I sidle up to a barstool next to the kitchen island. I’m wearing one of his white T-shirts and a pair of boxers that I found in his bedroom—disgustingly cliché, I know, the “whole borrowing your boyfriend’s clothes” dealio, but I desperately want his scent all over me.
He pours me a glass of grapefruit juice, and his eyes widen as I lift my shirt—his shirt—to flash my bare chest at him, for no particular reason. I do a sultry little dance in my seat, swiveling my hips on the barstool, all while sipping my juice casually like nothing unusual is happening whatsoever. I feel giddy and brazen.
“Do that again . . .” he warns playfully. “And pancakes will be postponed indefinitely.” I make a taunting “oooh” sound in reply, downing the rest of my juice.
He’s busying himself with various measuring cups, bowls, whisks, and whatnot, and he’s not wearing a shirt—which is cruelly distracting. His sweatpants are resting low across his hipbones, exposing the full length of his hypnotically sexy torso. It’s like D’Angelo in that one music video where he’s singing with those, you know, hipbone-muscle-thingies all exposed, and it’s just like “Whoa.” Google it.
If this were a TV show on The Food Network, the women (and quite a few men) in the audience would be shrieking and fanning themselves in complete hysterics, and quite possibly chanting and babbling and speaking in tongues. Panties would fly onto the stage. Security would need to escort numerous audience members out of the room.
“Can I help?” I ask, ostensibly to accelerate the cooking process, but really because I just want to be close to him in the kitchen, grazing our hips together, side by side, as we work.
“Can you separate eggs?” he asks. I nod.
“Eggcellent,” he responds, and we both start giggling at this ridiculous pun.
“Ren, wait, hold on a sec … are you secretly … a total dork?” I ask, gasping in mock astonishment.
“Takes one to know one.”
“Touché.”
He hands me a cardboard container of brown Grade-A’s. “Yolks here, whites in this one. Four total.”
We zest lemons, rinse berries, beat eggs into a furious, foamy lather, butter the griddle and attend to all of the other necessary preparations, pausing only to lay spontaneous trails of kisses on each other’s jawlines and cheeks. And other places.
Ren eyes the bowl of batter and determines that it’s a bit too dry and needs at least one more egg. He instructs me to separate a few more. I accidentally drop a shrapnel of eggshell into the batter and receive a swift, stinging spanking—boxers pulled down, hand meeting bare skin, bent flat with my chest pressed onto the prep table—in return. It happens so fast, I don’t even have time to yelp. I glance back over my shoulder and see Ren’s eyes blazing hungrily.
“Watch those shells. Don’t get careless,” he warns me, in a mock-threatening tone. I can tell he’s just playing, and yet, his deep voice awakens something inside of me—like a treasure chest unlocking. Click. I want to play, too.
Impulsively, I grope forward and grab a fresh egg from the container. He watches as I raise my hand, and then—in an act of wild rebellion—smash it down on the counter, mere inches from the bowl of blueberry-studded pancake batter. Yolk oozes grotesquely through my fingers. Shell fragments litter the counter. So wrong. Chaos. Disaster.
He mock-gasps in horror and consternation. I stifle a giggle.
He slaps my ass again, harder this time, then yanks me backwards and flips me to face him. Pinning my arms above my head, he backs towards the wall until my shoulder blades connect with the wood. Then he’s kissing me, firmly, intensely—neck, collar bone, lips—tasting traces of grapefruit juice and dried tears.
He whispers to me in a theatrically menacing voice:
“So, so careless. Will I have to punish you to teach you a lesson?”
OK. Hello. This pancake-making process just took a seriously Fifty Shades twist.
His voice pins me into place. My cheeks flush and my neurons fire wildly, unsure if his little performance is seriously sexy, or seriously silly, or both. But I definitely don’t want him to stop.
“Maybe, um, yes? Maybe I need … lessons?” I squeak in response, half-stifling another giggle.
I get the distinct feeling that even if we had seven hundred years together, Ren would never stop surprising me. Never stop revealing intoxicating new depths, new desires, unexpected facets of his personality . . .
