Cancer

Radtastic banner by ThunderLoser. Thank you! :D

Ryan answered the phone on the second ring.

"Hey," I mumbled, poorly disguising the pain that made my voice crack.

"Hey. Are you okay?" asked Ryan immediately.

"Yeah," I lied and bit my lip, wondering if I should have called him. But he said that I was his friend, that he wanted to help me, so... "I, uh, I talked to Brendon."

There was silence on the other end of the line for a second. "Really? How'd it go?"

I hesitated.

"You wanna go have a drink with me or something?"

Again, Ryan was quiet for a moment before reminding me apprehensively, "You're underage."

"I know."

He chuckled humorlessly. "That bad, huh?"

"Yeah." My voice broke again and tears stung my eyes; I blinked them away bitterly.

Ryan sighed. "Okay, well...where are you?"

I had no idea. I looked around and read off the name of the casino I was standing outside of.

"Okay, I know where that is," he assured me. "Stay put and I'll meet you there in ten minutes. Just let me brush my hair first."

-----

I couldn't stay put. If I didn't move, if I didn't get up and go somewhere quick, I would start thinking about Brendon...about the look in his eyes as he made me promises...promises I could never give him the chance to keep...

Yeah, I definitely needed to keep moving. Thinking was dangerous.

I had tried to shut down all thinking processes as soon as Brendon and I had gone our separate ways. It was the only way I could force myself to turn my back on him and walk away, without ever once glancing over my shoulder to watch him duck into the cab, staring straight ahead as I hurried back towards the Strip instead. It was the only way I could keep my strides slow and even as the cab drove past me with Brendon staring forlornly out the back window; it was the only way I could stop myself from running after him.

I couldn't think about him.

So I did what I had been doing for the past half an hour: I kept on walking.

Considering that I had lived in Las Vegas for well over a year at one time, I didn't know my way around the Strip at all. Tentatively, I entered the casino I had found myself standing before. Inside, it was crammed full of as many distractions as possible--bright flashing lights in every color imaginable, loud cheerful noises, the incessant babble of excited, drunken tourists enjoying a break from reality.

Because it was not reality at all inside that casino. It was a dream world, a figment of my imagination, surely, all that sound and color and movement...

I wondered vaguely if I was going into shock.

Deciding that the sensory overload of the casino wasn't helping, I stumbled around inside for some escape from all the overstimulation (after all, I couldn't leave, because Ryan was coming here to look for me). I had been hoping for a bathroom or broom closet or something, but what I eventually found was a bar.

The bar was a small, dark, sunken-in room with all of three steps leading down into it. In here, the only sound was that of the flirtatious chatting and giggling of the people seated at the bar and in tiny tables around the room, and the only lights were the cool dim blue ones that cast pools of deep indigo against the carpet at regular intervals.

It was such a relief.

I sat down at the unoccupied end of the bar to wait for Ryan, folding my arms across the cool black marble of the counter; it was so smooth and shiny that, as I stared down at it, I could see my reflection staring back at me. My expression was pained, my eyes dark with hurt, my forehead creased... I looked away.

Though I appreciated the peace and quiet of the bar, it was beginning to make me nervous. I could feel the Brendon-thoughts creeping up on me, gnawing gently at the edges of my consciousness; eventually they would break through the remote stillness I now found myself in and take over my mind. I had no one here to talk to, no distractions to busy myself with. The cancer cells would find a way in and spread, invading every last part of me, and the sea would rise up again.

I wasn't sure if I could beat it this time.

"You're not getting any better," said a quiet voice behind me, interrupting my dark introspection.

I jumped, gasping in surprise, and whirled around to see Ryan staring placidly at me. I took a deep breath to steady my racing heartbeat and glared. "You scared the shit out of me!"

He grinned crookedly, sliding onto the seat next to mine. "Sorry."

"I thought you said ten minutes?" I continued accusingly. "That was quick."

"That's what she said," said Ryan, smirking.

I rolled my eyes at him. My irritation only poorly disguised my relief: he had come to save me from the lonely Brendon-thoughts just in time.

"Anyway, as I was saying," he began in a serious voice, folding his hands very formally over the bar, "you're not getting better."

"How do you know?" I glowered. If my voice had not been so soft and unsteady, it would have been biting. "How do you know I wasn't worse before? You weren't there."

"No, I wasn't," he admitted. He paused for so long that I thought maybe he had dropped the subject, but then he asked gingerly, "Was it really that bad?"

Just as I opened my mouth to reply, a buff bartender that was probably also a male stripper on the side appeared before us. His gaze lingered on my tight-fitting, low-cut top--but this did not surprise me. What surprised me was that he seemed even more absorbed with Ryan.

The bartender blinked rapidly and quickly looked away from Ryan, straightening up like his boss had just walked in the room. "What can I get you?" he asked, too professionally.

