She soaps up the fronts of my legs and over my hips on each side. Then she stands up and makes little circles over my chest and down my arms. She lifts my arm and washes my armpit and it makes her giggle.

“What’s so funny?” I ask.

“You are,” she says. “You’re looking everywhere but at me.”

She picks up a shampoo bottle and starts to wash my hair.

“You don’t have to do that,” I say.

She waits a beat, and then she says, “How long has it been since anyone has taken care of you, Nick?” She tilts my head back and washes the soap from my hair, and I’m glad she does, because damn if tears don’t well up in my eyes. It’s been a really long time since anyone has taken care of me, since anyone has cared what happens to me.

But Carrie cares. I can tell that she does. I can tell she has true feelings for me. But will they be enough for us? That’s what I’m not sure about.

“It’s been a long time,” I whisper, and I pull her naked body against me.

“Let me take care of you,” she says.

I nod into her neck.

Her slick fingers wrap around my dick and she begins to stroke. I open my mouth to groan, and her tongue slides into it, and she starts to kiss me as she strokes me, pulling my very soul from my body with every tug of her tender little fingers.

“Carrie,” I grunt out.

“What?” she whispers against my lips. “Let me take care of you,” she says again. “Just trust me.”

Trust her? I don’t trust anybody. Not really.

Until now.

“Okay,” I say.

Her fingers tighten infinitesimally, and suddenly I feel like my balls are trying to crawl out my throat. I come with her little fingers gripping me, splashing her belly, and she just whispers encouragement to me as I die a little death at her hands.

I have to make her stop now because I’m just too sensitive, so I take her hand and lift it, pressing it and her against the wall, with my hands holding both of hers by her head. “Why did you do that?” I ask with my head buried in her neck.

“I wanted to make you feel good.”

“You don’t have to do that to make me feel good.”

“I know.” Her brow furrows. “You didn’t like it?”

I laugh and pick up the soap. I wash off her belly and her skin ripples as I touch it. “I think there’s plenty of evidence that I did.” I smile.

She giggles as I clean her off.

“What about you?” I ask. I kiss her, and she pulls her head back from me.

“I told my parents we wouldn’t be gone long.”

“But that’s not quite fair,” I protest.

She giggles again and gets out of the shower. I’ll have the image of her naked body in my head from this moment forward, though—for the rest of my life. I wrap her in a towel and dry her off really quickly, and she gets dressed again.

We get back in my jeep and I take her home. The wind blows her hair dry and she laughs as we take a turn too fast, grabbing for the overhead bars. “Nick!” she cries. I stop. Then she grins at me and says, “Do it again!”

So I do. And again, and again, and again.

But when we get to her house, there’s an ambulance in the drive.

Carrie

It’s time for hospice to come. While we were gone, Mom had a seizure and it scared the crap out of Dad, so he called 9-1-1. They spent the day at the hospital and then they came home, and a nurse showed up that night. Mom can still get up every now and then, but she’s so tired that it doesn’t last long. They had told us we had a month, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.

When we get home, Matt and Sky come over and they bring dinner. It’s really sweet of them, and I start to cry over their generosity. I can’t help it. Matt pulls me into him and holds me for a second, murmuring to me that it’s all going to be all right. That I’ll see. That I’ll understand it. But I don’t. And I probably never will.

Seth asks me if I want to take a walk with him, while the rest of them talk. I agree, because Nick had to leave to go to work. I don’t have anything else to do, and I don’t think Nick will mind.

“My mom died of cancer a few years ago,” Seth says to me the minute our feet hit the sand. “I just wanted to tell you that.” He looks at me. “Matt can tell you he knows what you’re going through, but he doesn’t. Not really. He didn’t watch his mother waste away and feel helpless because he couldn’t do anything. So I just…I just wanted to tell you that I do know what you’re going through and that I’d be happy to listen if you want to talk.”

“Thank you,” I say. But I have nothing on my mind that I want to say right now. “I might take you up on that later.”

We walk in silence.

“So, you and Amber, huh?” I ask with a grin.

He shakes his head. “No, she hooked up with some guy named Dean last night,” he says. He winces. “Don’t know what happened there.”

We walk and talk for a little while and finally head back. Friday and Reagan are in with Mom when I get there, and they’re all talking. I stand at the doorway and listen. I hear Mom say, “If I could do anything differently, I would never have gotten divorced. I wish we were still married now. But I guess it’s too late.”

Mom dozes off, and Reagan motions me out of the room with a crook of her finger.