He moves closer, eyes full of promises, just as an angry, metallic shriek brings our reverie to an abrupt ending. Ren backs away quickly, fanning the air, flipping knobs on the stove. The smoke detector rages and I cover my ears until he finds the switch and flicks it off. A charred pan of bacon sits on the stove—black, sooty, completely inedible. We’d forgotten all about it.
He slides the pitiful pan into the sink, turning on the cool tap to extinguish the charred mess. Moving towards the edge of the kitchen, further away from the smoke, our hands intertwine and we kiss. I can feel a shift. The performance has ended. No more tough guy, no mock threats of punishment, no Christian Grey persona. Now it’s just Ren.
His hands roam to the small of my back, my waist, then up to cradle my face.
“I want forever with you,” he half-sobs, half-moans, kissing me again. I can’t tell if he’s angry, resentful, mournful, or overwhelmed with lust. Maybe all of the above.
If I could put this exact moment—surrender, sweetness, the bitter scent of overcooked bacon, his sweat, his kisses, the faint salt taste of our tears, his murmured “I love you”—on instant-reply for all eternity, I would.
Maybe, in a few hours, once I cross over into whatever comes next, I will be able to do that. Maybe death is just an unlimited playlist of all your favorite moments from life. The greatest hits. Over and over. As long as you want. The thought feels comforting to me. But I don’t have time to wonder about that, and frankly, it seems pointless to do so, because nobody really knows what comes next. At least, I don’t. I don’t have a clue.
All I have is what’s right here in front of me: a beautiful man, a bowl of batter that desperately needs griddling, and hopefully some more bacon that we can fry up. Properly, this time.
Hour Nineteen
I am suddenly, and somewhat pungently, aware that I haven’t showered in several days. It’s not particularly cute. As much as I love watching Ren flip pancakes with authoritative grace, I excuse myself and head into his bathroom for a quick rinse-off.
His shower is outfitted with unscented soap, shaving cream, a nice-looking razor, and not much else. Everything you need. Nothing you don’t.
As the hot water pounds onto the nape of my neck, I wonder, momentarily, what “our” place might look like if we converged our lives together. After a few seconds of interior design fantasies, I curtail that train of thought because … there’s no point.
Toweling off, I will myself to think about something else. Is this why all those monks are constantly practicing meditation? So their minds don’t drift into painful and irrelevant places every five seconds? If so, I could really use that superpower right now.
I change into an oversized T-shirt that says Midwestern Karate Association and plop back onto the barstool, watching as Ren makes the final flourishes to our very belated breakfast.
He drizzles a short stack of ludicrously photo-worthy pancakes with warm maple syrup, sprinkles a few extra berries on top, and adds a light dusting of powdered sugar. The grand finale: a pat of creamy butter on top. It’s practically pornographic.
OK. Make that absolutely pornographic. The first bite of maple-and-butter-drenched pancakes rips me into a new stratosphere of pleasure. Each forkful is studded with warm blueberry jewels, perfectly proportioned, bursting into my mouth.
“You were not kidding,” I sigh, sidling closer to him on my stool, so that our knees touch. “You are an incredible cook.”
“Do y
ou believe in reincarnation?” he responds as I’m enjoying an exceptionally exquisite bite of pancake with a chunk of crisp bacon on top. I’m taken aback by his question.
“If I say ‘yes,’ does that mean I get to be reborn as … a professional pancake tester?” I joke, waving a forkful around in the air. “Because that would be a pretty fantastic life.”
“Seriously though,” he says. “Do you?”
“Um, well … not really,” I say. “I don’t believe in reincarnation. I mean, I believe that when you die, your body decomposes and you re-join the earth, feeding flowers and trees or whatever, but I don’t believe that you get ‘reborn’ as another person,” I clarify.
“That’s it?” he counters. “That’s all we become? Plant food?”
“Well, we don’t have any reason to believe otherwise, right? I mean, where’s the proof that there’s something ‘beyond’ this current existence?”
