pushed forward into my grip. “Pretty sure we’ll figure out something,” I said, kissing his neck. “We’ll hang here for a while and then go to the lake. Just you and me.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah, John. I promise. We’ll just say hi to a few people, have a couple of beers, and then we’ll get out of here.”

“Who do you want to talk to?” he asked me suspiciously.

Shit. “Uh…. Tony invited us.” Invited me, that is.

John tensed beneath me. “Did he now?” His voice was flat.

I sighed. “It’s not like you think.”

“Oh? And what do I think, Jack?”

Fuck. He was pissed. I should have known this would happen. Maybe I should have come by myself. I took a step back from him and put my hands in my pockets, looking down at my feet. I could feel John’s gaze on me, but I couldn’t meet it. “John,” I started. But then I closed my mouth, unsure of what to say.

“You know I don’t like him,” John said quietly.

“He’s not that bad. I… I think he’s… like us.” And that was why I was there, why we were there. I’d always wondered if there were others like us out there; I was sure there had to be. I didn’t even know how I knew it about Tony. Maybe just a vibe or a look or something. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was like John and me. I thought it might help us to have someone else like us that we could talk to. That I could talk to.

John snorted. “No shit.”

I looked up at him sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t see it, do you?”

“See what?” I was annoyed again and took a step back.

“He likes you.”

“We’re friends.” Sort of.

“No. More than that. He ain’t exactly subtle about it, Jack. You don’t see the way he looks at you like I do. When you ain’t watchin’, he’s watchin’ you.”

“Bullshit.”

He scowled at me. “Not hardly.”

“Why’re you lookin’ at him anyway?” I snapped at him, jealousy roaring through me. “What’re you tryin’ to find?” For a moment, all I wanted to do was find Tony and tear him to little bits so John would never have a chance to look at him again.

“Shut up, Jack. You know that ain’t how it is. Besides, he’s the one who can’t keep his eyes to himself.”

“Well, even if he is, I ain’t lookin’ back.”

“Sure.”

“John.”

“Jack.”

“You’re pissed at me.”

“No, I ain’t.”

“You only call me Jack when you’re pissed off.”

His scowl deepened, but he refused to look at me, so I knew I had him. “Foolish,” he growled. “Talkin’ like you know me.”

I narrowed my eyes and took a menacing forward. “Now you listen here. I know you better than anyone else in the world. I’ve put up with your shit for five years now, and there ain’t no one who knows you like I do. You take that back this instant!”

He tried to keep his face angry, but the sides of his mouth started to quirk up and he reached out and snagged me by the front of my shirt and pulled me back to him. He bent forward and I felt his lips brush my forehead as he chuckled deeply. “I take it back, Jackie. Ain’t no one who knows me like you do.”

“You’re damn right,” I muttered. “I’ll show you foolish, you jerk.”

He lifted his head, his hands going to my face, raising my gaze so I looked him in the eyes. What I saw there was no different than what I’d seen before. His dark eyes shone with warmth and trust, a look I knew he only gave to me. There was no one else John needed, or so he said. There was nothing else he wanted more. He didn’t need friends. He didn’t need peers. He didn’t need the social interaction. As long as he had me, he was fine. He was okay. Everything was right in his world.

I wished I could be like that. For me. For him.

But I couldn’t. Not completely. Still, I’d give him everything I could because he deserved nothing less than my all.

“You don’t gotta be jealous,” I told him, even though it felt hypocritical as all hell, given that I’d felt the same way not moments before. The thought of him looking at anyone else but me made me nauseous. “I’m here with you.”

“Then why you gotta talk to Tony?” he frowned.

“I just… don’t you want to know others like us, John? Don’t you want to know that we’re not alone?”

He brushed my cheek with his thumb. “I’m not alone, Jackie. I’ve got you.”

“I know. That ain’t what I mean, though. I love you, okay? That’s not what this is about. It’s about being around others who are the same. Other guys, you know….”

“Gay guys?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

“Why don’t you pick another gay guy, then?” he said, scowling again. “One who doesn’t want to stick his hands down your pants.”

I rolled my eyes. “Pretty sure that’s not the case, big guy. And it’s not like we’re growin’ on trees or anything. How the hell do you expect to find more?”

“If Tony is, then there’ll be others. Don’t know why it has to be Tony.”

“Don’t know any others, John.” Though, if I was honest with myself, it didn’t hurt that Tony Accosi looked as he did. He was Italian, with dark skin and inky black hair. He was whip thin and always had a devious little sparkle in his eye, and I’d caught myself staring once or twice at his full lips. I always told myself it was appreciation and nothing more, and that was the truth. I wasn’t blind, after all. Looking was part of being human. It’d be different if I tried to take it further. Knowing myself like I did, I knew that wasn’t possible. I’d already given my heart away, and it was safe where it belonged. Besides, I knew that no one who looked like Tony would ever want someone like me.

“Why do you need others?” he insisted, looking hurt.

I shrugged. “Just who I am, John. It can’t always be just you and me, no matter how much I want it to be. I can’t touch you in there like this. We’ve got to act normal for a little bit.”

“We are normal, Jackie.”

“I know,” I said, trying to keep my frustration down. “I meant normal like everyone else.”

He eyed me warily. “Don’t want to be like everyone else.”

“And you’re not,” I reassured him. “You’re better.”

“Let’s just go, okay? Let’s just go now. You ain’t gotta talk to Tony tonight. Do it later.”

“It won’t take long.”

He snorted. “I hate it.”

“What?”

“The way he looks at you. Like he knows somethin’. Like he owns you.”

“I told you I don’t care! I don’t look back, John. I swear it.”

“Fine.” He sounded pissed again.

“I’ve got you, okay? I’ve got you and I ain’t ever lettin’ go. We clear?” I reached forward and kissed him again, there in the dark, while the other kids laughed and drank without a care in the world. I envied them, for just a second. Then I realized I wouldn’t want to be anywhere but where I was right at that moment, in a kiss that was heat with a twinge of desperation. I wondered then why I couldn’t let talking to Tony go. I almost told John that he was right, that we should just get out of here now, just me and him, like it ought to be.

But I didn’t.

“Okay, Jackie,” he said as we broke apart. “Tonight, though, right? You and me? We’ll… the lake?” He looked nervous. And excited. Exactly how I felt.

I grinned at him as I kissed the tip of his nose, brushing my hands over the front of his jeans. “Tonight.”

And tonight was almost all I was thinking about inside the house, shoving my way through the crowds, John trailing behind me. Tonight, I knew, things would change. Tonight, I knew, nothing could be hidden between us anymore. I’d heard whispers of the mechanics behind what two men could do together and wasn’t disturbed at the thought. Quite the contrary; I had to avoid thinking about it to keep from getting an erection. I didn’t know if I was ready for sodomy, and I didn’t know between John and me who would be doing what to who, but I’d felt the length of him against me numerous times through clothing. I’d even seen it flaccid a few times in the shower. But I wanted it hard and I wanted him in my hands when it happened. I wanted to taste him, every single inch of him, so there could be nothing left secret. I knew his soul; now I wanted to know his body.

And I wanted to be at this house less and less.

I waved at a few people who called my name. Some even said hello to John, but he barely raised his head as he trailed after me, focused on me and me alone, brushing his hand against mine every now and then, hidden by the crowds of people. I caught and squeezed his fingers once and glanced back at him. I saw his small smile as our eyes locked for a second, and I knew he was thinking the same as me: Tonight. Tonight. Tonight.

We found an empty corner, and John crowded me against the wall, not touching, but forcing me to feel the heat radiating from him. To anyone watching us, it’d look like we were talking quietly about nothing at all. But he told me that he’d wanted me for so long, that he dreamed about what it’d be like to hold my dick in his hands, to drag his tongue down my chest, to suck on my nipples until I could do nothing but moan his name. I stared up at him, trying to keep from panting, trying to keep from dragging him into one of the bedrooms and fucking his mouth.

“You bastard,” I said in a choked voice.

He laughed. “I’ll go get us a beer. Then we go.”

I nodded, unable to say more. He grinned wickedly at me, dark hair flopping around his forehead as he backed away from me, his eyes never leaving mine. Finally, with a wink, he turned and made his way toward the kitchen. I took a deep breath to calm myself, turning to hide my erection from the crowd. I took another breath and—

“Jack,” a pleased voice said. “Glad to see you made it.”

I opened my eyes to find a brilliant smile inches away from me. I swallowed. “Tony, hey.” I took an involuntary step back, given how close he was standing. He smelled spicy. Masculine. Different.

That glint in his eyes was brighter than usual. “Alone?” he asked, though I had the idea he’d seen me standing here with John just moments before and had waited until I was alone before making his way over. I wasn’t a stupid boy by any means. Regardless of what I’d told John, I knew Tony wanted something from me. But I just wanted to talk to him. Find out what he knew. To speak to someone about these things aside from John. John knew what he wanted, and it was me. I knew the same, but I needed to know that we weren’t alone.

“Uh, yeah. John went to get us some beers. He should be back in a few.”

A look of faint disdain came over his face as he glanced toward the kitchen. And then he smiled. “Looks like he’s a little busy.”

I followed his gaze and saw John through the crowd, standing near the kitchen. He’d been cornered by Betty Vannatta. She’d carried a torch for John over the last year and was a tenacious little thing who I couldn’t help but dislike more every time I saw her. Not that I didn’t trust John or anything. I didn’t trust her. But it didn’t help that I knew John could find women to be attractive, even if he never did anything about it. But Betty was pretty, and she could touch him in ways I couldn’t in front of everyone, no matter how much I wished I could. She could do things for him I couldn’t.

