Page 147 of Things I Wish I Said
“A lot.” This time she does turn to me, and the pain I see in those whiskey-hued depths is nothing short of devastating. “Dying. Being known as nothing but my disease. Being forgotten.”
I want to lash out. Scream. I want to tell her she’s not dying, that she can still beat this. There’s still time. She still has options.
But I don’t.
I have no idea what she wants to hear or if she wants to hear anything at all.
“Impossible,” I say, bringing my hand to her face. I brush her cheek with my thumb, caressing the soft skin. “I could never forget you, Sinclair. No one could. And you’re a hell of a lot more to me than an illness. Cancer is the last fucking thing I see when I look at you.”
“Really?” Her voice breaks over the word.
I nod. “Really.”
“Do you want to know why I couldn’t finish that book?”
I think about the novel in my suitcase, the one whose ending I’m on the cusp of finishing, and I’m not sure I want to know why she couldn’t, but her question burns through me all the same. “Why?”
“Because I’m afraid of how my own story ends, but it’s looking more and more like I won’t get the ending I want. And maybe you’re right,” she says with a shaky smile. “Maybe all happy endings are just fairytales. But I’m not sure I want to read a story without one.”
I swallow, unable to speak through the lump in my throat as I reach out, my chest cracking in two as I place a hand over hers, wishing I could give her more comfort than my touch, but I can’t. It’s all I have to give.
Leaning toward me, she lays her head on my shoulder and whispers, her voice a whisper as she says, “Thank you for being here. For being you.”
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” I say, swallowing over the words I really want to say. That my offer to pay her mother’s debts and fund her treatment still stands.
Instead, I wait until she glances back out at the ocean to ask, “Have you ever been to the Hamptons?”
She laughs. “Even if I squeeze a trip into my soccer schedule, somehow I don’t think a potter can afford a vacation in the Hamptons.” I blush, feeling foolish for the question, but buoyed when she says, “You know, if I could go back knowing what I know now, I still probably wouldn’t change a thing. I’d still play soccer. Still give it everything I had because I loved it that much. But I do see all the things I missed out on. You know, kind of how they say hindsight is twenty-twenty?”
She pauses to cough in her hand, then inhales, gulping in air like a jagged pill.
“Summer vacations, dances, dating and partying with friends, truth or dare by a campfire.” She nudges my shoulder. “Nights spent watching sunsets, mornings watching the sunrise.”
“You could have that now,” I say, ignoring my earlier restraint. “Maybe not in high school, but there could still be college. Tens of years of experiences waiting to be lived.”
“You think so?” she asks, her voice soft—unconvinced.
“Yeah, Sinclair, I do,” I say, daring to hope. “My grandparents on my dad’s side actually have a cottage in the Hamptons. It’s why I asked about it. We used to go there every July and stay for two weeks. It might not have a sunset like this, but the beaches are beautiful and pristine. Quiet, with a killer sunrise. Going there was the only time I ever missed baseball, that’s how much I loved it. We didn’t go last year because it was only a couple months after my dad died, and this year, well . . .”
I glance away from her for a moment, thinking of how different I’ve been this year, how lost. Until Ryleigh.
“But maybe you could go with me? Maybe even over winter break,” I’m quick to add. “You can’t swim; it’ll be too cold, but it’s still beautiful. And then we could go back in the summer. Compare sunsets and eat lobster rolls until we burst.” I reach out and find her hand, give it a squeeze. “What do you say?”
An unreadable expression creases the otherwise smooth lines of her face.
My back stiffens, waiting for the response I know is about to come—that she might not be here. That she can’t plan a future she doesn’t know she has.
But it doesn’t.
Instead, she studies me a little longer, her hazel eyes brightening all the dark parts of me, and then says, “Yeah, I’d like that.”
I sit in the back of the Uber with my arm around Ryleigh, watching her sleep. Sand and salt cling to her sandals and long legs. The tops of her cheeks and nose are flushed with color from the sun. Her head rests against me, an unsettling rattle in her lungs as she exhales.
I grip her tighter, only comforted by the soft rise and fall of her chest because it’s a reminder she’s still with me, she’s still breathing, even if her lungs are working overtime. Besides, unless I’m reading too far into what she said back at the beach, she’s opening up to the possibility of the experimental trial.
My heart swells inside my chest at the thought, almost afraid to hope.
I place a soft kiss on the top of her head as the driver pulls up to the front of the hotel, smiling when she stirs and glances sleepily up at me, making my pulse skip.
