Page 109 of While I’m Still Here

“Apparently.”

“With garden equipment,” she deadpans.

“Yes.”

Her eyes drop to the incinerator again. For one terrible second, nobody says anything but then her mouth twitches. It starts small, just the slightest pull at one corner, but then she looks at me again and the smile breaks properly across her face. Not the careful one she's been giving people lately. Not the smile that says she's fine when she isn't. A real one. “Marcus?”

“Yes?”

She reaches out and runs one finger along the metal rim. “That's the most romantic fucking bin I've ever seen.”

Danny puts a hand dramatically over his heart. “Fuck. How are we supposed to compete with this, Colin?”

Colin considers the incinerator with entirely too much seriousness. “I've got a shed.”

Danny looks appalled. “That is not the same thing.”

“It's bigger,” Colin says.

“Size isn't everything,” Danny replies, and Bea snorts. I look at Danny, just as his smile fades. “I walked into that one, didn’t I?”

And standing there with a ridiculous metal bin between us, Bea laughing while Colin argues that his shed has electricity as though this somehow increases its romantic value, something shifts. They're still the men who knew her before me.

They always will be.

But for the first time, I don't feel quite so much like the man who arrived afterwards.

Bea still smiles as she looks down at the incinerator again, running her fingertips over the metal rim. “Seriously, though. You actually bought this for my bras?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

The question is softer this time. She isn't laughing anymore, and I realise she genuinely wants to know. “You said you didn't want them in your wardrobe after surgery.” Her expression changes almost immediately. “You don't want to give them away, and you don't want to pack them into a box and hide them somewhere. And you definitely don't want to open your wardrobe after surgery and find them waiting for you… So don't.”

The humour has completely disappeared from her face now. Her eyes shine and she swallows. “Don't what?”

“Any of it.” I glance at the incinerator between us. “Burn them.”

For approximately two seconds, nobody says anything, then Bea launches herself at me. I barely manage to get the incinerator onto the ground before her arms are around my neck, the force of her hitting me making me take a step backwards. My arms close around her automatically. “Marcus fucking Bennett.”

“That is my name.”

“You're going to make me cry.”

“I'd rather you didn't.”

“Too fucking late.”

Her face disappears into my shoulder, and I feel the first dampness against my shirt before her grip around my neck tightens. I hold her a little closer. I hadn't bought the thing to make her cry. I'd bought it because cancer has already taken enough decisions away from her. It gets to dictate what happens to her breasts. It doesn't get to decide what happens to the bras afterwards.

Over her shoulder, I find Colin watching us. There is something complicated in his expression, there and gone quickly enough that I could pretend I imagined it. I don't. I recognise jealousy when I see it, and I can't exactly blame him for feeling it while another man holds the woman he's loved for seven years.

But there isn't anger, and more importantly, he doesn't interrupt.

His eyes meet mine for a second, and something passes between us that I don't yet have a name for. Not permission. Bea doesn't belong to either of us to give permission over. Perhaps simply understanding. Then Danny looks from Bea wrapped around me to the incinerator sitting on the ground. “I've got lighter fluid,” he says.

Colin turns slowly towards him. “Why?”