And now she had her hand on John’s arm and he wasn’t doing a damn thing about it. Instead, he laughed in that quiet way he does with me, but at something she said—his eyes never leaving hers. He leaned up against the wall like he was settling in for a conversation. Like he wanted to be where he was.

This was the first time I’d ever seen him comfortable around someone our age other than me, and it didn’t sit right. All I could think of aside from burning anger was the way his lips had fit against mine, the way his body had felt underneath me when I’d pressed him against the house in the shadows where no one could see us.

“Once Betty sees something she wants,” Tony said, “she sticks her claws in, that’s for sure.”

I could hear amusement in his voice above the roaring in my ears. I had to stop myself from crossing the room and tearing her hand off him. They were absurd, these feelings. I knew John. Better than any person in the world. I trusted him. Tonight we would… finally. Tonight. And I loved him. He was my friend. He was my….

He gave Betty a little smile, the one that he always gave me.

“You okay?” Tony asked quietly, sounding concerned.

I turned away before John could see me glowering at him. “Fine,” I said roughly.

“You want to go somewhere and talk?” He reached out and touched my shoulder.

Talk. That’s all I wanted to do. Talk with someone like me. With someone who could understand what John and I were going through. That was all I wanted. That was the only reason I’d come here tonight. It was the only reason I was friends with Tony.

Just to talk.

“Yeah. You got somewhere quiet?”

Tony smiled. “I’ve got just the place.”

I followed him up the stairs, and when I reached the top, I glanced back just once and saw John still standing in the same spot, Betty’s hand still on his arm. He still smiled. I turned away and followed Tony down the hall.

He stopped in front of a door near the end of the hallway. “We’re okay here?” I asked him. “Don’t want no trouble. Don’t even know whose house this is.”

He pushed the door open as he chuckled. “This is my house, Jack. I’m pretty sure it’s okay for me to be here.”

“Oh. Didn’t know you lived here.”

He turned to look at me, gesturing me into the room. “I invited you,” he said. “It’s my party, after all.”

I hesitated. “Maybe….”

“It’s okay, Jack. John’s probably still busy with Betty and won’t even notice you’re gone.”

“Oh. I guess.” I tried to not let him see how much those words stung.

“Come on,” he said, waving at me again. “I just want to talk to you.”

Talk. That’s it.

I entered the room and he closed the door behind me. The room was just like him—straightened, neat, and refined. The bed was made, the blanket pulled tight. No clothes littered the floor, no copies of Argosy or comic books sticking out from under the bed. The room was like Tony. Not like my room. Our room. Mine and John’s.

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked him, tapping my fingers nervously against the desk, staring at the Philadelphia Athletics poster on his wall.

He shrugged as he moved and sat on the twin bed. “Don’t really know, I guess. Never had a chance to talk to you by yourself. You’ve always got your shadow with you.” The words come out slightly mocking.

“John and me…,” I started, but then I stopped. John and me what? How was I going to finish that? I didn’t know Tony that well. I didn’t know if my suspicions about him were correct, regardless of what John said. I wasn’t going to out us if it meant putting us in danger. I couldn’t do that to him. I wouldn’t. “John and me are best friends,” I said truthfully. “He lives at my house. He’s had a rough go of it, and….” I essentially murdered his father. We’re in love, but sometimes I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. If part of him resents me. Hates me. I don’t think I could take it if he did. I don’t think I’d survive if he ever left me. Are you, Tony? Are you like us?

“Oh, I’m sure he has,” Tony said dismissively. “But don’t you ever get tired of him following you around everywhere?”

“No. I don’t. John is”—mine—“my friend.”

“Ah. Well, let’s not talk about him anymore.”

“Okay? What do you want to talk about?”

He looked over at me, and I looked back, meeting his dark eyes. “I’ve seen you,” he said slowly.

“Oh?” I felt sweaty.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Watching me. You like watching me, Jack?”

My face felt hot, like I was blushing. “No,” I said quickly.

He chuckled again. “Oh, that’s too bad.”

“You like baseball?” I said, pointing at the Athletics poster, desperate to change the subject. I wasn’t ready, it seemed. Not yet. Not to talk about it. It felt like a trap, in here. In his room.

“Sure,” he said, glancing at the poster. “My dad says they’re a shit team. They don’t win much, but that’s not why I watch them.”

“Why, then?”

He grinned at me and it was all teeth, all straight and white. “Marion Fricano.”

I shrugged.

“He’s the pitcher. He’s shit too, but he’s nice to look at.” Tony turned back to me as he said the last words.

I froze. That could have meant anything, I thought. It doesn’t have to mean what you think it does.

Tony stood up from the bed and took the poster down off the wall. He brought it over and stood close to me, holding the poster up between us. I felt his shoulder brush mine. He tapped his finger on a face in the lineup. “That’s him,” he said quietly. “Do you think he looks nice, Jack?”

“Uh. Sure, I guess.”

“He’s Italian, like me. Do you like Italians?”

“Don’t really know that many.” I tried to take a step away from him, but for some reason, my feet wouldn’t move.

He turned and set the poster on the desk, but he didn’t step away from me, and for a moment I wondered what it’d be like to kiss him, to find out if I did like Italians. I wondered how he’d taste, if it’d be different than John. The rational part of me knew that of course it’d be different than John because it wouldn’t be John, but I couldn’t focus on that voice. All I wanted to do was just talk, but I couldn’t find the words to say anything because the hairs on his arms were brushing against the hairs on my arm, and it was like little jolts of electricity were shooting through my skin.

He moved until he stood in front of me, and I had to look up slightly into those dark eyes. “Do you like me, Jack?” he asked.

I knew what he was asking, but played the fool. “Sure, we’re friends.”

He frowned, but it was gone quickly. “We are, aren’t we?”

“Yeah.”

He inched forward and touched my fingers with his. His lips parted and I knew he was going to kiss me and I didn’t know if I was going to stop him. “It’s okay, Jackie,” he whispered. “It’s okay.” He bent forward.

Jackie. He called me Jackie.

A memory rose as his lips brushed mine: No one else will call you that like I do. No one ever will. You hear that name and you’ll know it’s comin’ from me.

“No,” I said against him. “Don’t.” I pressed my hands against his chest to shove him away, and he reached up and clutched me to him.

“You want this too,” he said and leaned forward again.

I got ready to shove him again, maybe even take a swing at him when his lips touched mine. I started to snarl and then I heard, “Jackie, you in here?” as the bedroom door swung open.

And everything got cold.

John, the guy I wanted more than anyone in this world, stood in the room, his hand still on the doorknob. A pained look stuttered across his face, and I realized I was still standing with my hands against Tony’s chest, and Tony’s face was close to mine, so close that when I turned, his lips brushed my cheek.

“No,” I said. “No, John. It’s not. It ain’t like this, I swear.” I jerked out of Tony’s grasp and tried to keep from running toward John. I paused at my first step because John took one back to compensate, holding his hand up as if to ward me off. I watched as his fingers shook.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice quaking.

“John—”

“You knew,” Tony said from behind me. “You knew, John. You’ve seen the way he’s watched me. And he knew what was going to happen when he came up here. Don’t you let him tell you otherwise.”

“No,” I said, taking another step, unable to stop from sounding as if I was begging. I trembled as John took another step back. “John, I didn’t. I just wanted to talk to him. I told you. I don’t care about him like that.”

“And I told you what he wanted,” he said through gritted teeth. “I told you it wasn’t a good idea. You didn’t listen to me. I told you.”

“It’s just you and me,” I said. My eyes were starting to burn. “I swear it. I swear it’s just you and me.” I took another step toward him.

“Back off, Jack,” he warned me, eyes flashing. “Don’t. Not now.” The knuckles on his hand holding the doorknob were white from gripping too tightly.

“Jackie,” I told him. “My name is Jackie. You know that.”

“I thought I knew,” he said. “I thought I knew a lot.”

And then he turned, slamming the door behind him as he fled.

“No,” I whispered, unable to move, not believing what had just happened. It felt surreal, like a dream I couldn’t wake up from. Everything was hazy and my vision tunneled. All I could think was John, all I could want was John, all I could breathe was John, John, John. John Kemp didn’t ask for much. As a matter of fact, the only thing he asked for was me and I couldn’t even him give him that. I couldn’t even—

“It’s better this way,” Tony said from behind me. I felt his hand drop on my shoulder. “You deserve better than him. I’ve always thought so.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He fluttered his fingers against the skin on my neck. “You don’t need him. Look at him, Jack. He’s trash. He’s always been trash. You don’t owe him anything.” He stood behind me, and I could feel the heat from his body.

“He’s….”

He brushed his lips against my ear, and I closed my eyes. “I’ll take care of you. You can stay here with me tonight, and I’ll show you how—”

His words were cut off when I whirled around and smashed my fist into his jaw. Pain exploded down my hand and arm. Tony stumbled backward, his ass hitting the desk behind him, the poster sliding to the floor.

My hands were clenched in fists at my side, and all I saw was red, all I felt was rage. “You touch me again and I’ll break your fuckin’ fingers,” I snarled at him. “And I swear on all I have, if you ever talk about John that way again, I’ll kill you.”

He stared at me, eyes wide, holding a hand to his jaw.

And that was where I left him.

