Page 44 of Lessons in Lemonade

Love . . . not even going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

“Oh, I know.” I turn to face him more and pull one leg up under me. “If I thought you were being mean to me, you wouldn’t be here right now.” I grin at him. “I like who I am now and the perspective I’ve gained because of it.”

He purses his lips and looks down at the couch between us. Scooching closer, he picks up one of my hands and starts playing with my fingers. I’m once again awestruck by how large his hands are. As a wide receiver, I guess they would have to be, but his basically engulf mine twice over.

“We’ve never talked about this.” His eyes rise to find mine. “You don’t bring it up and I’m not sure you would want me to, so I haven’t, but I’d like to know more. I’m just trying to figure out how to word my questions without sounding insensitive or nosey about your business.”

“Jack, you can ask me anything and I’ll tell you.” I squeeze his fingers reassuringly and give him a go-ahead smile.

“All right. Did you know you had cancer? Did you suspect it? Did you have any symptoms?”

Of course the first one is a doozy. I really do hate this question. I think Jack is ultimately just curious about me, but most of the time people ask this to educate themselves on possible markers for themselves, things to look out for. While I’m all for empowering people with knowledge, there are thousands of types of cancers and all of them can present differently.

“No, I didn’t know. I was twenty-one, and no one that young thinks about cancer.”

“At thirty-two, before I met you, I didn’t really think about it either.” He gives me a small smile, laces his fingers with mine, and then tucks a loose piece of hair behind my ear before tossing his free arm across the back of the couch.

“Shelby had started a blog where we road-tripped, eating at different restaurants, and she would write reviews. Every weekend we were out trying something new, and I noticed I had started gaining weight. Of course, I blamed it on all the food, and that’s when we started running. We ran and ran, but the weight never came off, and I started getting heartburn. It wouldn’t go away no matter how many antacids I ate. I ended up at the doctor for that, and the rest is history.”

“Wow.” His eyes widen and his brows rise.

“You can say that again.” With my free hand I pull the blanket from across the couch and drag it across my lap. “The tumor was almost the size of a baseball.”

His brows drop and he pinches his lips together. Tugging the blanket so it stretches across his lap too, he thinks about his next question before he asks it.

“What was the worst part of all of it?”

“You mean besides wondering if I was going to live or die?” I smirk.

He frowns, hard, but doesn’t respond to my attempt to lighten the conversation.

I let out a sigh. “I know it’s vain to say my hair, but I was a twenty-one-year-old college student, and losing my hair was traumatic. It was happening to me, and it placed a large blinking light over me letting everyone know I was sick. Lots of people have cancer and the outside world has no idea, but if it’s to the point of needing this life-saving treatment, obviously people choose life. Still . . . I’ve always had this messy mop of brown curly hair. It’s one of my favorite features about me, and losing it was hard.”

“You do have beautiful hair, but you’re so much more beautiful than your hair.”

His words hit their target, and my insides squeeze. His hand moves from the back of the couch, cradles my head gently, and then slides down my neck and over my shoulder before moving back to the couch. It’s the most intimately I’ve been touched in a long time, and he didn’t even really do anything.

“I hated people saying I had a nice-shaped head, or I looked good bald, or they were certain they wouldn’t look as good as me. I didn’t choose the look, cancer chose it for me, and it was another reminder that all of it was out of my control.”

“Yeah, I can see how that would be annoying.”

“But it grew back, and like I said, I grew stronger.”

“I didn’t know you before, but you are definitely a force to be reckoned with.” He reaches over and pulls on my earlobe.

“A force,” I echo, and then a grin stretches across my face. “Like, ‘May the force be with you.’ I think I like that!”

He grins and shakes his head at me. Reaching for the remote, he settles back into the couch and pulls me next to him. As he flips through the channels to find us something to watch, I can’t help but think he’s a force too, one I might not be strong enough to fight.

Asparagus and Pea Soup

ALL MORNING I’VE thought about how Meg opened up last night about having cancer. I’m sure I could have asked her before now, but it’s awkward and I never want to upset her.

She doesn’t know that after Thanksgiving, when I first found out, I researched ovarian cancer and read as much as I could about it. We didn’t discuss the specifics, what stage she had, or what kind of surgery they performed, but I guess at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. She had this cancer and now she doesn’t. The fact that it’s considered rare, with less than two hundred thousand cases per year—it makes me angry that my girl went through this.

And yes, I do think of her as mine, even though I know she’s not. Well, I think she kind of is, she just isn’t ready to acknowledge what’s staring her in the face. But back to the anger, something I’m trying to deal with logically.

I’m certain a lot of the emotions I’m feeling about this are more of real-time emotions, ones typically felt while a loved one is going through this, but it’s real-time for me now and I’m having to internally deal with questions like Why her? Of course, I don’t want to verbalize any of this to her; she’s moved on, and I have no interest in dragging her backward to remember the scariest time of her life.