“No, Tyler – even when it isn’t fun. Even when the ride breaks, and we’re petrified of what’s going to happen next, I’m still going to be here, right next to you. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, Mr Lohan. I’m not going anywhere.”
***
“Tell me more about this journal of yours,” I asked when I exited the bathroom after showering and noticed it sitting on the coffee table with the leather string unwound. “Is it a therapy tool?”
“Kind of. It all started as a way for me to get fine motor skills back after a relapse then it just became a way for me to muddle through my thoughts. It helped a lot when mum and dad split. I was so angry with him, and I needed something to calm me down. Writing, or even drawing helped to do that.”
“Can you tell me what happened with your dad, or would you rather not talk about?”
“I can talk about it. It’s like I’ve said before – he left because of me. Because of my MS.”
My eyebrows rose halfway up my forehead. “Did he seriously say that?”
He leaned forward and picked up the leather journal and secured the string. “That’s exactly what he said. He said it hurt him too much to see me sick, so he would leave everything up to my mum when I relapsed, and when we came to Sydney for better treatment facilities, he refused to follow and watch his son slowly become a cripple, so, he set up a trust fund, dumped a bunch of money in it to appease his own guilt and that was that.”
“That’s just awful, what an arse.”
He shrugged then shook his head. “I used to think so, but, I don’t know. I kind of get it, hell, I don’t want to see it happen either,” he said with a laugh, even though there was nothing remotely funny about a father not wanting to be there for his son.
“Doesn’t excuse it,” I replied, shaking my head and folding my arms indignantly. “He’s your father. He should be here.”
“Sweetheart, not everyone is as strong as you. Don’t judge until you’ve seen how bad it becomes, you might want to walk away too.”
“I won’t, Tyler,” I said resolutely. “Don’t even suggest that.”
He held his hands up in a surrender gesture. “OK, sweetheart.”
“So is it all about your dad or do you put other stuff in there too?” I asked, indicating the journal once again.
“No. This particular one was started a little before I met you actually. My mother gives me a new one for my birthday each year, and in it, I write down everything I want to do before my next birthday, or before I can’t anymore – whichever comes first. Then I chronicle everything that seems important.”
“So, is it all focused around your MS or is there personal stuff in there?”
He smiled, his eyes lighting up as he ran his hand over the soft cover. “Ah, now we get to the truth of it all, you want to know if I’ve written anything about you in here.”
“I’m not going to look, obviously, but I kind of like the idea of having a starring role in this edition of Tyler Lohan’s secret thoughts.”
Laughing, he once again met my eyes. “You do have quite a large part in this edition. I think my lists have more than doubled since you came along.”
“Lists – you have more than one?”
“Yeah, you know, hope lists – kind of like a bucket list I guess. Except mine are more a ‘things to do before you’re permanently incapacitated’ lists. But, they’re for all different things.”
“Like what?”
He let out his breath and thought for a moment. “Well, one was graduating university, and I just completed that. And I want to do that colour run before that limp I sometimes get becomes permanent. You know, things most people want to do that aren’t so easy when you’re disabled.”
“And why has it grown since getting to know me?”
“Because you make me want more from life, more than I ever thought I’d have.”
“Tyler,” I breathed. “That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
He lowered his eyes as if embarrassed then he shrugged. “Well, it’s true. And, now that you know what’s going on with me, I’d kind of like it if you did some of the things on the list with me.”
“Wow. I mean, yes, of course. What kind of things are we talking here? Climbing to the top of Mount Everest type stuff, or the kind of stuff that makes a girl blush?”
“I have to admit I’m kind of interested in this stuff that makes you blush. Tell me more, sweetheart,” he said with a grin.
“Well…” I shrugged, wishing I hadn’t blurted that last part out.
“Come on – spit it out,” he goaded, reaching out and grabbing a hold of my leg. “What would make you blush – kinky sex stuff?” he laughed, pulling me toward him and grinning like the Tyler I know and love. It made my heart sing to see him beginning to relax around me again after the tears we’d shared over the past twenty-four hours.
“No! I’m not saying anything that will give you any ideas!” I squealed as he began to tickle me into submission.
When he stopped, he was on top of me, looking down at me with desire in his eyes. “Sweetheart, you have no idea how much kinky shit I’ve got stored up in this brain.”
“So tell me,” I urged, biting my lip as I looked up at him. His mouth curved upward then he leaned in close and whispered in my ear. But I didn’t blush. I squirmed.
And then we didn’t need any more lists or words…
WINTER, 2011
25
TWO MONTHS later, and life had been almost perfect. Tyler and I were practically living together, and the absence of that massive secret between us made life so much better. I mean, I still knew that something was coming, but at least I knew what it was. So I wasn’t waking every day, worried that that would be the day he disappeared on me.
His mother had, surprisingly, been quite lovely to me. It turned out she was only upset with Tyler over skipping his treatment to hang out with me – which was understandable. She was actually really happy that Tyler had found someone who wanted to be with him regardless of his disease, and I found her to be a fountain of wealth of information whenever I had a question about his condition or his treatment that Tyler wasn’t being very clear on.