I flew out of his bedroom and tore down the stairs. So many people were in my way, and it seemed as if they were all shouting and laughing and screaming and I couldn’t get them to move, I couldn’t get them to move the fuck out of my way. I looked for that familiar head of black hair, that olive skin, but I couldn’t find him. I became more frantic, sure he couldn’t have left the house, sure he wouldn’t leave me here, but unable to find him anywhere.

Only minutes later did I come across Betty. I had to keep from shaking her as I grabbed her arm. “Where is he?”

“What?”

“John,” I snapped at her. “Where’d John go?”

She pulled herself from my hands. “He left,” she said, taking a step back. “Like, five minutes ago. Came down the stairs and left.”

She said something else, but I didn’t hear her. I was already pushing my way through the crowd to the front door. I almost tripped as I reached the porch, reeling to avoid falling down the steps. It was dark and I couldn’t see John anywhere.

I took off at a run, heading home.

Mom and Dad were already in bed by the time I got there. It didn’t look like John had been there. His bike was still in the garage, next to mine, leaning together. Nothing had been moved out of our room. I felt a moment of relief when I saw his clothes still in the drawers next to mine.

I tried to stay at the house in case he returned, but ten minutes later, I was frantic again. I left a note on the bed (IF YOU COME BACK, STAY HERE! I AM TRYING TO FIND YOU) before heading back down the stairs, grabbing my bike, and peddling off into the dark.

He wasn’t at the soda fountain, but I didn’t think he would be.

He wasn’t at the school, hiding under the bleachers, waiting for me to see him.

He hadn’t gone back to the party, already starting to disperse.

He wasn’t at the shack where he used to live, though it was nothing more than a rusted-out hovel now.

He was not at his father’s bare grave. He never went there.

He wasn’t anywhere. He wasn’t anywhere at all.

As I rode frantically in the night trying to think of anywhere he could have possibly gone, I wondered if I would ever see him again. I wondered if he was on some highway already, thumb outstretched, waiting for someone to stop and pick him up, carry him off to places unknown. He would be taken from me to someplace far away and I would never see him again.

Tears blurred my vision, and I wanted to chide myself for being eighteen years old and crying as I looked everywhere for a boy who wanted nothing to do with me. He left me. He left me when I needed him. It was his fault. He was the bastard. He was the asshole. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do a goddamn thing except love him.

But even I knew those were all lies. What had happened with Tony wasn’t on him. It was on me. And I hadn’t listened. I’d thrown it back in his face.

I ended up in the one place I didn’t think he’d be—by the lake. It had been our plan to come here after the party so I figured it’d be the last place he’d go. And he wasn’t here. I wasn’t disappointed in that regard, even if a small part of me had hoped.

I sat on the shore where I’d kissed him for the first time, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to fall, wondering just how far away John already was from our little town and if I’d ever see him again.

I didn’t want anyone else. I didn’t need anyone else.

The logical part of me, that little nagging voice, told me that John had no right to keep me to himself like that, that he was a right bastard for even saying so. It’s not fair, it said. You can’t expect to be kept hidden away for the rest of your life just because he doesn’t want to share you.

But I knew if that was what he wanted, I’d do it. I’d do anything to stay by his side.

My cheeks were wet, and I laid my forehead against my knees, wrapping my arms against my legs, trying to think about how to find him, how I could get him back. I thought about riding around town again until I found him. I gave myself a few minutes to pull myself together, but I couldn’t seem to stop the shakes.

And then he sat down next to me. Hadn’t even heard him walk up. He left a bit of space between us as he sat Indian-style and picked at blades of grass.

I couldn’t find a way to speak, my throat was too constricted. I thought he might be a hallucination, something my John-starved mind conjured up just to keep my sanity. But then I reached out and poked him on the arm. He arched an eyebrow at me, a look so like him that it set me off all over again. I bowed my head against my knees and cried.

A second later I felt him wrap his arm around my shoulders, and he pulled me close to him. Sure that this was his way of saying good-bye, I threw my arms around his neck and buried my face in the hollow of his throat. I blubbered nonsense that was meant to be an apology, but that was more like me begging him to never leave me. He murmured little noises while tugging on my hair and waited until it was all out of me and I was hiccupping and sniffling against his neck.

“Thought you were gone,” I whispered finally. “Couldn’t find you. Thought you—” And then my breath caught in my throat and I had to stop before I started crying again.

He sighed. “I wouldn’t leave you. I can’t. Not even if I wanted to.”

“You don’t want to?” I asked, barely able to hope.

His answer was long in coming. “No, Jackie. Don’t want to.”

I kissed his neck. “I was pushing him away, John. I swear it. I should have listened to you, but I was going to push him away. He ain’t what I want.”

He sounded compassionless. “I don’t know if you know what you want.”

I pulled away from him, suddenly frantic. I grabbed his hands and pressed them over my heart. “I know! I promise I do! You ain’t gotta worry about that, okay? I promise you. I don’t want anythin’ else. Just you and me, okay? I don’t need nobody else, and I won’t talk to anyone ever again. I promise, John. Okay? Please just say that’s okay.”

He carefully withdrew his hands from me, and in that moment, in that cold, terrifying moment, I felt rejection like a slap across the face. I was sure he didn’t believe me and I was frozen on my knees in front of him, scared to reach out, sure I’d only push him farther away.

John looked down at his hands in his lap and that minute it took for him to speak was the longest of my life. “I think I’ve made a mistake,” he said quietly, and my heart began to shatter.

“John—”

He held up a hand, cutting me off. “Now hold on, Jackie. I’ve got something to say, and if you still want to say anythin’ to me when I’m done, you go right ahead. Okay?”

I nodded and another tear slipped down my cheek. He must have seen it because he reached up and used his thumb to brush it away. I couldn’t stop from leaning into his touch, trying to get as much of it as I could in case I’d never get it again. I kissed his palm, and I heard him grunt as if in pain, his eyes a little brighter. He dropped his hand away, and I tried not to whimper at the loss. He looked down at his lap again.

“I’ve only ever wanted to do right by you,” he said. “I’ve only ever wanted to keep you safe and make you happy.”

“You have! You always—”

“Jack, hush.”

I hushed.

“But I had no right,” he continued, “to tell you for so long that it’d just be you and me. It wasn’t fair to you, Jackie. You and me, we ain’t alike that way. You need others in your life. You need to grow and change and become whatever you want to be. And I… I just need you. So I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I let you down and I’m sorry. If you need to… if you want…. Tony… or anyone else, well. I won’t stop you. I may not like it. In fact, I’ll probably hate it, but I ain’t ever gonna stop you. I ain’t gonna leave you. I can’t. I don’t think I’d survive without you. You’re my Jackie. Without you, there ain’t no me.”

By the end of what had to be the longest speech I’d ever heard him give, his voice was low and rough and I could see him clenching his fists in his lap. I’d heard and catalogued every single word he said and it changed nothing for me. I understood him, yes, but it wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t what I needed from him.

“Don’t want anyone else,” I told him, trying to keep myself from shouting, angry that he could ever think such a thing.

“It killed me a bit, Jackie,” he choked out, his voice breaking on my name. He gripped his fists tighter. “Openin’ that door, it killed me a bit seeing him against you. I didn’t know who I wanted to hurt more: him or you. That’s why I left like I did. If I stayed, I would have hurt you, and I couldn’t do that. I won’t be like my daddy.”

I struggled to speak. “You ain’t like him.”

He shook his head. “More than I thought I could be. I’m still so angry.”

“I’m sorry,” I said in a small voice.

“Not at you, Jackie. Not really. More at myself. I don’t know if I should’ve pushed more or less. It’s my fault. I should’ve—”

“Oh, fuck off, you bastard,” I snapped at him, unable to keep my anger in check any longer. His eyes narrowed as he finally looked up at me, seeing me for the first time since he found me. “If you’re gonna be pissed off, you best be pissed at me! I did this, John. Not you. Not anyone else. You told me what he wanted and I didn’t believe you. All I remember is seeing you with that damn bitch Betty, and I—”

He looked startled. “Hey, now. It wasn’t like that. I don’t even care about—”

“Then why were her hands all over you?” I growled at him, leaning forward, my hands on his knees. “She looked awfully comfortable touchin’ you.”

“At least I didn’t kiss her!” he cried at me.

“I didn’t fuckin’ kiss him!” I shouted back. “He kissed me and I was gettin’ ready to shove him away!”

“Really? Looked like to me you were gettin’ pretty cozy behind my back, Jack Ford!” He grabbed the collar of my jacket, twisting his fists, holding me tight. I could see the fire flashing in his eyes. “That it? You fuckin’ around on me? Just couldn’t wait to get to the party so you could fuck your precious Tony, I bet. How’s he taste, Jackie? Does he taste like me? Does he give you what you want?”

I couldn’t hold it back anymore. Before I knew it would happen, I tackled him down onto the ground, punching and kicking him with all my might, spitting out obscenities as I tried to make him bleed, make him hurt as much as I was hurting. He grunted as I got a solid hit on his stomach, and he grabbed for my hands, trying to pin my wrists together. He was bigger than me, always had been, but I was a scrappy little thing, twisting violently until I was free again, trying to find skin to gouge my fingers into.

