Page 45 of That Weekend in Paris
“You have a strong stroke.”
“I was a terrible swimmer at first. I had to work at it to get remotely respectable. I even took some lessons at one of the clubs in Nashville, me, and all the other six-year-olds there.”
I laugh. “Hey, sometimes you got to ditch the pride to get where you need to be.”
“That is very true,” she says. “What do you do for fitness?”
“I like to run, and I hit the gym a few times a week. Don’t want to be the only band member who can’t lug a piece of heavy equipment on stage.”
She looks at me, a little surprised. “You still do that?”
I shrug. “I like to be a part of the whole picture, and I did those things from the very beginning. I don’t see any reason to change that up.”
“Some people would see plenty of reason.”
“I’m not those people.”
“No, you certainly are not,” she agrees.
“I didn’t tell you that for admiration or anything like that. It’s just that I see myself as a regular guy, and regular guys don’t stand around waiting for other people to do things for them.”
“That’s not what Josh would say,” she says, the words coming out so fast that I wonder if she would like to take them back.
“I’m sure he’s done his version of hard work,” I say. “He wouldn’t be where he is if that weren’t true.”
“Yeah.”
“What happened between you two?” I ask before I can give myself time to reconsider. “I mean I know he had an affair, but what went wrong before that?”
She folds her arms across her chest and looks off at the other end of the pool.Several long seconds pass before she answers, and when she does, her voice is so low that I wonder if I have imagined her answer.
“These,” she says, waving four fingers across the center of her chest. “These went wrong. They’re not real. They look it in this bathing suit, though, don’t they?”
I have no idea what to say, so I just keep my face blank and wait for her to go on.
“I had breast cancer about three years ago, and these are the outcome of the surgery I decided to have when all was said and done. They weren’t enough for Josh. I think it was the whole not-really-real thing that got him. In the hospital after my mastectomy, the nurses were changing my bandages. Josh caught a glimpse between the crack in the curtain. I remember the look on his face, and how utterly horrified he was. And every time I think about how I looked after that surgery, that’s what I remember because his expression was an exact, honest, description of what had been done to me. Of who I had become.”
I hear the break in her voice and slosh through the water to stand in front of her. I feel as if my own chest has cracked open. I reach out a thumb to wipe the tears leaking from her eyes. I wrap my arms around her and pull her to me, holding on tight, as if I can absorb the pain of hurt in her voice. Pain that is still so clearly there. I feel the sobs start, her shoulders shaking under their weight.
“Hey,” I say, pulling back to look down at her and brushing my hand across her cheek. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I opened that up. I didn’t know.”
“Of course, you didn’t. I don’t know why I told you. You certainly didn’t need to hear all of that. I mean, I’m fine.”
“Are you?” I ask, and I realize how very much I need to hear that this is true, that she is fine. I take her hand and lead her to the side of the pool, lift her up, and set her on the edge. I hoist myself up to sit next to her. “I never heard anything about you being sick.”
“I didn’t want anyone to know,” she says. “To be honest, after Josh’s reaction, I was kind of terrified to tell anyone because I didn’t want them to see me as that songwriter with cancer. I just wanted to keep being me. Dillon Blake, the girl I’d always been.”
My heart hurts with sympathy. “How long were you sick?”
She shrugs. “All said and done almost two years. Everything is good now as far as I know.Last scan said so, anyway.”
I hear her attempt at nonchalance, but there’s nothing light about this. “I can’t even imagine how painful what you went through must have been. And that’s what should have mattered. Your pain. Your suffering. Not how you looked.”
Tears stream down her face, and I don’t even bother to wipe them away. I just pull her up against me and wrap my arms tight around her, so tight that I might somehow keep the pain she still feels about that time in her life from breaking her in half.
I hold her for a long time while she cries quietly. I don’t know how long we sit that way before she says in a soft voice, “I really should not have unloaded all of this on you.”
“I wish I had known. Even as a friend, Dillon, I would have liked to have been there for you.”
