Gift of a Lifetime

IV

"--and then I found out that I had cancer, which was apparently caused from my asthma," I was talking at the speed of light, "and my body was so small and frail that it couldn't fight it and I . . ." I was practically sobbing at this point. (We were at my house, later that night, because I knew something like this would happen and I wouldn't be able to return to my classes. We were propped up at the top of my bed side by side.) "And I-" I was breathing so heavily I could hardly speak, "I think Ryan was the one who told people? I told him all this and he didn't believe me and then after a minute of thinking he suddenly started acting all weird and supportive-" I fell into a pit of trembling, shaking breaths, and tears falling and dripping onto my shirt.

I held onto him by his arms and we put our foreheads together in the gentlest way. He didn't judge me. He never did.

He released his arms from my grasp and took my hands in his. "It's gonna be okay."

What Jayden didn't know was that, beyond that point, nothing was going to be okay.

I sighed out all of my stress. "You have no idea how badly I needed to hear that."

At that, he wrapped his arms around me and pressed my head into his chest. I cried even harder when I began to remember my mother, and the way she would do that. Tears fell into the collar of his shirt. My hands subconsciously grabbed onto him to keep from shaking so hard he had to let go of me.

"Shh," I remember him telling me in a soft murmur, bringing the two of us back to lay against the head board of my bed. "Go to sleep, Tommy."

His arms around me, one around my neck, looping to rest on my upper back and the other around my head to cover my face from the light of the hallway seeping through the open bedroom door. And mine on him, one hand just resting on his stomach, the other barely stretching out to lay across his slim waist. His hand on my back moving in a lulling pattern, me, tears still streaming from my eyes and soaking his shirt, though he didn't seem to mind -honestly he didn't seem to mind anything, whether you spilt water onto a school paper, drank the rest of his drink on accident, or if he left something at my house he wasn't bothered, said he trusted me to keep it safe.

It was dreamlike to sleep next to him so close yet so comfortable. The next day he acted as if it was a normal thing to do, as if it wasn't anything out of the ordinary to do as friends. I had almost wanted to open up and talk to him, how weird I felt about it, but I knew it would sound dumb -hey, just wanted to let you know that it was weird that you were comforting me during a panic attack, never do that again.

Because, in a way, I didn't want him to never do that again.