Chapter 29 Quality over time
I watch Michael, his fingers lightly tapping the edge of the table, the sound of it almost meditative. His words are slow, but they feel solid, like he's piecing something together as he speaks.
“Depends on how much I want it,” he says, voice low but somehow certain, even with the quiet weight of it. “Some things you know are fleeting, but they’re still worth wanting. The good stuff, the deep stuff? It’s not always the longest, but it can be the most impactful.”
I feel the words settle between us. He holds my gaze, and for a moment, it feels like he's almost speaking to something deep inside me. Like he’s digging around, without realizing, into a place I've kept tucked away.
"I guess it’s about quality over time. If it means something.... then I’d want it. For however long it lasts.”
His words hang there, I nod. There’s something piercing in his gaze now, a kind of awareness that’s unsettling. It’s almost as if he knows I’m the kind of person who holds onto things too tightly, who wonders about things that don't make sense.
“Why’d you ask that?” his tone softer now, almost like he's treading lightly, sensing something deeper in my question.
I glance at him, still unsure of how to put my thoughts together. “Is that your question for me? I'm not inclined to answer otherwise.” I say, trying to deflect just a little.
He raises an eyebrow, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Sure. If that’s what it takes to get you to respond.” His words are playful, but there's something serious behind them too. A challenge, but not one that feels like it’s meant to break me. It feels like he's waiting for me to meet him halfway.
I swallow, but instead of retreating, I hold.
For a second, it feels like I might crack, or break, like something’s too close to the surface and I can’t stop it.
I wish, for just a moment, I could be someone who could lie with ease, someone who could disguise things with a smile, slip words past without the weight of truth crushing them. But I’m not that person.
Instead, I meet Michael’s eyes, and I finally say, “I was diagnosed with cancer when I was sixteen. Hodgkin lymphoma.”
The words feel like they’ve slipped from me too easily. His brows shoot up, the shock clear across his face. I don’t want to look at him, not yet. Not while his expression is still shifting, still surprised, still unfamiliar. But I have to. Because I need him to hear this.
"There was a node, I felt it in my neck. I’d been feeling progressively worse for a while. But I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want to be the guy who worried everyone, you know? So I ignored it."
I swallow hard, trying to push the lump away, but it’s there. The way the memories have gotten too sharp. I can’t stop them from coming. I don’t know what compels me to go back there. I don’t know why it’s spilling out now, with Michael sitting across from me, watching in that quiet, unsettling way of his. I just know that once it starts, it doesn’t stop. Like my body's been waiting for someone steady enough to stand still while I unravel.
My parents went away for a few days. An aunt’s wedding. I stayed behind because I still had school, because being responsible felt easier than admitting something was wrong. I told myself I was fine. I was very good at telling myself that.
One day, I wasn’t fine at all. I felt scraped raw from the inside out, breath coming short like my body was rationing it. After school, the panic crept in and I stopped by the hospital on my way home. Just to check, just to be safe. I needed it to be nothing.
They ran tests. Bloodwork. Scans. Time thinned, every sound felt invasive. When the doctor finally sat across from me, his face was careful, something wasn’t right. That much was clear.
He told me they’d found irregularities....nothing definitive yet, but enough to warrant concern. He said there were patterns they didn’t like, results that didn’t quite behave the way they should. He also told me not to panic, that it could still be many things, that this was exactly why they needed more tests. Words stacked on top of each other until they stopped sounding like language.
I asked what they were trying to rule out.
He said cancer, among other things.
I was sixteen. Sitting in a hospital room by myself, in a chair that felt too big. Like I’d wandered into a life I wasn’t meant to be in yet. They handed me a date to come back, the paper warm from the printer, and asked if there was someone they could call.
I said no.
I told myself I didn’t want to worry my parents for no reason. That I needed certainty first. But underneath that was something uglier, a belief that if I could just hold it together long enough, it might disappear. Like it would reward me for being quiet.
There was a tennis event at school. Doubles. I got paired with Dylan, this classmate who I’d had a crush on for ages. The kind that lives quietly in the background, all glances and daydreams, safe because he didn’t even know I existed. I’d been okay with that back then. Watching from a distance had felt easier.
But suddenly there was a real chance to get closer. The next hospital appointment was the same day, and I decided....stupidly, desperately....that one more day wouldn’t matter. That missing it would cost me something I couldn’t afford to lose. And I wasn’t about to be the one who ruined it.
Michael’s hand stills on his mug when I get to this part. His eyes don’t leave me. It feels too intimate, being seen like that.
I hadn’t accounted for how exhausted I already was, how my body had been running on something borrowed even before I stepped onto the court. Tennis turned out to be far more strenuous than I’d imagined, every movement dragging something out of me I didn’t have to give.
I hadn’t accounted for the crowd either. The eyes. The noise. I’d never been used to that kind of attention, never thought about how it might press in on me, tighten around my chest. Or the unforgiving adrenaline, which masked the warning signs just long enough to make everything worse.
And I especially hadn’t accounted for seeing Dylan kiss his girlfriend before the match. The casualness of it. The way it reminded me how far outside the moment I really was.
Mostly, though, I hadn’t accounted for how thin I already was....how little stood between me and the edge. Breathing turned into work, then into something I was failing at. Each inhale scraped, like my body had decided it was done cooperating. I remember my knees giving out before I consciously chose to stop, the court tilting as I dropped, hands braced uselessly against the ground.