K. Bromberg - Slow Burn

The same song and dance continues one more time, her hands steady and sure while my whole soul is shaken to the core. But this time she has gotten a clean margin.

All in all, the procedure is quick, and I really don’t feel a thing except for the hum of my nerves zinging through me from my adrenaline high. I feel the tug on the incision as she closes it up and then watch her hands move although I can’t feel the steri strips being applied. I thank her, sigh in frustration when she won’t answer when I ask if whatever she biopsied looked cancerous. She just smiles the tight smile that I want to knock off her face again and tells me that pathology might have a preliminary report within the next couple days, but she wants to wait for the full workup. I can’t really focus on the terms she uses as the rest of the drugs and their calming effects ride out their stay in my body.

My mom comes in, and I think I smile at her, but I’m not sure because I’m so busy watching her talk to the doctor, glancing at me intermittently, with her fingers tugging on her damn necklace the whole time.

At some point the medicine must knock me out cold because the next thing I remember is waking up in my parents’ house. In Lex’s and my old bedroom, surrounded by memories of her in so many ways. Happy ones and sad ones. I feign sleep when I hear the door to the room open, not wanting to talk just yet about the cacophony of thoughts cluttering my head. I hear my parents murmuring their thoughts and fears in the hallway, and it takes everything I have not to cover my ears and rock like a child to shut them out.

And I wish I could act like a child. I wish I could throw a tantrum and fight and rage and not care what people think or understand the consequences.

But I’m not.

And I do.

And fuck if I want to get a firsthand reminder of just how devastating life can be.

Chapter 16

The jerk of Rylee’s head up from the vegetables she’s chopping to meet my gaze is almost comical. God, I’m glad she’s home. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed her. How much I needed to look at her and not see fear mixed with pity looking back at me like I did at my parents’ house.

I meet her gaze—my closest friend—and feel the pointed sword of guilt pressing against my throat as I carry on like everything was perfectly fine while she was away on her honeymoon. Like the doctor didn’t call and say she was ordering more extensive pathology tests on the mass she’d removed before making any conclusive decisions. Or how she was skirting around using the word diagnosis … because diagnosis is the word they use when they tell you it’s cancer. I’ve never lied to Rylee, and yet here I am, the smile I have fraudulently plastered on my face feeling more and more natural as I fall under the comfort of our easy rapport.

And I feel like I’m two inches tall, strong-arming the bucket brimming with indecision from tipping over to the point where I tell her everything.

But I don’t. She’s gone through so much in the last few years, and I don’t want to worry her unnecessarily. Plus, it’s the first time I’ve seen her since she got home from her honeymoon, and I’ve missed her like crazy. I want to hear all about how sickeningly happy she is because I know her happiness will ease the weight of the unknown that I carry with me as a constant right now. The goddamn cloud trying to block out my sun.

Add to that I have the little issue of having to explain why my only question in our first conversation since she’s returned was if Becks was going to attend the little “we’re home” barbecue she was throwing. I wish I could kick myself in the ass for the knee-jerk reaction that’s resulted in my preoccupation to avoid Rylee’s assessing eyes. I’ve been so diligent, changing the subject anytime it circles back around to me that I realize I’ve missed out on hearing the details of their honeymoon highlights.

And of course my mind is so scattered that she catches me off guard. By fault of my distraction, I accidentally acknowledge that Becks and I did in fact have sex on their wedding night and then maybe, possibly one other time. It’s a muttered point given under the duress of a knife-wielding best friend, who’s chopping vegetables and waving said knife at me while she talks—but she hears my admission nonetheless.

“So you look nice and tan and overly sexed,” I say over the rim of my glass of wine.

“Whoa! Hold it, sister!” she demands, waving the weapon in her hand in my direction. “You think you can hit me with all of this …” She’s so flustered by my confession that she can’t find the words to continue, so she keeps jabbing the air with her knife toward me until I start laughing. “It’s not funny! I haven’t seen you in weeks—”

“I know. It’s so great to see you so relaxed. So give me all the details … ‘sex on a secluded beach’ type of details—”

“Don’t you dare change the topic. Sit,” she orders as she takes a sip of her merlot and stares me down until I oblige. “First, you tell me that you guys hooked up on our wedding night, which I thought a possibility when Becks had your phone … but then you did it again … AND you snuck out before he woke up?”

I bite my bottom lip and nod my head subtly, guilt still slicing through me like a razor blade at my cowardice—the only part I feared admitting to Ry because even I know it was wrong. Not just the leaving but the subsequent refusal to speak to him other than my inadequate text telling him I was wrong in thinking I could have any type of relationship with him.

No further explanation. Nothing. I was just trying to make it easier all around for him and for me. For the changes I fear are knocking on my welcome mat that are far from welcome.

The sad fact is even I didn’t believe my own lies this time.

“Why?” She finally sets the knife down and wipes her hands off on the dish towel before placing them on the kitchen counter to brace herself. Violet eyes meet mine, and fuck if I don’t love and hate this new self-assurance that Colton has brought out in my oldest friend. I really would prefer her not to have it focused on me right at this moment though.

I sigh as I break my gaze from hers. “Because I’m trying to get my shit together.”

She laughs out low and rich, and despite my thoughts, the sound brings a smile to my lips.

“What?”

“I do believe that getting someone’s shit together led to my current state,” she teases as she holds up her hand where her wedding ring reflects the light and sends a blizzard of prisms against the walls of the kitchen. I laugh with her now that I finally get what she’s saying and the irony in my own comment. How I once told Colton when they first started dating that he needed to get his shit together and only then would he be worthy of my friend.

“So … six months from now should I be expecting one of these on your finger?”

I cough on my sip of wine. “Are you certifiably crazy, Ry? After everything …” I stop myself from confessing all of the emotions I’ve hidden. Everything I’ve tried to keep inside since Lex’s death so that I could be a good friend for Rylee, so that I could help her plan her wedding without the oppressive weight of grief being a downer. And I know she knew what I was doing, the distraction techniques, the false fronts—all of it—but she let me think I was fooling her because she knew that was what I needed at the time. She knew that was what was best for me. And now I fear that she’s done being patient, and she’s going to tell me exactly what I need to hear. Except I’m not ready—and although there are things she doesn’t even know the whole truth about, I know she’ll be correct in her assessment nonetheless. “I haven’t even spoken to him since.”