Chapter 187: Counting

We collected seashells before we left the beach.

It was a strangely peaceful thing to do after everything we'd talked about. Just walking along the shoreline, bending down whenever something caught our eye, examining shells that were chipped or oddly shaped before deciding whether they were worth carrying back.

Ryan found one that was almost heart-shaped.

Almost.

You had to squint at it a little and be generous with your interpretation. He held it out to me.

“Look.”

I took it from him and turned it between my fingers. He told me he'd turn it into a necklace for me when we got home so I slipped it carefully into my wallet. And somehow, that tiny, imperfect shell felt important enough to protect.

That evening, after dinner and an episode of Survivor, we retreated to the hammock outside. I brought a heavy fleece blanket with me because the temperature had dropped enough to make the night air bite, and Ryan inspected the hammock before we got in, tugging at the ropes and checking the knots with the seriousness of someone conducting a structural inspection. Eventually, we settled in. I pulled the blanket over us and drew Ryan against my chest.

The stars were unbelievably bright. There were so many of them that the sky almost looked crowded. I stared upward while my fingers rested against Ryan's arm, feeling the warmth of him beneath the fleece.

We didn't talk. We'd hardly spoken since the beach. Not because anything was wrong. There was simply nothing left to say that didn't feel too close to what we'd already said. Eventually, Ryan shifted slightly.

“I'm sorry.”

I looked down.

“For what?”

He was quiet for a second. “For earlier. I didn't mean to sound so bleak and pessimistic.”

I shook my head and assured him he didn't ruin anything.

“You were saying what was on your mind,” I said. “It's allowed.”

He didn't respond. I wanted to ask who else was he supposed to say those things to if he couldn't say them to me, but I didn't. He rested his head against my chest again, and for a while, neither of us spoke. Then he turned his face toward me. His gaze found mine in the dim light. The hammock shifted gently beneath us, answering the smallest movement with a slow sway.

“Who proposed?”

I looked down at him, Ryan was wearing his glasses, the frames catching faint pieces of starlight whenever he moved. I had always liked him in them. Maybe because they reminded me of the first time we'd met, when I'd snatched them off his face just to have an excuse to bother him.

It was ridiculous, looking back. We'd used those glasses as an excuse to see each other again. Neither of us had admitted that was what we were doing, but it was.

“I was planning to, but you beat me to it,” I finally said.

There was something almost smug about the way he smiled. Then he asked, “Where did I do it?”

I thought about that for a moment, my gaze drifting toward the dark outline of the trees beyond the porch.

“You were planning on doing it at the restaurant where we had our first date, except it started raining. Not normal rain, either. The kind where you look out the window and immediately decide you're not leaving the house again.”

Ryan's smile grew.

“So we stayed in, and we folded laundry.”

“Very romantic.”

“We also made chicken wraps.”

“Even more romantic.”

“And you rearranged your bookshelves for the third time that week.”

“Fourth.”

“Right....Fourth.

I could picture it too easily. Ryan surrounded by books, shifting entire sections around because apparently the arrangement he'd been perfectly happy with twelve hours earlier had suddenly become unacceptable. Me sitting nearby, watching him move things from one shelf to another. Then, eventually, he'd stopped.

He'd stood there for a while, until I'd asked him what was wrong. He'd said nothing. Then he'd looked at me and told me to sit down.

“You were already sitting on the couch.”

“Fine. You made me stay there. You were acting extremely strange.”

“I was nervous. I thought you were going to figure it out.”

He went quiet. I looked at him for a moment before continuing. “Then you stood in front of me.”

The memory I'd invented had already begun taking on a strange life of its own. I could see the living room we'd imagined. The warm light. The laundry we'd been too lazy to put away properly. The half-eaten chicken wrap sitting on a plate somewhere. Ryan standing there with his hands clasped together because he didn't know what else to do with them.

“And you just stood there,” I murmured. “For what felt like forever.”

Ryan smiled faintly. “I was trying to figure out how to do it. I'd rehearsed it about twenty times but forgotten every word.”

“But you eventually went down on one knee.”

Ryan's smile faded into something quieter.