I don’t know how long it went on, just that it did for a while. And I can’t say for certain at what moment I stopped trying to hit him and instead tried to get my hands underneath his shirt, tried to touch more of his skin while he was pawing at the front of my jeans, unsnapping the buttons. We were both breathing heavily, our foreheads pressed together, slick with sweat. His gaze never left mine, and that first moment, that first time I ever felt his hands on me that way—when he gripped my length with his strong hands—was something I won’t ever forget. It wasn’t just because I had a man’s hand on my cock. It wasn’t even that this moment was coming after the biggest scare of my life.

No, all that mattered was that John was the one straddling my thighs, his back bowed up as I found one of his nipples and twisted, his eyelids fluttering. It was John who used his thumbnail to scrape my cockhead, whether by design or by accident, I didn’t know, only that I felt like a bundle of live wires and any place he touched was like a shock.

And when John gave in to his true nature and snarled, “I take it back. You don’t ever let anyone touch you again or I’ll kill you, I swear to God, Jackie, I swear to God,” I knew this was the way we’d be.

Some wouldn’t understand it. Some wouldn’t agree with it. But if that was the way things needed to be so John and me could be John and me, there was no question what I’d choose.

We didn’t have anything slick then, but it didn’t matter. Once his pants were around his ankles and mine were gone, we spit into his hand and he rubbed us both up and pressed himself against my ass and it burned. I cried out because it felt like I was going to split in half, and he faltered. He hesitated. He stopped until I hooked my ankles around his waist and pulled him toward me, and I cried out against his neck, biting his skin, fisting his hair. It was painful, and I felt like I was being torn apart, but underneath it all, underneath the waves that washed over the both of us, I could feel his heart beating against my chest, and we rose above it and the pain faded away. It dissipated until there was nothing left but him and me, and I could hear him whispering in my ear that he loved me, that he’d always loved me, ever since that first day. The moment he saw me, he knew I was always going to be his and that none of the rest would matter, because if I was by his side, he could handle everything else, no matter what was thrown at him.

I came first, my orgasm taking me by surprise, spurting between us, coating our stomachs. He snapped his hips before crying out, and I was filled with a wet heat as he thrust again and again. He collapsed on top of me moments later, his breath hot and harsh in my ear, and he trembled, so much so that it felt like his skin was vibrating. I wrapped my arms around him and held him tightly, not wanting him to leave, not wanting this connection to be severed.

His lips eventually found my neck, and he placed gentle kisses up the slope until he reached my jaw, my lips. His hands went to my face, rubbing against my cheeks, lightly touching my eyelids as if he were trying to memorize me, like he was seeing me for the first time, really seeing me. I looked up at him and his eyes were wide, but there was no fear. There was no doubt. There was a shy wonder. A smug amusement. Rapture. Radiance.

And I had to tell him. He had to know.

“No one else,” I whispered.

He touched my cheek. His thumb grazed my nose.

“There will never be anyone else, John. I promise you. There will only be you.” Because it was true. I knew it to be true, and damn the rest. Damn whatever else could come. It didn’t matter.

“You sure, Jackie?” he asked me quietly as he moved his hips back slightly, slipping from my body. He pushed forward again and rested against me. “This is what you want?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t….” He stopped.

I kissed him lightly. “What?”

“I can’t promise you it’ll be easy,” he said, averting his gaze. “I can’t promise you that we won’t fight again. I’m a right bastard, Jackie, you know that. I have a temper that I don’t know if I can control sometimes. It scares me.”

“I know,” I told him. And I did. But he didn’t scare me. “You ever try to raise your fist to me, John Kemp, and you know I’ll be fighting back.”

A smile quirked his lips before he frowned. “People may hate us if they find out.”

“They won’t. Not unless we tell them.”

“Your parents will expect you to get married.”

“I won’t. I don’t care. I’m eighteen, same as you. It’s my life now. It’s our life.”

“They might say—”

“John!” I’d had enough. No more doubts. I grabbed his face and forced him to look at me. We were so close our noses touched. “Do you want me?”

“With my whole heart, Jackie,” he whispered. “There’s never been anyone I’ve wanted as much as you.”

He tried to look away but I wouldn’t let him, because I knew there was more he wasn’t saying. “But?” I asked him, dreading what his next words would be.

“But is that going to be enough for you?” he asked. A single tear dripped from his face onto mine. “Couldn’t stand it if it wasn’t. Don’t want you to hate me somewhere down the road. What if I ain’t enough?”

Somehow, I laughed. “You miserable bastard,” I said as his eyes narrowed again. “Don’t you see? You will always be enough.” And I knew that now. I hated that it was a lesson I’d had to learn, but I knew it now. There was no question.

“But what about—”

“John.”

“Yeah?”

“Tonight and always.”

“You mean it, Jackie?” He looked heartbreakingly hopeful, like all he wanted was right in front of him and he could take it if only he reached for it. “You sure?”

I’d never been surer of anything in my life and I told him so.

And there, by the lake, under the stars in the sky, John Kemp kissed me deeply, a promise made, one that I intended to keep for the rest of my days.

Please Don’t Leave

“AND YOU did,” he whispers to me now. “Every day you did.”

“I tried,” I say, reaching up to brush my fingers along his brow. He closes his eyes and hums a little sound from the back of his throat as he presses into my touch. “Lord knows I did.”

“I know, Jackie.”

“John?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s still there? With your whole heart?”

“Yeah. My whole heart.”

“Me too.”

He looks happy.

I start to pull my hand away, but I freeze when I see it’s covered in fading sunlight. I look up the wall and see the sun has stretched up high, as it always does when dusk approaches. I start to shake, wondering if I can somehow block him from seeing it, shield him from seeing how close it is, that it’s almost time.

I’m not ready. It can’t be now.

I still have days and weeks and months and years of things I need to say to him. It’s too soon. There’s not enough time. There will never be enough time. It’s not fair. I don’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve this. How can it end this way and—

“Jackie,” he sighs. “I know.”

And he does, because he’s watching me with those shrewd eyes. One thing I’ve learned about my life with John is that there’s nothing I’ve been able to hide from him. It’s one of those secrets of long-term couples, able to read each other’s little tics, their tells, their every move. And their thoughts. Even if it wasn’t splayed across my face, he’d know what I was thinking because he knows me.

I shake my head wildly, starting to lose control. I told myself I wouldn’t, but I can’t stop it. “Maybe we can try more radiation therapy. Or surgery again! We don’t know what could happen tomorrow! They could come up with some procedure that we haven’t thought of yet. It’ll be—”

“It won’t help,” he says. “You know that, Jackie. It’s too late.”

“It can’t be,” I say weakly, tears in my eyes. “It can’t be too late. I’m not done with you yet. I’ll never be done with you. Can’t you see I need you?”

He grips my hand tightly. “Right now,” he says, “I need you more.”

I hang my head. I hang my head because I can’t hold it up anymore, because my best friend for the last seventy-one years is right. Maybe I’m allowed to be selfish. Maybe I’m allowed to break, but I can’t. It’s not about me. It’s about this man, my John, and what I’ve promised him. My suffering is nothing compared to his, and I promised if I could do anything to ease it, I would.

And I will. All John ever wanted was me, and he needs me now.

I nod tightly and stand slowly, carefully, starting to pull away. I don’t get far as he doesn’t let my hand go. His grasp is stronger than it’s been in months. It’s all bone and tendon, but it’s still familiar, his touch second nature to me. So why does it feel like so much more?

“Jackie,” he says.

I don’t look at him.

“Stop,” he chides me gently.

I sniff and rub my free hand over my eyes.

“I wish…,” he says.

“What?” I say quickly, wondering what he wishes for now, and if it’s something I can make come true. I’ll do anything.

“I wish you’d look at me.”

Oh. That.

“Jackie,” he says, his voice deeper, stronger. If I close my eyes, I can pretend everything is back to the way it used to be. That his voice doesn’t crack with age because we’re young men again. That we’ve got our whole lives spread out in front of us and even with that time, we’d never take it for granted. We’d live every moment like it was our last. We’d kiss each other like we’d never do it again. And when we saw each other at the end of the day, we’d pretend we hadn’t seen each other in years.

But I can’t close my eyes. I can’t pretend. My husband has wished for something, and I’ll give it to him.

I look at him, though he’s blurry through my tears.

“Kiss me?” he says hopefully. “Please?”

Oh, John. My heart.

I shuffle back to him, my hand still in his, and I push the oxygen mask out of the way gently and lean down and press my lips to his. The kiss is medicinal, sharp. The kiss tastes like illness, like disease is eating him from the inside out. But underneath that horror, underneath the starkness of it all, there’s John.

There’s him, tasting as he always has, since that first time I pressed my lips against his on the banks of the lake so many, many years ago. I take my fill of my—our—lips pressed together, rubbing our cheeks together. But I have to stop once he starts to struggle for breath.

I pull away, but only just, and slide the oxygen mask back into place. But I don’t leave him. Not yet. I press my forehead to his, and we watch each other. I memorize all I can. Every defect. Every wrinkle. Every spot. The face I adore, shrunken and gaunt. Those eyes I love, bright and aware. I think he’s doing the same, because he doesn’t look away.

“You and me,” he whispers. “Forever.”

“Forever,” I choke out. Because we are, me and him.

“Outside?”

“The porch?”

“Yeah.”

I pull away, tucking the blankets around him so he won’t get cold. I pat my coat pocket to make sure I have what I need. I move to the front of the cabin and open the door. The cool air is crisp and clean. The sun is slowly approaching the horizon. I think about running through the door and never looking back, but I don’t.

