Page 187 - In Five Years

Chapter Thirty-Six

I move into Bella’s apartment the first week of December. To the guest room that
still has clouds on the walls. Aaron helps me with the boxes. I do not see David.
I leave a note on the table when my necessities are gone. He can buy me out or

we can sell, whatever he wants.
I’m so sorry, I write.
I don’t expect to hear from him, but he sends me an email three days later

with some logistical things. He signs it: Please keep me posted on Bella. David.
All that time, all those years, all those plans, gone. We’re strangers, now. I
cannot fathom it.

Hospital. Work. Home.
Bella and I are curled in her bed. We inhale early two thousands romantic
comedies like popcorn kernels while she hurls, sometimes too weak to turn her

head all the way to the side. She has no appetite. I fill up bowls and bowls of ice
cream to the brim for her. They all melt. I throw their milky remains down the

drain.
“Canker sores, open wounds, the taste of bile,” she whispers to me, shivering
under the blankets.
“No,” I say.

“Chemicals being pumped through my veins, veins that feel like fire, fingers
up my spine, grabbing at my bones, cracking them.”

“Not yet,” I say.
“The taste of vomit, the feeling of my skin crawling with fire. That it’s getting
harder to breathe.”
“Stop,” I tell her.

“I knew the breathing would get you,” she says.