Breeze of Life (4 page)

I took a deep breath to contain my sorrow, lord knows Mia didn’t need it. “Um, I guess I like many different kinds of music—jazz, rock, R&B, pop, classical. I do love Pink, what about you?”

“Oh my God I love Pink too. My mum got me tickets for her concert in January!”  Mia was so excited I couldn’t help but smile with her.

“Wow, that’ll be awesome. I’ve never seen her live.”

“Oh my God!” she squealed again. It seemed as if ‘oh my God’ was the phrase of choice for teenage girls these days. “You should come with us—you and Harper; my brother Jack is coming and he’s friends with Harper. It will be awesome.” My mind raced to keep up with Mia’s excitement.

“You know Harper?” I asked a little surprised. He had never mentioned Mia or Jack to me, not even in passing.

“Of course, Jack surfs on the tour with Harper. He always comes for dinner when he’s not away and he sits with us when we go and watch Jack surf. I’ve known him for years.” I don’t know why this information bothered me so much. Harper and I were best friends and we certainly had our own lives outside of each other. Harper had plenty of friends I didn’t know about. I shook the irrational irritation off as Mia continued to ramble on about Pink and how Harper and I could stay with them when we came up for it.

“Your family might not want Harper and me to crash the Pink party,” I confessed.

Mia shook her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. Jack will be stoked that he has a guy to hang out with and Mum loves everyone, she’ll be cooking you shepherd’s pie and trying to fatten you up in no time. Come on, pull your phone out and see if you can get any tickets.” Suddenly, I was absorbed in the joy of that moment, excited about the possibility of seeing Pink and maybe hanging out with Mia’s family. Once I reached the event site and found the tickets for Pink’s
Rock the House
tour, I found a few random seats available. I actually managed to find two seats only a few rows away from Mia and her family. I stared at the screen of my phone for the longest time debating whether to buy the tickets or not. Maybe Harper kept Mia and her family a secret for a reason, maybe he didn’t want me hanging out with them. I glanced across the room and Harper’s eyes met mine. He gave me a subtle nod and a wink. No, this was right, he brought me here to meet Mia. He wanted me here, he wanted me in this part of his life. I looked back down at the screen of my phone. The tickets were almost three hundred dollars and I didn’t have much more than that in my account.

“Come on, you only live once.” Mia nudged my arm from beside me and without another thought I bought the damn tickets. “Yay!” Mia squealed, wrapping her arms around my neck for a hug. I had only known her for less than fifteen minutes and she already felt like a long lost friend.

“So, what you listening to on that thing?” I asked pocketing my phone in a moment of dazed wonder.  Mia offered me the ear buds and I held them to my ears as she pressed the play icon.
I Feel Pretty/Unpretty
by the cast of Glee played loudly through my ears. After a short while, I pulled out the buds. The words to the song played over in my mind and resonated through my body. Feeling confident in your own skin was more beautiful than any aesthetic enhancements, true beauty reached beyond the skin. I knew I shouldn’t be ashamed or embarrassed by the way I looked now, but knowing and doing were worlds apart for me right now.

I couldn’t help but feel ugly, so I was ugly. My eyes saw what they wanted to. I could cover all the mirrors in the world and wrap my head behind all the fabric I could get my hands on, but if I didn’t feel pretty inside, I would never feel pretty outside. I looked at Mia and she was observing my scarf. For the first time since I had lost my hair I was feeling self-conscious for covering it.

“My mum made up a playlist for the days I feel yucky. Listening to these songs makes me feel better,” Mia explained. I nodded and handed her back the ear buds.

“That’s a good idea,” I murmured.

“I didn’t know Harper had a girlfriend?” Mia said with a bit too much enthusiasm in her voice.

My laugh was a little uneasy. “Well, no. Harper doesn’t have a girlfriend. We’ve been friends since we were kids, I’m his flat mate.” Mia glanced over to where Harper was. He was currently trying to play a dance game on the Nintendo Wii.

“He sure seems to like you,” Mia chuckled. With my confused look she nodded in his direction. I caught Harper looking my way and his eyes danced with happiness. “He keeps looking at you like a lovesick puppy, I’ve never seen him look like that.”

I laughed. “Oh yeah, and what do you know about that?”

