Page 21 of Exit Lane
“We can read when we’re dead,” I respond, dropping to my knees before pulling her pajama pants off and leaning my face into the space between her legs.
We fuck in the afternoon and take a long walk for pastries.
Then we do the same thing the next day.
At night, I cook while Marin sits on the counter, feeding me bits of cheese and teasing me about all my Midwestern tendencies. “No, sweet Teddy, I cannot find you pepper jack, even if I agree it would be perfect on this.”
Moving around the apartment, we stop to narrate the scene we’re in, two people charmed by their own compatibility. “It’s easy being around you. I’ve never felt that before.” She’s wiping off the counter and barely speaks above a whisper. “With everyone else, I feel like I have to be on or ready, but being with you feels like being alone, but better. I didn’t know that was possible.”
I wrap her in a hug and listen to her heart steady its beating. “I know exactly what you mean.” And even in the silence, there’s an invisible tin-can phone line stretching between us. I don’t have to guess what she’s thinking anymore.
Falling into a routine, our days eventually start to shift away from sex and popcorn in bed. Still, every quotidian moment—reaching for her hand at the crosswalk, watching her try on a gown for a gala next week, finding my favorite mug on her shelf—cements my sentiment that there’s not a single person on the planet I’d rather do it all alongside.
I start running her a bath the minute she texts she’s coming back from Pilates. She scratches the inside of my arm after we slip into velvet seats at the movie theater. I make a list of all the reasons why she should come back to Iowa with me, even for a weekend, and tape it to her fridge. She cries talking about how lonely it felt to become her sister’s second parent when she was a teenager. I promise her I’ll never ever leave, even though I’m getting on a plane in days and don’t know what the future holds.
Before we’re ready, it’s our last day, and while she pops out for sustenance, I decide it’s time: that I’d like to hear whatever medical update awaits while I’m still cocooned in this dream world with Marin. I step out onto the apartment’s balcony to make the call, catching my doctor before he starts his appointments for the day. “We caught it early,” he says as I grip the railing. “Rare for someone your age but very treatable,” he continues as my eyes go searingly hot in the cold. As he transfers me to the receptionist to set an appointment for next week, the word “cancer” pings between every neuron in my brain.
When Marin returns, I’m slumped on the couch. I don’t know how much time has passed. For a minute, I wonder if I should propose, before shoving the idea into the categoryof deeply irresponsible. I want to tell her my news as much as I don’t want to tell her. I try to make my face neutral. I stand tall and hang up her coat.
“It’s Tivoli,” she says, craning her neck toward me in the entryway. “Our last night has to be at Tivoli Gardens.” And what can I do but smile and kiss her on the top of her head?
When we arrive at the kind of amusement park reserved for picture books, the snow has painted it in an even more festive hue. The setting brightens each of the emotions swirling through me—tenderness, contentment, anger, fear—as they all battle to express themselves. My stomach grips like I’ve ridden the Fatamorgana looming overhead. Marin hands me a bag of warm, spiced nuts and a cup of hot cider when it hits me—the time-is-now gut punch.
Marin
“Archery is over here. It’s not real archery, so don’t get too excited, but trust me, it’s the best game on this side of the park.” I tug Teddy’s hand, but he stands resolutely under a weeping willow dressed in cascading Christmas lights. His eyes are wet, and his expression is strained.
“What is it?” My skin starts itching under my wool sweater, and I’m suddenly hot. The list of worst-casescenarios I kept at bay for the past week comes flooding in, knocking me backward. I’m still holding his fingers, but there’s too much distance between our bodies. A space that now feels unnatural. I take a step closer to him, and my vision blurs around the edges, the sound of the park fading until I can only hear my voice, desperate, shaky.
“Teddy, I love you,” I say, gripping him tighter. “I’ve been thinking about it all week, and I can say it now. I have no idea what it means—for us or for what happens next—but it’s true. You’re the best person in the entire world, and I have no idea why you picked me, but all I want is to figure out how to be as good to you as you are to me.” I exhale, trying to smile, willing any powers that be to let us live in this moment under the willow tree for the rest of our lives. Teddy shakes his head, reaching for my elbows and attempting to steady both of us.
