What the Riddle Takes

Maya watched from across the bar as Ethan traced the lifeline on her open palm, his calloused finger sending shivers up her arm. The palm reader at the company holiday party had told her she'd live to ninety-three, but she'd stopped believing in predictions three months ago, when the biopsy results came back.

"You're bearing it alone," Ethan said, not a question. He'd been her best friend since they were seven, since the day he'd found her behind the elementary school crying because her mother had forgotten to pick her up again. He'd given her his lunch—his mother's bear-shaped honey sandwich—and sat with her until the dismissal bell.

"The chemo starts Monday." She pulled her hand away. "I don't want you to watch me fall apart."

"You think that's optional?" His laugh was ragged. "Maya, I've loved you since we were twelve. You really think I'm leaving now?"

She looked at him—really looked—at the laugh lines around his eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw. For years, she'd treated him like a sphinx, its riddles too terrifying to solve. What if she was wrong? What if he didn't feel the same? Better to keep him at a distance, safe and certain, than risk losing everything.

But cancer had a way of simplifying things. Fear of rejection seemed almost quaint now.

"I'm scared," she whispered.

Ethan took her hand again, interlacing their fingers. "Then we'll be scared together. Every treatment, every night. I'll be there."

The bar noise faded to a hum. Maya thought about the palm reader's prophecy, about how futures were written and rewritten in the spaces between moments. She'd asked for certainty at a time when none existed.

She squeezed his hand. "Okay."

Outside, snow began to fall, each flake distinct and impossibly brief, like the moments they'd already lost and the ones they were just beginning to claim.