Larkin's Letters (8 page)

I didn’t feel well enough to eat anything, but Ian was able to talk me into coming downstairs
with him as he ate lunch. He carried me to the recliner because I could barely walk, and we watched movies from noon until dinnertime. I had gotten sick several times, but I always felt a little bit better afterward. He would sneak out onto the front porch to smoke whenever he thought I fell asleep. The one time, I heard him on the phone with Linda, and the other time I heard him talking to you. When he came back in, he noticed I was awake and told me you called to check on me.

I miss you, Ryan. I don’t mind Ian being here, but I miss you. I want you here. I want to tell you how much I love and need you.

Ryan will never forget the first time Larkin told him she loved him.

Love. He was doing it for love. It had to be the reason. It was the only logical reason. Why else would he have sacrificed his career to be by her side? They had been three quarters of the way done with the movie. They were finally ahead of schedule. Leon could do without him for a couple more days. But of course, he wouldn’t see it that way. He had wanted Ryan there and nowhere else. He was a control freak, and he wanted to control his cast and his crew. He had told Ryan, “You’re lucky I let you have two days away
.
” He wasn’t too terrible to work with. Sure, he had them work twelve-to sixteen-hour days, but he was good about giving actors two days off a week. He just didn’t want them leaving the country, especially his lead actor. Besides, Leon was one of the most successful directors in Hollywood, and every actor aspired to work under him. Ryan had done everything Leon had asked of him.

But that time was different. How could he expect Leon to understand? Leon had never been in love. He had three children from three different women. He had never married, and he had a different woman on his arm at all his red carpet events. Ryan had been worried. He had only texted Leon to tell him he was leaving for the rest of the week. He didn’t even tell him face-to-face. He knew Leon would have given him an ultimatum. But at that time, he just didn’t care. At that point, he was willing to sacrifice his career to be by Larkin’s side. He hadn’t known how sick she really was, so he hadn’t known if she would even live much longer. And he was going to be there with her every step of the way, even if he had to bring her back to South Africa with him.

He had caught the red-eye out of Cape Town, just two hours after he talked to Ian that night. He would be in Atlantic City in sixteen hours. He had hoped to be in Somers Point by noon.
Thank God for the time change
, he thought.

Ryan had fallen asleep in the cab on the way to Larkin’s. He was so jetlagged. He had had a headache for two days, and his sleep patterns were so out of whack his body didn’t know if it should be asleep or awake. His body was so disoriented. He had been on two sixteen-hour flights in a matter of two days, and he would have been just fine with it if he never had to get back on an airplane again.

The cab pulled up in front of Larkin’s house, and he had seen Ian smoking on the front porch. He hadn’t told Ian he was coming, so he knew he would be more than surprised. As he made his way down the slate walkway connecting the driveway to the porch, Ian stood up and extended his hand to greet him. Ian never said a word to him; he just gave him a nod and tilted his head toward the second floor, signaling to Ryan that Larkin was resting upstairs.

Ryan had placed his luggage on the floor at the base of Larkin’s bed. She was sleeping, and he could see the bucket next to her bed was half full of vomit. He, without thinking twice, had picked the bucket up and emptied it into the bathroom toilet, cleaned it with soap and water, and quietly placed it back next to her bed. He stripped down to his boxers and tank-top shirt and quietly slipped in under the covers next to her. He had noticed her cheek and the side of her nose was damp, and a small tear was stuck in the corner of her eye. He gently wiped it away with his finger, taking notice of the subtle curve of her cheekbone and the light pink color of her lips. As she opened her eyes and realized him lying there next to her, she buried her face in his chest and began to cry. Her breaths were deep and shallow, and he could tell she was having a hard time breathing. He gently lifted her chin up so he could see her face.

“Larkin, breathe. Take a deep breath.”

She slowly started to calm down, catching her breath. “Larkin, I’m here. It’s okay. What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“Ryan.” She paused for a moment. He never took his gaze off her eyes.

“Ryan, I love you. I love you so much, I can’t breathe when you’re gone.” She buried her face back into his chest. He knew it had taken everything she had to tell him that. She had risked ruining their friendship by telling him. He knew because that was exactly the way he had felt. He had wanted to tell her for the past month that he loved her, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know how she would have reacted, and he would never risk their friendship. But now he knew. She felt the same way.

Again, he pulled her chin up, guiding her face up to his so he could look into her blue eyes. “Then take
my
breath. I’ll be your breath when you can’t breathe.” And with that, he pressed his slightly opened lips against hers, cradling her face with his hands, allowing her to breathe him in. He held his lips against hers until she calmed down, and then he slowly pulled away. He wiped her tears away.

“Kiss me, Larkin, anytime you can’t breathe, anytime you want to cry, you kiss me. You hear me?”

She nodded.