He gazes at me thoughtfully, as if that’s not such a simple question. I continue, feeling my pulse rise.
“I’d love to believe that there’s something more, something beyond this life—trust me, I’ve often wished that I had faith in something like that—but I think we tell ourselves fairy tales about heaven, reincarnation, and things like that, because we’re too afraid to face the brutal truth that when it’s over, that’s it. It’s just over.”
“Nobody wants the party to end,” I continue as he listens, silent and stoic. “But eventually, it does. It’s easier to lie to ourselves, easier to convince ourselves that the fairy tales are true, rather than just deal with the total, crushing over-ness of it all. You live. You die. Plant food. The end.”
He listens as I reach my definitive finale, patiently nodding.
“What about you? Do you believe in reincarnation?” I say, after a long-ish pause.
“Would it surprise you if I said that … I don’t?” he returned, slicing his final pancake in half and placing one half on my plate, practically floating atop a pool of molten maple syrup.
I eye him curiously.
“I don’t believe in reincarnation, not in the literal, die-and-come-back-as-a-new-baby sense,” he continues, watching with a smile as I slice my final pancake into four sections, compiling four miniature bacon-pancake towers. “But I do believe that there is ‘something’ waiting after this lifetime. And I believe that eventually, with the right scientific advancements, we will discover what is waiting.”
I listen as he continues, raising one last forkful to my mouth.
“Gravity. The wheel. Skyscrapers. Penicillin. Space flight. Postponing death. Prolonging life. Understanding what comes after this life. Everything is incomprehensible and impossible … until one day, it’s not.”
He stands to clear away the dishes, stacking them in the sink and giving the countertop a brisk sweep with a damp cloth.
He continues, “The fact that you are here with me—that is a miracle of science that would not have been possible even ten years ago. Not long ago, we didn’t even know that a procedure like Temporary Cellular Resuscitation was possible. But here we are. Eating pancakes. Living inside of a miracle.”
I nod. He has a point.
“Maybe someday, you and I will reunite inside another type of miracle.”
He eyes intensify, locking with mine.
He seems to be waiting for me to respond, to agree, disagree, do anything other than just stare at him blankly.
After a few beats of silence, I rise off the barstool, move closer, and kiss him. His arms instinctively encircle me. I can’t enthusiastically voice my agreement, but I don’t have to dash his hopes either.
The best I can offer him is a wobbly, uncertain kind of optimism.
“I really hope that what you believe—that you and I will be reunited, somehow, somewhere—I hope that turns out to be true.”
He pulls me closer into his body, burrowing his face in the curve of my neck. We rock subtly, swaying, barefoot in the kitchen. Saying nothing. Feeling everything.
The second hand of the clock mounted on the wall ticks softly—an aggravating, insistent reminder.
I tilt my chin upwards and find Ren gazing down at me. Lips curled in a smile. Eyes warm, molten with affection. He runs his fingers up the sides of my waist and ribcage, sending me into a subtle flurry of shivers. His kiss lands on me, sending the world into slow motion.
He seems to be inhaling me with each unbroken kiss, folding into the next kiss, trying to absorb my scent, my taste, my being into himself. I feel a drunken head rush as he lifts me into his arms, my legs wrapping around his waist as he carries me back towards the bedroom. I can feel his heart beating steadily through the thin fabric of his T-shirt. Can feel my own heart beating in time.
A pressure builds inside my chest, like I’m sinking fast, underwater, holding my breath . . .
And then … it’s all wrong.
I feel a sickly heat overwhelm my body. Heaviness. Pressure in my lungs. A boulder on my heart. I rip my face away from Ren’s next kiss, feeling like I’m about to release my pancakes onto the floor behind him.
The pressure in my chest builds and builds, like a grand piano is resting on top of me. I try to gulp down some air, but it doesn’t help. Instinctively, I twist my torso, shake out my arms, as if I can shudder this heavy, ominous feeling right out of my body.
