Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 151085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
This is everything I’ve missed, and my body laps at it like a starved stray, taking not one drop for granted. I slip my thumb between her legs, stroking the nub of nerves every time she rocks and rolls, takes me deeper into her body.
We pound out a rhythm of you are mine and I am yours.
And mine and mine and mine and mine.
And yours and yours and yours and yours.
Our bodies don’t let go, wet and wondrous and welded by sweat and lust and desperation.
“Oh, God,” she cries out, linking her hands behind her neck and riding me harder, her face twisting in ecstasy. I’m not far behind, spilling into her, my voice broken, harsh, hoarse, nothing but strips of sound. I come so hard it’s bright behind my eyes, and we are incandescent. The dying rays of sunlight—the last breath of day.
Golden.
Magic.
Light.
I sit up while she’s still astride, while I’m still inside, and press my palms to her back. Through the smooth skin and through the latticework of her bones, her heart bellows. Somehow this union, more than the transplant, more than the last two months of healing, confirms that she is alive—that she is safe—and it moves me. I’m not sure if I’ve held it back on purpose, or if this reuniting of soul and flesh razes my defenses, but I taste tears. Mine, hers, relief, joy, mingling on our cheeks.
“I love you,” she sobs, clenching her knees at my waist, folding her elbows around my neck, holding me so tightly I can’t breathe and I don’t care.
“And I . . .” My voice fails. The moment palpitates with the unevenness of my breaths and I give up on controlling anything. This is a free fall and I surrender. “I love you back.”
We stay that way, her head tucked into the curve of my neck. For a few moments, the scent and feel of her comprise my entire universe. When she finally rolls off and falls to her side on the bed, her fingers find mine immediately. I lie down, too, drawing her into me, kissing the top of her head. I pull back a little so I can study her face, commit every curve and line to memory. I wish I had my camera to capture not just her beautiful body, which still bears the scars of her fight, but to capture my life molded into flesh and bone—formed into a person. To capture the picture of my contentment, mixed into her molecules and layered in her skin and bones.
And then I remember that we have captured it.
“Hey,” I tell her, cupping her cheek. “I want to show you something.”
69
Neevah
I’m still halfway to Mars after we make love, and it’s hard to come back to earth, but I clean up, slip on Canon’s I’m Gonna Git You Sucka T-shirt and follow him downstairs. He grins over his shoulder and opens the door to the theater.
“So I had an idea,” he says, leading me down the steps.
“Always dangerous,” I laugh.
He sits down in the front row and pulls me onto his lap. “We have all this footage now of your journey with lupus.”
“Yeah,” I reply, smiling at the thought of my initial reticence to even have my picture taken while I was in the thick of the flare-up. Canon took so many photos of me that day in the studio after I re-watched The Magic Hour. Then he turned on his video camera, and I started talking. Everything that was happening inside came pouring out, a deluge of emotions and reflections. We haven’t looked back since, capturing all my thoughts and milestones along the way. It’s been cathartic, maybe as much for him as for me. Another thing we’ve bonded around.
“I thought about doing a documentary,” he says, caressing my hand.
I turn my head to peer at him in the dim light of the theater. “Really? Wow that could be . . .that could be amazing.”
“I’m glad you think so.” He stands, depositing me in the seat and walking to the back of the theater. “Because I want to show you a little something I’ve been working on.”
“Working on? In all your spare time?”
“We weren’t shooting,” he says, shrugging. “I had a little time on my hands. Actually once I started, I couldn’t stop.”
“Couldn’t stop what?”
“This.”
He dims the lights and the screen comes to life. My words come to life.
“I have lupus. It does not have me.”
I watch myself—that version of myself from a few months ago—onscreen, staring into the camera and saying the words that changed my life. Those words and that perspective, so much a part of me now, were new to me then. The fear still lingered in my eyes that day after I watched Remy’s final sunset. Hell, sometimes that fear returns, roaring back to taunt me, but sitting on the floor of Canon’s studio that day, I kept it at bay. For the first time, I held the reality of my disease in one hand and the necessity of my will to fight in the other. Not only to fight its effects on my body, but on my soul. On my very sense of self.