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TWENTY-NINE
Cole
Friday inevitably came.
Not that I didn’t want it to per se, but I knew it was the last day I would be working with Romeo, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to be done yet.
It wasn’t that Romeo himself wasn’t ready. The horse had come a very long way since I started working with him, that was for damn sure. He was ready to start working with patients who came through the clinic, and with time, I knew he would be just as gentle as any of the other horses they had there.
But, without Romeo being the reason to keep us together, we both had to admit that what we were doing was real. I wanted to talk to Raya about it. I wanted to lay it all out on the table for her, letting her know just what she would be doing if she was my girlfriend, and just how much I felt it was worth it anyway.
I convinced her early on in the afternoon to come out to the ranch that night. It would be a drive, but it was Friday, and she would be able to spend the night. Tomorrow she could take as much time as she wanted getting up and heading home. If she didn’t want to stay all weekend, that is.
I was more than happy to have her spend the couple days out at the ranch with me before she had to go back to work, and I would be sure to tell her when she was there that this could very well be something we did often. We could make it work. I might come down to her place, or she might come up to mine. Either way, it would be doable, and we would figure out something else in the winter.
The problem was I was afraid. If I was really honest about how I felt about this, I was afraid that she wouldn’t want to keep the relationship going after she saw how much she had to drive to come out to my place, or that she didn’t want to try something that was long distance. I knew it was just a couple hours, but that was a long time for some people, especially when she spent as much time working as she did.
But, I didn’t want to stress about it too much. Not when she was going to come out that night and at least get a chance to see the ranch for what it was. It was the best I could do to impress her, and I hoped it would be enough to get her to consider keeping a relationship going. I might even ask her to officially be my girlfriend. It would be a good time now that I wasn’t working for her anymore.
No more conflict of interest in that regard.
She’d given me my final paycheck already, and I was happy with that. It had started out being about the money, but it wasn’t anymore. Now it was about her and me. It was about our relationship. It was about what we could have if we were both willing to work for it.
I knew I was.
I just hoped she was, too.
I wasn’t a messy person. Never had been. If there was one thing I appreciated in my life, it was orderliness, and that’s how I kept my place. It was clean, it was nice, and it was always ready for anyone to come through the doors.
At least, that’s how I thought of it before I had invited Raya herself to come over for dinner.
I pulled out two steaks and left them to thaw, then I hurried through the house and straightened out everything I saw that needed a little extra care. I wanted to view the place through the eyes of someone who had never been here before. Not a bachelor who rarely had company other than his best friend who also didn’t give a shit about how tidy the place was.
Women were so organized, it just seemed to come naturally to them. I hoped Raya wasn’t going to walk into the place and see tons of things that needed cleaning. She wasn’t exactly that kind of girl, but then, I hadn’t had her over to my place yet, either.
She’d told me to excuse her own house with the messiness from moving, and I had. I was sure she’d do the same, except for the fact I didn’t have an excuse for anything messy in my place. The only reason it would be was because I hadn’t taken the time to clean it up, and that was annoying. I didn’t care for my own self, but when I was trying to impress someone, it seemed there wasn’t enough time for me to get to everything before she would be coming over.
I shoved a pile of clothes needing washed in the closet when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number and was surprised when it was the doctor on the other end of the line. We exchanged pleasantries, then he got right down to business.
“I would like for you to come in and go over these test results with me,” he said. “I know it’s a little spur of the moment, but there are a few things you and I need to go over, and I find it better to do that in person than to try to handle this over the phone.”
“You make it sound like I’m dying,” I joked, though there was a pit in my stomach. “And if I am, I would rather you said so when I was on the phone with you so I could digest this without an audience.”
“I’m not going to say you’re dying,” he replied. “But this is serious.”
“Go on,” I said. “You’ve got me this far. It would be a shame for you to stop now. I’m not going to come in today, and I’ll go crazy if you don’t tell me before the weekend.”
“It’s cancer,” the doctor said. “You have cancer in your leg. Not caused by the fall, so perhaps you’re lucky that you did have the accident you did so we were able to get a look at what was going on.”
“Cancer?” I repeated.
My heart pounded in my chest and my thoughts spun in my head. I immediately felt a fog settle over me. My thoughts went straight to my mother who had passed away from cancer when I was young. Shit, when she was young for that matter. She was still in her twenties when cancer claimed her life, and I immediately wondered if I was going to suffer the same fate.
Dying hadn’t really bothered me before, but then, I had always been the kind of person to live life to the fullest each and every day. I always treated life as something to be enjoyed, knowing we weren’t given very long to enjoy it.
But, now, this news was shattering. I had fallen in love. I had met someone who made my life mean more than it ever had. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to have a life with Raya. And that led me to a whole new problem. How the hell was I going to tell Raya that I had cancer? Would that change the way she felt about me?
Would she want to date someone who was dealing with something terminal? She was incredible, and I didn’t want to subject her to a life of hardship that it would be dating me with cancer. I could envision it all now. I would fade. I would lose myself in the disease and the treatments, and I wouldn’t be the strong man she had fallen in love with.
