“Go ahead be gone with it,” I echoed through my doubled-over laughter.
“Drinks on me,” he smiled while he stretched out two glasses of wine, one for me and one for Ian.
“I’m gonna make both of you go ahead and be gone if you don’t stop singing and finally start holding still for me, Julie.”
I’d pissed him off. It was never a good idea to piss someone off when they had two sharp, pointy blades this close to your head. This could turn into the shower scene from Psycho all too quickly.
“I’m sorry.”
Ian rolled his eyes and snipped a lock from my hair. “It’s okay. But in all seriousness, you are sure you want me to do this?” There went another six inches tumbling to the floor.
“Yes.” I took a sip of the Chianti in my glass. “I am. Take it all off!”
“How about we just take some of it off? I think you can get the same point across without going for the skinhead look.”
I was fine with that. The reality of it was that I probably shouldn’t be making such rash decisions like this based on impulsive emotion and desire, but that’s clearly what Leo had done. He chose to physically show me his story. My choice was to do the same.
“If we’re a go, I think I can shape this into a pretty damn good hairstyle.” Ian’s eyes met mine in our reflective image in the mirror. His eyebrows jumped into his hairline and he said excitedly, “Audrey Hepburn meets Halle Berry meets Charlize Theron but completely runs away from Miley Cyrus.”
“We’re a go!” I shouted, lifting my class in the air. “Let’s do this!”
So we did. For about two hours. That’s how long it took for Ian to chop off the good majority of my hair and then work the remaining length into an adorable pixie cut that framed my face remarkably well. Those long bangs that had been in the awkward, in-between growing out stage were brought up closer to my hairline, and the left side remained slightly longer than the right, creating an asymmetry that was both flirty and feminine.
I looked hot. For once, I could emphatically say that. Ian done good.
“All finished here,” he said, sweeping the mess of hair into a dustpan. He tossed the thick clumps into the waste bin and swiped his hands over each other, a satisfied gesture. “Joshua and I are going to meet up with some friends for drinks. Wanna join?”
“Nah, Pixie and I are gonna hang low tonight.” I actually had hopes of meeting up with a friend of my own, but I hadn’t received a confirmation text. If Leo decided to go dark like before, I’d enlist the involvement of the NYPD and their searchlights to scope him out if I had to. I wasn’t going to let him get away from me again. “Thanks for the invite though.”
“Anytime.”
“And Ian?” He swiveled back toward me at my call. “Thanks for always humoring me,” I smiled, because he did. I wrapped my arms around my roommate and planted my cheek onto his solid chest. I truly adored his guy. “You’re too good to me, Ian. From tattoos to hairdos, you put up with a lot.”
“It’s easy to put up with stuff when you love someone, Jules.” That was sweet. Just another reason why Ian was, and always would be, my right-hand man. “Be good tonight. We’ll be back later.”
“I will and have fun!”
I followed them through the apartment and shooed them out the door like a mother hen pushing her chicks out of the roost. I bolted the lock behind them and turned to the empty room.
It was quiet.
I docked my phone and turned on a little more Justin to keep me company.
Still no messages. Curses.
I waited another hour before I gave up hope and adjusted my expectations for the night. It wasn’t like things went wrong, but sometimes life playing out any way other than your wildest dreams felt like a letdown. My wildest dream right now was for Leo to show up on my doorstep in a fireman suit, all six seasons of Gossip Girl and a golden retriever puppy because I’d always wanted one and was deprived as a child. And maybe not the whole fireman suit, maybe just the pants and the suspenders. Come to think of it, who needed pants?
The startling rap on the door snapped me out of my dream that was quickly becoming a smutty soap opera script. Scrap Gossip Girl. I wanted to watch this soap opera unfold.
Without hesitation, I raced to the door and flung the handle open so quickly it slammed into the wall and even our windows rattled. But they were old and did that a lot.
“Damn,” I sighed. “No puppy.”
