Page 19 of Seize the Night

“Kinky,” Julien said. Remi flicked him in the arm. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Remi said. “Just keep talking. I want to know everything.”

“This next part is kind of embarrassing.”

“Tell me, Julien. Please tell me everything.”

“I’m sterile,” Julien said. He glanced her way before staring assiduously at the ceiling again.

“You mean, sterile sterile?”

“Chemotherapy plus bone marrow transplant means goodbye to your fertility forever. It’s possible I could have kids someday. They froze some of my sperm.”

“That was smart.”

“Smart and horrible. Talk about humiliating, sitting in front of your doctor with your mom next to you and discussing your sperm.”

“Oh God, you poor thing.” Remi could have cried at the thought of what Julien had endured. She felt an ache, almost physical, to go back in time and somehow be there for him and with him while he’d gone through it all.

“Yeah, that was a bad day.” He laughed softly and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t think Mom’s ever recovered from the ‘Save Julien’s sperm’ conversation either. Anyway, thought you should know that part up front.”

“As long as I have my horses and my horses have babies, I don’t need much else,” she said before realizing they were already talking about the future. Where had this come from? She didn’t know. Right now she didn’t care. “That doesn’t bother me.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Anything else I need to know?” she asked.

“Nothing much more to tell. Oh, except this. Two years after diagnosis I’m finally in remission. After about six months after that I started to feel pretty normal. I looked normal too. My hair was back. It was short but at least I had some. I couldn’t wait to get out of the house. I was starting college and was so ready to have a girlfriend.”

“And have sex?” she teased.

“All the sex,” he said.

“So what happened?”

“My immune system still wasn’t one-hundred-percent. I caught a cold. The cold turned into pneumonia. I had to take a medical leave from school two months in. I’ve never been back to school. College drop-out. Thank God for trust funds, right?”

“Why didn’t you go back to school when you were better?”

“Mom took the pneumonia as a sign I should be in lockdown. Do you know how hard it is to meet women when your mother won’t let you out of your own house?”

“Pretty damn hard, I’d guess,” Remi said as she laid her hand on his chest. They’d been making out in his office a half hour ago. Surely touching him wouldn’t be presumptuous. Clearly it wasn’t, as Julien placed his hand over her hand.

“And it’s really hard to kiss someone when you’re under orders to wear a surgical mask.”

“You had to wear surgical masks?”

“Everyone in the house wore them around me,” Julien said. “And that’s where Salena comes in. My parents hired Salena to be my live-in doctor. Salena had burn-out and student loans from med school. My parents paid off her loans, and now she has only the one patient. Well, two patients counting Mom. First thing Salena did was diagnose my mother with ‘Vulnerable Child Syndrome.’ Real syndrome. It’s basically, pathological overprotectiveness. And then she wrote her a prescription. Four words—‘Let Julien move out.’”

Remi would have applauded if her hand had been free.

“Thank God for Salena. That’s really smart, writing it on a prescription pad.”

“Doctor’s orders,” Julien said. “Salena writes me prescriptions all the time. ‘Go running’ or ‘Go hiking’ or ‘Ask her out on a date.’”

“She writes you prescriptions for dates?”

“I know. She’s awesome, right? I had to have a ton of tests and stuff to get cleared to have sex. You know, they had to make sure my immune system could take it. Salena did all the tests and then after I got cleared, she sat me in her office and gave me a three-hour lecture on sex, women, and the female anatomy. She had charts and diagrams. The films were my favorite part. It was amazing. I’ve never had sex, but I know where the clitoris and the g-spot are, and I know what to do when I find them.”

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