I turn back to my husband and his gaze follows me with every step I take, like he’s trying to burn into his memory every single moment. I know this, because I’m doing the same to him. I touch him as I reach the bed, a fleeting thing, my fingers against his arm. I lower the IV stand attached to the bed so we’ll fit through the doorway. I unlock the wheels on his bed and stand behind it and begin to push, rolling him toward the open door.

Every step is like climbing a mountain. Every step is hell. Every step is pain, torture, and grief, all rolled into one. I bite back a sob that threatens to spill over as I take another step. I grip the edges of the bed as I take another step. I almost cry out when we reach the doorway. I want to scream as we push through outside into the fading light.

The forest stretches out before us, surrounding our cabin in the woods where the sun shines in summer and the snow falls in winter. There’s a garden off to the side, with carrots and cabbage. An apple tree that grows Granny Smiths. There are fragrant flowers. Green trees. The nearest town is miles away, and it’s just me and him here, in this place, just like he’d imagined it that day by the lake. He’d built this place for me, as a home away from home, until it eventually became our home in the later years.

I lock the wheels on the bed and walk around to his side again. His eyes are wide as he surveys the expanse of forest stretched out before him, the sun setting near the peaks of the mountains in the distance. Somewhere, a bird calls out, a long, mournful sound that reminds me of aching. He hears it and his eyelids flutter closed. He reaches up and removes the oxygen mask and lets it drop to his side. He takes in a deep breath of this place, our home. And then he sighs.

“Jackie.”

“Yeah?” I can’t help it when my voice breaks.

“My ring?”

I nod.

“Can I wear it?”

“Yeah, John.”

I reach into my coat pocket and my hand skitters across the sheathed hypodermic needle before my fingers find the gold circle at the bottom of the pocket. I pull it out and reach for his hand, and it’s like it was years ago, when we stood in this place and I pushed the ring onto his finger for the first time. It’s loose now, very loose, given how much weight he’s lost over the past year. But I slide it onto his finger anyway and then grip his hand, his ring pressed against my own.

“I do,” he says, and I realize he’s made a joke as soon as the shocked bark of laughter comes out of me. It quickly turns into something more, and before I know it, I’m sobbing against his hand, clutching at him, begging him not to go, pleading with him to stay with me, to just stay with me forever. I don’t know what I’ll do without you, I tell him. I don’t know how I’ll go on. I don’t know how to live when half of me isn’t there anymore. So, please. Please don’t leave. Please don’t let me go.

Eventually, I calm. He rubs my head with his other hand as he murmurs quietly to me, words meant to relax, to soothe. The storm is passing, and it’s left in its wake a path of destruction so wide all I can do is stare at it in wonder.

“Lay with me, Jackie?” he asks me. “Need to feel you next to me.”

I sniff once and nod, rubbing my forehead against his hand. “Just got to get your bed situated,” I tell him, even though he knows what I really mean. The sunset is here.

“Sure, Jackie. I can wait.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

I stand up, let go of his hand, and move to the rear of the bed. I think I’ll hesitate. I think there’s even a chance I’ll refuse, but I reach into my coat pocket again and pull out the hypodermic. I take off the cap. I detach the IV line. Here. This moment. Here’s where I’ll hesitate. Here’s where I’ll beg. Here’s where this whole thing will fall apart and I’ll tell him he can’t ever leave, that I won’t allow it, that he’ll just have to suffer and suffer because I’m a selfish bastard who can’t ever let him leave.

It’s these thoughts I have as I inject the concentrated solution of pentobarbital into the IV line that flows into his wrist—which will shortly instigate complete respiratory collapse. It’s supposed to be peaceful. It’s supposed to be kind. It’s supposed to be—

It’s done before I realize what I’m doing.

It’s finished.

The moment has passed.

I can’t take it back.

I cap the needle. Put it back in my pocket.

I round the bed and collapse the rails along the side. Hooking a foot onto the lowered rail, I climb up beside him. Immediately, he wraps his arms around me as I curl into him, against his sunken chest. He’s warm, but bony. Too thin. Too reduced. Too small.

But there’s a strength to his hold on me, and even with how much he’s lost, there’s still that boy in there, the one capable of such a mischievous spark in his eye. There’s still that man in there, the one who could hold me as my body shook with the force of his passion. So many memories try to flood their way in, and it’s almost hard to focus, so I push them all away and wait. There’s still some time. I press my ear against his chest and listen to the sound of his heart.

“Jackie,” he says, as I knew he would. “You ’member when we came here the first time?”

I do. I try to speak, but I can’t. I nod.

“I was so scared,” he says. “Did you know I was scared?” His words are starting to slur.

I find my voice. “Yeah. Because I was too.” And I was. Deathly afraid.

“Of me?”

“No. Never you. Of what you would say.”

“Tell me,” he says quietly, like he’s fading.

And here, as the sun lowers and the light dims, I do.

For him, I do.

All I Ever Wanted Was You

MY MOUTH was dry as I asked him again, “Where are we going?”

He gave me that small smile and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, trying to pay attention while he drove. We’d been driving for a while, and the road was now all uphill, deeper into the forest, the trees growing taller and blocking out the bright summer sun. Shadows crossed the two-lane highway in front of us, but instead of being ominous, it was almost welcoming. It felt like a homecoming of sorts, even though we were far away from the little town where we’d grown up. Oregon was a much different place than where we’d come from. It was hard to believe it’d been twelve years since we’d left, twelve years since we graduated high school and packed up my old car and never looked back.

John had come with me when I’d gone to the University of Oregon. We’d holed up in a crappy apartment in Eugene, me going to school during the day and working as a short-order cook in a diner at night. John had gotten hired on at a garage working as a mechanic and had a natural aptitude for all things car-related.

We were together, and we were happy, but those first four years were rough, regardless. We were always tired, always broke. We fought often over little things that carried no consequence. But I never had a fear of John leaving me or of me leaving him. Every night, regardless of how angry either of us was, we left our arguments at the door when we went to bed and curled up into each other, making love more often than not. I never questioned his devotion to me, and I made sure I did my damnedest that he would never have any doubts about me.

Somehow, we survived and things began to fall into place. I graduated with my MBA. Artie, the owner of the garage where John worked, began not-so-subtly hinting at his wanting to retire over dinner at our little house one night, which ended up with all of us drinking too much wine. John and I woke up with a hangover and a plan to purchase the garage from Artie and make it our own. John would oversee the mechanical and repair aspect of it. I would handle the finances and books. It was scary, that decision, but we made it work. Somehow, we made it work.

Which was why I was surprised when John told me we were taking the day off. That he had something to show me. We were close to opening up a third garage, and there was still much to be done. I didn’t know what he wanted me to see. Our thirtieth birthdays had recently passed, so I didn’t think it had to do with any gifts. It was possible he wanted to scout a location for another garage, but usually he was a little more blatant about that.

It probably didn’t help that I was already a bundle of nerves, as I was still trying to work my way up to giving him the real birthday present I’d bought for him, not the one I’d actually given him. I carried the little box with me everywhere, sure that at some point, the moment was going to feel right and even though it wouldn’t be legal, we’d know what it meant.

If only I could get the words to come out.

“We’re almost there,” he said as he reached over and squeezed my thigh. I captured his hand in mine and intertwined our fingers, an action so unconscious it was like breathing for me. He smiled again and said nothing more.

We’d driven an hour and a half from home, passing through the little town of Roseland before we’d gone deeper into the woods off the Old Forest Highway. It was another twenty minutes before he turned onto an old dirt road that wound its way up farther into the forest until the road came to an end in a clearing of sorts, trees all around. He turned off the car as I gazed out the windshield.

“What is this place?” I asked curiously.

“Come on. I’ll show you.”

He met me around the front of the car, and in that sweet summer sunlight, he stood behind me, molding himself to my back, wrapping his arms around my neck, brushing his fingers against my chest. I looked back at him and he kissed my forehead. His eyes were sparkling, but I could see the nervous tilt of his head, the little lines on his forehead. His arms were tense around me.

“Okay,” I said. “Spill it, Kemp. What’s going on?”

He turned me around in his arms and brought up his hands to cup my face. “You know I love you, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “Pretty sure by now. You’re stuck with me.” The little box in my pocket felt like it was on fire.

“Yeah, Jackie. I know.” He paused and chewed on his bottom lip, averting his gaze.

“John?”

“Yeah?”

“What did you do?” I narrowed my eyes and scowled at him.

For one of the few times in his life, John blushed and I knew it had to be big. John Kemp didn’t get nervous. John Kemp didn’t blush. My stomach flip-flopped.

“Do you like it here?” he asked, still not looking at me. He waved his arms around, pointing at our surroundings.

“The woods? Sure, you know I like this kind of stuff. The city ain’t all bad, but it’s good to get out and hear myself think every now and then.”

He sighed. “So it’d be okay, then, if I….”

“If you what?”

He misunderstood me and blushed again. “If we….”

I grabbed his face and forced him to look at me. “Say it.”

“I bought this place,” he said quickly. “This land. It’s ours.”

It wasn’t what I was expecting. “You did what?” I took a step back.

He brought up his hand and started chewing on his thumbnail, waving his other hand around as he spoke in a rush. “I’ve been lookin’ for a while now. To find someplace away from everything else. I wanted to surprise you because I wanted to make you a home, Jackie. I know we have our house and the shops, but I wanted to make another place that was just for you and me and no one else. I was going to wait until everythin’ was done, but you’d notice the money going into here and I don’t much like the thought of you thinkin’ I had another thing goin’ on the side. Like I was lyin’ to you. It ain’t like that. I just wanted to make this place for you. For me. For us. I know it’s big. Lord knows I do. And maybe I should’ve talked to you about it first. I just… I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Shocked, I asked, “How big?”

