by Naomi Niles
“Are you sure? I can try to reschedule…”
“Nah, don’t do that. I’ll find a ride. Thanks, man.”
I hung up and waited a beat before I pressed Sarah’s number. I really didn’t want to ask her. She took me for my scan yesterday, so her imagination would go wild when I told her they wanted to see me today. I changed my mind about calling her and I was about to just schedule an Uber when the phone rang. It was Amber. I stared at it for a few moments and wondered why she was calling me. She never called me, and I never called her. Like I said, we had our Friday afternoon trysts and that was it...if you didn’t count the hundred times a day I thought about her…and the dreams…
“Hello?”
“Hi, Kyle.”
“Hey, beautiful, what’s up?” her voice sounded serious.
“I thought I should let you know… Dylan’s being discharged today.”
I hesitated. I wanted to be very careful what I said here. I wanted to say, Screw him, who cares, move in with me, I love you…shit! Finally, I went with, “So…what does this mean for us?”
She sounded like she might be crying as she said, “I don’t know yet. He’s clean and he has been for two months now. He did everything I asked him to do. I, on the other hand, did not. I’m so torn here, Kyle. I feel like I owe him something…and I feel like I owe you, too.”
She “owes” me something? What the fuck is that? Is that all this is to her? “You don’t owe me anything.” That came out in a harsher tone than I had planned, but suddenly, my insides were in turmoil.
“That’s not what I meant. I feel like… I don’t want to lose you, Kyle. But the deal I made with Dylan was if he did this, we’d at least try again.”
The anxiety I was feeling just a while ago boiled and turned into a sudden blast of anger. “I’ve spent the last two months pretending, Amber. I pretend that you’re mine and I don’t have to share you with anyone or give you up at the end of this ‘trial’ period you seem to have me on… But this is where the rubber hits the road and you’re the one who has to decide what you want. I’m done pretending, so let me know what it’s going to be.”
“I want you,” she whispered. “But…”
I was over-wrought emotionally. I couldn’t take any more of this. “When you can say that to me without any buts, Amber, call me and if I’m still around, we’ll talk. Until then, I can’t do this. I’m not going to share you with him.”
“I’m not asking anyone to share – and what does that mean…‘if I’m still around?’ Are you okay?”
I hung up. I didn’t owe her an explanation. I didn’t owe her anything. I was pissed and there was no telling what I might say if I stayed on that phone. Apparently, I had bigger fish to fry, anyhow. I called my sister and told her I needed a ride and then I spent the next two and a half hours wondering how a few phone calls could cause the pendulum that controlled my life to swing from one end to the other that quickly.
*******
“Kyle, the radiologist sent over the report on your scan yesterday.” I was in the doctor’s private office. I made Sarah stay in the lobby. That was quite a feat.
“Is the tumor back?”
“It’s growing,” he said. Everything inside of me quivered. “The tissue we left behind has taken hold and has begun to spread.”
Fuck. I sucked in a deep breath. “So, why am I not having symptoms?”
“Because it’s small and it’s just beginning to grow.”
“Can we stop it…or take it out?”
“Well, this one is a little bit different than the one we took out. The tissue was left in there in the first place because of vascularization. That means it was tangled up in your blood vessels and too dangerous for us to try and remove. It’s only gotten more entangled as it’s grown-”
“Why didn’t we see this on the last scan?” I interrupted.
“Like I told you, it’s still small, but it’s growing. In the last scan, it still only looked like residual tissue. So, as I was saying, surgery won’t be an option here. But one very good option we do have is radiation therapy.”
“Like shooting moonbeams into my head?” He laughed. I wasn’t trying to be funny.
“Yeah, like that. We can have you see the radiological oncologist and he’ll talk to you about the options and how many treatments he thinks you’ll need – and a prognosis.”
“Prognosis as in how long I have left to live?”
“Kyle, this tumor is not in a life threatening place – yet. If it continues to grow, there is a chance that it will wrap itself around your brain stem and affect your vital functions such as breathing. So, that’s why we need to make sure we don’t let that happen. You’re very lucky that we caught it so soon.”
Lucky was not how I felt at the moment. Pissed, sorry for myself, scared…I was feeling a lot of things, but not lucky at all.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AMBER
“Do you want pizza tonight?” Dylan was yelling at me from the other room. I just walked through the door. Kyle hadn’t shown up for therapy for the second week in a row. He wouldn’t answer my calls or my texts… I was worried about him and didn’t know what to do.
“I don’t care.” I tossed my purse and keys down on the table and sat down. As I was taking off my shoes, Dylan came out from the kitchen with his phone pressed to his ear. He had on a pair of jeans, but no shirt and no shoes. He hadn’t shaved in almost a week and his belly was starting to hang over the front of his pants. He’d traded in his alcohol and drug addiction for food and television.
“Pepperoni?”
“I don’t care.” He made a face and finished ordering his pizza, with stuffed crust and breadsticks.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said after he hung up.
“Nothing.”
He waited like he thought I was going to say something else. When I didn’t he said, “Seems like something.” He sat down next to me. He smelled like the horses.
