Jace stopped the cart. “Hold up. Saltines are on the list.” He reached
for one of the long boxes of crackers with his left hand—a mistake since
it was still so unreliable. His whole hand was shaking as he tried to put
the crackers in the cart, but his fingers wouldn’t unclench. Ben looked
torn between panic and tears.
“I’m fine,” Jace said. “Happens all the time.”
Jace grabbed another box of crackers, this time with his right hand,
and although it was steady, he started shaking it too. Soon he was
moving his shoulders and hips to the rhythm as he shook the crackers
like two maracas.
Ben tried not to laugh but couldn’t help himself. Jace grinned in
return as he danced around the cart, ending with a flourish by tossing in
both boxes of saltines.
“Pretty sexy, huh?” he asked.
Ben’s smile became more demure, which was good, since it meant
he had taken the hint. This is exactly why they needed to do normal
things together, so Ben would start viewing him that way again. Normal.
Sure, maybe Jace had mood swings, strange sensitivities, and a twitchy
left hand. But he was still Jace.
They gathered the rest of the items. Then Ben insisted they get kitty
litter, even though it wasn’t on the list. Jace agreed. The game was fun.
Smelling a dirty litter box wasn’t. They were heading to the front of the
store when Jace checked the list one more time. “We didn’t get
marshmallows,” he said.
Ben pointed to the cart. There they were. Of course.
That was another side effect. Jace’s short-term memory wasn’t great.
He glanced over at Ben, dreading the sad expression he’d see there, but
instead Ben’s eyes remained bright. “Looks like you need me more than
ever,” he said.
“God help me,” Jace muttered, as if this was a terrible fate, but of
course he couldn’t be happier.
They were rolling up to the cash registers when Ben nudged him,
nodding meaningfully at a man waiting in line. After a moment, Jace saw
it too. The man’s cart was filled with all the same items they had just
bought. Jace put a finger to his lips. Then they got into line behind him.
Ben kept laughing as Jace put everything on the conveyer belt, doing
his best to place them in the same order as the man ahead of them had.
Chicken first, then the hot dogs and buns, saltines, and so forth, until the
items were perfectly duplicated. Almost. Jace tapped the man on the
shoulder.
“You forgot the graham crackers,” he said.
The man looked panicked when he realized this was true, then
puzzled when he noticed the conveyer belt. “Are you having a grill party
too?”
Ben and Jace glanced at each other. “Of course!”
The man considered them, unsure about their curious behavior. He
was soon comforted when Ben offered him the graham crackers. “I just
remembered. I already bought some last week.”
The man’s face lit up. “Thanks!”
They waited until the man had paid and left before they burst out
laughing.
“What are we going to do with all of this horrible food?” Ben asked
when they were wheeling the cart out to the parking lot.
“Grill party,” Jace said.
“We don’t own a grill.”
“Then let’s go buy one.”
Ben shook his head, but he was smiling. After stopping to pick one
up, along with charcoal and lighter fluid, they drove home. Ben didn’t
want Jace carrying anything heavy, which meant he couldn’t help bring
in the groceries. He contented himself by putting away everything they
wouldn’t be needing. Then they went to the backyard, working together
to assemble the grill and laughing that neither one knew how to get it
going. After checking the instructions and the Internet, they eventually
got it started. When the coals turned white on the surface, they were
ready to cook their food from below.
“We did it!” Ben said.
“Yes, we did.” Jace glanced over at him, at the way the light of the
setting sun caught in his hair. “Are you hungry?”
When Ben turned to him, it was if he saw Jace clearly for the first
time in a month. “Not for food,” he said.
Jace smiled. “Good. Me neither.”
“Bedroom?” Ben asked.
Jace nodded. “Bedroom.”
* * * * *
The hospital parking lot was the last place Jace wanted to be.
Unfortunately, Ben was staring at the steering wheel, as if he no longer
comprehended how a car functioned. Jace resisted the urge to lash out at
him, to demand that he be taken far away from there. Instead, he said,
“Do you want me to drive?”
Ben glanced over at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was. After all,
Jace was a ticking time bomb. He was the last person who should be
behind a wheel.
“Maybe they were the wrong results,” Ben said. “Maybe they
belonged to somebody else.”