“Forty acres or so.” He looked off into the trees.

“And we can afford this? John, we’re opening another shop!”

“Been savin’ for a while, Jackie. Nothin’ coming from the shop. My own funds. Set it aside for a while now.”

I took a step toward him. “You keepin’ anything else from me, John Kemp?” It came out as a growl.

“No. I swear! This… this is it.”

“And you want to build a house here?”

He shook his head.

I was confused. “That ain’t it? What, then? Where are we…?” A shudder went through me, and I felt tears prick my eyes. “Oh, John.” My voice cracked. I remembered.

“Jackie?” He sounded worried and put a hand on my shoulder.

“The cabin,” I whispered. “That day, by the lake. That first time we kissed. You said you wanted to build a cabin for just me and you, and….”

His eyes softened and the nervousness that had been there since we’d gotten into the car faded. He gathered me up in his arms again and kissed me sweetly. “The cabin,” he echoed.

“You did this for me?”

He shrugged. “For me too. For us.” He chuckled ruefully. “That’s a bit of a lie, I guess. Yeah, Jackie. For you. I did this for you. Is that okay?” He looked worried again.

“Yeah,” I told him roughly. “That’s okay.” Because it was. “Show me.”

And he did. He showed me where the cabin would sit, how it would be designed, with a porch we could sit on during the summer. A fireplace to keep us warm when the snow fell in the winter. He showed me where the garden would go for my carrots and cabbage. Where the apple tree would stand, its branches heavy with Granny Smiths. He showed me how we were not so far away from Roseland that we’d be cut off, but far enough that it would seem like it was just him and me. We’d keep the house in Eugene, he said, at least for now. Maybe, someday, down the road, we could live in the cabin for good and we’d be left alone, the way he’d always wanted us to be. “You’re my Jackie,” he told me. “All I ever wanted was you.”

I stood looking into the forest when he said this, my back to him, only a few feet away. I took a deep breath and realized this was the moment I needed. This was what I was waiting for. I reached into my pocket and curled my hand around the little box and knew what it would mean. I’d already given him forever, and he’d given it back to me. It’d be nice to have a token to remind us of today.

Without allowing myself to think too much about it, I pulled the box from my pocket. “John,” I said.

“Jackie?”

I closed my eyes and turned, sank to one knee and held the box out in front of me, opening it so he could see. I felt foolish, and my face was aflame. It was almost impossible to get the words out that I’d planned to say, but somehow they came, and while I was sure they sounded halting and flat, I meant everything I said. “John Kemp, you are my life. You are everythin’ to me. Without you, I ain’t got a life. I ain’t got a home. I ain’t got a family. I can’t say I knew it on the first day I met you, but in the days that came after, I was sure that I would want you by my side for always. We’ve been together for a long time now, and I don’t plan on goin’ anywhere else. I know it can’t be real, that we can’t go down to the church and get hitched like other folks, but I don’t know that it matters. All that matters is what’s in our hearts, and I know my heart would be mighty glad if you wore this ring. If you’ll marry me. Every day after today, every time you look down at this ring on your finger, you’ll know what you mean to me.” I took a deep breath. “Okay, that’s all I wanted to say. Uh, you can say somethin’ now. If you want.” I squinted up at him.

He watched me with those dark eyes and that small smile. “Yeah, Jackie. Yeah. Yes.”

My hands shook as I stood and pulled the ring from the box. I dropped the box to the ground as I stepped forward and slipped the ring onto his finger. It was a little snug, but we made it work. Once it was on, he pulled me into a crushing hug. I could feel the rapid beat of the heart in his chest and I thought, You best beat forever. You best keep going on and on and on. And if there’s one day you can’t beat no more, may my heart follow you into whatever may come.

“Gonna have to get you a ring now,” he muttered in my ear. “Gonna have to find you the perfect one. You’ll wear my ring too, Jackie?”

“Yeah. I would. I will.”

He let go of me and pressed his forehead against mine. “Kinda like a weddin’ present, right? This place?”

I laughed. “Yeah, John. I guess it is. I’m glad I waited till now.”

“Me too.” We watched each other for a time. Then, “Hey, Jackie?”

“Yeah?”

“This place is gonna be our home one day. That okay?”

“Yeah, John. That’s okay.”

“And it’ll be just you and me?”

I nodded. “You and me. Like we always wanted.”

“Good,” he sighed. “You’ll see, Jackie. I’m gonna make this place so good for you. I promise, okay? I’m gonna make this a place you could be proud of. I’m gonna make this place your home.” And then he pulled me to him again and his strong heart beat against my ear. Please beat forever.

His Voice

“AND THEN you kissed me again,” I tell him now as the sun sets below the mountains, “and then you loved me, there, in the middle of the clearing in the forest, and that was the first day that we made this place our home. That was the first day this place was ever really ours. And I knew then, John. I knew like I’d never known before that it would be forever. It would be always for us. There’d never been anyone before you. And there would have never been anyone after you. I knew. You were it for me.”

There is no response.

“John?”

My ear is still pressed against his chest. I wait for his heart to beat. I wait for it to beat so strong and so loud. I wait and I begin to clutch at his hospital gown, and only then do I notice his arms have slid from their grip around me and lay at his sides and there’s no beat, there’s no beat of his fucking heart, and it’s quiet and silent and dark and cold, and I told it to beat forever. I told him it would be forever and he promised me, he promised me—

“John?” I croak out. “Hey, John? Sweetheart? Answer me. Say something. Oh, God, please. Please.”

Nothing.

I look up at him from where I lay on his chest. His head is resting against the pillow. His face tilts toward me. His mouth is parted slightly. His eyes are closed. He does not speak. He does not breathe. He does not move.

“John?” I reach up and touch his face. His skin is still warm, and I start to shatter.

I pray it’s still possible he’ll open his eyes and smile down at me and say, “Jackie, I love you. You know I do. You know I’ve always loved you, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I have to go now. I’m sorry that you’re still here and I won’t be. But I promise I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait for you so when it’s time, we’ll go together, ’cause I can’t imagine taking another step without you. I can’t imagine you not bein’ by my side. It ain’t right, you and me not bein’ together. Nothin’ about that is right, so don’t take long, okay? Don’t take long, ’cause I can’t stand being apart.”

He’ll say all this because he didn’t even say good-bye to me. He didn’t even… say… ah, Jesus. Ah, please. Please don’t leave me alone. I’ve been torn in two and my soul is empty and please don’t go.

Please.

I wait.

Nothing. It doesn’t happen. John does not wake up.

He’s gone, and for the first time in seventy-one years, I’m alone.

Things need to be done. Plans set in motion. I know I need to make phone calls, but I can’t seem to find the strength to care. Instead, I curl up against him, laying my head on his silent chest, trying to feel any warmth he has left for the last time.

And then I weep for my husband.

IT’S FULL-ON dark when I wake, my face feeling stiff and cracked, and I have the desperate thought that since he’s gone, I’m going to forget what he sounds like. I’ll forget the timbre and cadence of his voice. I’ll forget the low rumble that can come from his chest when he calls me Jackie. It’s irrational, this thought, but it’s the only one I can focus on. Now that he’s gone, I won’t remember what he sounds like.

I can’t allow that to happen.

“Wake up,” I mutter at him, shaking him. His head rolls back and forth. “Wake up, John. I can’t forget. You have to wake up.” It sounds crazy, I know, but I don’t care. Not anymore. I can’t forget and, oh my God, is it starting already? Why can’t I pick his voice out in my head? It can’t be happening already. Why can’t I—

The video. I recorded him hours ago. To show people. To show everyone.

“Hold on,” I tell him as I put my feet to the porch. My knees ache as I stand.

“Just hold on, John. I promise you I won’t forget. Just need a little help, is all. I ain’t gonna forget what you sound like.”

He doesn’t answer me, and I refuse to think why. All that matters is that I hear him again.

I rush as quickly as I can and unlock the wheels to his bed. I push the door open behind him and pull him back into the house. The side of the bed hits the doorjamb, gouging the wood. The reverberation of the impact jars up through my arms. My teeth are chattering. My arms have broken out in gooseflesh. I’m so cold.

I try to pull the bed again and it catches on the door, gouging it further, and I cry out because it’s getting harder. It’s getting so much harder to remember what he sounds like.

“Please! Please just help me so I don’t forget. Oh, John! Please. I need this. I need this.”

I pull for a third time, as hard as I can, and the wood splinters and the bed slides through so quickly I almost lose my balance and fall to the floor. I catch myself on the bed and my fingers touch John’s thin hair, and it’s like it electrifies me and I jerk my hand away because I just can’t. Not until I hear him. Not until he speaks to me.

I pull and spin the bed until he’s facing the TV hung up on the wall. I snap the wheel brakes. There. He won’t move. He can’t move from here. I turn to find the camera and there’s a stutter to my step, a tightness in my chest, and I gasp for air. It’s like my body knows something I won’t accept and it’s crying out in grief. I take another step and the pain comes again and I think John and I think please and I think heartsore and broken but I take another step and another and another. The camera is in the den, where I left it, where I set it down when John was talking with me and he was so gloriously breathing and speaking and laughing and loving. Was that only hours ago? Why can’t I remember his voice?

