Slow Burn (20 page)

So I’ve turned my anger at myself onto him, blaming him for making me want something I can’t have right now. I’ll let it manifest into annoyance from his persistence and then irritation so I can pass the phone without wanting to pick it up to see if he has or hasn’t texted.

And I’m not even sure which one of those I want more: to be ignored or to be pursued.

The hum of the phone vibrating pulls me from my thoughts, and I giggle. I know it’s inappropriate for the situation, but the soft edges the valium gives me makes me feel warm and fuzzy that he’s calling me again. But I don’t want to giggle. I want to be angry with him for continuing to call and text me. I’m selfish, damn it. Can’t he see that? I snuck out in the middle of the night without so much as a
See you later, Charlie Brown
…. The giggles take over again at the thought of Snoopy and Charlie.

A momentary peace settles over me, and I definitely want some more of this shit they gave me. It’s more than just the valium, but whatever they put in that shot to relax me some … it’s nice. Like riding-on-a-cloud nice. Like “sinking into the mattress with Becks’s weight on top of me” nice.

Stop it. My voice is loud in my head, chastising me for the temptation of what I can’t have, what I refuse to let myself have. And it’s more than just his mighty fine dick. I snort out the laugh this time, which causes the nurse to look over at me and ask me if I’m having a good time by myself on the gurney. I just nod my head like a little kid and think,
Well, it’s true
.

And then the thought of him and his mighty fine dick rushes in with a surge of guilt like a buzz kill on my inappropriately giddy high. I wish he’d just be so angry at me that he stops calling and texting. It would make this all so much easier on me. Because if he’s mad, then it makes it
easier to justify being a bitch to him like I’m being by ignoring him.

I thought that after he woke and realized I wasn’t going to answer his calls, he’d get the hint. I was proven wrong when the pounding on my front door commenced five texts later. Luckily, Dante was gone, or else I have a feeling I wouldn’t have been able to pretend I was not home. But fuck, wouldn’t that have been kind of hot if they’d fought over me? I giggle again as images flicker of bad boy versus good guy, and I think Orgasm-Inducing Becks just might be able to take Delectable Dante.

My eyes drift closed momentarily as the wonderful world of pharmaceuticals allows me to remember sex with Becks in 3-D fashion. Thank God, my nurse and my doctor are females because now I’m horny and have an easy-access hospital gown on.

Horny Haddie in the procedures room for all available hot male doctors, STAT
.

I laugh at the thought, the drugs pulling me under their haze until my phone chirps, and pulls me from loopyville.

Oh, Beckster boy
. He deserves an explanation. Thank God, Rylee is still out of range of cell service, or I’m sure he’d have called her. But what exactly is there to say to him? It’s not like I can give him a blow job as a parting gift,
The Price Is Right
style. “Next item up for bid is a blow job by Horny Haddie. Will Beckett Daniels come on down?” This time I slap my hand over my mouth because I laugh so hard and my head is so dizzy that I know the nurse must think I’m bat-shit crazy.

Well, she would be partially right because I kind of am. Especially now. Specifically for walking away from him, the quintessential good guy.

It’s not like I can answer my phone right now and say,
Thanks for the quick fuck that was, like, porn star good and the shoulder to cry on like Oprah’s
. It’s a little more than three days later, and I’ve already had my tit smashed flat as
a pancake, then lubed up with gel and pushed around with the ultrasound. I mean, at least if I’m gonna get felt up, the technician could pinch my nipples or something, give me a cheap thrill. I snort again and can’t stop laughing because that was pretty funny. Even drugged I know that.

Oh. Maybe I can get them to give some of this shit to my mom, who’s wearing grooves in the hallway outside so that she can relax a bit because she’s telling me everything is going to be fine, but she played with her charm on her damn necklace when she said it. That means she’s lying.

Girls, Rover dug a hole under the fence and ran away, but I’m sure he found a nice new home to take him in and love him
. Played with her necklace as Lex and I cried buckets of tears.

Haddie and Lexi, I’m sick. It’s nothing major, just something the doctors call cancer, but I’ll be completely fine
. Playing with her necklace the whole time. Two relapses, twenty-three total rounds of chemotherapy, fifteen sessions of radiation, and a chestful of scars that make Frankenstein’s monster’s stitches look like scratches.

