Page 152 of The Cost of Forgetting You

“How can you say you’re not scared?”

“Because,” she says, shifting so she’s facing the muted television rather than me. “All I wanted in life was to be free. And these last six years, that’s exactly what I’ve been. No Waylon. No overbearing father. Just me and Truett. And you, occasionally.” She winks, but there’s an edge to her voice. A yearning that neither of us dares to acknowledge. Solemnity falls over her face, filling her eyes with a soft reverence. “That’s more than a lot of people ever get in their lives. I’m lucky. I know that I am. How could I be scared of dying, when I get the pleasure of leaving on a high note?”

Tears blur my vision. I blink them away, wanting as clear a picture of her as I can get. “How long do we have?”

She rolls her bottom lip, glancing down at our joined hands. “Could be a year. Could be less. Depends on how I respond to treatment.”

A sob surges in my chest, begging for release. A year. Such an impossibly short time. A minuscule fraction of everything this life owed her, an insufficient repayment for all that it took.

“Can I ask you something, Henry? And please be completely honest.”

“Anything,” I manage to choke out.

She swallows hard. When she glances up, her eyes are more blue than gray. Damp with the remnants of her grief. “I know we agreed a long time ago that this would be it. A friendship. A beautiful one, I might add. One that I’m so grateful for. And before you panic, I’m not asking for that to change.” She pats my hand, laughing softly. “Turns out, cancer doesn’t lend itself to feeling much in the way of desire. And I guess it’s not a question so much as a confession.” Her lips part as she sucks in a quick breath. “Sorry, I’m rambling.”

I bite back a smile. “What else is new?”

That earns me a punch to the bicep. A surprisingly strong one. I rub at the ache, shooting her a glare. She giggles in response, and I smile. For a moment we’re not Henry and Lucy, with all the complications that entails. We’re just two people talking. Laughing. Grieving, too. All the rest falls away, and I catch a glimpse of who we could’ve been had circumstances been different for us. Had I made different choices, or the same choices sooner, and changed the entire course of our lives.

Perhaps the problem isn’t that I was selfish, but that I waited too long to be. And now it’s too late. It’s the saddest truth I’ll ever have to face.

“I need you to know that I love you, Henry. I really, truly do. And that love is the greatest gift, the greatest burden, I’ve ever had the privilege of bearing.” Her face crumples, careful stoicism fragmenting. A tear falls against her will, and her tongue meets it on the descent, swiping it from the precipice of her upper lip. “And I guess what I wanted to ask was if you felt it, too. If this big, impossible thing that’s taken up so much space in my heart for so long was one-sided all along. Because I don’t think it is, but I can’t bear to die without knowing for sure.”

There’s the validation of finding out the truth about a situation after so many years, and there’s the pain of finding it out far too late. This is both, and for a moment I’m broken so thoroughly by it that I can’t take my next breath, let alone speak.

Then I do, and my confession flows from me with abandon, no longer bound by the ties her words have snapped.

“I think the first time I considered the possibility that I might love you, I was maybe twelve? You were singing in the choir and I was thinking very not-church-appropriate thoughts, and I wondered if that was it. The feeling my parents talked about, or movies I’d seen on TV. Now I realize it was probably hormones, but I digress.”

She palms her face, peeking at me from between her fingers. Suddenly I’m seventeen again, and so painfully in love with her I can’t form a coherent thought, so I rip the rest of my admission out of thin air.

“It was the moment we played together that very first time that did me in, to be honest. That night I lay in bed with the feeling of that song still vibrating in my fingertips. With the image of you in that sundress, letting loose in front of me for the very first time, replaying in my head on a never-ending loop. I was a goner. So totally confident that I loved you.” I smile at the memory. At the phantom tingling creeping its way back into my fingertips. “And I’m sure I did, as much as any kid can love, you know?”

She nods, her gaze distant. “I know.”

My throat constricts, holding my next words captive. Their passage from my lips is almost as difficult as the years they recollect were to live. And yet, here I am.

Here we are.

“Losing Dad…it forced me to grow up overnight. Then everything happened with Kimberly, and I told myself I had to forget that feeling we shared. That it was blown out of proportion, bigger in my memory than in reality.” My gaze drops, shame coloring my cheeks. “When you and Waylon showed up next door, I’d worked so hard for so long to forget how it felt to be close to you. To convince myself it was a product of teenage hormones rather than anything real. But you were here, right in front of me, and despite the circumstances, those feelings all came rushing back. Just as real. And even more impossible to act upon than when we were kids.”

I blink away the image, replacing it with one from the night of Delilah’s first volleyball game. “I denied it for years. Forced myself to believe that you were happy, and I was happy, and everything would be okay. But the day you showed up at the school with that bruise on your face, I could’ve killed Waylon. Do you know that? I wanted to. I’ve never wanted that before, or since. But knowing he had hurt you. Someone so precious, so perfect. I couldn’t bear it. And I knew then that I only felt that way because I loved you. Because I never stopped loving you.”

In the silence that follows, the room comes rushing in. The low buzz of the television. The tick of a grandfather clock in the hall. A cow mooing outside, and the engine of an ATV that follows.

We’re running out of time together, in more ways than one.

Lucy smiles, her gaze locked on something unseen. “I’m happy we never got to be together.”

I startle, one brow raising. “Why?”

“Because,” she says, shifting so her knee rests on my thigh, and our joined hands are propped on that tower of limbs. “I’ll die without you ever finding out how imperfect I actually am. I’ll always be this tidy, beautiful thing in your memory. Never the broken woman I’ve seen in the mirror my entire life.”

Anger pulses in my temples, surprising me. I swallow hard, forcing my words to come out calmly, when the feelings behind them are anything but. “You’re forgetting that I know you, Lucy. Not some curated version of you, but you. To your core. I’ve seen you cower for your father. Take more shit from that asshole you married than anyone ever should. I’ve seen you weak, and I’ve seen you strong. Brave. Running from your bedroom window at midnight or standing up for yourself and preparing to leave that same man you gave your life to when he didn’t deserve it. Leaving him, when the time came to do it. I’ve seen you lose your cool with Truett, and I’ve seen you apologize afterward. I’ve seen every good and awful thing, and I love you anyway. Still. No matter what.”

She offers a watery smile that chisels at my heart. Drops a stone in my hollow chest. “It could’ve been amazing. You and me. We could’ve had something really special.”

That ATV engine grows louder, then cuts off right outside the door. Her gaze flickers to the door, but I’m not done. Not ready to let this moment pass without making her the only promise I can keep.

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