“If you want to break up with me, then just fucking break up with me,” I said.
“What?”
I shook my head. “You can’t even stand to be in the same room with me, can you? You can’t even look at me.”
“It’s not— Vanessa, I don’t have a choice. I’m his attorney. I have to go down there.”
“The only reason you have to go down there is so you won’t have to face a night alone with me. He’s got a whole firm of attorneys. You said it yourself, anyone can go, it doesn’t have to be you.”
I could almost see him dragging his hand down his mouth, looking anywhere but at me.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Don’t pretend this isn’t exactly what we both know it is, Adrian. You’re running. Even when you’re with me, you’re not here. Stop ghosting me and calling it work. Please. Please. Turn around. Come back. And stop doing this to me.”
There was a long pause on the other end.
“And then what? I watch you let yourself die?”
And there it was.
So I was right.
My chin quivered. “I can’t give you what you’re asking, Adrian.”
“And I can’t give you what you’re asking either. I need this job. Right now it’s the only thing making me feel halfway sane.”
“So being away from me twenty hours a day is what’s making you sane?”
“I didn’t mean it like that—”
“Yeah, you did.” I forced down the tears. “I get it. You’re still whiplashed and trying to figure it out, and you’re doing what you do when you feel out of control—you work. But you’re wasting precious time.” I shook my head. “It’s just an illusion, Adrian. The control is an illusion. No one can promise you forever. People die unexpectedly every day. They have car accidents and heart attacks and strokes and if all you do is live your life fixated on how it ends, you’re just living the end twice. We still have time and all these things that you think will save me won’t. Stop chasing it and just be happy. Be happy with me while you can.”
He didn’t answer, but the wind in the background had stopped, like he’d pulled over.
“This might be my last New Year’s,” I whispered. “Don’t you get that? Don’t you get that every single holiday might be my last one? That every day with me is a gift? Doesn’t that mean something to you?”
“Of course it does.”
“Then treat it like a gift! Come back to me. If not tonight, fine. If you have to work, I get it. Go do what you have to do. But then be in this relationship. Your knee-jerk response to finding out that I might be dying should be to spend every waking moment with me, not disappear.”
He was quiet for so long I thought I’d dropped the call.
“I can’t be helpless, Vanessa.” His voice was thick. “I can’t sit here and watch you die without knowing we did everything we could to prevent it.”
I shook my head, and the tears that had been welling in my eyes spilled down my cheeks. “I can’t wait months for you to come to terms with this, Adrian. I don’t have months to spare. Especially if you’re not going to do anything to help you work through it. You won’t go to therapy, you won’t join a support group, you won’t even talk to me. And I’m not willing to be unhappy and alone while you act like I’m already dead. I’m just not.”
There was a long, quiet pause.
“I need you to tell me that you’ll seek treatment,” he said into the silence. “That you’ll get diagnosed, that you’ll do clinical trials, take the medications available. I need answers. I need a plan.” He paused. “This is my bottom line.”
The words hung between us.
“Your bottom line?” I whispered. “Your bottom line? You’re giving me an ultimatum?”
He didn’t reply.
I shook my head. “And what if I say no?”
He waited a long beat. “Vanessa…I need to know you’re going to give us more time.”
My heart shattered and disintegrated into a thousand tiny pieces.
“Fuck you, Adrian. You don’t even want the time you have.”
And I hung up on him.
CHAPTER 29
THIS GOODBYE WILL LEAVE
YOU IN TEARS
VANESSA
Annabel’s rehab facility was a nice one. It should be. It was costing me enough.
After I hung up on Adrian, I left the bed-and-breakfast and drove to Iowa.
I spent New Year’s Eve at a Motel 6 a mile from where Annabel was staying. I checked the rehab’s visitors’ hours, set an alarm for the morning, and then downed half the bottle of champagne I brought out of a paper cup and went to sleep before the countdown.
Adrian had called me back almost as soon as I hung up on him. I turned off my phone. There was absolutely nothing left to say.
He’d given me an ultimatum. An ultimatum about how I’d live the rest of my life.
He wouldn’t have even dated me if he’d known I might be sick. It was something I had been afraid to think about. It was something he’d vehemently denied. But now I knew that all of this, all his love, had been given in ignorance.
I was clickbait.
I was a deception. An enticing promise of worthy content. But when you really looked, it was nothing but false advertising. Not at all what you thought it was going to be. I’d sold Adrian on something that didn’t exist. I hadn’t done it on purpose, but he’d been misled nonetheless.
I should have known he was too good to be true. I should have looked for the reason a man like that would be willing to love someone like me. It was because he didn’t know any better.
And now he did.
The implications were too enormous to think about. So I didn’t. I showered, grabbed a shitty coffee at the gas station, and went to see my sister.
Annabel wasn’t expecting me, and I didn’t know if she’d see me. I checked in at the front desk and they buzzed me in.
When she came out into the visitors’ area and saw me, she paused for a moment. Then she pressed her lips into a line and dropped into the chair across from mine.
“Hey,” I said.
She crossed her arms. “Hey.”
We sat there in a tense silence.
She seemed tired, but her eyes were clear. She wore a clunky sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. Her blond hair was up in a messy ponytail. She looked thin. Almost gaunt.
“Are you eating?” I asked.
“The food here is shit,” she mumbled.
“Do you want me to get you some protein bars or something?”
She shrugged and looked away, picking at a small tear in the arm of her recliner.
“How’s your shoulder?” I asked.
“Fine, I guess,” she muttered. “They won’t give me anything so…”
“Well, no. You’re in rehab,” I said sarcastically.
She ignored me.
“Grace is doing well,” I offered.
She didn’t reply.
“I called you,” I said. “A lot.”
She pursed her lips. “I didn’t want to talk to you.”
“And why?”