Jack's Last Summer

Part 7

Jack picked his way up the sandy path slowly. He was well aware of Skylar right beside him. There were words for this situation, but he couldn’t find them anywhere. They were on his tongue; he could detect their sweet flavour. Warm words. Apologetic words. The kind of words that would make her look less defeated.

“I’m sorry about Kyle. He doesn’t think.” He said carefully. Picking his flavours.

“It’s alright. I get it a lot.” Skylar sighed and wrapped her arms around her waist. She radiated with insecurity. Maybe it would accelerate the growth of his cancer, thought Jack. Or create a new one.

“It’s not. You shouldn’t. It’s not right.” Jack experimented with the words that came to his mind. Tonight they came groggily; hard to taste through the fog of exhaustion.

“Shit happens.”

Those words thrust a stake right through Jack’s tired heart.

“You can say that again.” He said bitterly.

Suddenly Skylar halted, realising what she had just said.

“Oh god, Jack. I’m so sorry.” She choked and freed her arms from her waist, slinging them around him carefully.

“It’s alright. I get it a lot.” He smiled a little and hugged her back.

The pair continued walking into the darkness, holding hands. Not in a romantic way; just for the confirmation and reassurance of friendly contact of another human being. Jack swung their interlocked arms gently.

“We’re two fucked up individuals.” Skylar concluded finally with a sour laugh.

“That we are.”

--

Jack lay on the bed with his head propped up by a stack of pillows. His eyelids were heavy but he couldn’t let himself sleep. Not yet.

“How did you meet Kyle?” He asked Skylar.

“At a party. I was drunk. We fucked.” She stated simply and gulped down a mouthful of water from her ever present bottle.

“Oh. So you aren’t together?” Jack asked, hoping the words didn’t sound as desperate as they tasted as they rolled off his tongue.

“Ha. No. We aren’t. We’re just friends, as he calls it.” Skylar said with a sharp edged bitterness.

“He’s my friend, but… He really can be a douche, can’t he?”

“Well, it’s probably good for him that we’re not in a relationship. That would give me more reason to go off at him for what he said to me tonight,” She glared at her hands. “There’s no way in hell that I’m sharing a bed with him. I’ll go on the couch.”

“You can crash here.” Jack blurted out. Shit, shit, shit.

“Really? You’d be cool with that?” Skylar smiled down at him with that adorable yet horribly sad grin of hers.

“Totally. I’ll get lonely up here all alone.” The words came much easier now, almost like he was drunk.

“Thanks heaps, Jack.” She leaned towards him and closed her eyes.

Something screeched in the space between Jack’s temples. Surely this wasn’t right. She realised that he was dying soon, right? He shouldn’t commit to anyone. Nobody should commit to him.

A quote drifted lazily to Jack’s mind. Appropriately enough, it was from The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. ‘I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?’ The group of words flung themselves from either side of his headto the next, a cacophony of emotions and feelings that should have a taste but Jack was too numb to taste it, he couldn’t taste it.

All he could taste was Skylar’s cold lips on his own.