“Does this mean we’re not going out for burgers?” Jace said, but
even he didn’t laugh at his humor.
They were supposed to be celebrating right now. Neither of them had
thought the day would turn out like this. “Just a routine follow-up,” the
doctor had joked yesterday. “We’ll scan that head of yours and make
sure everything was put back in the right place.”
They had laughed, which seemed extremely na.ve now.
“Two more aneurysms,” Ben said.
“I know,” Jace snapped. “You don’t need to remind me. Even my
fucked-up short-term memory won’t let me forget this.”
“I’m sorry, I just—”
“I know,” Jace said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How do you
think I feel?”
“I’m sorry,” Ben repeated.
Jace felt guilty for acting this way. “There’s no reason to panic,” he
said. “You heard what the doctor said. This isn’t like an emergency room
visit. Unruptured, the mortality rate is less than one percent. We’re
probably more at risk eating fast food. Which we’ll still be doing. You
can’t take away my burgers now. That would be cruel.”
Ben started the car but didn’t pull out of the parking space. He was
probably thinking the same thing Jace was. Between now and the
surgery, two tiny little things could go wrong, both of them in Jace’s
head. If one of those aneurysms should rupture… Jace had beat the odds
once, which still felt like a miracle. His chances of doing so again
seemed beyond unlikely.
“Shouldn’t you be in the emergency room now?” Ben asked, but he
already knew the answer.
“If the doctor doesn’t think it looks bad, then it’s not bad. Otherwise
I would be in the ER. And it makes sense that he wants me to finish
recovering from the first before the other two are taken care of, right?”
Ben nodded numbly.
“We’ll call tomorrow to set up the appointment,” Jace said.
No response.
“Ben!” Jace shouted. “Fucking look at me! Stop acting like I’m still
in intensive care! Right now we’re going to get some food. Next week
we’re going to the Ozarks, and sometime afterwards I’ll go in for a low
risk surgery. During all of that, you can either freak out and make me
feel like I’m ruining your life, or you can act like you love me.”
Ben turned to him with tears in his eyes. “I do love you!”
“Then show me I still make you happy!”
Ben unbuckled his seat belt and practically threw himself into the
passenger seat to get at Jace and kiss him. After a moment of shock, Jace
exhaled through his nose and kissed Ben back.
* * * * *
“It’s not easy,” Jace said. “I feel like life is getting harder by the
day.”
“I know how that is,” Greg said.
Greg was sitting on the trunk of his Porsche, wearing a tank top and
shorts despite it being the first cool day of autumn. Sunglasses in his
hair, he looked like he owned the world. Hell, he still got carded when
they went out drinking. His career had taken off years ago, Michelle was
crazy about him, and the kids adored him.
“Care to explain what you mean by your life being hard?” Jace said.
Greg winced. “I was aiming for empathy.”
“Well, you missed. Anyway, I’m not trying to throw a pity party
here. I just need you to listen.”
“I can do that,” Greg said. “We still have time?”
Jace checked his watch. Another twenty minutes until his
appointment with the lawyer. He glanced around the parking lot of the
office building, then motioned for Greg to scoot over. Once perched on
the most expensive seat he’d ever sat on, he began.
“It’s Ben. All the medical stuff, the fear of death, it’s nothing
compared to how I feel like I’m failing him.”
“Failing him?” Greg said incredulously.
“Yes. I’m supposed to take care of him. Not vice versa. Plus, I’m not
exactly the guy he married. I get moody all the time. I can’t count how
often I’ve yelled at him lately. It’s getting to the point where I’m sick of
myself.”
“Everybody understands the mood swings,” Greg said. “They don’t
bother Ben, and they don’t bother me. Did you hear me complain on the
way over here?”
“Huh?”
“When I ran that red light. You snapped at me.”
Jace shook his head. “I don’t even remember that. See what I mean?
I’m losing it.”
“That’s putting it a bit strongly.”
“Is it?” Jace frowned at the office park around them. The perfectly
pruned trees, the glass buildings that reflected sky. All of it planned, all
of it perfect. “Remember when we were teenagers and I had just broken
up with Victor? We got super-trashed that night. Do you remember?”