“When was the last time you took a shower?”
He made another face, but to his credit, he didn’t say what I knew he had to be thinking… I was being a bitch. “This morning, why?”
“You smell like your horse.”
He actually smelled himself and then he said, “I was petting her when I went out to feed her. I’ll take another shower before bed. Did you have a rough day?”
Every day is a rough day when you’re pretending, I thought. “No, it was fine. I’m going to shower now if you’re not going to.”
He grinned. “I’ll just take one with you. The pizza won’t be here for forty-five minutes…”
“No, I just need a minute to decompress,” I told him.
“If the day was fine, why do you need to decompress?”
“Dylan, please…”
“Fine, whatever.” He picked up the remote and switched on the T.V.
I got up and went to take my shower. He lay down on the couch. I couldn’t for the life of me understand what either of us were doing. He acted as miserable as I was. While I was alone in the safety of the shower – in the bathroom that still had no door – I resolved that we had to have this talk and we had to do it tonight. We were both wasting our lives.
When I finished and got back out to the living room, I found him eating pizza. I sat down next to him as he handed me a piece. I sat it down and said, “Dylan, we need to talk.”
“About?”
“I can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Jesus, Dylan! Do you not see how ridiculous this relationship is? You’re twenty-five years old. All you do is eat and watch television. I’m twenty-four and all I do is work and watch you eat and watch television. What kind of life is this?”
I saw something of the old Dylan flash in his eyes. He took a long drink of his Pepsi and then he said, “So, let me get this straight. When I was riding in the rodeo and partying and having a good time, you were miserable. Now that I’m not riding in the rodeo and not part
ying and having a good time, you’re miserable. So, the only common denominator is me. I make you miserable no matter what I do.”
“Do you love me, Dylan?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Do you love me?”
“Of course, I love you, Amber. I’ve loved you since I was a kid. It’s not me. I still want you. You turn me down every time I try and get close to you. I think the question is do you love me?”
I had to really think about the answer to that one before I spoke. I could tell by the look on his face that my hesitation hurt him and I didn’t like that, but we had to do this. Finally I said, “I’ve loved you since I was a kid, too. But…”
“Here we go.”
“Listen, Dylan. Please,” he didn’t say anything, so I went on, “But I don’t like you when you’re drunk and high and making threats to my sister and mean, bitter comments to me-”
“I haven’t been drunk or high for almost three months and you still haven’t let me touch you.”
“I wasn’t finished. I don’t like the guy who just sits around the house all day and rarely showers or puts on a shirt, either.”
“I’ve been riding bulls since I was eight, Amber. It’s what I planned on doing with my life. I didn’t go to college and short of working on a ranch for shit wages, I don’t have any skills. I’m good at it rodeoing. Good enough that I have enough money in the bank that I don’t have to rush into finding a job. I’m adjusting to being home all the time and being sober – it doesn’t happen overnight. They told me in rehab that I wasn’t going to stay sober if I continued to live the same lifestyle and hang out with the same people. I’m doing what they told me, and I thought what you wanted, Amber. I thought you were being honest when you said you wanted to see me through this…”
“I was being honest, and believe it or not, I am proud of you. I’m also relieved because at the rate you were going, you were going to end up getting hurt or hurting someone else. I do hope you did it for you, too, and not just for me.”
“It was for you at first, but yeah, I’m glad that I did it for me, too, now.”
Sadly, he was right. He did everything I asked and I’m still not happy. I know why, and I also know that I won’t ever be happy if I walk around with a heavy conscience. “Dylan, there’s something I haven’t been honest with you about and maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’ve just been looking for ways to blame you for my unhappiness when it’s really me.”
“I have a feeling I’m not going to want to hear this.”
I had a feeling he was right. “I’m sorry, just know that up front, but the truth is that I’ve tried to feel differently and I just can’t. I think that I’m in love with someone else.” He looked like I kicked him in the gut, but not necessarily surprised. I guess when you factored in that he and I hadn’t had sex for about four months, it wasn’t a hard conclusion to come to.
“Who?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
“The point is that I didn’t set out to fall in love with someone else, but it happened and now I don’t know what to do about it. I assumed for so long it would be you and me forever…-”
“It still can be, Amber. Are you sleeping with this guy?”
“Not anymore. I saw him while we were separated.”
“You cheated while I was in rehab?”
“That’s not fair, Dylan. It’s not cheating when we’re separated. I’ve never cheated on you and since the day I moved back in with you, I haven’t even seen him.” That was because he hasn’t shown for his appointments, but Dylan didn’t have to know that. I hadn’t had any plans on continuing my affair with Kyle while I lived with Dylan. I just didn’t have that in me.
“Okay fine, whatever. You moved back in with me, that has to mean some part of you still wants to be with me, right?”
“Some part of me will always want to be with you. But it’s not fair to only give you part of myself.”
“If you’re not still seeing this other guy, then what’s to keep us from getting back to where we…shit…not where we were when I was being a drunken ass, but before that, when you wanted me and we were happy?”
“I don’t know if we can do that.”
