"Are you okay?" I ask her with worry.
She nods but has to take a couple of deep breaths. "I'm sorry. That was just … really intense and scary as hell. I wasn't prepared for it."
I can imagine. Jillian and I had talked a lot about her medical condition that day on Cannon Beach so I could understand it. I was heartened to learn her blindness wouldn't be a complete blackout type of inability to see, but more of a blurred distortion that will make it impossible for her to see much other than large shapes or moving shadows. She would be legally blind one day, but it won't be blackness. And though she may not be able to see the actual shape and color of the sun, some of its miraculous light will be able to get through.
But still, there's no doubt that having her sight ripped away when she wasn't prepared for it, knowing it's her permanent destiny one day, shook her up and with good reason. I'm surprised Jillian's still standing on her feet.
"I'm sorry," I say as an afterthought. "I didn't even think they would do something like that."
"No, it's okay," she says, still a little breathless. Something that sounds like it may be a laugh comes from her, but then her face crumples and tears fill her eyes.
"Hey, hey … what's wrong, baby?" I say in a soothing tone as I bring my hands to her face. Other people are now walking out of the cave past us, but I pay them no mind.
"I'm an absolute mess," she says with a quavering voice. "I talk such a good game of being brave and optimistic that I almost believed my own hype."
"Jillian," I start to say consolingly, but she shakes her head.
"A few seconds of darkness and I freaked out," she says quietly, dropping her gaze from mine. "And do you know what was running through my mind?"
I shake my head, but she doesn't see me because she's looking at the ground, so I clear my throat and say, "What was running through your mind?"
"That I couldn't do this," she says with utter desolation. "That I cannot handle being blind. I don't want to lose my sight. It's not fair."
I use my palms to tilt her face back up, leaning down so we're staring eye to eye. "That's bullshit, Jillian. You can handle anything."
"No, I don't-"
"I said it's bullshit." This comes out forcefully and with firm resolve. She blinks at me in surprise. "Listen … it's okay if you want to sunshine your way through life and look on the bright side of things. And it's also okay if you get scared and think the world is falling in on you. You can have both. You can have moments of great confidence in yourself, and then moments where you're so low you don't think you can make it another day. But the one thing you can never do is give up the belief that it will all be okay. And you'll know it will all be okay because regardless if you're up or down, I'll be with you through it all."
Jillian's mouth falls open, her eyes filling with surprise. "You will?"
I don't answer her directly. Instead, I follow my heart because it is now completely wide open with all the amazing possibilities that could be my life if I have the courage to face it. "One day in the future, a long time from now when we're old and gray, someone will look at me and they'll note the way I look at you. You may not be able to see me, but they will. And they'll see that look on my face, and they'll be compelled to ask me, ‘Christopher, do you remember the day you started to fall in love with Jillian?'."
"And what will you say?" Jillian asks on a whisper.
Leaning down, her face still held in my hand and a half, I brush my lips against hers. "I'll tell them the truth. That the process started for me on the very first day I met you. I'll never forget the radiance that you emanated from your sunshiny blonde hair, to your sweet, tender voice, to the way in which you clearly had room in your heart for everyone in that room."
"Even assholes like you?" she asks with a smile.
"Even assholes like me," I tell her and then I continue. "And I'll tell them that I kept falling in love with you during an amazing seven-day trip across the country where not even death could mar the perfectness of our time together."
"Wow," Jillian says in breathless wonder. "I did not know you had such poetic words in you."
"Neither did I," I tell her truthfully with a grin. "But I mean them. You've taught me so much in such a little bit of time, and I am so fucking lucky that you can see past the broken parts of me. You made me see that hope is a wonderful thing, and I want to work hard to turn those dreams into reality. Jillian, you were my bucket list and I didn't even know it."
"Christopher," Jillian says as she steps into me, breaking my hold on her face. She places her cheek on my chest and wraps her arms around my waist. "I know there was a time you didn't believe it, but I think you can accept it now. You're an easy man to love."