“Close your eyes, Lark. I promise I will be here when you open them.”

Her eyelids slowly fell, covering her tear-filled eyes, and as her mind and her body and her sickness drifted off into sleep, Ryan closed his eyes and pressed his lips against hers again, never taking them away until his eyes opened several hours later. Ryan remembered that next week like it was yesterday. That week with her had been an awakening for him, an awakening of his feelings for Larkin, an awakening of how important she was to him, an awakening of his hopes for the future with her. Although she had been recovering from the chemo treatment, he enjoyed the time he had spent with her. He had held her every night in his arms, and he would listen to the beating of her heart and her breaths as she would drift away into sleep. He had cooked for her, and they would hold hands across the table as they ate, and they watched movies every night—their favorite movies from childhood. When she had started to feel stronger, they would take the long walk hand-in-hand down to the pier, and they would sit together at the edge watching the fish swim by. They would watch the boats throughout the bay—some anchored, others drifting—as fishermen were trying to conquer that last keeper of the season. Sometimes, if it wasn’t too crowded, they would sit on the beach together, Ryan embracing her as she sat in front of him, and he would gently brush her hair out of her eyes when the breeze from the ocean water would graze her face. As they talked about life, she would frequently rest the back of her head against his shoulder, close her eyes, and tell him she loved him. And each time, he would hold her a little tighter and sweep her cheek with his lips. He remembers they had seen an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand down the beach and Larkin had asked Ryan, “Do you think that will be us one day?”

“God, I hope so” was all he could say. And all he
could
do was hope.

Those had been the best moments that he had experienced in a long time. He hadn’t wanted them to end, but it was hard to ignore the life that had been waiting for him back in Cape Town. But when he was with Larkin, he had felt like he was in a completely different life, a life that he had left behind when he had moved away fifteen years ago. He had wished that he had never left. The miles had torn them worlds apart, and he had wished he could have had those fifteen years back, fifteen years he could have had with her. He had loved the life he had been living, but he had finally come to the realization that he had loved her more.

Letter #14 - October 24, 2011

Dear Ryan,

You’re going back to South Africa tomorrow, and I am going to miss you so much. Even though I am fighting for my life right now, I have never felt more alive. This week has been so many things to me: extraordinary, confusing, uplifting, and magical. We fell in love this past week. I think my heart fell for you a long time ago, but now you have finally caught it. And I know you will nurture it, and you’ll never let it go. You do so much just to make me smile, and I promise you I am going to do everything I can to make you smile.

Most people will make small sacrifices in life, usually for their own gain. But a true sacrifice is giving up your own happiness in order to make someone else happy. How many people have come across your path in life and made a sacrifice for you so enormous, it took your breath away? Most people would probably say no one. I, on the other hand, am one of the lucky ones. I am lucky because, Ryan, you are the epitome of what sacrifice is all about. And what makes you so extraordinary is that you didn’t make just one sacrifice, you made numerous. You are sacrificing your career, your time, your desires, your money and humility, all for me. I ask myself why every day. I can only hope that you fully understand how grateful and indebted I will always feel to you. I don’t know if it is possible to find the words to explain to you all that you have been to me. Ryan, you are so good to me. Why are you so good to me?

Letter #15 - December 26, 2011

My Ryan,

I haven’t written to you in a while because we have been inseparable these past several weeks. But even though we are spending more time together, I still want to write to you to let you know my thoughts and my feelings. Even though we are going to share almost everything from here on out, I still want you to be able to remember. Remembering the good things will help you heal.

As the warm, autumn breeze slowly transitioned to harsh cold winds, the treetops that were once dressed in reds and oranges are now blanketed with winter’s snow. The normal hustle and bustle of the summer and early fall—the neighborhood kids playing in the streets, tourists traveling by foot to the beaches, the procession of pick-up trucks and SUVs at the docks waiting to launch their boats and Jet Skis into the Great Egg Harbor Bay, the jam-packed boardwalks, the lines at the amusement rides, the sky littered with parasailers and small airplanes pulling banners advertising the local seafood restaurants—had all come to a sudden halt as early winter had cast its unwelcoming spell over Somers Point and the surrounding ocean towns, turning them into ghost towns. I had my third treatment on the second Monday in November—ten days before Thanksgiving—and after celebrating an early holiday dinner with my parents, we flew to Cape Town together where you were going to finally be wrapping your movie. You vowed never to leave me again after my treatments, and you were going to do everything you could to make sure you were by my side.