He seemed to be addressing Ryan and Ryan alone.

"I'll have the usual. And she doesn't drink," said Ryan dismissively, jerking his head in my direction.

I glared at Ryan. "Oh yes, I do," I corrected him. If I had ever needed a drink in my entire life, I needed one now--badly. (Plus, I was sort of offended that he had answered for me without even asking for my own input; I would have argued anyway, out of sheer rebellion.)

"You're underage!" Ryan hissed at me.

I continued to glare at him, unable to think of a suitable rational for essentially breaking the law. Normally it wouldn't have bothered me, but somehow I hated to admit less than moral perfection to Ryan; he was just such a good person that I couldn't bear to stoop so low in front of him.

But Ryan gave in anyway. He turned back to the bartender with a disapproving but resigned expression and said dryly, "She'll have the same."

The bartender flitted away obediantly with no further questions. He had clearly overheard my exchange with Ryan, but he never once asked to see my ID. I was puzzled, but grateful.

As soon as the bartender disappeared, I felt Ryan's gaze latch onto me again. I stared down at the bar once more to avoid his probing eyes.

He persisted. "Kelsey, do you want to tell me what happened?"

"He called my hotel room last night and left his number...so I called him back and we met up here a couple of hours ago...and we just..." I choked on the words. "We just...talked--"

"I wasn't talking about tonight," said Ryan darkly. "I was asking about what happened two years ago."

The jolt of shock I felt at his words made me completely lose focus, made me turn frantic and irrational and defensive like a wild animal.

"You know what happened, Ryan," I snapped. It came out more harshly than I had intended, and he flinched a little.

A moment of awkward silence passed and the sting of surprise and hurt faded enough that I could see clearly again, and I was ashamed. What was wrong with me? He was trying to help me out and I was treating him like he was the enemy.

"I'm sorry," I apologized, the words bubbling up in scared little quivers. "You're just trying to help--"

"It's okay." He tried to smile encouragingly at me.

I sighed again. I still couldn't look at him; his truly caring expression broke my heart. "It's just...it's hard to talk about, is all."

"I know. I understand," said Ryan sincerely, and I knew he did. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to--"

"No, I do. I want to." I bit my lip, hesitating, and then admitted, "I need to talk to someone about it."

I glanced up and Ryan was still sitting there beside me, just looking at me--waiting.

"I guess...it just...got too hard...for him." The words were choked, halting; it was almost impossible to force them out of my throat, where I had kept them locked away from the rest of the world for so long. The conflict between wanting to release myself from the agony of my secret burden and wanting to protect myself, to not make myself vulnerable, raged inside of me.

But I knew I had to open to Ryan. I had to let myself trust him. I had to, in order to put myself back together again.

Averting my gaze, I continued, "You guys were gone all the time and we never saw each other. He started emailing me less and less, and then he just stopped replying altogether. At first, we talked on the phone almost every day, and then it was once a week...and then once every two weeks...and then..."

I trailed off as I started crying. The bartender set our drinks on the bar before us, but I hardly noticed.

Ryan shifted closer slightly, reaching up to push a lock of my hair out of my face. He handed me a tissue that he produced from who knows where (surely Ryan had some sort of magical powers--or maybe he really was an angel), and I took it from him gratefully. I dabbed at my eyes until the tears stopped, and then I tried to pick up where I left off.

"Then he called me one day...and said he thought we should...take a break." I squeezed my eyes shut; it was almost physically painful to say these words aloud, and I couldn't bear to see Ryan's reaction to them, no matter what it was. "He said we didn't have to break up--that we were just taking a break. You know. He just 'needed some space'--" I used air quotes for Brendon's exact words to me--"and all that."

My voice twisted into an ugly, sarcastic tone as I explained this last part, and suddenly I was no longer aware of Ryan watching me, or the bartender watching Ryan, or the annoying drunk girls three seats over watching the bartender. Suddenly the whole casino, with it's pulsing lights and disorienting sounds, faded into the background. Nothing existed but me and my anger, my hurt.

I bit my lip until I tasted blood, and then I reached unseeingly for the drink I knew was before me. I gulped down half of it in one swig. The alochol burned all the way down my throat, matched the stinging in my eyes. I choked back the bitter taste, the bitter words, the tears, and I finished off the drink.

Ryan was quiet for a very long time--so long that my abrupt fury had ebbed away and I had come to my senses again in time to notice. I turned to him, and he was watching me speculatively, sadness mingling with uncertainty in his face. He looked oddly torn.

"Ryan?" I murmured. "What's wrong?"

He blinked once at me and then looked away. He stared down into the full, untouched glass before him, trailing his fingertip around the rim as he spoke. "Did you ever think maybe he did it for your own good?"