Nerd Girl(115)

“Hey,” he said quietly and gave me a shaky little smile. This wasn’t one of the sexy, casual, or seductive smiles I’d gotten used to. There was no hug or kiss like he normally greeted me with. He had both hands in the front pockets of his jeans and his shoulders were hunched, his eyes uncomfortably shifty. He looked like a little boy who knew he had done something wrong.

“You look so guilty,” I blurted out and tried smiling. I intended to sound like I was teasing him, but his face fell flat and I knew this conversation wasn’t going to go well. I started to feel my stomach churn.

He moved to the side of the doorway, which was his gesture to let me in. He closed the door behind me and I stood uncomfortably in the foyer, not knowing where to go or what to do.

When I turned around, he was standing inches from me. He was so close I could feel the warmth radiating off of his body. I wanted to lean into him so badly and have him just hold me and kiss me like it was the most natural thing on earth for us to do. I could see his restraint, though, which was strange in itself. I could sense he wanted to touch me, but something told me not to reach out for him right now.

We stood awkwardly, staring at each other. The silence was deafening. “What’s going on with you, Ryan?” I asked quietly. I paused for a moment to let the question hang in the air.

Ryan didn’t speak immediately. Instead, he walked over to his sofa and sat on its edge, resting his elbows on his knees and leaning forward. His hands were folded together in front of him. “Catherine is sick,” he said, looking at his hands.

“I figured that out on my own. You’ve been avoiding me,” I said accusingly.

I hadn’t moved yet from the entryway, but I was looking at him now. He looked up at me, too, and for the first time since I arrived, we were making eye contact. “She has stage two breast cancer. For the next I don’t know how long, the unforeseeable future, she’ll get poked and prodded, have one test after another, have surgery to remove the tumor, go through multiple rounds of chemo, probably get a mastectomy, radiation, and God knows what else.”

I gasped and covered my mouth in shock. “Oh my God,” I whispered. “Ryan, I’m so sorry.” My heart had started pounding. An overwhelming feeling of sadness and heartache consumed me as I slowly grasped what Catherine was about to endure. I rushed over to Ryan’s side and sat next to him. I refrained from touching him, though. There was still a sense of restraint emulating from his body, putting me on alert.

Ryan turned to face me. When I met his eyes, a shiver ran through me. There was a deep sadness in them. His face looked completely tortured and his eyes were shining with moisture. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck and my heard pounded even faster in my chest.

“Ryan, she’ll get through this,” I said, trying to reassure him. But what did I really know about Catherine’s condition? Stage two was beatable, wasn’t it? I didn’t know much about cancer, but I knew that stage four was the worst. He looked so upset. I struggled to find the words to comfort him.

“No, Julia, you don’t understand.” His voice cracked as he spoke. He lifted his hand to caress my face and gently brushed his thumb along my cheek, my jawline, and then to my lips. The look in his eyes was so sad.

“Ryan, you’re scaring me,” I whispered. “What don’t I understand?”

“Catherine needs me, Julia. She has no one else to help her through this. Her only immediate family is her dad and he’s in an adult care facility. He barely even knows who she is anymore.”

“Okay. Then you’re there for her. We talked about this. I’ll support you, and Catherine, through this. If it’s still too hard for her to see or be around me, I understand and I’ll respect her wishes to remain away. Some things are much too important to let a little bit of relationship possessiveness get in the way. We’ll be fine. She’ll be fine,” I appealed to him in earnest.

But Ryan was shaking his head. “Julia, she needs me.”

Okay, I get that already.

“She’s asked for … all of me.” He said it so quietly I had to strain to hear him.

“What exactly does that mean?” I asked softly, my face contorting with obvious confusion.

And then he spelled it out. “She’s asked me to be by her side through all of this. She wants me to break up with you and be with her. She says she can’t do this alone, that the idea of me going home to you every night breaks her heart, body, and soul. She says she can’t fight this thing without my support.”

“What?!” I stood up, not believing what I had just heard him say. The NERVE of her! I looked at him with my head slightly cocked to the side. Did I really just hear him right?