We spent the next four weeks in Cape Town before we had to come back for my fourth treatment, but it was a quick trip, and we headed right back to Cape Town so you could wrap your film. You were so busy with work, but you tried your best to show me what Cape Town had to offer. You took me to the Atlantic Seaboard, Blaauwberg Coast, and to Cape Flats. We hiked. We fished. We biked. We swam. We did everything we had time for. Even though you wrapped the movie a week before Christmas, we decided to spend Christmas together in Cape Town, and it was amazing. You got permission from the hotel and surprised me with a tree, and we spent Christmas Eve decorating it, taking several breaks to enjoy a dance together to the slow beat of the Christmas music. And you surprised me on Christmas morning with an amazing gift: a white gold heart-shaped locket with a picture of us inside. I don’t want to leave here. I love it, and I love you, and while I was here, leukemia never crossed my mind. Just you. Just you on my mind. Just you and me together. Nothing is better.

Now we are traveling back to New Jersey to finish my treatments. We are into the tenth hour on this more than half a day plane ride across the world. In between sentences, I frequently glance down at your perfect face as you sleep next to me, your head on my shoulder. I am overwhelmed by the way you make me feel. I can’t believe you love me. Me.

You were supposed to start filming another movie in two months, but you have decided you are going to take a hiatus from acting. You are truly amazing, and the sacrifices you have been making for me are humbling, and I don’t know what to make of it. I ask again, Ryan. Why are you so good to me?

His time with Larkin in South Africa back then had only solidified his feelings for her, and he was going to spend every moment he could with her. Christmastime had given way to the New Year, and Larkin had finished her sixth and final treatment by February’s end. The chemo treatments had taken almost everything out of her, and although she did everything she was told to do by the doctors, her body had been through a war. In six weeks, they would find out if the chemo was working. Ryan had taken as good of care as he could have of Larkin, and with each day’s passing, they fell more and more in love. Ryan had rented a house with a private dock that sat nestled among the bay homes outlining the lagoons in Ocean City, and they stayed there together. He had missed the warm sunny days that Los Angeles had to offer especially at this time of year, but he knew he had made the right decision. As much as he loved acting and making movies, every morning when he had woken up next to Larkin, he had never felt happier. That was where he was supposed to be at that moment in his life.

Letter #16 - March 10, 2012

Dear Ryan,

Signs of springtime are creeping upon the Jersey Shore and along with the birth and new life of flower blooms and tree buds comes hope for my recovery. Birdsong is slowly making a comeback, offering sweet morning serenades from the treetops that sit just outside our bedroom window. We are playing a waiting game, and it will be six more weeks before we find out if the cancer is gone. I spend much of my time trying to finish my manuscript, which is why I haven’t written to you in a while, and you spend your mornings on the water fishing on your newly purchased Grady White. You always make a daily stop at the flower shop, picking out a different bouquet each time to bring home to me. You are still so good to me. It is still too cold for me to join you on your morning fishing trips. My immune system is still compromised, and I cannot take a chance of getting sick. The slightest cold could easily turn into pneumonia, and that is not a battle we are willing to fight. But I would give anything to be out on that boat with you.

I want to write to you about yesterday. Yesterday was a great day. I want you to remember it like I do. Like you do every afternoon when you dock, you hosed down the boat, making sure to clean off the saltwater. You smiled at me when you noticed me watching you while I read on our back deck. Over the past several days, I knew you could tell that I hadn’t fully recovered from the last chemo treatment, but I think after you saw me on the deck reading, you knew I must have been feeling better. I could see the relief in your smile. I took a minute to watch you as you cleaned off the boat. You are so meticulous with the way you clean up that boat. Just like how you take care of me. Your beauty is vast, limitless, and cosmic. You have no idea how beautiful you are, and that makes you even more beautiful. After you finished, you made your way up the stairs that connected the deck to the dock, and as I looked up at you away from my book, you brought flowers out from behind your back.

“They get more beautiful each day,” I said, reaching out my hand to grab them.

“Just like you,” you responded, kissing me on the forehead.

“I caught us some dinner today,” you proudly said as you made your way through the sliding glass door into the house to wash your hands.

“Did you really? Well, if you fillet them, I’ll cook them.”

You were quick to accept that deal. “You look like you are feeling better today!” you shouted from inside.

“Yeah, I am actually. I wasn’t as tired when I woke up this morning.”

You made your way back onto the deck and knelt before me. “Well, then, are you up for some dancing after dinner tonight?”

“I would love it, Ryan.” We shared a long kiss before you retired to the shower.

You had caught two twenty-inch flounders on your morning fishing trip, and after you filleted them, you threw them on the grill while I prepared the side dishes. I had originally wanted to bake the fish, but you insisted that you grill them instead. We enjoyed a banquet with all the food I had prepared, and of course, there were leftovers, as always. You always say to me, “Larkin, it’s just the two of us. You don’t need to make so much food.” But cooking is a newfound interest for me. I did very little of it when I was married to Chris, but now I have been doing it more and more since I am at home all the time.