Mia shrugged. “I have a boyfriend. His name is Sam and he used to look at me like that when he wanted to ask me out.”

“Ohhhhh, do you have a picture?” I asked. Mia flicked through her iPod and pulled up a picture of her standing beside a tall blonde boy with a cheeky grin. “He’s cute,” I whispered.

“Yep, and he’s mine.” Mia grinned proudly. “And that over there looks like yours.” She nodded at Harper. I laughed at his goofy attempts to dance. “Come on, he is really embarrassing himself.” I followed Mia over to the gaming section where the girls were in fits of laughter at Harper’s very poor attempts to dance. I knew he was putting it on thick, he could dance just fine.

“Mia and I are going to take you down Harper Somerville.” I chuckled from behind him. He stopped dancing like a loon and turned to look at me with a raised brow.

“Bring it on, Breeze Delaney.” He grinned, giving Mia a hug. “How’s it going you little terror?” She punched him playfully.

“Pretty good, Jack’s home.” Her face lit up as she mentioned her brother’s name.

“Yeah well, he bombed out of the last round big time. I think I need to give him another surf lesson,” Harper said thoughtfully. Mia snorted.

“I’ll be sure to tell him.”

Finally Harper was partnered with a tall dark-haired boy called Ryder. Boys against girls and in the spirit of fairness Mia and I let the boys go first.  They spent a painstakingly long time choosing a song and in the end they agreed on Flo Rida’s
Good Feeling
. Harper held nothing back, breaking out all his moves which had the girls gushing and the boys hi-fiving him. Once they were finished, we moved them aside and chose our song, it was an easy choice, Pink’s
So What.
Mia and I danced our hearts out and when we were finished it was up to the spectators to decide on a winner. It was Mia and I, of course, and we hi-fived and hugged like a pair of crazy girls. Harper grinned with lazy satisfaction, approaching me slowly, his gaze holding mine.

“Nicely played, Breeze baby,” he murmured. His arm wound its way behind my back and he pulled me close, placing a chaste kiss to my forehead. Like always, my heart did a crazy flip at his touch. The way Harper had looked down on me, the heat in his stare was unfamiliar and confusing though. Suddenly our friendship felt different, more intense and maybe a little bit thrilling. And just like that I was entertaining thoughts of more. More Harper, more us, more life. I didn’t want to cling to any of those possibilities because to not get them would hurt too much. For a long time now I had convinced myself there was nothing in my future, entertaining thoughts of something now would only lead to disappointment.

***

Later that evening, I wandered out from my bedroom to find the dining table, which had sat unused since Harper left in March, full of all the ingredients needed to make tacos and my stomach grumbled with satisfaction. Harper smiled from the kitchen and quickly poured two glasses of water and joined me. Just like that my mood picked up. All it took was one smile, one quirk of his lips and my world felt brighter.

“You did great in Portugal,” I quietly confessed as we sat in an almost painfully awkward yet civilized manner. We usually only ate at the table when we had guests over.

“You saw?” Harper asked surprised.

“Of course, I watched via the live feed on the net. I’ve watched most of your heats through the year when I was able to.” Harper seemed pleased with that revelation.

“When is your next doctor’s appointment?” he asked.

“The third.”

“And what happens at that one?”

I shrugged. “Results from the last tests, more tests. I hope some indication of how long I’ve got to live.” My voice was excruciatingly flat and void of emotion. This was my death voice, the one I purposefully forced when I talked about cancer and my future. It took every ounce of my strength not to start crying the moment my lips parted to speak, so this was how I dealt with it, detached.

“Your positive attitude is astounding,” Harper said a little too sarcastically for my liking. “With thoughts like that, I understand why you mope around the apartment all day.” I took a deep breath trying not to lose my temper, I simply didn’t have the energy to do this tonight.

“I’m just being realistic.” I shrugged with nonchalance.

I could see Harper shaking his head in disbelief beside me. “George tells me you haven’t played much.” He signaled to my guitar. “Why?” I looked at my guitar that sat on the couch where Harper had laid it down this morning. A part of me wanted to play but I was afraid of enjoying something I might not have the pleasure of enjoying much longer. Somehow my mind had reached the decision it was easier to give it up now rather than have it ruthlessly snatched away from me later. It was quite clearly a ridiculous thought now that I was trying to reason it aloud.