I pick up the camera and rush back to John. He hasn’t moved, not that I expected him to. I try to remember how to hook up the camera to the TV. I’ve never been very good at the technical stuff. That was all John. He was the one who knew how to hook this stuff up and he’s not here right now, so I have to. I have to figure it out.

I find the cord in the drawer under the TV but I can’t get it to fit right. It won’t go in and I wonder if he’ll be trapped in this little camera and I won’t be able to get him out. He’ll be stuck there and it’s my fault and—

The cord’s backward. It’s so obvious. It’s so easy. Don’t know why I didn’t see it. I flip it around and plug it into the camera. The other end attaches to the TV. I flip the TV on. The screen is blue. I press play on the camera and can’t help but scream in triumph when a shaky video appears on the screen. “I got it, John!” I crow. “I figured it out! Ain’t that somethin’!”

He doesn’t reply. That’s okay, though, because I’ll hear his voice soon enough.

I turn and climb back up onto the bed as my video self on the TV shuffles toward a John who is still alive. I lay against his chest, thinking maybe, just maybe his heart will beat again in my ear, but there’s nothing. I grab his arms and pull them over me so it’s like he’s hugging me. I let go to get comfortable, and they fall to his sides. I grab them again as I start to sweat. I ignore the stiffness in my chest, the way my left bicep is tingling like it’s being pricked by tiny needles. His arms start to slide off me again, so I just hold them in place.

And on the video he speaks:

“You recordin’, Jackie?”

“Yeah. I think so. Little green light is on. Is that right?”

“Yeah. You got it.”

“Okay. John?”

“Yeah?”

A tremulous voice: “Can… can we do this?”

A pause. “I think so, Jackie. I think so.”

“I… okay.”

“You ready?”

A sigh. “Yeah.”

John clears his throat and begins.

“My name is John Michael Kemp and I am of sound mind, but not sound body. Lord, ain’t that the truth. Six months ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. By the time it was caught, it’d already progressed to stage three. Last month, it had moved on to stage four. From what the doctors have told us, my body is riddled with this… this thing. It has… oh, damn it all. What’s that word, Jackie? It’s metsa… metsi….

“Metastasized.”

“Yeah. That. It’s metastasized. Outside of the prostate, apparently. Infected other tissues. It’s in my bones. My liver. My lungs. Radiation wouldn’t touch it, no matter how much they pumped into me. No medicines could break it. It spread through me, not stoppin’ no matter what.

“The docs told us I’d have three or four months. That was two months ago. They told us there’d be pain. They told us that it would hurt. I figured it wouldn’t be so bad. I ain’t no sissy, that’s for sure. I could handle it, I knew. I could take anything on if it meant… if it meant I could have a few more moments with… with the man I… just a few more weeks. Or days. Or hours.

“But they couldn’t know. They couldn’t know how bad the pain is. No one can, not unless you’ve been where I’m at. There don’t seem to be many of those around that have. It’s not just the pain; like I said, I ain’t a sissy. No. I can… I can feel this thing eatin’ me from the inside out. I can feel my body rottin’ out from under me, and with it there is pain, but it’s not like gettin’ hit in the face or breakin’ an arm. It’s like I have acid pourin’ through my veins. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to move. It hurts to be touched. And if there’s one thing I cannot stand, it’s not to be touched. I need it. I need him.

“The man… the man recordin’ this is my husband. His name is Jackie. My Jackie. Jack Kemp. One day, not long ago, I made a decision that I couldn’t live like this. I couldn’t let myself waste away more than I already had. I couldn’t let myself go like this. But not because of the pain or the cancer. Because of him. Every moment I descend further, he descends with me, and I will not pull him down. I will not drag him into the depths with me.

“I thought long and hard about what to do. The state of Oregon has doctor-assisted suicide laws, but I couldn’t stand the thought of a stranger’s hands on me like that. I couldn’t shake the idea that it was wrong.

“So I was gonna to do it myself. But I couldn’t do it until I’d spoken to Jackie. Every major decision I’ve ever made has been with him, and this would be no less. You see…. Jesus. I’m sorry. Don’t normally get so choked up like this. It’s not who I am. It’s not… you have to understand somethin’. About him and me.

“I am eighty-three years old, but I only remember the last seventy-one years. You see, when I was twelve, I met a blue-eyed boy and fell in love. I can only remember the last seventy-one years because anythin’ before that day don’t matter. Nothin’ that came before could compare to anythin’ that came after. I wasn’t truly alive until he looked at me for the first time. And from then on, even if I didn’t know how it was possible, I knew he was mine. And he has been. Every day he has been.

“People still say today that two men can’t love each other the way a man and a woman does. That it ain’t right and it’s against God and some such nonsense. Well, that’s bullshit. That’s so much fuckin’ bullshit that I can’t stand it. For the last seven decades, I have loved a man that I could not live without. Jackie makes my heart whole. He makes my soul complete. Without him, there’d be no me. I would not have survived this long if he hadn’t been by my side. For every person out there who says a man can’t love another man, just know this: you’re wrong because I have loved. I am loved.

“I told him… I told my Jackie what I was gonna do, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say. It didn’t go over very well, if I’m bein’ honest. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him so mad. At first, I thought he was mad at me for even thinkin’ about doin’ it. But it turns out that ain’t it.

“We ain’t ever been real religious. That was all Jackie’s parents, and once we moved out of there, we didn’t keep up with God and church and all that. Maybe we should have. I don’t know. But Jackie here, he… he wouldn’t let me do it. Not to myself. He was worried about my soul. Supposedly, suicides don’t go to Heaven. We don’t know if there is a Heaven, or even if that’s true, but Jackie… he wouldn’t take that chance.”

“You’re damn right I wouldn’t!”

“I know, Jackie. I know. Calm down. Just sayin’ what needs to be said. I tried to talk him out of it, but when he gets somethin’ in his mind, somethin’ that he feels needs to be done, it’s better to just let him do it ’cause there won’t be no other way around it. I learned that a long time ago, and it’s been fine just the way it was.

“So this video is bein’ made, so you know that what we’re doin’ is what I want. We’re doin’ this so you don’t think Jackie is some kinda murderer. He ain’t. He loves me. With everythin’ he’s got. He always has. And that’s why he’s gonna do this for me now. He’s gonna help me not hurt no more.

“Our life hasn’t always been easy. We had to hide for a long time. Things changed and we’ve been legally married for goin’ on twenty years now. But it’s been so much longer than that. It’s meant so much more than that. Jackie… he’s my… there ain’t never been anyone other than him. We promised each other that, back when we were kids. And it’s been that way ever since.

“I’m… tired now. Cancer has a way of takin’ all that you have away. It’s a vicious thing, an evil thing. It hurts, yeah. But what hurts the most is how angry I am. That it’s takin’ me away from him. That it dares to step in here and try to break us apart, ’cause it would have eventually. But this way, at least, it’s on our terms. It’s our way. And I know I’ll be waitin’ for him. No matter what happens in this life or the next, Jackie belongs to me and I will never let us be separated for long. You hear me, Jackie? You understand me? You’re mine and not this or any other thing will ever keep us apart.”

“Yeah, John. I get you.”

“And I love you. You know that, right?”

“I know. Is that it? That all you want to say?”

“Yeah, Jackie. That’s it. Put the camera down and come here. Need to feel your bones.”

The video ends. The screen turns blue.

The cabin falls silent.

I scream out. There. In the dark.

John and Jackie

“DOUGLAS COUNTY Sheriff’s Office, this is Darlene. How can I help you?”

“Darlene, it’s Jack. Jack Kemp?”

“Jack! How are you, sweetie? How’s things up on the mountain?”

“Ah…. John…. John’s gone. He’s… gone.”

“Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. He’ll need… I need….”

“I know what you need, Jack. Don’t you worry about that. We’ll get an ambulance up there. It’ll take about an hour, okay? I’ll make sure everything is taken care of.”

“Okay. T-t-thank you.”

“Oh, honey. Please don’t cry.”

“Ain’t cryin’, Darlene. Just havin’ a bit of trouble catchin’ my breath, is all.”

“You feeling okay, Jack? Oh, what an awful question. Of course you don’t. I’m just worried. Can’t have both of you go. It’d break my heart even more.”

“It’s fine, Darlene. I’m fine.”

“If you say so. I hope you’re telling me everything. How about I stay on the phone with you until the guys get up there? Keep you company? I hate to think of you all alone in the cabin now.”

“N-no. Need to spend some time with him. Need a chance to say good-bye.”

“Okay, if you’re sure. Take as much time as you need. You call me back if you need me. I’ll wait here by the phone.”

“Darlene?”

“Yeah, Jack?”

“Do you… you believe in Heaven?”

“Yeah, Jack. And you know John’s there, right? If anybody could get there, it’d be him.”

“Yeah.”

“When I was a little girl, my mom told me that Heaven is whatever we want it to be, that it’s God’s gift to us for having lived in this world, our reward for all our suffering. She told me that before you’re welcomed home, you’ll remember a moment when you were most at peace and it will help guide you to your Heaven. So you bet your John is where he’d be happiest, and I know he’s waiting for you. And the Heaven you’ll have will be one you’ll make together. I know it, Jack. I know it with every fiber of my being.”

“I gotta go, Darlene.”

“Okay, honey. I’ll see you soon.”

I HANG up the phone. Somehow, it falls back onto the cradle.