He’s silent as tears start to fall from his eyes. Not the happy kind, not the emotionally-moved-by-the-monologue-I-just-gave kind. Children run screaming around us, but I barely hear them. “No, no, no,” I whisper, eyes widening, willing this conversation in any other direction.
“I love you, Mar. Of course I love you. And I hate every single day we’ve spent not saying that to each other. I don’t know about soulmates, not really, but if they’re real, you’re mine. If destiny is a thing we’re lucky enough to hope for, it’s what led me to you.”
I hold his upper arms and kiss him, childishly thinking I can slow this whole thing down.Every day, I realize—I’ve thought about him every single day since we first met. AndI can’t imagine going another day not telling him I love him. I say a silent prayer, uncertain to whom I’m making the request, for this to be the part where the tears are a good sign and nothing bad ever happens again.
“I have to tell you something.” Teddy straightens up, taking a big exhale and folding his hands in front of him. I’m sweating through my mittens, and I stuff them into my purse, my eyes never leaving his.
“I’m sick.” The world stops spinning for a moment. All the sights and sounds of Tivoli drop to a white noise. “I just found out today that it’s cancer.” He looks down. “But if I’m being honest, I think I knew in my gut before I came here that it was something. I didn’t want to find out. I wanted to keep us safe by not knowing, and I wanted to protect you, Mar—you’ve already been through too much. But it’s stage 1. And we’re working on a plan.”
That’s what they said, my parents, the night in the living room when all four of us were huddled in a pile of tears and snot—the spelling list I was quizzing Violet on crumbled between the couch cushions: that they were working on a plan. There was never any plan. For my dad, it was always incurable, but for the next three months, I clung to that phrase, that ambiguous blueprint and its implications, like a prayer for a miracle.
“I’ll probably have to take a medical leave from FourVC, but I’ll know more next week. I love—”
I’m back at the family dinner table with my sister on my lap, the ice cream melting in our bowls, watching our dad break down in front of us. “It’s going to be treatable.It has to be treatable. We’re going to get through this as a family, and I promise you, I’m going to be OK.”
The fear shakes itself out of its dormant slumber. Teddy’s different. I’m different. I’m not a child, and it’s early stage, and he’s going to be OK. But before I can metabolize any of this, before I can gather any rationality, I respond.
“How could you lie to me about this?” My voice is angrier than I want it to sound. “How could you keep this from me all week?” I wish I could hold him, promise him I’ll be there for every appointment and take the best notes and send the email updates to our families and sleep next to him on the hospital bed. But I can feel the panic creeping up, wrapping itself around my lungs and my throat. For every part of me that knows this can be different, there are a thousand reasons why I’m afraid of it feeling like losing my dad all over again. Any empathy is overpowered by fear, which flips a switch somewhere inside of me.
“Sloane and Carter know?” The words come out three octaves higher than I mean them to. I don’t know how I got them out at all.
He rocks his head back and forth. “That I was waiting on results—they know that. Not what the results are.”
I count three breaths in for an inhale and three for an exhale. I can get through this. I can be strong for him. But then I think about those nights, alone in my bedroom, crying into my pillow, trying to make sense of the loss, and I am overcome with terror by the idea of going back there again. Something in me breaks, and the words areout before I can stop them. “I can’t do this again.” Teddy pulls me in, arms tight around my shoulders.
I’m sobbing, shaking in his arms.I can’t do this?God, what have I done? Deep in some cavity of my brain, I’m aghast at myself. But that disappointment is eclipsed by the need for this not to be happening, the instinct to protect myself from another loss I know I’m not strong enough to handle. All the memories of the past week, the certainty we felt, get shelved in the recesses of my psyche. The invisible thread between us is severed, like it was made of spider silk all along.