Haddie, Lexi’s going to beat this cancer, and we’ll all laugh about it later
. Playing with her damn necklace. But she played with it at Lex’s funeral too. That meant she was hoping it was a lie, and well, fuck, it wasn’t.

Same necklace but different charm over time.

And I got the necklace act today. The bad track record of that stupid chain makes me want to rip it off and chuck it as far as I can so that I never have to see it again. Especially around me.

Wait. Maybe I need the necklace when I talk to Becks. Maybe he’ll catch on if I play with it when I tell him thanks for the good time, the two hours you allowed me to be a
we are
, before fate stepped in and put me in my place. Reminded me why I’d made promises to myself about not getting involved with anyone.

The door whooshes open and pulls me from my thoughts.
“You ready, Haddie?” Dr. Blakely walks in with a relaxed smile on her face, and I want to tell her it’s okay to be worried because I sure as fuck am.

“Hearts and heels.” I exhale, thinking of Maddie girl. I want to ask the doctor something but I don’t remember what … oh, about giving me some of this on the take-out menu plan so I can have some of the special sauce when I need it to feel better.

A strained smile is on my lips as she snaps on her rubber gloves. “Did that valium help take the edge off?” she asks, causing me to snort out a sarcastic laugh as I nod.

How exactly does one little pill—one I actually had to ask for to stop the churning in my stomach and the anxiety controlling my nerves—really take the edge off? Because cutting into your boob is a walk in the park, right?

My mind screams with a sarcastic retort, but I just nod my head and mumble, “A bit.”

“No need to worry,” she says, her smile still tight as I giggle again, my head feeling like a dandelion seed floating in the breeze. “Can you feel that?” she asks, ignoring my laugh. I can see her shoulders move as she does whatever with her hands, but I don’t feel a damn thing.

Why the fuck didn’t they give me this shit when Lex died? I like this not-feeling thing. Maybe if I take enough, I can numb my heart and be immune to everything that happens.

“Like we talked about, I’ll make a half-moon-shaped incision, remove the mass that we saw and marked from the scans, and send it to pathology. I’ll stitch you up, and you’ll be as good as new,” she explains as she spreads the butadiene over my left breast and then covers it with a surgical drape.

Good as new? Okay. Whatever you say, Doc, because at this point I’m not real happy with you for slicing into my perfect tits. Full D, pink nipples, perfectly shaped, and perky as fuck. Never had any complaints yet. I usually get the
bone-o-meter to be straight up when I show these babies, and now she’s going to fuck them up.

Let’s begin the patchwork quilt, shall we?

“Relax. It’s probably nothing.” Her smile is reassuring now.

I close my eyes and try not to read into her smile, but I want to snort and tell her good as new with some X-marks-the-spot stitches and possibly cancer, but that’s nothing big at all. Just a walk in the park.

I exhale when I begin to feel the pressure and try to return to the happy thoughts I couldn’t stop thinking moments ago. But this is suddenly way too fucking real, and I’m scared to death. I force my breathing to slow down, and I can feel my armpits sticky with sweat.

She passes something off to the nurse waiting at her side, and the nurse leaves the room. Dr. Blakely turns to me and explains something about the pathologist checking to see if there are clear margins. Of course, my mind starts fretting that the only way one can have clear margins is if it’s measured against something that’s not clear, something cancerous.

Time passes, and since I’m still under the veil of valium, I don’t know how long we wait.

The phone buzzes in the room and scares the crap out of me, my valium obviously making me not as courageous when sliced apart with a scalpel. Dr. Blakely speaks to the pathologist and says she has to clear a bit more.

I fix my eyes on hers, looking for any kind of sign of what the pathologist has said, but she busies herself, preparing to rebiopsy my breast. I want to tell her to look in my eyes and tell me the truth. This is my life she’s cutting into, and don’t I at least deserve an inkling of what is going on?

But my mouth stays shut, my hands remain fisted, and my heart feels like it’s lost its beat.

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.

T
he 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?”