Page 48 of Remember Us This Way

Unease pounds at my chest, and I clench my jaw. The thought of little Zoey not surviving cripples me. “Don’t fucking say that.”

“Noah,” she whispers. “It’s true. You’re the reason I’m still here. You saved me. You got me through it. During those torturous chemotherapy sessions, I remember thinking all I had to do was get through that and when I was done, I would get to see you again. It’s your optimism and that stupid smile that forced me to fight.”

I shake my head. “I knew you were sick, and that it was bad, but I never thought . . .” My words trail off, not able to bring myself to say the rest of that sentence out loud. That I could have lost you.

She just sits there in the comfort of her bed, looking at me as though not knowing what to say, but this is Zoey fucking James, she’s always known the right things to say. “I guess I just assumed that at some point, your mom or someone would have told you.”

“You should have told me.”

Zoey scoffs. “And there’s a lot of things you should have done too, but you don’t see me sneaking through your bedroom window to dig up the past.”

“Zo,” I whisper, inching closer. “I’m not asking you because I want you to have to relive all of that bullshit. I just . . . I need to fucking know.”

“I don’t want you hurting for me, Noah,” she says. “You’re already hurting enough for the both of us.”

Pain rockets through my chest, and I drop down on the edge of her bed, keeping just out of reach so that I can’t be tempted to throw myself at her and pull her into my chest, right where she’s always belonged. “Tell me about it,” I beg her. “Every last excruciating detail, and don’t even think about trying to spare my feelings. I can handle it.”

“The same way you’re handling your feelings now?”

“For fuck’s sake, Zoey,” I groan, unable to bear being left in the dark a second longer. “Please just tell me. Do you have any fucking idea how it feels to learn that there was this huge, monumental thing that you went through, something that could have easily taken your life, and I just stood by, fucking clueless?”

“You didn’t just stand by, Noah,” she tells me. “You knew enough to help me through it, and that was everything I needed. We were only kids. You were seven when I was diagnosed. I barely understood what was happening to me, and it’s not like any of our parents were willing to put the weight of that on your shoulders.”

Leaning forward, I brace my elbows on my knees. “Please, Zoey,” I whisper, my voice trembling.

Zoey nods, grabbing the spare pillow from beside her and hugging it to her chest as if that can somehow offer her just a snippet of comfort, and damn it, I’ve never needed to be the one to offer her that so badly in my life. “I was six,” she says. “I don’t really remember much of it.”

“Just tell me what you do know.”

She nods again, and as her words flow through the dark room, my head falls into my hands, taking in every last detail. “It all happened really quickly. One minute I was at the doctor’s office because my mom thought I had the flu, and the next, I was in a hospital bed, connected to a million different machines with nurses fussing over me. I remember thinking that I just wanted to get out of there and see you,” she says. “At the beginning, the tests were really scary. I didn’t understand what was happening or why I had to go to the doctor’s office all the time. They would always take blood tests and then there was the bone marrow biopsy. That one was terrifying, and while I had been given local anesthesia, I remember screaming. Not because it was painful or anything, I was just . . . scared.”

She takes a deep breath, worrying her bottom lip, but I remain silent, taking in every detail. “People seemed to cry a lot,” she continues. “I had people I never really knew holding me in the street and wishing me well. Actually, a lot of that I’ve worked hard to try and block out over the past ten years, but those memories just seemed to have stuck. Our moms were the worst at it. Every time they’d look at me, they’d burst out crying, but you would roll your eyes as if they were being ridiculous and then we’d end up laughing.”

My lips press into a hard line, somewhat remembering that. It seemed everyone we talked to knew that Zoey was sick, and I remember thinking they were all exaggerating and making her feel like she was broken. I hated it. Especially considering she was trying to get better, and all those assholes were going out of their way to remind her just how sick she was. She didn’t need that. She needed me.

“Fuck, Zo,” I mutter.

“I can stop,” she suggests. “If it’s too much—”

“No,” I tell her. “Keep going.”

“Okay,” she says, her voice a little shaky. “After the diagnosis came, we were pretty much straight in the hospital to start my chemotherapy treatment. There were three rounds of it over the course of eighteen months. And they really sucked, Noah.”

Her voice trembles, and I find myself reaching out, my hand dropping to her foot that’s hidden beneath the blanket, and she flinches, pulling her foot away. “Don’t,” she warns me, her tone filled with pain. I meet her stare, my brows furrowed. I thought she wanted this from me, wanted to feel me coming back to her. Seeing the confusion in my stare, she explains herself. “Not like this. The old Noah, the one I loved and needed, he’s already gotten me through this. He’s already given me what I needed. This new you, this stranger sitting at the end of my bed, I don’t need or want his pity.”

“I don’t pity you, Zoey,” I say, pulling my hand away and accepting her reasoning without question. “Never.”

“Okay,” she whispers with a slight nod before pressing her lips into a hard line. Something softens in her eyes as if deep in thought, and for a fleeting second, I see that six-year-old girl who so desperately needed me by her side. A moment later, she throws her blanket back and crawls across her bed, climbing straight onto my lap and straddling me.

She sits far enough back, her ass resting against my thighs with plenty of space between us, not at all like the way my body was pressed against hers in her closet earlier tonight. I keep my hands down, not daring to touch her despite the overwhelming need to do just that.

Then with her gaze locked on mine, she raises her hand to the neckline of her pajama top and pulls it aside, pointing out a small scar just below her collarbone, one I’ve always known was there but never thought to ask why. “This is where they put the port for my chemo,” she tells me. “The first round was brutal. I remember it making me sick all the time, and I would cry non-stop. I’m pretty sure that first round I was only in there for a few weeks and then I got to go home.”

“I remember,” I tell her just as someone appears in Zoey’s doorway. My gaze flicks across the room to find Zoey’s mom, clearly having heard voices in here, and I wait for her to tell me to leave, but instead, she just hovers, listening to Zoey’s recap of her chemotherapy.

“The second round was intense,” she murmurs, clearly not realizing her mom is listening as she focuses her whole attention on me, her gaze far away as she recalls those painful memories. “But I think I was better prepared because I knew what to expect. Only, that round was a lot longer. I can’t be sure exactly how long that hospital stay was. Maybe a few months? I don’t know. The details are fuzzy now.”

“And the third?” I ask.

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