Page 157 of While I’m Still Here

Four bald heads.

Three men who love me.

And for once, when I look at the photograph, I don't search for everything cancer has taken.

I just see us.

Chapter 25

Wednesday 9 p.m.

Hair: 0.

Cancer: Fuck you.

Boyfriends: Still complicated.

Men who kissed my bald head tonight: 3.

Times I believed them when they told me I was beautiful: … 1.

Chapter 26

WHILE I’M STILL HERE

Beatrice ‘Bea’ James

But the photograph is just a photograph, and eventually the kitchen needs cleaning. Hair gets swept into the bin bag, the clippers go back into their case, and somehow the four of us end up in my bedroom because nobody wants to leave. I'm exhausted, hollowed out from crying, and my scalp feels strange and exposed against the pillow when I lie down.

Colin is on one side of me, Danny on the other, and Marcus sits at the foot of the bed with his back against the wall. Nobody says much. The weight of the afternoon is still settling around us like dust.

Then Danny's hand finds my shoulder. Just rests there, warm and solid. Colin shifts closer, his arm sliding carefully around my waist. Marcus watches us from the foot of the bed with an expression I can't quite read, but his fingers are laced loosely around my ankle, thumb moving in slow circles against my skin.

The touch is light. Comforting. But there's something else underneath it too.

A tenderness that feels different from before.

They're not just keeping me company. They're seeing me. Scars where my breasts used to be. Bare scalp where my hair used to be. All the soft, secret places I've been learning to hate about myself, and they're touching me as though I'm still something precious.

I swallow hard. “I feel strange.”

Danny's lips brush the side of my head. “Strange how?”

“Like I'm not sure who I am anymore.”

Colin sits up slowly, his hand still resting on my hip. “Then let us show you.”

My breath catches. “Show me what?”

Marcus moves then, shifting from the foot of the bed until he's kneeling beside me. His fingers trail from my ankle up to my knee, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “That you're still you,” he says quietly. “And that you're still beautiful.”

I open my mouth to argue, but Danny's hand is already cupping my face, turning me towards him. His kiss is gentle at first, then deeper, his tongue sliding against mine while Colin's lips find the curve of my neck. I shiver, caught between them, and Marcus's hand continues its slow path upward along my thigh.

“You don't have to do anything,” Colin murmurs against my skin. “Just let us love you.”

I close my eyes and nod, because for the first time in months, I don't want to fight the way they see me. I want to believe it. Just for a little while. And as their hands begin to move over my body—carefully, reverently, mapping every scar and every new bare place as though memorising me all over again—I let myself fall into the warmth of them.

But the photograph is just a photograph, and eventually the kitchen needs cleaning. Hair gets swept into the bin bag, the clippers go back into their case, and somehow the four of us end up in my bedroom because nobody wants to leave. I'm exhausted, hollowed out from crying, and my scalp feels strange and exposed against the pillow when I lie down.