Page 46 of Any Given Lifetime
“Why? You’ve made it more than clear that you despise my work, that you believe I’m a bad risk, even implying that—” Neilwasfreaking out now. He was lost without his work, and this was too much. Pushed off the project in hopes of wooing Joshua as a donor, and trapped in this young body in the wrong time and place. Fucking Derek at night would never wipe this clean. He could feel everything closing in around him. He was in the middle of the road again, Magic’s leash just out of reach, with a truck barreling down on him.
Joshua interrupted his babbling. “Will you just shut up for a second? You run your mouth when you really should listen, okay?”
“Fine. Why are you considering funding a project that goes against everything you’ve believed in since your husband died? Everyone knows you’ve blamed nanites for his death. That you—”
“Shut up. For once in your short, privileged life…just shut up.”
“Short and privileged. That’s hysterical.”
“Listen—” Joshua fell silent for a moment, clearly gathering his thoughts. Finally, when he spoke, he sounded like he was hedging on the truth. “You remind me of someone. I’d feel guilty if I didn’t try to help you.”
“I don’t need your guilt, and I sure as hell don’t need your—”
“What? You don’t need my money? I’m pretty sure you do, actually.”
Neil’s heart raced hard, panic rushing through to own him, and, spontaneously, he disconnected the call. His legs trembled, his breath came in short, terrified pants.
He sat down on the sidewalk to stop himself from falling over. He’d been a fool to apply for that grant. He’d been an even bigger fool to meet with Joshua in person. But calling him now had been the biggest mistake of all. He wanted to find a hole and crawl inside it. He wanted to go home to Alice and bury his face in her lap and cry. He wanted to tear off his own skin and grow it back as the man he used to be. Hell, he’d wantedthathis whole life.
Neil snorted. Maybe Joshua had good reason to worry about his sanity. Maybe everyone did.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, but when the call came in from Brian Peters telling him that the Neil Russell Foundation was going to back the project, so long as Neil was in charge, and so long as Neil answered directly to Joshua himself, he found the strength to stand up and start walking back to the labs.
Neil didn’t know if his overwrought nervous system had finally kicked in enough endorphins to override his emotional pain, but he felt as though every nerve and synapse was firing at once, leaving him with a single, atypical thought: “This is what the saints called ecstatic pain. Funny, because it’s feels like hell.”
Hope. He couldn’t afford to have it. But it was there like a flare in his chest, burning hot and bright, promising phone calls with Joshua, promising pain, and maybe something more.
Chapter Seventeen
November 2032—Bowling Green, Kentucky
The morning airwas crisp in the lingering dawn, and Joshua adjusted his scarf before shoving his gloved hands deeper into his pockets. The cemetery was empty, as usual, but it seemed occupied in a different way by the low-lying fog that rose from the dewy grass.
Joshua hadn’t visited in a while.
At first, he’d come almost every day, just to remind himself that Lee was buried there and not away on some business trip or an extended vacation that Joshua could hop on a plane and join him on. But after awhile he’d stopped. He remembered the day that he chose not to go anymore—alone in Earl G. Dumplin’s, watching high schoolers jostle each other, ready to head out into their day filled with techno-babble that Joshua failed to understand. Just living their ordinary lives, in their ordinary ways.
Joshua had swallowed hard and understood that that would be every day from now. Every day would go on without Lee. No amount of going to the cemetery or talking to his gravestone would change that. After that moment, Joshua hadn’t gone again for a long time, just like he’d eventually stopped talking to Neil. Life moved on, and whether or not it was fair, he was still in it, and so he had to move on, too.
But the dream about the bees had overwhelmed him again in the night, and after he’d gone back to sleep, he’d dreamed of Neil and Dr. Green again. He’d woken up sweaty, sick, and desperate, but he thought he finally knew what he had to do. First, though, he needed to talk to Lee, and so he stood by the completely ordinary grave with a completely ordinary gravestone, with his hands in his pockets and a terrified lump in his throat.
Lee Michael Fargo
B. December 5, 1984 D. November 28, 2030
Beloved Husband and Dearest Friend
He remembered the discussions he and Lee had had about death during the illness caused by the nanite damage.
“I don’t want to be cremated,” Lee had said, a dark look on his face. “It’s not logical, but I was in a fire, and I survived it. I don’t want to put my body in one again, even if I’m not really there to feel it.”
Joshua had agreed easily. “Whatever you want.” And worry pulled at him, not for the first time, over his decision to have Neil’s body cremated. He’d done what he thought Neil would have wanted at the time, but there had been no way to know for sure.
In the end, Lee’s body had been laid to rest in a plot that Lee had chosen himself, in the middle of Crescent Hill Cemetery, without an empty spot beside it.
“Because you should be cremated, babe,” he’d said. “That’s what you’ve always wanted, and that’s what you should do. I know you love me. Whether your body’s ashes are in the creek with Neil or buried in the ground next to me doesn’t change that.”
Joshua had changed his will after Lee’s death to dictate that half of his ashes should be dumped into the creek on Stouder Farm close to where he’d poured Neil’s remains, and the other half interred with Lee’s grave. Laid to rest with both the men he’d loved.