Leo cocked his head. “I’m not sure what that means, but I did bring you this.” He reached his arm out toward me, pushing a cup with a pink mixture that looked like lots of unidentifiable melted slush toward me. “It’s the closest thing to gelato I could find in the city.” His eyes combed over me. “Your hair looks beautiful, by the way.”
“It’s a statement.” I ran my nails along my scalp. When I came to the end of each strand, my fingers stopped short, like I could feel the phantom ghost of the hair that was there before. This would take some getting used to. But I supposed that was the case for any adjustment in life.
“And what statement are you trying to make exactly?” Leo edged his way around me and invited himself into my home. I would’ve liked to invite him into a few other places within it if that didn’t make me seem completely anxious and possibly desperate. Instead I just pointed to the futon. We both sat down and he put the gelato on the coffee table before looking back at me, expectantly.
I was waiting for him to speak, and he was waiting for me. Which led to silence, like when you rolled up to a stop sign at the same time as another car and waved them forward, but they also waved you, so it became this really awkward back and forth of both of you almost going but not quite, until one person decided to just gun it and go for it, hoping to avoid the crash.
I pressed my foot to the gas.
“So I get that it’s back.” Air huffed between his lips when I said it. Desperation etched into the tired lines on his face like my words somehow drew them there. “And I’m in this battle with you, Leo. So if you’re gonna lose your hair, I’m losing mine too.”
Laughter wasn’t what I expected to come out of him. It made me nervous, quite honestly, and I did that weird thing where you joined and attempted a fake laugh because it was less awkward than just sitting there like you didn’t know what was happening. Even though you truly had no clue.
“I’m not going to lose my hair, Julie.” Leo scooted closer on the futon cushion. Our knees touched. He cautiously lifted his hand to slide his fingers into my now much shorter hair. “There’s no chemo involved this time. They signed me up for some clinical trial that they’ve seen some recent successes with.”
“This is me being the queen of jumping to conclusions once again then, isn’t it?”
His eyes slivered. “What other conclusions did you jump to?”
“Oh, you know,” I began casually as I shrugged my shoulders. It made me nervous being this close to him again. “The conclusion that you hated me and tried to ship me halfway across the world just to get away from me. That one. And the other one where you hired a hot intern to take my place and order your coffee.” Insecurity didn’t look as good on me as my new hairstyle, and I hoped he wasn’t as repulsed by it as I felt saying it.
“So I met this girl—”
“That’s not where I envisioned this going.”
“Just let me finish.” Leo pressed his index finger to my mouth. I licked it. “Did you just lick my finger?” He slunk back and held it up to his face to see if I had, indeed, licked him. There was a shiny patch of my saliva on the pad of his finger.
“I did.” I was a freak.
“Why did you do that?”
My pulse picked up speed. It was ringing in my ears. “I don’t know. But I’m not posing. So at least give me some credit for that.”
Probably to avoid more unnecessary licking, Leo chuckled and folded his hands in his lap. They should be safe there. Relatively. “Is this one of those awkward moments where I make you do weird thing
s?”
“To be honest, Leo? I don’t know. I’m not sure what to do with this. You left. You came back. You didn’t tell me, and then you show up in my class and I find out that you have cancer again. I don’t know what to do with all of that. But I know where to go from here. I know I want to be with you—to fight this with you—but I don’t know how to get past all of that.”
“I get that.” Feeling like it was safe to touch me again, Leo reached out for my hands. “As I was saying earlier, I met this girl when I was at the hospital.” My palms started to sweat against his. He didn’t notice, and if he did, he didn’t care. “Hers was stage four. Same kind. But get this. No warning. The doctors never found anything anywhere on her that would even hint at the fact that she had melanoma. But there it was, growing inside of her, taking over her organs one by one. Before she knew it, she had full-blown cancer riddling every inch of her body. Last Tuesday they told her she has less than three weeks to live.”
