But we touch.
Every chance he gets, Nate touches me, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear, grazing my neck with his lips, rubbing the curve of my back with his palm. And I eat it up. I absorb it like nourishment for my soul.
We walk so closely that we bump shoulders, and when we stop, we stand so closely that I could fall over and never hit the ground. Nate would catch me without even trying.
He is a pillar of fire at my side—the heat I’ve always been drawn to, the one person in the world I’ve never wanted to leave.
As we walk the streets, hand in hand, I look around me and let my imagination take flight. Compared with tourist destinations in the U.S., being here is like being thrown back in time. Many of the buildings appear to be simply restored, still boasting their Tudor faces, as if time forgot to pass them by. The cool air carries with it the scent of literary history, smelling of old books, as though the spirit of Shakespeare himself is opening and closing books all over the cloudy sky.
Or at least that’s how it seems to me. But I want to be in a different time, a time when my husband and I are enjoying rather than escaping, when we are running toward something rather than away from it.
So I let whimsy take my mind to another place.
Glancing around, I can easily envision the women who pass us dressed differently. I can picture them made up in Elizabethan finery—brightly colored, heavily padded, and bejeweled. And the men, I can imagine them laced up from head to toe, the ridiculous clothing of that time making even the smallest of movements a challenge.
I journey back with all my senses, back to a simpler time. Back to before. Even if it’s just for a moment, for a moment that exists only in my imagination.
Because “before” for me means Before Diagnosis.
********
Later in the evening, Nate and I enjoy a quiet dinner at the Rooftop Restaurant and Bar above the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, overlooking the River Avon. Our conversation is soft and inconsequential, our gazes lingering and meaningful.
I manage to keep my contented smile intact even as I force food into a stomach that threatens to reject every bite. Silently, I pray prayers I don’t really believe are going anywhere. But I pray them anyway.
Out of desperation.
Sheer desperation.
I ask that my nausea be a result of stress rather than the progression of my disease. Because if it’s not…if it’s progression…I won’t last three months away from home. Our trip will be ruined.
So I pray.
I haven’t suffered much with symptoms up to now, and I hold fast to the hope that I won’t.
Surely the universe can give us three short months.
Surely Nate and I can have that.
Six
Lay Your Hands on Me
Lena
It seems odd and counterintuitive that sex would get better after a terminal diagnosis, but I have found that to be the strange truth. Lately, Nate and I make love more often and with more fervor than ever before, even during our youth.
Maybe it’s the knowledge that our time together is limited. It’s ironic really. Life got in the way before, but now that life is being taken away…
Or maybe it’s my sudden lack of concern with my thicker thighs and fuller stomach.
Maybe it’s simply that we are both more open about our love and our feelings and our desires than ever before. (I mean? there’s no reason to hold back now.) Maybe that’s it.
Or maybe it’s just desperation. Because we are both desperate. I can feel it.
Still, I can’t be sure what it is, but something is at work between us.
After we watched Wendy & Peter Pan at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre earlier, Nate tucks me into our rental car and spirits me back to London as though we are being chased. There is an air of urgency about him, one that I shared but don’t understand. Or maybe I do. Three months is an eternity in some instances, but when it is some of the last months, it is but a heartbeat.
And then it will be over.
Back at the hotel, with his fingers wound tightly around mine, Nate pulls me into the elevator and then into his arms, kissing me with an abandon that would’ve embarrassed me at any other time in my life. After all, we aren’t alone in the little car. But I don’t care. I’m as eager to be kissed as he is to kiss.
At our floor, we break apart just long enough to rush from the elevator and to our room, Nate flinging open the door and then slamming it shut behind us. From that point on, it is a beautiful tangle of hungry moans, clinging lips, and seeking hands.
We finally make it to the bedroom. Our lips, our hands, our hearts can’t seem to get close enough, warm enough, deep enough.
We just can’t seem to get…enough.