My arms begin to tingle. The tingling spreads to my back, neck and jaw. I feel myself going dizzy, going black, going gray, going down as my knees buckle beneath me . . .
No.
Not yet.
I’m not ready yet . . .
Hour Twenty
“Nora, Nora, are you with me? Nora, talk to me. What are you feeling?” Ren’s voice sounds disembodied and distant, even though his lips are just inches from my face.
He’s gotten me onto the bed, propped semi-upright, pillows arranged behind my neck for support. He’s cradling my face in his hands. He seems tightly wound, coiled, ready to spring into action, and I can see fear glittering in his wide-open eyes.
I feel unbelievably exhausted, as if every single cell of my body has collapsed inward. I gesture limply at my chest.
“Hurts. Heavy,” I manage to choke out.
Ren departs briefly, returning with cool, damp towels from the bathroom. He lays one over my forehead, another behind my neck. I sigh. I hadn’t realized that I was sweating. The coolness feels good. I relax. The pressure on my chest seems to dissipate slightly.
Still bad but not unbearable.
“Nora, I think you might’ve had a heart attack,” Ren says, arranging another damp cloth across my chest. I suspect he’s trying to stay exceptionally even-keeled for my benefit.
“Or some other heart issue? A stroke? I don’t know. I’m going to call 9-1-1.”
“No,” I splutter. He freezes, phone already poised in his hand.
“No,” I repeat, a little more steadily. He gives me an indecisive glance, as if he’s trying to decide whether or not I’m capable of making this kind of decision right now.
“Look. My heart is messed up. I already know that. But I don’t want to go to the hospital,” I plead. “They’ll just hook me up to machines, run tests, everything . . .” I wriggle myself so that I’m sitting fully upright on the bed, as if to show him, Look at how healthy I am! Ta-da! No doctors required.
“Ren, I don’t want … I just don’t want to spend my final hours in a hospital with strangers. I want to be here. With you.”
His face looks tortured, caught in an impossible decision with no desirable outcome no matter which choice he makes. I know exactly what he’s thinking. He doesn’t even have to speak. But what if you die right here, right now … ? And there’s nothing I can do?
He eyes me solemnly, saying nothing, still holding his phone in one hand. Three taps on the keypad and an ambulance will come surging to his street,
strangers will flood into the apartment, and they’ll carry me away, taking me away from him forever. No. I can’t let that happen.
“It’s probably nothing to worry about,” I tell him. “It’s normal TCR stuff.” And actually, that might be true. The physicians warned me about unpredictable reactions that might arise during the final hours of my TCR experience. Lethargy. Dizziness. Fever. Tightness in the chest. Maybe a fun little epileptic seizure for good measure. All “normal” sensations as your body begins to shut down … for the second and final time.
Some people get these “exit symptoms,” as they’re euphemistically labeled. Others don’t. Some only get them during the final hour. Others, sooner. I guess I’m one of the unlucky ones.
Ren puts down his phone, which sends a rush of relief across my body. He won’t call. They won’t cart me away.
“How can I make you more comfortable? What can I do?” he asks. His eyes are fiery and pleading.
“Can we just … get out of here?” I reply softly. I feel a sudden, intense urge to get out of the apartment, out into the fresh air, as if a change of scenery will delay the inevitable.
“Can we go somewhere?”
He looks like he is about to shake his head, but he stops himself. “Where do you want to go?” he asks.
I think it over. It’s nighttime—right smack in the middle of the night, actually—and the city is dark and inactive. Our options are limited to: a twenty-four-hour diner, a public park that’s probably filled with unsavory characters getting up to hijinks that I don’t particularly want to witness, a strip club, or, I don’t know, trespassing into someone’s backyard to sneak into their pool? None of these possibilities sound appealing. And then … I know. I know exactly where I want to go.
“Ren … where do you work? Can you take me to your job? I want to see where you spend your days. I want to see your regular, normal life.”
He laughs.
“I teach martial arts for a living. You want to go to the dojo? Like right now?”
So This Is the End Page 8