“That’s awful.” It was. I couldn’t imagine. I didn’t want to imagine. Your brain inherently tried to protect you from those sorts of things, but your soul allowed you to empathize. “I’m so sorry.”
Again, he laughed, and I figured that, “You say it like you had something to do with it,” was replaying in his mind. “It is awful. But you know what’s worse?”
“Than having only three weeks to live?” Nothing. To me, I doubted anything was worse than hearing the news that your number had been called. That your time was up.
“What’s worse? Being alive, but acting like you’re already dead.”
Yikes. I supposed that was the morbid truth. I hadn’t thought of things that way. The glass was half empty and all. I preferred mine half full, preferably with red wine.
“Is that what you’ve been doing?” I asked. Honestly, it didn’t seem like Leo had totally given up on life. The time we had together was alive, like it had its own pulse. If he was only half living then, I couldn’t wait to see what things were like when he was all in. I couldn’t wait to live that life together, fully charged.
“So before my mom died, she left me a letter saying not to let anyone crack me.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“So maybe I didn’t let someone crack me, but something.” Leo leaned closer. His breath brushed across my skin. If it wouldn’t look crazy to lick absolutely nothing, I would’ve been tempted to eat up the air that floated my way the same way you stick out your tongue to catch raindrops on it. I buttoned my lips tightly together and just listened. “Cancer cracked me, Julie. I let it. I let the statistics guide my perspective and determine my hope.”
“I could see how you would do that, though. Leo, it’s only natural to feel that way. I mean, I guess. I’ve never been in your shoes before.”
“No,” he chuckled, his head dipping down. He looked back up at me through his dark lashes, his lips hooked at the corners. Damn, he was sexy. Even when talking about cancer and death. How did he manage that? “You just like to dump coffee all over them.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I remembered that day. It wasn’t even that long ago, but everything about my life and about my future was different now. Sometimes different was good.
“I thought we determined I was just trying to get your clothes off,” I snickered, shooting back my own flirtatious grin.
Leo stilled. “And now that you have, it’s probably more than you bargained for, right?” I saw the pain in his eyes as he adjusted his position and the fabric of his neckline pulled against the incision that peeked out of it. It was an ugly scar, but not one that marred his beauty in any way. It seemed silly that people would say beauty was only skin deep. They had it all wrong. There was nothing wrong in being beautiful. Beauty came from within and poured out, and Leo was hands down the most beautiful man I’d ever encountered.
“Leo, I love you. I hope you know that.” My phone suddenly went into sleep mode and the tracks stopped rolling. It was quiet, just the muffled honking and bustle from the street below filtering in through the sealed windows. I’d never said those three words back to him, though it felt like they’d been waiting at the edge of my tongue for so long. “The only thing I bargained on when I met you was that you would be my newest muse, and you’ve given me so much more than that.” With caution, I lifted my finger to trace the incision along his neck. I wasn’t sure if it would hurt for me to do it, but I had to feel him.
At first Leo cowered with his eyes closed, but then he relaxed under my touch and let me leave my hand there. I felt the ridges cut apart and then sewn together against my skin. “The piece I drew of you today? You know what happened when I sketched you?”
He shook his head no, as if the words couldn’t make their way out too.
“It’s the first real work I’ve created that has ever made me overwhelmed with emotion.” Cupping both hands to his jaw, I pulled him closer to me. He shifted his weight to move in. “You made me an artist today, Leo. Because now I know what it’s like to create something that is an extension of my soul, the way true artists do.” He didn’t wait for me to say anything more, and Leo’s mouth met mine. A sigh of contentment slid past our lips as he leaned back from me and shook his head in disbelief. “You’ve become an extension of my heart, Leo, and mine beats for you now, too. So if you’re ever tempted to let your own heart shut off again, let mine pick up the slack, okay?”