“Yeah,” Greg said. “Except I drank so much that I blacked out and
still can’t remember half of what happened.”
“And it drove you crazy. You asked me for days to tell you what
we’d done that night, and I kept making up stories to screw with you.
Eventually, you got upset at not being able to remember and made me
tell you the very boring truth.”
“Flipping through the yearbook and pointing out who we wanted to
sleep with, right?”
“Yeah.”
Greg sighed. “Okay, I can see how the memory thing must be
upsetting to you.”
Jace nodded. “I don’t trust myself anymore. The memory loss and
personality change alone ensure I’ll never work again. Not as a flight
attendant. Lord only knows what else will happen to me. As much as I
hate having two unruptured aneurysms, I’m more scared of who I might
wake up as once they are removed. The worst, though, is what all of this
is doing to Ben. I’ve been researching online, reading personal accounts
from people who have gone through the same thing. That was comforting
until I started reading ones written by spouses of aneurysm survivors.
Past the initial fear and relief, many of them begin to feel resentment.”
“That’s not Ben,” Greg said strongly.
“Maybe,” Jace said. “You have to think in the long term. More than
just this last month or the next year. Picture decades of me snapping at
him, of not being able to remember the simplest things. He’ll never stop
worrying, wondering if another aneurysm has formed that we don’t know
about. I don’t want to do that to him. This isn’t what he signed up for.”
“Yes, it is,” Greg said. “It’s called marriage. Would you abandon
him if he developed a disability? You’re better than that, and so is he.”
“Okay,” Jace said. “But I still don’t know if I want to put him
through this, even if he’s willing.”
“There’s no alternative,” Greg said. “Don’t you dare suggest one.
Like it or not, you guys are spending the rest of your lives together, even
if I have to lock you up somewhere.”
Jace smiled. “Just make sure it’s somewhere nice.”
“How about that banana-filled gay island of mine?” Greg bumped
shoulders with him. “You know what you remind me of lately? When we
were teenagers. You were moodier back then, and half the time you
didn’t know what was going on because all you could think about was
Victor. Now you’re angsty again and obsessing over what Ben thinks
about you. Well, you know what I think?”
“What?”
“That whatever happened to your brain knocked you back a decade
or so.”
Jace groaned. “You think I have the brain of a teenager again?”
“Why not?” Greg shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.
Anyway, that means you’ll grow out of it eventually.”
“How embarrassing, if true.”
“Nah. Most guys our age are gearing up for a midlife crisis. You’ll
fit right in.”
They shared a laugh together, Jace thinking about it. Maybe he just
needed to mentally go through everything he had before meeting Ben,
relearn from his life experiences. How ironic, then, that he was about to
visit someone who had been crucial to his development.
“I’m worried about the surgeries,” Jace said. “There’s little chance
that I’ll die, but I might come out a different person again. There’s just
no telling.”
“You’ll be fine,” Greg said dismissively.
“If I’m not,” Jace said, silencing any protest by raising a hand. “I
need you to take care of Ben.”
Greg shook his head. “He doesn’t need me. He needs you.”
“Regardless, he’ll need support.”
“He’s family. Of course we’ll be there for him, but only you can give
Ben what he needs.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Jace said. He checked his watch.
“Time to talk to my past about my future. See you soon.”
Jace hopped off the car, feeling nervous as he entered the office
building. When he’d spotted the ad in the phone book, he scarcely
believed it could be the same person. He still wasn’t sure—wouldn’t be
until they were face to face. Just the idea made him edgy. He was glad
Greg had agreed to drive him out here. Jace didn’t trust himself to drive,
not when he could cause an accident if another aneurysm ruptured. Until
he was given a clean bill of health, Jace would make his peace with
being chauffeured.
The office Jace entered was elegant and smelled of success. Jace was
the only one in the waiting room, so he didn’t need to be seated. The
secretary, keeping an interested eye on him, called her boss.
“Mr. York? Yes, Mr. Holden is here to see you. Okay, I’ll send him
in.”
So formal! Jace had a hard time not smiling as he opened the door.
He did so quickly enough that he caught Adrien fixing his hair in the
window’s refection behind him. Then he spun around in his chair to look
Jace over.
After a moment of uncertainty, they grinned bashfully at each other.