“Gotta say good-bye,” I tell the empty room. “They’re gonna be here soon, John. Gonna be here soon to take you away, and I gotta say good-bye. I don’t want to. John, I don’t want to say it. Not out loud. Out loud will make it real. Out loud means it’s true. Out loud is… oh. Please. Is this a dream? I want this to be a dream so bad. Wake me up, please. Please wake me up.”

I take a step toward him and there’s a spasm in my left arm. My fingers are tingling and a bead of sweat runs down the back of my neck. The darkened room seems to flash a bit, like lights are descending outside the house, but then it’s dark again and all I can hear is the creak of the house, the erratic beat of my own heart.

The blue screen is still on the TV and I can see John’s outline in the bed. I want to break. I want to collapse on the floor and shriek my fury, my outrage, my sorrow. I want all the world to hear how lost I am, how I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again.

But I don’t. Somehow, I don’t.

These are the last moments that I’ll spend with him alone, and I have to make the most of them. You gotta live as best you can, he’d told me the day we’d come to this decision. It may hurt, Jackie, and it may not seem fair, but you gotta promise me you’re gonna live. You can’t let yourself waste away. You can’t. Won’t do this if I don’t know you’ll be okay.

Sure, John, I’d said. I’ll be okay.

It was the biggest lie I’d ever told him.

Promise me, Jackie. You promise me.

I….

Jackie.

“I promise,” I whisper aloud. “It hurts, John. It hurts, but I promise.”

I make my way back to the bed, crawl up next to him, and lie down beside him. His face is turned toward mine, and even though it’s dark and we’re awash in a harsh blue light, he still looks so handsome. Even though he’s wasted away, I can still see the boy I first met all those years ago. The one who grabbed my arm and told me he’d call me Jackie because no one else did. The boy who saw me and knew we were meant to be, even if I didn’t know it myself. I promised him. Now I’ll do my best, even if I’m broken.

I reach up and touch his cheek. His nose. His ear. I lean forward and kiss his lips gently. “You remember,” I ask him, “that time we took that vacation over my spring break? You borrowed that old beater from the shop and you were gonna take me to see the ocean because I’d never seen it before and had always wanted to go. ‘Gonna take you,’ you said. ‘You ain’t never seen it and so I’m gonna take you because I’ll give you whatever you want, Jackie.’ So we got into that little beater and just drove west.

“Got lost, though, didn’t we? Somehow we got turned around. ‘Shouldn’t be that hard to find the ocean,’ you said. ‘It’s the damn ocean.’ I remember laughin’ at you because I thought you were so beautiful with how red your face got, how you ground your teeth together. You tried not to snap at me, but I didn’t know how to read a map, and we ended up fightin’. You remember? We said some awful things to each other, and I hated arguin’ with you. I hated it.

“So I went to sleep. You woke me up later and it was dark but I could see you s-smilin’ at m-m-me. Your hand was in my hair and you said I had to wake up because you had somethin’ to s-show me. And I remember just watchin’ you because of the way you smiled at me and I knew then that it didn’t matter if we f-fought. It didn’t matter if we argued. We’d always find our way back to each other and nothin’ would break us apart.

“‘Do you hear that, Jackie?’ you said. ‘It’s the ocean.’

“And it was.”

I grimace as a sharp pain goes up my bicep to my shoulder and sinks into my chest. It’s a deep thing, an aching thing, and my heart skips a beat and I close my eyes, waiting for it to pass. I don’t know what this is but I won’t let it interrupt my last moments with—

The pain stabs at me again and oh, Jesus, this one hurts. My hand feels like it’s buzzing, and I flex my fingers out and then make a fist, then flex again. The shadows my fingers create over John’s face look like black claws are squeezing him whole, and I drop my hand in irrational fear, ignoring the sweat on my brow, the way my heart has started to race.

“Y-you told me that you’d take me anywhere. That you’d f-follow me anywhere and that as long as we were t-together, nothing else mattered. ‘I’d do anythin’ for you, Jackie.’ That’s what you said. And I told you the s-same. Where you go, I go. No matter what. It w-w-wouldn’t—”

A wave of pain rolls over me, causing my vision to blur. My chest is on fire. I jerk against John and his head falls to my shoulder and I can’t help but laugh. It’s a low sound, a harsh sound, like it’s hissing out from between my gritted teeth, but it doesn’t matter because I just laugh. “That you, John?” I shout. “Is this what happens? We’d never be apart! That’s what you said! You said we’d never be apart!”

I moan as my heart stutters in my chest, as a roar starts to take over my ears and the light from the TV seems to grow brighter as I squeeze my eyes shut. I know I should get up. I should get up and get to the phone. Call Darlene back. Tell her that something’s happening. That something’s not right. Think I’m having a heart attack. Don’t that beat all? I think wildly. Never once have I had a problem with my heart.

I try to move, but John’s head is on my shoulder and the weight is comforting and heavy and all I want to do is sleep. All I want to do is sleep next to my husband and never have to worry again.

“Ah, Christ! It hurts, John! Oh, God, it hurts.” And as the thunder that is my heartbeat echoes in my ears, I can’t seem to catch my breath. I try to pull in air, but it’s like sucking through a straw and it’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough. My throat is constricted, almost as if the black claws from John’s face have wrapped themselves around my neck and are squeezing tighter and tighter.

I gotta breathe. Breathe. Inhale. Do it!

I struggle to take a breath and all I can remember is him. The feel of his hand on my elbow as he asks me my name. His lips against mine for the first time. His battered body. The look of betrayal on his face. The way the ring slides over his finger. And everything else. Everything about him. The way he tastes. The way he smiles. The way he says my name. His skin against my fingertips. His laugh. His anger and his beauty. The pictures of our life, shoved into those boxes, into those warehouses, have exploded and all I can see is him, I am engulfed by him. Memories slam together and voices roll over each other and mesh together until all I can hear is Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, and it’s a chant, a loving caress, a joyous scream.

Exhale.

It burns. My whole body feels like it’s on fire, and my head rocks back. John’s cheek brushes against mine.

In… hale….

“John,” I whisper as I arch my back, muscles tensing viciously.

Ex… hale….

The pain starts to fade. I can feel his body next to mine.

In….

… hale.

I’m warm. It’s not… it’s not like I thought it would be. I can’t… is this…?

I think, John.

Ex….

THERE WAS a time once, right before the cabin was finished, when I came around the corner from my garden and saw John standing in the middle of the yard, his eyes closed, his face tilted up toward the sky. He had a small smile on his face as he took a deep breath and let it out. At that moment, he’d never been more beautiful.

Something came over me then, and I couldn’t keep from rushing to his side, grabbing his face in my hands, and kissing him for all I was worth. He laughed quietly against my lips, and when I finally pulled away, he hooked a hand around my neck and pressed his forehead to mine. No words were said, but it didn’t matter. I knew his thoughts because I was thinking the same thing.

Forever.

THE SUN is on my face. I’m lying on my back. There’s grass underneath me. A bee buzzes past my ear. I hear waves lapping at a shore. Doesn’t sound like the ocean. Is it… maybe. A lake? It sounds like a lake. Birds off in the distance. A breeze through my hair. It feels like summer. It’s warm. It seems safe, like nothing could ever hurt me. It feels like a dream, and I can’t tell if I’m dreaming while awake.

Footsteps approach and a shadow crosses over my face. Someone is standing above me, blocking out the sun. I hear a deep chuckle and it rocks me down to my bones and I want to open my eyes. I want to open them so bad, but I can’t take the chance that it’s not real. That this is a dream and not real.

Then the figure above me says one word and one word only, and it’s said in a young voice. A strong voice. A voice that makes me ache. And with that word, tears explode from underneath my eyelids and I cry out a song of loss and mourning. Of heartbreak. Of relief, of so much goddamn relief that I think I’ll be torn apart from the tragic beauty of it all. And buried in this song comes a single memory rising through the cacophony that is my mind, brightly lit, like it’s a shooting star. I latch onto and hold it tight because I know it means everything. Because I know it is everything.

It’ll only be me. Only me. You’ll see. No one else will call you that like I do. No one ever will. You hear that name and you’ll know it’s comin’ from me.

And from up above me, the word comes again: “Jackie,” he says.

I open my eyes.

About the Author

When TJ KLUNE was eight, he picked up a pen and paper and began to write his first story (which turned out to be his own sweeping epic version of the video game Super Metroid—he didn’t think the game ended very well and wanted to offer his own take on it. He never heard back from the video game company, much to his chagrin). Now, two decades later, the cast of characters in his head have only gotten louder, wondering why he has to go to work as a claims examiner for an insurance company during the day when he could just stay home and write.

He recently went slightly insane and moved to the East Coast from the Sonoran Desert with his fiancé and neurotic cat in tow. He dreams about one day standing at Stonehenge, just so he can say he did. TJ can be found on Facebook under TJ Klune.

His blog is tjklunebooks.blogspot.com.

You can e-mail him at tjklunebooks@yahoo.com.

By TJ KLUNE

Burn

Into This River I Drown

John & Jackie

Tell Me It’s Real

BEAR, OTTER, AND THE KID

Bear, Otter, and the Kid

Who We Are

The Art of Breathing

Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

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Copyright

Published by

Dreamspinner Press

5032 Capital Circle SW
Suite 2, PMB# 279
Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

John & Jackie

© 2014 TJ Klune.

Cover Art

© 2014 Reese Dante.

http://www.reesedante.com

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.

Digital ISBN: 978-1-62798-855-1

Printed in the United States of America

Second Edition

July 2014

First Edition published by TJ Klune with The Crack Crew, May 2013