“You realize I don’t deserve you, right?” He bit into his bottom lip. Hell, that was a turn on. I had to remind myself that he’d probably had surgery just a couple of days ago, and I doubt the doctor had cleared him for the kinds of activities I had in mind to do. We’d have to take things slow, and honestly, slow was probably just what we needed. Everything else happened so quickly. I never knew before that giving your heart away could be such an instantaneous process, like a reflex or instinct. It wasn’t like I’d even handed mine over to Leo, but had instead used one of those slingshots of his and catapulted it his direction. I was just grateful he’d actually caught it, and held onto it, too.
“No, you probably don’t deserve me,” I teased. “But you don’t deserve cancer either, so maybe you’re just the king of getting what you don’t deserve.”
“I’m the king of getting what I don’t deserve and you’re the queen of jumping to conclusions.” He laughed. He looked young. At ease somehow. Maybe my words had done that to him, or maybe just finally accepting life for what it was did that. Let you face your future with a vulnerable outlook. “To me, it sounds like we’re just two royally confused people.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” I couldn’t give an answer. “But I’m not confused at all about what I want to do right now.”
“Let me guess.” Leo angled his head. “Something to do with drawing?”
“Something to do with sleeping.”
“With me?” Some flash of hesitation crossed over his face. I faltered. That was a good suggestion, but not exactly what I had in mind.
I dropped a leg over the futon; toe first like back in Florence. But Leo wasn’t looking at my legs this time. He was looking at my heart. And it was fully his to do whatever he wanted with. My hand outstretched, upturned and asking for his, I instructed boldly, “Come with me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I woke up pinned under the weight of Leo’s right arm draped across my chest. But it wasn’t a heavy, dead weight. It was light, cautious. A delicate touch that didn’t want to rouse me from slumber. I was certain he was awake, aware and intentional in the way his body fit against mine.
Pressing my hip into the mattress, I twisted to curl into his chest. To my surprise, he didn’t stir. Leo was completely out. To be able to sleep like that, like floating in a dream, had to be some sort of miracle. He’d endured a nightmare of weight for so many years, pulling down on his resolve. That I’d somehow been able to take that from him, even for just one night, was all I’d wanted.
We didn’t do anything other than sleep. Leo let me undress him, lifting his shirt fr
om his body as though unbandaging a wound, slow and careful. I placed my own bandages back on, the healing form of my lips on each patch of his skin, my heart on his heart.
He cried. Our knees were bent on the mattress, our bodies pressed together upright, arms coiled around each other like a spring. He hung his head in the groove of my shoulder and I held him there as he shook. Breath trembling, body quivering. I took all of it from him, his safe place of release. Raw groans of despair, the fear and anxiety leaving him in sometimes audible, sometimes silent sobs of anguish.
He cried for his mom, I was sure of it. Because this wasn’t just a man worried about his future. He was mourning. A lost, scared boy, all scarred with emotion he wasn’t allowed to possess. I’m sure everyone told him he had to be strong. But maybe being strong wasn’t about sheltering yourself from hurt. In putting up a guard to keep the pain out. Maybe being strong came in healing from those hurts. In allowing the chips and the cracks to take form, and then patching them back up.
That’s what Leo was doing as he cried. Healing. And I was nursing him back to health.
We finally collapsed into sleep a few hours later. We’d talked once Leo’s voice was able to articulate with words again, and I listened. It was stage four. Not a good outlook, at least from the doctor’s perspective. But maybe outlooks weren’t based on statistics and figures, but on the hope we allowed ourselves to hold onto. On the dreams we built our very existence upon.
I knew within my soul that my life, no matter how long it went on for, would involve Leo in it. And maybe the time he could offer wasn’t long by normal standards. I couldn’t be sure. But it would be enough. We had right now, and that’s all I truly needed. That’s all we were ever really guaranteed.
I finally had Leo.
My soul mate.
And out of all of the drawings I’d scribbled over the years, out of all of the sculptures I’d molded and paintings my brush had feathered across canvases too numerous to count, this was by far my favorite creation.
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