In April, we’d celebrated my twenty-second birthday by taking a trip up to Queensland and spending the weekend in a hotel on the North Queensland. My highlight was snorkelling hand in hand along the Great Barrier Reef and getting to see all the beautiful coral and colourful fish. It was hard to come back to real life, but I had a job to go to, and Tyler had treatments, and his own physio sessions to attend.
I looked forward to the days he had an appointment in our department, and even though I wasn’t his therapist, I always stuck my head in so I knew how he was progressing and what I could do to help him at home.
I loved my job, and found it incredibly rewarding to help patients regain the use of their limbs after surgery or sickness. Some of them were so stubborn at first, but once they got involved in their own therapy, I could show them how to use their support muscles to increase their strength and reduce their pain. It was exactly why I became a physiotherapist, and in a way, I could see why Tyler had chosen to study the same thing. He wanted to stay as strong as he could for as long as he could, and the fact he was so focused on keeping up his rigorous health and exercise regime, showed that he really believed in the practices.
However, even with his tenacity, the more time I spent with him, the more I noticed the struggles he’d been hiding from me, and how his MS was starting to affect his life. He’d been living with it for eight years before it moved into what’s called Progressive Relapsing MS. Basically, it meant that he didn’t recover from his relapses the way he used to, and the disease could progress on its own, presenting him with new symptoms whenever it felt like it.
I could see it in his coordination which was a bit off whenever he got tired, and if I was standing on his left, he didn’t always see me there because of the increasing fuzziness in his vision. Sometimes,
he was moody as hell, which he explained was because his muscles caused him pain that never seemed to go away, but that his medication, and the massages I gave him eased it.
It was all manageable, and we were happy together, planning a trip to do the craziest thing that was on Tyler’s list – climb an active volcano.
The idea of it petrified me. Namely because I thought we’d die of sulphur poisoning or fall in, and it wouldn’t matter how much time he had before his MS took his legs – we’d be charcoal. I fretted about it while we flew to the Philippines where Mount Mayon, the world’s most perfect cone shaped volcano, jutted up out of the landscape like a smoking beacon of death. I couldn’t believe I’d agreed to do one of his crazy daredevil acts with him and was seriously considering just catching the next flight back home the moment we touched down.
“Sweetheart, it’s perfectly safe. And it will be amazing,” he assured me for the eleventy billionth time as we made it to the meeting point where we were to meet our guide.
I held up my gas mask and shook it for emphasis. “You don’t need gas masks to do ‘perfectly safe’ things,” I grumbled, my heart beating way faster than it needed to when we had a two-day hike ahead of us.
Grinning, he placed his hands on either side of my head and kissed me until I relaxed against him.
“That wasn’t fair,” I whispered when he released me.
He chuckled in response then lifted his head to indicate there was someone approaching. “Besides, you don’t want to let our friends down do you?” he asked, and when I turned to where he was looking, I saw Janesa and Alex approaching. I couldn’t contain my delighted squeal.
“Oh my god!” I cried, wrapping my arms around my tiny friend before also hugging Alex. “I’m so happy to see you guys.”
“We’re happy to see you too,” Janesa said as she finished hugging Tyler then he and Alex did one of those back slapping man hugs. “Especially since you’re together again. I knew you’d work it all out.”
“And all I had to do was stalk him for a couple of months and we were good,” I proclaimed, nudging my shoulder into Tyler’s arm.
“Stalking?” Alex commented with a smile. “So that’s how you win hearts these days?”
“Seems that way. He’s too big for me to kidnap, so…” I shrugged and everyone laughed until Tyler wrapped his arm around my shoulder and looked down at me.
“No. It wasn’t stalking at all. You were keeping a promise not to give up on me, even when I was being a dick.”
Rising up, I pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “Speaking of being a dick, can you believe this guy is making us climb a freaking active volcano that requires gas masks!” I shook it again, still thinking I might prefer to just watch Tyler climb like I’d done previously in his sporting ventures.
“Come on, Sarah. This is a once in a lifetime thing. You’ll regret it if you don’t do it,” Alex countered.
I rolled my eyes. “Something to tell the grandkids I suppose.”
“And, you’ll have photos to prove it,” Janesa said, pulling out her camera before getting us all to huddle together so she could take a shot of us with Mount Mayon in the background.
The guides gathered our small group together and explained a few of the finer points pertaining to our hike. We’d be hiking through the scrub until we reached the camp at the base of the volcano which is where we’d have lunch then continue on until night fall when we’d pitch camp and climb the rest of the way early the next morning.
We listened intently, and I tried to convince myself that I was going to be just fine. Tyler squeezed my hand reassuringly and said, “If you really don’t want to do this, I’ll take you back to Manila right now. Just say the word, sweetheart.”
Squeezing his hand back, I shook my head. “No. I want to do this with you. I’ll be OK.”
“OK,” he whispered. “I’ll be right beside you the whole way.”
“OK,” I replied.
Covered in mosquito repellent, we spent the rest of the day walking through the hot and humid landscape. We talked a lot, catching up with Alex and Janesa, listening as they regaled us with tales of their time in Mexico while also taking in the differences between the plant life to what we’re used to in Australia. This was a lot more tropical and almost jungle-like compared.