“Your hands were shaking so badly you had to steady one against your knee.”

I could almost see the nervousness. The ridiculous courage it must take to make yourself vulnerable in that particular way. To kneel in front of someone and offer them the possibility of changing your entire life together.

“And then you looked up at me,” I said. Ryan's eyes returned to mine. “And I knew.”

His expression changed slightly. Just enough to remind me that even imaginary things could land somewhere real.

“Knew what?”

“That I was going to say yes.”

The hammock swayed once beneath us again, pushed gently by the night breeze. Neither of us spoke for several seconds. Then Ryan smiled, and I felt something warm move through me despite the heaviness that had been following us all day. The strange thing about pretending was that we never had to acknowledge how close it sometimes came to the things we actually wanted. We could build an entire life out of nothing, and maybe that's why we liked it.

Ryan was the first one to fall asleep.

It happened gradually. His replies got shorter, his head grew heavier against my shoulder, and eventually there was nothing left to answer. Just the slow, even rhythm of his breathing and the occasional tiny shift whenever the hammock moved beneath us.

I stayed there longer than I should have. Then, carefully, I woke him enough to get him inside. He barely remembered the walk to the bedroom. By the time I pulled the covers over him, his eyes were already closed again.

I stood beside the bed for a while, watching him sleep. And because he was asleep, because there was nothing I could do for him in that particular moment, my mind started doing what it had become frighteningly good at doing.

Counting.

He had hardly eaten anything, not really. The breakfast he'd supposedly eaten that morning had amounted to a few bites of fruit and whatever he could convince me he'd finished because I hadn't been there. Dinner hadn't been much better. I'd watched him push food around his plate, take a few mouthfuls, and then quietly decide he was done.

He'd cut his finger while making dinner. It had been nothing. A stupid little nick from the knife. Except the bleeding had taken longer to stop than it should have. Then there were the bruises...too many of them. Some faint enough that I'd almost convinced myself I was imagining them. Others dark and unmistakable against his skin. And his face had become something I didn't know how to look at without feeling afraid.

Pale. Tired. Sick....

I hated those words. I hated even more that they fit him.

A few days ago, Parsons had looked at the results for a little too long before telling us, his parents included, that his counts had ‘unfortunately’ fallen again.

Unfortunately.

Such a small word. Such an ordinary word. Yet I'd wanted to ask him what exactly it was supposed to mean. Instead, I'd watched Ryan stare at the floor.

They were concerned. That was what Parsons had said. That they were “starting to get concerned.”

As though they hadn't been concerned before. As though concern had levels, and we'd just crossed into another one. Ryan had left the room, and after a while, when he'd been gone for too long, his dad had stopped me from going to look for him and said he'd do so himself.

Later, when we were alone, I'd seen the evidence he'd tried to hide. His eyes had been red. His lashes still slightly wet.

He'd been crying....I knew he had. I knew him well enough now to know the difference between tired eyes and eyes that had been deliberately wiped dry.

And I hadn't asked. Not because I didn't care. God, I cared too much. I just didn't think I had anything left in me that day. That was the part I still couldn't forgive myself for. I had been so emotionally exhausted that I'd seen him hurting and still felt too empty to reach into it with him.

So we'd gone home, we'd pretended. Yesterday, we'd packed and driven his parents to the airport. We'd driven to “Hawaii” and walked to the beach. We'd collected seashells and played pretend and lain beneath a sky full of stars. We'd stargazed until our necks hurt, pointing at constellations we couldn't name and inventing stories for the ones we could. We dreamed up better lives. Happier endings. Entire futures that belonged to us simply because we could imagine them.

Now I sat there and watched Ryan.

Catalogued him.

Unfortunately....his counts had, “unfortunately” fallen again. And now I could see that word everywhere. Mapped across Ryan's frame. In the weight he'd lost. In the food he couldn't finish. In the blood that took too long to stop. In the exhaustion that seemed to have settled into the angles of his face, as though his body had quietly started made room for it.

I lowered my head and pressed my lips against his knuckles. Well aware that the only unfortunate thing about all this was knowing that everything wouldn't be okay simply because I said it with enough certainty.