Ryan gets his affairs in order. He writes little notes on his computer before he goes to his lawyer; neat little columns of who should get what. He deletes the list three times and starts over, plays around with the formatting endlessly, changing the font and alignment.

Chris

Christian

Christian M. Potter.

He’s never written a will before.

He sits back and watches the words on the screen. He watches the city lights play across the hardwood floors, the coffee table. Joanna’s floors, Joanna’s table.

Ryan makes a note. For Joanna: apartment. Paintings. The designer coffee table. He erases it and changes it to apartment & contents because that’s what it amounts to, anyway. All the little pieces of his home that he’ll leave for his girlfriend when he’s gone.

He stares at the words burning black against the screen, and changes the font to blue.

--

Ryan gets his affairs in order. He sits in his lawyer’s office on Tuesday morning and watches the sun bounce off his lawyer’s bald head. He drags a hand through his hair and straightens his Armani suit. He wants to be buried in Prada.

His lawyer says to put that in the will.

--

He tells Joanna one day, and she’s furious.

“You’re not going to die.” She says, cleaning up his vomit.

“I have cancer.” Ryan states. She scoffs, and he wonders why she’s pissed. Ryan asks about it, tired and weak from spewing. His ribs ache.

“You’re pissed at me.” He says, resting his head against the tiles of the bathroom floor. He feels old and malnourished. Fucking radiation.

Joanna smiles and kisses his forehead. “Nah.”

“Fuck off, you are too.”

“Of course I am. When all this is over, you’re taking me to Ibiza to grovel for my forgiveness. You asshole.”

When all this is over, Ryan thinks, and desperately wants to fight with Joanna now.

--

“I’m leaving you the apartment, and all my stuff,” Ryan says one day. Joanna’s making some kind of vegetable soup, and the knife she’s using to cut the carrots pauses in mid-air, wobbling dangerously.

“I’m going to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says and goes back to cutting the carrot into neat little slices.

“I’m talking about my will.” Ryan leans over the table, watching Joanna’s mouth quiver a bit. The carrot begins to look mutilated.

“Shut up Ryan.”

“Joanna…” Ryan thinks about maybe taking the knife away, but it falls to the counter, sliding across it, reflecting the kitchen light onto Joanna’s face.

“I can’t hear this.” She turns away, and Ryan thinks she might be crying. He walks up behind her, pressing his body against her back, trapping her between the counter and himself.

“Rock and a hard place,” she mutters, and Ryan hears the underlying panic in her voice. “You’re not going to die, Ryan. Christ.”

“Okay.” He nuzzles her hair.

“Not ‘okay’. Say it, ‘Joanna, you’re right, of course I’m not going to die’.”

Ryan is silent, and Joanna heaves heavily, her breath quivering. He wants to say it, he wants to tell her. He’s said it before, but now he really wants her to hear it with a ferocity and urgency that only comes from being scared out of your mind.

“Joanna, I-“ She interrupts him.

“Don’t you dare.” She threatens. He watches the steady rise and fall of her shoulders, the tension in her neck. “Don’t you dare say it now, Ryan. I don’t want it to sound like good-bye.”

“I-“

“Ryan.”

“I-“

“Ryan. Please don’t do this.” Her voice is small, quiet. “Don’t say it.”

“Don’t say ‘I love you’?” He asks gently, guiding her body to lean back against his. “Well, then I’ll think it.”

--

Joanna loses her shit. She doesn’t speak to Ryan for three days; she just quietly makes the soup and cleans the toilet and presses up against him at night. She doesn’t sleep; he sometimes wakes up to find her listening to him breathe. It makes him smile and freak out at the same time.

He says it again and Joanna almost smiles.

Almost.

--

Christian is pissed about the will too, and Ryan thinks they’re all in denial. They’re hanging around in his apartment, drinking, and he mentions this.

“Yeah, well you’re in reverse denial.” Christian says around the neck of his beer bottle. Ryan lifts his head from the floor to look at his best friend.

“I’m what?”

“You’re acting like it’s a certainty you’re going to die.”

“It is.”

“Fuck you, it’s not. The doctor said-“

Ryan laughs. “It has nothing to do with doctors, Chris, everybody dies. And if I want Joanna to live at my place and you to drive my car when I do, I need the papers. It’s business.”

“Ryan-“

“Leave it the fuck alone.”

“Say you don’t think this cancer is going to kill you.”

“I don’t think this cancer is going to kill me.” Ryan takes a sip of his beer and stares at the ceiling. “But there is nothing like having your balls nuked to remind you that something else will.”

--

A few weeks go by, and Joanna forgets about it. Ryan doesn’t. He makes three copies of his will and hides them strategically. He starts paying attention to his health. He stops going out as much and goes to bed earlier. He stops smoking, except for occasional pot. He quits drinking and eats a lot of fresh fruit. He starts drinking decaf but Joanna says without caffeine he’s like the living dead anyway, so he goes back to regular.

He stops holding things back. He says what’s on his mind, and he starts hugging people more. He makes plans to take Joanna to Italy and helps his mom pay for her mortgage.

He starts saying the word ‘love’ practically every day, and every time he does Joanna looks at him like his dick fell off. He starts saying it just because the look on her face amuses him.

He deals with it, in his own way.

Then one day, he goes back to being Ryan Marshall. He shows up at Joe’s Bar at 11:30, smoking on his way in, and orders two shots of Jack Daniels. Joanna is visibly relieved. He makes fun of all the pathetic over 30s, leers at the hot chick behind the bar, and when he wakes up with a hangover the next morning he relishes in it.

He leaves the letter from the oncologist’s office for Joanna to find on the fucking coffee table, and pretends not to notice her small smile when she reads the word “cured”.

Joanna calls it the great resurrection of Ryan Marshall. She says they should commemorate this day every year, like Easter.

The next year, Ryan takes Joanna to Ibiza. They party on the beach and argue the whole time about Joanna turning down a job offer in Berlin. The argument culminates when Joanna screams that he’s a ‘maladjusted fuckwit’ and Ryan storms out only to come back at four in the morning and pass out on the couch.

On the way home from the airport Joanna calls it the best vacation she’s ever been on. Ryan contemplates driving the car over the nearest bridge.

--

Ryan gets his affairs in order. He makes three copies of his fucking will and then burns them one by one. He stares at Joanna’s name crackle and wither inside the open fire, and smokes three cigarettes in a row.

Ryan watches the wills burn away to nothing, and feels free.