Page 61 of Styx & Stones

Condoms!Shit. I need condoms. I pinch the bridge of my nose and wish the blood would drain from my dick just long enough for some to filter back to my brain. Where did I last see condoms? My dad’s truck.

I grab the room key and run outside. Where the hell did I park? I run through the lot, half-crazed out of my mind, then I spot Dad’s truck where we left it at the front of the hotel. I should move it in from the main entrance, so the cops don’t drive by and see it.

I jump in and park it at the back of the lot, far from the street. Then I rummage through the glove box, in the trash lining the truck floor, and behind the seat. They’re nowhere to be found.Shit. Did Alaska throw them out the other day? I search my memory. No. She put them back inside the car. So where the fuck are they?

Christ, she’s gotta be finished her shower by now. I jump out of the truck and head for the office. The lady is still watching her soap opera. There are no condom vending machines, despite this being a place that looks like its patrons desperately need protection. “Er ...” I clear my throat. “Have you ... do you guys sell? Um ...”

“If you’re looking for condoms, you’ll find none here. The nearest you’ll get is the drug store a block away.”

“Shit.”

“Maybe you should just abstain.”

“Thanks. That’s sound advice.”

She grunts and I pull my baseball cap down on my head and leave the office. I walk back to the truck and jump in. I don’t want Stones to feel pressured, but I also want to be prepared. The last thing either of us needs is an unwanted pregnancy.

Then it hits me.I won’t make it to have kids. Let’s face it—stage three is pretty much worst-case scenario, and the only way to go from here is to slide right on into stage four. All the poking, the prodding, the tests and chemo—it’s not for us. It’s for them. It’s to ease their collective conscience. The doctors, our parents, hell, even Carissa, they’re all invested in our treatments, in a cure, because it makes it easier to go on living knowing that you fought like hell for a kid whose time was cut way too short.

Alaska and I know differently. We’ll both leave this Earth without making our mark on it, and when our parents die, we’ll be forgotten. There will be no one to remember us, no one to carry on our genes or our legacy. This is it. This is all we get. A road trip to Disney, stolen kisses, the illusion of freedom, and our first time in a “brown” motel room.Now. All we get, all we’re promised is now, and I intend to make every goddamn second count.

I turn the key in the ignition and peel out of the lot, my tires screeching on the blacktop. I tell Siri to find me the nearest drug store and I head there and back in record time. Of course, everything felt so slow as I waited in line with a basket of prophylactics, lube, candy, Advil, Gatorade—to keep our strength up—and a bunch of cheap flowers that has seen better days. I could swear every old lady in the state of California was waiting in that line as I paid for my items, but fuck that noise. YOLO, right?

After I park the truck, I grab my goodies and the room key, and head back to the shittiest motel room on the planet to be with my girl. When I slide the key in the lock, Alaska is on the bed, wrapped in a towel, her knees drawn up to her chest, and her face wet with tears. My heart hammers against my ribcage.Fuck.

I drop my loot and run to her side. “Stones, what’s wrong? What can I do?”

“You left me,” she says in an accusatory tone. “Do you not want to have sex with me? Fuck, I sound like such a girl right now, but you ... just tell me. I can take it. If my scars and my chemo paunch are repulsive to you, I get it.”

“Stones, stop.” I take her face in my hands, forcing her to look at me. “I already know every inch of your body, even though I’ve barely touched you. Even though I’ve never seen you without your clothes. You don’t have a paunch. You’re fucking hot.” I shake my head. “You’re beautiful, perfect. And I definitely want to have sex with you. Trust me on that. I can’t breathe knowing you’re naked under that towel, and I want you so bad.”

“Then why did you run?”

“I wanted it to be perfect.” I glance at the room around us and laugh. “As perfect as it can be in a shitty hotel like this. I wanted to be prepared. I didn’t want to have to stop halfway through to look for a condom, and when I went out to the truck, I couldn’t find them.”

“You went to get condoms?”

“Yeah. I know that might seem kind of like I was expecting something, and I’m totally okay to wait if you are—”

A line forms between her brows. “You wanna wait?”

“No. Stones, I wanna have sex with you. I want it—I want you—so bad, but only when you’re ready. I just want everything to be right.”

She sniffs and her lips tip up in the corners. “What else did you buy?”

The breath leaves my lungs in a rush, and I stand and walk over to my discarded items. I pick up the bag and dump it out on the duvet. The flowers are even worse for wear now that they’ve been hanging on the brown carpet with whatever flesh-eating viruses live within the fibers, but I hand them to her and she smiles. “You got me cheap drug-store flowers?”

“I did.”

“They’re perfect,” she says, thumbing the bruised petals. She lifts a stem that no longer contains the head of the rose and laughs. “Especially this one.”

“Who doesn’t love a thorny stem, right?”

She sets the bouquet down on the dresser and picks up the bottle of lube, carefully reading the description. Her brows pinch and she bites her lip. “And this?”

“I heard it goes better with lots of lubricant.”

“You’ve really never done this, have you? You weren’t just lying to make me feel better?”

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