“I don’t feel like playing. It doesn’t bring me the peace it used to, it just makes me sad.”

Harper laughed but it was a sound of sarcasm rather than genuine happiness. “And you’re not already sad? Ever think it might bring you some joy if you allow it?”

I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes and counted to ten.  Finally, I raised my gaze to Harper’s. “What are you trying to do? You think you can waltz in here and make everything okay? You’re going to what, fix me? Make it all okay with your pretty smile and easy going attitude? I have cancer, Harper, it is going to kill me!” Harper threw a tea-towel across the table and looked me straight in the eye.

“Fuck, Bree, will you give it a fucking rest with the death shit! Yeah you’ve got cancer and it sucks, it’s fucking unfair! I hate that you are sick and I hate that you’re scared and sad, but you need to quit with this bullshit because at the end of the day you are being selfish. You are more than likely going to be fine and yet you’re moping around this house like you’re already dead. There are people in a worse place then you and you need to realize that.” They say the truth hurts and, yep, their pretty accurate. Harper’s blunt admission tore my heart in two. What he didn’t understand was that I wanted it to be that easy, just let common sense prevail. I wanted to smile and have the ‘old’ Bree back. I had tried everything to drag myself out of this depression, but one thing kept pulling me back down—death. I wasn’t ready to die, it scared the hell out of me. It kept me down, it kept the sorrow locked inside me. I saw the cost of the words that Harper had said in his eyes, on his regretful face. He was scared too, but it wasn’t his body that had been attacked by cancer. He wasn’t the one struggling, he didn’t understand, he couldn’t understand.

“I think I’ve earned the right to feel a little sorry for myself, Harper. You weren’t here, you didn’t see the bad days when I was so sick I couldn’t move, where all I could do was lean over the side of the bed and hope my puke made it into the bucket. Not even the damn tablets they gave me could help with that. The ulcers in my mouth were so bad it hurt to swallow. I forgot stuff all the time; George had to keep a ‘Bree’ diary cause Bree couldn’t take care of her own freakin’ life.” Damn it, the tears were threatening to fall yet again. I pushed them down and my throat throbbed with the effort it took to ignore them.

“There was a reason I wasn’t here for all that, Breeze, so don’t give me the ‘you weren’t here’ bullshit and yeah, it all fucking sucks, but you know what? You are alive right now, breathing, beating heart and all. You are able to leave the apartment and live, that’s more than what others have.” My lips trembled; my eyes filled with unshed tears.  “You’re pissed off cause you know I’m right,” Harper said in a quiet voice. I refused to look him in the eye as I took a deep breath.

“I get it, Harper, I understand what you’re saying but when I got cancer something inside of me broke. I’m filled with selfish thoughts like how I won’t have children or get married. I want to smile but it’s just easier to frown. I want to go outside and enjoy the sun but when I’m out there the sadness just follows me, I get so tired of pretending everything is okay for other people’s benefit. At least in here I can be myself, I can be sad. At least death might bring me peace from all this selfish sorrow.” Harper’s eyes dropped with understanding and sadness and it was that look that caused the first tear to slip away. “Thank you, for this,” I waved my hand to encompass the food that I had barely touched. “And thank you for coming home,” I added before once again retreating to my room.

Chapter 4

Road Tripping

An impromptu journey in a vehicle; no two road trips are alike; games and rules may apply

Harper didn’t follow me last night, he didn’t climb into my bed and wrap his arms around me. To say it didn’t matter to me would be a lie. After only one night I missed his warmth at my side. My sleep was inundated with its usual restlessness and this morning as I slid from under my sheets I was still laden with vague memories of fitful sleep. I pulled on a pair of yoga pants and shuffled out of my bedroom door only to be confronted by Harper. He stood in the doorway to his room across the hall from me wearing a cheeky grin that played havoc with my heart. It took another second for my foggy brain to realize he had shaved his head. Not to the skin short, but buzz cut short all over. It wasn’t fair. How did he still look so damn good? I reached down grabbing a discarded cushion from my bed and threw it at him, scoring a direct hit right in the face.

“Why did you do that, you jerk?” I mumbled.

“You don’t like the way I look anymore?” He held his hand to his heart feigning hurt.