Sunshiner

For the first time in a very long time, I was scared.

Candace was hunched over, red faced and breathless. Her coughs had been loud and violent for only a few seconds, for she quickly ran out of breath and the hacking had subsided to a sickening rasping sound. She gasped for air several times, but every time she did so it seemed to make it worse.

“Candace? Candace! Are you okay? Do you need help? What do you need?” I was spitting out questions rapidly; I didn’t know what else to do and I was freaking out. Candace couldn’t answer my questions, however, because she was still too out of breath.

Do something, you fucking idiot. My mind was racing, but my body refused to listen. I was frozen still. Do something!

Right. Right, okay. I need to help her. Water.

“Water,” I said aloud, and she only nodded, and without further ado I darted into the attached bathroom. At first I couldn’t find a cup, and I began to swear uncontrollably; leave it up to the piece of shit motel service to forget to put a cup in the godforsaken bathroom. Thinking on my feet, and actually using some common sense, I looked in the cabinet under the sink – and thank god. There was a cup. It was chipped on the side and absolutely filthy, and when I tried to clean it in the sink, the water came out brown and gross. I had to wait a few seconds before it began to run clear, and while waiting I could hear Candace continue to cough.

“Come on, hurry the fuck up, you stupid fucking sink,” I cursed as the faucet sputtered and spit, leaking out water at a snail pace. It took nearly two fucking minutes for the cup to fill up.

My heart was pounding so hard. So hard. I couldn’t ever remember feeling this terrified throughout my entire life, not even when I was still a baby and scared of the monsters in my closet. This was different than those imbecile monsters, though. This was real. This was too real.

“Here,” I said, darting out of the bathroom with the cup in my hand. Candace’s coughing fit had subsided; she was sitting on the corner of the mattress, hands tucked between her knees. She was staring blankly at the awful painting on the wall and she hardly blinked when I had reentered the room. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glazed over; her coughing had hurt so much she had cried. She was very silent, which should have been a relief since at least now she didn’t sound like she was going to throw up a lung, but instead her silence was just as scary as her coughing.

She took the water without a word, and in two giant gulps she had downed the entire cup, save for the last sip. I wanted to urge her to finish it, but then I remembered that Candace never liked finishing her drinks. She had told me once that the last sip grossed her out. Apparently it contained all of the backwash or something like that.

I wanted to sit down next to her, to wrap my arms around her and make her feel better, to make me feel better, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t be still. I needed to keep moving, to keep my mind busy. “I’ll, um, get you more water,” I said slowly. She only nodded again. She still hadn’t made eye contact.

I went into the sink less hurried this time, willing my heart rate to slow down a bit. As I waited for the cup to fill up again, I leaned both arms on either side of the sink and dared a glance at myself in the dusty mirror. Sea-green eyes stared back at me. My face held an emotion that I was unfamiliar with. In a word, I looked terrible.

“Okay, Kase, okay,” I muttered to myself, hopefully quietly enough so that Candace wouldn’t hear me. “Get a grip.” I splashed some water on my face and then ran a hand through my hair. I blinked a few times in the hopes that it would make me look less like I got hit by a train and more like I was calm and confident. I couldn’t look like I was afraid. If I did, then how was I supposed to be able to comfort Candace?

Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the cup and headed back into the room. Candace hadn’t moved from her spot. I sat down next to her, ignoring the puff of smoke that wheezed out of the side of the mattress, and handed the water to Candace. I hoped that she would finally look at me. That she would smile and say that everything was going to be okay. But she didn’t.

“Thanks,” she said. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. Instead of drinking the water like she had done last time, she placed it in her lap and stared at it. I looked at her hands and realized that she was trembling. Moving cautiously, I gently placed a hand over hers and gripped her fingers firmly. She stopped trembling under my touch and I took that as a good sign.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” I asked softly.

“Everyone coughs,” she replied quickly.

“You already used that lie on me,” I said. I removed my hand from hers and brought it up to her face, cupping her chin and forcing her to look at me. I immediately wished I hadn’t. Her honey eyes were glistening with tears and there was an emotion in them that I couldn’t quite comprehend, but then again I don’t think I really wanted to. I didn’t want to understand how she was feeling. I was scared enough as it was. “Not everyone coughs,” I went on, trying my best to keep my voice steady. “Not like that, at least.”

She stared at me for a very long moment and the emotion in her eyes was so raw and so powerful and so terrifying that there weren’t any words to fully describe it. For a second I thought that I was going to break. I thought that I was going to take her in my arms and tell her that everything was fine and not bother her with questions anymore. I thought I was going to let her keep her secret.

Much to my surprise, however, she broke down first.

In one, shuddering sob, she had thrown herself into my chest and buried her face in the crook of my shoulder. I fell over from the force and landed on my back on the mattress with her on top of me. My arms reflexively went around her waist and I held her close to me, tighter than I had ever held her before. Her cries were completely silent and I would have had no idea she was crying were it not for her tears sliding down my neck.

“I want to know,” I whispered.

“I can’t tell you,” she replied. “I’m not…I’m not ready.”

“Does anyone know?” I demanded. I knew I was in no position to become angry with her, but I couldn’t help it.

“My parents,” was her simple response. “But they only found out because of medical records. I hadn’t planned on telling them. I hadn’t planned on telling anyone at all.”

I wanted to ask more questions. My chest was burning with curiosity and I was sure that I would die right then and there if I didn’t find out what exactly what was wrong with her and how we could fix it. But then I realized that maybe we couldn’t fix it. And if that was the case, then maybe I didn’t want to know. At least not yet. I wanted more time to pretend that everything was okay and I wanted our road trip to continue and I wanted us to be as carefree and worriless as we were before.

And then I realized I was being selfish and stupid. I had to know what was wrong. I couldn’t live my life like it was a fairytale; I couldn’t live in the dark like that.

“Tell me,” I whispered into her ear, “please.”

She didn’t respond, and then I realized that I was being selfish again. If she didn’t want to tell me, then that was that. I sort of felt like I was being betrayed because she was keeping it a secret, and I felt like I deserved to know whatever it was that was making her cough, but I knew I didn’t have the right to know. She hadn’t even wanted to tell her parents; she probably didn’t want to tell me, either. I had to respect that.

When she began to speak, my heart leapt in my chest; I thought that she was finally going to cave in. I was quickly proven wrong.

“If there’s one thing I learned throughout the course of the last eighteen years,” she started, lifting her head to look me in the eye, “it’s that you can never waste a day of your life. There can be no holding back. There can be no regrets.” She bit her lower lip nervously before continuing. “That’s why I wanted to go on this road trip. I wanted to disappear so that we could do whatever we wanted without anyone judging us. I’m going to show you how to live, Kasey Ray.”

The intensity of her stare was overwhelming and I shyly averted my eyes and looked away. My gaze fell upon the tissue lying on the floor, the same tissue that she had been coughing into only minutes before. There were dark droplets of crimson on it.

My first reflex was to ignore it and pretend that I hadn’t seen it at all, and instinctively I brought my eyes back to meet hers. Much to my surprise, she had a wide grin on her face. The room in the room suddenly brightened and I instantly felt better, if only a little bit. I smiled hesitantly back, and she took it as a cue to bring her lips down upon mine. This kiss was deeper and more passionate than anything we had ever shared before. That made me happy and a little bit afraid all at the same time. I wasn’t sure if I should be looking forward to anything or if she was trying to tell me something.

When she pulled away, the grin was still on her face, only this time it was softer and her eyes were a warm and gentle color. She was so undeniably happy and I couldn’t understand why. And then she opened her mouth again and her next statement made everything crash down around me.

“I love you, Kasey.”