After I put the leftovers away, I started cleaning up the dishes. I could hear you fumbling around with something in the family room, and as soon as I closed the dishwasher door and pressed start, music could be heard over the surround system. I turned around and saw you standing there as you held out your hand for me.

“Dance with me?” you asked.

“What, here?” I thought that when you had asked me to go dancing, you meant go out dancing.

“Yeah, here. Why not?”

I approached your 6’2” frame, and as my hand fell into yours, you spun me around and guided me into a perfect slow dance. Dancing with you offers me a peace that I have never experienced before. When you hold me close, I feel as if everything is right in the world and that nothing can touch me. Not even leukemia. I have always loved you, and I knew that, but it wasn’t until the past six months that I have realized just how much. I didn’t think it was possible to love another human being the way I love you. It is almost frightening to me. I have never felt so vulnerable, as weak, to another as I do to you. Dancing with you gives me hope. Hope for a future with you. Hope that my disease will be cured, and I can give everything I am to you. Hope is all I have. Hope is the foundation for my strength.

As we danced, I took in your scent. I always loved the way you smell—clean and musky, seductive and sensual. Your scent is intoxicating and addicting, and I didn’t want to let go of you. You would frequently spin me away from you, and you would stare into my eyes as we swayed together to the sweet strings of the orchestra that emitted out of the radio speakers. You move like water. You have turned into a great dancer, Ryan. I was in heaven. Maybe I have already died and gone to heaven. You are my angel, my light at the end of the tunnel. You are my warmth, my peace, my strength, my hope. You are everything I have always thought of as heaven being.

I still can’t believe you have taken time off your career to be with me. I feel bad that you don’t get to see your friends and that you have put off a major movie production to be with me. I begged you not to. But you didn’t want to hear any of it. You promised me that this was what you wanted and that this is where you are supposed to be at this exact moment in your life. “Acting will always be there. You may not,” you would plead to me. Although it is an awful thing to say, you are right. Neither of us knows what the future is.

My knees were starting to weaken from the dancing, and once you realized that you were the only thing holding me up, you carried me to the patio recliner on the back deck. You went inside to grab a blanket to wrap us up in as you held me while we listened to the tide come in. “Thanks for the dance,” you whispered in my ear. I leaned my head against your chest, and I was so overwhelmed with the feelings that you had ignited inside of me. I absorbed the surroundings. As we sat in silence, I watched as the last of the Jet Skis and boats weaved their way into the lagoons to dock before the last of the sun went down. The warm season is just getting started, and this has always been my favorite time of the year—the tourist season. I love the excitement that exudes from parents as they watch their young children experience the sand and the ocean for the first time. I love watching teenagers experience the excitement of their first big catch as their fathers help them reel it inside the boat. I love watching couples walk hand-in- hand or arm-in-arm where the water meets the sand, letting all their troubles go, if only for that moment. This is a place where people come to get away, to create happy memories, and to try to forget about the bad ones. It’s humbling to know that our home is really a sanctuary for most other people. But for me, my sanctuary is in your arms and nowhere else.

“What are you thinking about?” You broke the silence as you held me close to keep me warm.

“I was thinking about how much you mean to me,” I answered.

“Oh yeah? How much?”

I buried my head into your chest, trying to become one with your heart.

“I’m dying,” I paused for a moment. “I’m dying, and the most valuable thing to me, right now, is my life. But somehow still, I seem to love you more than I love my life. And I don’t want to keep on fighting to live if I can’t live without you.”

You lifted my chin so that my eyes could meet yours. “Well, then, keep on fighting, baby, because you will never have to live without me.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.” And with that, you stood up with me out of the recliner with my legs wrapped around your waist. As you wrapped the blanket around me, you kissed me like you never kissed me before. For just a moment, you released our kiss. “I love you, Larkin. Let me take you to a place you have never been before.” And as you kissed me again, you carried me into the house and up the stairs to our bedroom where we made love for the first time.

I took notice of the gentle way you had taken care not to hurt my fragile body, and you never took your eyes away from mine. I let you take me to that place that you had promised, and you took my breath away, and you made me feel like a woman. I suddenly knew at that moment that you are my heaven, and I was in awe of this beautiful angel that had placed his body on top of mine. You are strong and masculine, but you took care of me the way a man should take care of a woman he loves. After I caught my breath, I raised my hand up to your face, brushing your flushed cheekbone before I outlined your lips with the tip of my finger.

“Take me there again,” I pleaded with you. As the sun set and the moon took its place, as the stars gave cover to the chilly March evening, throughout the night, you and I repeatedly became as close as a man and a woman can become. And just before the sun rose the next morning, you watched as I let myself go to that magical place that you had taken me so many times that night, a place that you too had gone with me. As I returned back to you, out of breath, you caressed my forehead with your hand, your brown eyes staring into mine. You gently kissed my nose, and you decided to give all of yourself to me at that moment.