Page 199 - In Five Years

“That I’m dying.”
I turn to her, because she can barely move anymore. Her eyes look into mine.
Those same eyes. The eyes I have loved for so long. They are still there. She’s
still in there. It’s impossible to think she won’t be.

But she won’t be. Soon, she won’t be. She is dying. And I cannot deny her
this, this honesty.

“I don’t like it,” I say. “It’s bad policy.”
She laughs, and then starts coughing. Her lungs are full.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I check her pain pump. I give her a minute.
“I’m sorry,” she says.

“No, Bella, please.”
“No,” she says. “I am. I wanted to be here for you for all of it.”

“But you have,” I say. “You’ve been here for everything.”
“Not everything,” she whispers. I feel her search for my hand under the
sheets. I give it to her. “Love,” she says.
I think about David, in our old shared apartment, and Bella’s words: Because

that’s the way you love me.
“You’ve never had it,” she says. “I want the real thing for you.”

“You’re wrong,” I tell her.
“I’m not,” she says. “You’ve never really been in love. You’ve never really
had your heart broken.”

I think about Bella at the park, Bella at school, Bella at the beach. Bella lying
on the floor of my first New York City apartment. Bella with a bottle of wine in
the rain. Bella on the fire escape at 3 a.m. Bella’s voice on New Year’s Eve,

cracking through the Parisian phone. Bella. Always.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I have.”
Her breath catches, and she looks at me. I see it all. The cascade of our

friendship. The decades of time. The decades to come—more, even, without her.
“It’s not fair,” she says.
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”

I feel her exhaustion move over both of us like a wave. It drags us under. Her
hand softens in mine.