Page 112 of Life’s Too Short

“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.