“Are you willing to try? Amber, I was willing to change my whole lifestyle for you. Are you willing to at least give me a chance to make you fall in love with me again?”
I was looking into his eyes – the same pair of eyes I fell in love with and have been looking into for almost nine years. I had told Kyle that I owed it to Dylan to at least try, and I meant that. But since Dylan’s been home, I hadn’t been able to get Kyle off my mind. The question in my heart is if it be fairer to leave Dylan alone and allow him to find someone who loved him with their whole heart or stay with him and hope that eventually my feelings for Kyle would fade. Maybe it was only a crazy, mad attraction and if he’s not in front of me five days a week, I’d get over it. I wished I knew.
Meanwhile, Dylan was sitting here looking at me and waiting for an answer. The Dylan I had lived with for the past five years would have never done that. He’d be going off on me by now – more proof that he was trying to change.
“Okay, Dylan. If you still want me, I’ll put in as much effort here as you are and I’ll stop living in the past.” He smiled and opened his arms. I moved into them and I could feel his heart slamming into his chest as he held me. He loves me…and I love him. Kyle was just a distraction when Dylan and I were going through a hard time… I hope.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
KYLE
“Okay, Kyle, keep your head really still, honey. Here we go…” I’m lying face down on a cold table and I’m wearing a mesh mask the radiology people made out of a mold of my head. They left the spot they wanted to radiate open and they once again shaved hair off my head and tattooed little dots for the laser to point at. I’m considering just shaving it all off. That’ll make it easier the next time someone wants to poke and prod at my skull.
At least this was painless…virtually. The position is uncomfortable and my scalp tingles a little bit, but there’s no pain like after they cut me open or stitched me up. It’s quick, too. The only real pain in the ass is that I have to do it every day for twenty-eight days straight. Except the weekends, I get those off. I’m on Wednesday of the second week of treatment.
That first week I argued with my sister. I wanted to refuse it. I was just so sick of it all. But she made some valid points – the best of which that I don’t really want to die before I’m thirty, or go blind, or be unable to walk. So, here I am. Sarah had won again. “Okay, Kyle, that’s it.” The tech came over and helped me off the cold table and took off my helmet. “Are you doing okay?”
“Great.” As far as the radiation was concerned, I was doing okay. The rest of my life, I was still kind of figuring out. I’d always been so in control of everything that this was new to me. I think Sarah’s constant nagging made me that way. If I was on top of everything, she didn’t have anything to nag me about. Now, with these daily trips to the radiation clinic and the fatigue that comes afterwards, I was getting behind on the work I was doing at home. And then, of course, there was Amber. I couldn’t stop her from running through my head every five minutes all day long or inserting herself into my dreams at night. I was as horny as hell, but that wasn’t even the real problem… I didn’t just miss the sex, I missed her.
“Are you still going to your physical therapy?” the tech asked me as I slipped on my jacket. It was like she was reading my mind.
“No, I’ve come a really long way and I know how to do all of the exercises at home and I’ve been doing them. With doing this every day, there’s not a lot of time left to do that, too.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Does the doctor think that’s a good idea?”
“Yeah, he signed off on it,” I lied. I couldn’t see Amber every day and not want her. This was the only way for me to get over her.
“Okay, but make su
re you keep up the exercises. That spot where you fell is still healing…”
Jeez, every woman in my life is so bossy. “Thanks, I will.”
I went out into the lobby and found Sarah, the bossiest one of them all. Kimber was with us today, and she ran up and put her arms up to me. “Kimber, Uncle Kyle can’t pick you up…” Sarah was still talking when I swung my niece up into my arms. “Kyle Cloud! Put her down; you’re going to fall.”
I just rolled my eyes at her and walked outside with Kimber in my arms. I was doing all this shit to stay alive. I was not going to stop living.
*******
“Is it okay for you to have beer?” We’d just sat down in a corner booth of the Electric Cowboy bar.
“Jesus… You and Sarah really have been spending too much time together, haven’t you?”
“I’m just asking.”
“I can have a beer; stop nagging me like an old woman.”
“Fine, check out the cowgirl at the bar.” I looked in the direction he was leering. There were two girls at the bar. One of them was in an outfit that looked like she should be in some sleazy rap club and the other one had on a short denim skirt a ruffled beige blouse and a pair of cowgirl boots. She had long, dark hair and even though I couldn’t see her face, I’d have to say I would do her. At this point, a knothole might even do.
“She’s hot.”
“Go talk to her.”
“Not yet, we just sat down.”
“Man, what happened to you?”
“Let’s see, brain tumor, surgery, therapy, woman who wanted her ex-boyfriend instead of me…”
“Wah! Wah! Stop whining about how shitty your life is and do something about it.”
I stood up and looked at Greg. “Fuck you.” I heard him laugh as I made my way up to the bar. There was plenty of space, but I chose to insert myself in between the two girls. “Excuse me, ladies. Can I have a glass of ice water?” I asked the bartender. I was facing the brunette, and her face was just as hot as the rest of her. The first thought I had was that she favored Amber. I mentally kicked myself in the ass. “Are you ladies having a good time tonight?”