Kiss Me While You Can
Beck, I'm dying. Kiss me while you can.
You're dying too, I guess – all of us are unwittingly. But I can feel it in my heart as it beats toward old age. I know its beats are numbered. I know life is a terminal cancer, where none of us get out alive after maybe 650,000 hours of fighting it. I know I'm on the way out the door – I've always known it a little better than others, I guess. Even anticipated it, when life really sucked.
Here's the thing: with you, I don't care.
We're lying on the couch. No big deal. Lying on the couch, watching some movie I lost track of in the opening credits. But my eyes have taken the backseat for the moment, the figures on the TV fading to blotches of swirling colors. I never do this. Never. But right now, with you, I'm allowing myself to feel.
I feel the rub of your jeans against mine. I feel your hand on my back, your thumb tracing my shoulder blades, your fingertips sweeping along my hips, almost grazing the waistline of my jeans. You've done this before; you've loved before. I'll let that bother me later. Right now, I'm lost. I'm totally, utterly lost in your guitar-calloused fingertips, your metal-studded jeans, your heart beating a slow, steady rhythm against my back. I know its beats are numbered, as numbered as mine, but I care only enough to wonder if my life will be shorter just because my heart is racing, racing, racing.
I could stay here forever, just like this. I so wish.
Beck, I'm dying. Kiss me while you can.
X
Ah, Beck, I'm breaking. Kiss me while you can.
I guess it never really occurred to me just how imperfect I am. I mean, Dad knew it, and Mom knows it more every day, but I never really thought about it. Never really minded. Take me or leave me, to hell with conformity, standards, whatever. This is who I am. It's too late to change.
Until I met you.
Because now you're perfect, and I'm just so not, and I don't know what to do. Because you know how to love. You're a freaking expert, like everything you do is just how it's supposed to be. I might as well be blind, deaf, mute – it comes out wrong or too late, jealousy snaps when it's least wanted or expected, I'm constantly trying to analyze what you're thinking. Not that you make it any easier. Sometimes, when you look at Tori, I swear I – I – forget it. Doesn't matter.
But now I'm crying, curled up on my bed, and I can't stop no matter how hard I try. And you're standing in the door like a nightmare come true because you were never, ever supposed to see me like this. I guess that's why my mouth keeps shooting off things I don't mean, things totally opposite of what something in my chest is screaming. Go away (stay here). Don't you dare walk through that door (I need you). Let go of me (thank you).
I don't know how you hear what I'm not saying, but I'm glad you do.
What's gonna happen to me? Why can't I live? Why don't you just shut me up and stop me thinking and make me feel alive? Because right now I can feel my heart beating toward its end more than ever, and my entire body is trembling like it wants to vibrate until it dissolves, slipping away like dust on the wind.
Please, Beck, I'm breaking. Kiss me while you can.
X
Oh, Beck, I'm living. Kiss me while you can.
I have to admit when you showed up on my doorstep with a blindfold and truck keys, I almost gave into blind instinct and bolted. But trust is a choice, right? So I'll trust you. And looking back, I'm glad I did.
Venice beach. How did you know? I swear I never told you my birthday. My own mother can barely remember my birthday. I've learned not to count birthdays as very important anyway – a pathetic celebration of 8,760 more hours stolen by time. But this is just amazing. I'm happy, Beck. I'm happy!
We're running in the surf. The sand is like a massage and the crashing waves fill me with energy each time they burst against me, and I'm spinning and lifting my face to the sky and laughing, laughing, laughing crazily. Your hands are on my waist and your chest is against my bare back in a way that sends my heart spiraling and freedom soaring in my veins. So beautiful. So pure. And – hey! Stop! Stop!
If you ever tell anyone Jade West is ticklish, you die.
God, Beck, I'm alive – kiss me while you can.
X
Look, Beck, I'm leaving. Kiss me while you can.
It started stupidly and it's ending stupidly. Your fists are tight and my face is red and words are pouring from my mouth – stupid words, words I don't understand and don't expect to, because I can hardly hear myself over the equally stupid words pouring from your lips like acid and paint, staining and corroding everything they touch. I don't know how it started and I don't know if it will stop, but all that matters right now is that we're screaming, and the RV's walls are straining like it can't hold our anger in much longer. Is this love, when I want to claw your eyes out? Is this love, when you're punching the walls?
I've never seen you this angry and I'm scared I might have finally crossed a line. But I'm too angry to be scared. Or at least that's how I'm making it look. I want you to hold me, but don't touch me, because you're reminding me of Dad right now and believe it or not, Beck, bruises can leave scars, even if you can't see them.
I'm turning to the doors, but don't let me leave, okay? Don't let me leave. I might not bend, but I break, and if I walk out those doors I might just break so hard I'll never pull myself back together. Forget not touching me. Grab me, pull me back, because no matter how afraid I am of your touch right now I'm more afraid of you letting me go out that door. If I go out that door, I'll never come back. It's a West girl thing. My mother did the same thing, and I know she regrets it, even if she pretends she doesn't. I'm not coming back if you don't make me. So make me. Please.
You swore you loved me. Our time is running out. Show me.
Come on, Beck, I'm leaving. Kiss me while you can.
X
Beck, I'm dying. Kiss me while you can.
First off, I want you to know I don't blame you. I chose to walk out, I drove angry, I didn't see the car, and I got blindsided. You are nowhere in that equation – except that you came to see me in the hospital. Right after I called you all those names. So I don't blame you. I thank you for being bigger than the fight. Bigger than me, because I really don't know what I would've done, even though cold-hot shame courses through me when I think that.
The wreck wasn't that bad, anyway. It's my own body that's the enemy right now.
I can hear the doctors, talking in mortician voices at the end of my sterilized bed. Like closing my eyes magically makes me deaf. I kind of wish it did. If I hadn't heard what they said, maybe I could pretend it isn't happening, that my world isn't slowly, slowly crumbling down into a great, agonizing mystery.
APL. Too short for a four-letter word, but say it right and it still sounds like an expletive. The L is the only letter that matters, anyway. Leukemia. Didn't see that one coming. Ironic, isn't it? The girl who thinks so much about death is the one who meets it earliest. If it's any consolation, since you always silence me with your lips whenever I bring it up, you'll probably be the last to meet it in our little group. Keep pretending it doesn't, won't, can't exist. The delusion – coming from you, at least – is kind of comforting, in a really sick way.
Second, I want you to know that I'm going to fight. With every breath. Because I have you, and I'm going to fight for every second I can spend with you. I – I love – I love you, Beck. There. I said it. Better late than never.
The third is a request. I want you to fight with me. Keep that annoying habit of never looking despair in the eye. Even if I don't have 650,000 hours left in me, I want to pretend I do. We're both actors. We'll make it work. Fight with me for every fleeting moment of a forever that might not happen, because I want whatever fraction of forever with you I can wring out of this crazy jumble of hours and seconds and hopes and wishes called life.
Beck, I know I'm dying. Kiss me while you can.