By the time we reached base camp, I was already exhausted, but happy for the chance to rest and eat before the next leg of the journey.
“How are you holding up fatigue wise?” I asked Tyler as I sat beside where he was sipping on a bottle of cool water.
“I’m doing all right. This is why I work out all the time. How are you holding up?”
“Fine. Although my hour long daily runs don’t quite compare to this full day of trudging.”
He leaned across and kissed my head. “You’re doing great. And I’m really happy you came.”
“Me too,” I smiled, resting my head on his shoulder for only a moment before we were told it was time to move again then we hiked until the colours streaked across the sky.
***
“You know, I kind of expected that we’d be pitching tents on an angle being half way up the side of a volcano,” I commented as we hammered tent pegs into the rich smelling soil covered in vibrant green grass.
Tyler looked up from where he was crouched across from me and smiled. “You thought’s we’d be sleeping on an angle?”
I shrugged. “I suppose.”
“You’re adorable,” he grinned. “Are you still worried about the volcano erupting?”
“Well, I wasn’t a second ago, but thanks for reminding me.”
Chuckling, he glanced up at me with twinkling eyes as he prepared the tent poles. “I’ll hold you if you’re feeling scared, sweetheart.”
“Yeah, that fills me with a heap of confidence – a hug will totally fend off the flow of lava.”
By the time our tent was set up, dinner was also ready. They gave us what seemed like a curried chicken and rice dish with bottles of water or warm beer. We all sat around the campfire eating and talking as the guides reminisced about a time when the volcano really did erupt.
“God, I don’t want to hear this,” I said, turning my head against Tyler’s chest. We were sitting with a blanket wrapped around us for warmth in the cool night air. It smelled musty but I felt safer cocooned against him than I did listening to tales of free flowing lava.
“Relax, sweetheart. Look up at the stars, they look different here don’t you think?” he asked, distracting me and causing me to think about the first time we sat around a fire looking up at the sky. That was when I knew my life would never be the same without him in it.
“They are. And there’s so many. More than I’ve ever seen before.”
“And to think, we’d never have seen these if we weren’t sitting on the side of a volcano. It’s pretty amazing. There’s so much out there, so much to see and do, and everywhere is different and has a beauty all of its own.”
“It is beautiful,” I agreed and for a moment he was quiet, just looking up at the stars with me, listening to the conversation around us as we picked up on a story one of the guides was telling about the legend of Mount Mayon.
Supposedly, the mountain rose in the place two lovers were buried after their tragic death. The woman, Magayon, was beautiful and had many suitors but she only wanted to marry for love. When she almost drowned, she was rescued by a man named, Paganoron who she fell in love with and agreed to marry. But, there was one suitor who didn’t take his rejection well and kidnapped Magayon’s father to force her to marry him instead.
An epic battle broke out and just as the two lovers thought they were triumphant, they were killed in each other’s arms. However, the father sought revenge, and then returned with their bodies to their village.
“And so, Magayon and Panganoron were buried side by side. Both their villages mourned for the two and offered flowers and fruits on top of the grave. The villagers noticed that the grave of the lovers had starte
d to rise after a few weeks, and it kept going – up and up, higher and higher, shaped as a perfect cone.
“And because it was so pretty to look at, they started calling it ‘the beauty, Mayon’ after the beautiful daughter of their ruler. And you know what?”
The guide, knowing that he had the rapt attention of all that campers, held up his finger and slowly looked at all of us, one by one, his voice low like he was telling a ghost story of sorts. “The people believes that when the Mount Mayon rumbles, it is the two lovers reminding the villagers about their tragic death.”
“And what’s the moral to that story?” one of the other women in the group asked.
“I don’t know,” the guide laughed. “I just tell it like my grandmother told me. But, I think it is just about letting people love how they want to love. Because it will end badly if you fight love – it’s a powerful thing,” he said, nodding as if he was pleased with his explanation.
“See?” I said to Tyler. “Even the mountain says you can’t fight love.”
“I’m not fighting it, sweetheart. I’m totally on board,” he responded before pressing a kiss in my hair. “You’re my forever.”
26
“WAKE UP, sweetheart,” Tyler murmured, as he nuzzled his nose against my neck in our two-person tent, we’d been so tired from walking all day that we practically passed out the moment our heads hit the pillow.
“What time is it?” I’m mumbled with a sleepy smile, as I wriggled my body against his, feeling his erection pushing against my buttocks.
“It’s time to tick, ‘sex with my girlfriend in a tent halfway up a volcano’ off the list.”
Giggling, I reached my arm behind me, and slid my fingers into his hair. “You’re so making that one up.”
“Well, you inspire me,” he murmured, his hand creeping around my waist to the front of my sleep shorts where he slipped beneath the waistband to cup his hand over my mound.
I let out a soft moan as he slipped his finger between my thighs, lightly teasing my opening before rolling my silky wetness over my clit. “Whether this is on the list or not, I think it should be,” I gasped, turning my head to kiss him over my shoulder as his expert hands touched me perfectly, bringing me ever closer to climax.
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