Page 25 of Intersect

Her eyes move toward me, not nearly as full of loathing as I’d expect. She’s angry, but there’s something else there too. It takes me a moment to realize what it is: pity. Did Nick tell her about my brain tumor? Does she know I’m dying? I’m not sure why it bothers me so much, but itdoes.

She says nothing. Just stands still as a statue and then steps around us. Nick pulls my hand and leads me to the elevator, while I grapple with a stew of sick thoughts I wish I was not having. I stare at the floor, wanting to pull my shit together so when I voice a thought, it’s the rightone.

“Hey,” he says, pulling me to him. “I’m sorry about that. Are youokay?”

I press my head to his chest and close my eyes, needing comfort and distance at the same time. My imagination is off to the races now. She’s moving into his apartment after all. She thinks their lives might just pick up where they left off when I die, and I wonder if, at some level, he’s thinking they will too. If I were a better person I’d want that for him, wouldn’t I? I’m not a better person. The idea of him with anyone but me makes me feel like I’m going to be sick. I step away from him, leaning against the wall. “You told her, didn’tyou?”

“Told herwhat?”

“You told her I’mdying.”

He swallows. “She knows about thetumor.”

She doesn’tjustknow about the tumor. That look she gave me wasn’t the kind you give a person who might recover. “And is she just…waiting for you?” I ask. My words snap like lightning but there’s grief behind them. “Letting you go spend time with the dying girl, knowing the two of you will pick up where you left off in a fewmonths?”

I’m not sure what I expect from him in response, maybe blithe reassurance, a little pat on the head. Instead, he stops the elevator entirely and closes the distance between us until I’m pressed to the wall and so close to him I can barely breathe. “Are you serious right now?” he asks. “Please tell me that was not a seriousquestion.”

I exhale. “I wouldn’t fault you for it,” I reply, my voice small. I think it’s true, although the pain is so fresh right now it’s hard to imagine. “I mean, you deserve to have a life after I’m gone.But…”

“It may have escaped your attention,” he says, voice low with fury. “But I am crazy about you. I’m so crazy about you I seem to care very little about everything that mattered a month ago. Not my reputation. Not my job. Not my future. All that exists for me is the time we have left, and after that, honestly, I can’t imagine wanting to goon.”

The pain swells and releases, and I weep, my face pressed to his shirt. It can’t all be about seeing Meg or the possibility that he’ll move on. I’ve been building to this for a while. Every day I spend with him just makes it hurt even more that it can’t last. “I’msorry.”

He holds me tight to his chest. “Not as sorry as Iam.”

9

NICK

Our talk in the elevator lends our house-hunting trip a new gravity.This is probably the last place she will ever live.It focuses me. I want to choose the perfect home for us. The one where we might have stayedforever.

We follow our agent over the cobblestone streets. She’s talking on the phone, so I tug Quinn closer and press my mouth to her hair. She’s recovered from the incident in the elevator but I’m not sure I have.It’s actually going to end—for some reason, it didn’t seem real until now. She’s already preparing herself for the day when I’m here without her. The emptiness I feel at the idea of it terrifiesme.

“Like anything yet?” Iask.

We’ve seen two townhouses and a few apartments. They were fine, but none of them wereenough. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m just asking toomuch.

“They’re all great,” she says. “I just can’t get past the idea of spending that much on aplace.”

“It’s really not that much,” I counter. “Everything we’ve looked at isn’t a ton more than I’m paying for a one-bedroom rightnow.”

“I guess you take the girl off the bankrupt farm, but you can’t take the bankrupt farm off the girl,” she says with a smalllaugh.

I raise a brow. She’s implied before that she grew up without money, but she’s got this inheritance and her mother’s new home couldn’t have been cheap. It doesn’t add up. “Your definition of bankrupt and mine must be different. Your mom looked like she was living pretty well tome.”

She shrugs. “My dad had this massive life insurance policy. About two million. And 200 grand of that was earmarked for me. That’s what I’ll be using to pay forschool.”

I shove my hands in my pockets, thinking. People who are broke don’t take out insurance policies that size. He’d have had to pay premiums on it he could have barely afforded. “Doesn’t it seem a little strange that your dad would have taken a policy that large?” Iask.

She nods. “Yeah, especially because my father was the cheapest man alive. He once went an entire day in Philly in the summer without anything to drink because he couldn’t find a water fountain and refused to pay for a bottle.” She smiles a little at the memory. “But thank God he did. We found out about it at the last possible moment, right before the bank was going toforeclose.”

“It wasn’t in hiswill?”

She shakes her head. “Nope. If I hadn’t dreamed about that policy I think we still wouldn’tknow.”

The agent is on the phone again so I stop, tugging her hand to face me. “You dreamed about it and then ithappened?”

She laughs. “I see where you’re going with this, but no. I just had a dream in which I remembered talking to him about needing a policy and when I woke up I knew where tolook.”

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