We stand like that for God knows how long. Her arms around my waist, mine tightly wound around her back. Her cheek on my chest, feeling my heart beat, and mine on the top of her head that was warmed by the summer sun.
I have no delusions that my life will now be all unicorns and rainbows. In fact, I anticipate Jillian and I will have tough times ahead as life continues to throw its curveballs at us. But my heart has been softened and my mind has been opened, and I've learned some important truths about myself.
A great gift has been bestowed upon me, and that is the gift of life. What I choose to make of it is all on me, but I can lean on my friends when I need to. I also know not everyone can reap the rewards of the life that's been handed to them, and some will lose it along the way, intentional or not. Those losses will forever be etched upon my soul.
I choose to live.
I choose to love.
I choose to forge my path.
Life is my choice.
Epilogue
Four months later …
Death isn't pretty and because we loved Connor so much, it was uglier than normal. He held on for far longer than he should have, despite his parents begging and pleading his heavily drugged mind to just give up the fight and let go. Toward the end, he wasn't conscious. I'm not sure if he even knew we were there, but I'll never have a single fucking regret about Connor McCann being my friend, even though his loss was the most painful thing I've ever endured in my life.
Jillian and I spent every bit of our free time with him, and I think we've officially been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. McCann. We had movie sleepovers at Connor's house, and when he was well enough, we'd take weekend trips to the beach or the mountains. Day by day, his cancer grew, spread, and started to deteriorate the healthy parts of him. His body became skeletal because he had no appetite, and his skin turned an ashy gray. Before he started getting hardcore pain medications that kept him almost coma-like, he'd be so tired he'd fall asleep in the middle of a conversation.
But through it all, he always had that smile and his mischievous sense of humor that made it bearable.
As we stand in the cemetery under gray skies and a misting rain that makes the tip of my nose feel like ice, I suppress a spinal shiver that has everything to do with the frigid December weather and nothing to do with the fact I find death to be an abysmally ugly condition.
But this isn't our first rodeo-standing before a gravestone, I mean.
Grieving.
The McCanns generously buried Barb in the same cemetery, one plot over from Connor's so they can rest side by side. She had no family or friends. To prevent her from being buried a pauper by the state, well … I guess you can say the McCanns adopted her too.
I'll never forget the day I last spoke to Connor before he went under the deep sleep before death. He'd told me that he was confident Barb would be waiting for him on the other side, so I wasn't to worry about it.
I hope that's true.
As the minister talks about the afterlife over Connor's casket, my eyes cut to the left to look at Barb's headstone. While the McCanns paid for her burial, I paid for the headstone. I wanted to do something nice for Barb, and I hope she appreciates it. Otherwise, if anyone ever had the ability to come back and haunt me from the grave, it would be her.
Let's pray for the sun to shine its warmth upon us always,
So we never forget the hard truth of it.
Jillian came up with the epitaph for Barb's grave marker. It's followed simply by the words "Barbara H. Stiles. Our Friend."
Nothing more needed to be said. We chose not to put the years she lived beneath her name. Frankly, we think she stopped living the night her uncle first abused her.
Jillian squeezes my hand, and I look down at her.
"What are you thinking?" she asks softly.
"Whether Barb will haunt me at some point," I say.
Jillian gives a quiet laugh. "I think Connor will keep her under control."
God, I hope so. Standing here, among this plot of earth collecting souls and dried bones-my heart hurts for me, for her, for them-and I know I should feel some guilt because I'm the one who got a silver lining.
All thanks to the girl with the glass perpetually half full.
No … wait.
That's not right.
Jillian doesn't do half full. She's a brimming-to-capacity kind of woman.
My kind of woman.
I look back to Barb's headstone one more time and read the beautiful words Jillian chose. They're poignant and mean so much to me. When she said them aloud all those months ago as we watched the sun come out after a dark rainstorm, I never thought they meant anything more than a basic tenet of Jillian Martel's philosophy on life. I never realized they would have a profound effect on me. To others, they would fall on deaf ears.