Reid put the phone down and debated whether to tell her the truth. On the one hand, Haley fucked better when she was angry at James. On the other, he couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t call the cops if she knew James was involved in a deal with him.
“It was business,” he said. “You’re pleasure.”
“I’m not pleasure, Reid. I’m . . . I don’t know what I am to you, actually. It’s never made any sense. I know that something must go on in your head, because every once in a while it makes you decide we should do this, but for the life of me, I don’t know what it is.”
“Right back at ya. I never know what possesses you to agree to come over when I call.”
Their affair—if that was the right word, which it wasn’t—had begun shortly after James left Haley. She called Reid one day, spilling out a sob story about how all their mutual friends had chosen James over her. He reminded her that those people were James’s friends to begin with.
“We met you together,” she said. “You’re friends to both of us. Please, don’t abandon me.”
Reid didn’t really have friends. The people in his life were there for a reason: family, business, pleasure.
He’d seen an opportunity for Haley to serve as pleasure. And she certainly had served. Each and every time. And all he’d had to pay to be the recipient of the most off-the-wall sex of his life was to listen to Haley rant about James doing her wrong and how she’d get even with him someday.
“I think you know exactly why I come over to fuck your brains out whenever you call,” she said.
“Yeah, why’s that?”
“It’s my way of getting some small measure of revenge against James. Because I know he’d be absolutely incensed if he knew. Which begs the question: What did James do to you this time to make you want to fuck me?”
“You’re crazy,” he said. “Why can’t I just enjoy the company of a beautiful woman?”
“For the same reason that a cigar can’t just be a cigar.”
She was right, at least in part of it. Truth be told, Reid didn’t think James would care in the least if he knew that Reid and Haley sometimes went at it. “Better you than me,” he’d probably say. But Haley was undoubtedly correct that, for her at least, their encounters had much more to do with James than with him. It didn’t take an advanced psychology degree to realize that Haley was hate-fucking James with Reid’s body. For her, it was like a drug—she got the positive reinforcement that she was desired, with the added benefit of believing that James would be apoplectic if he found out she was screwing Reid.
“That just makes me feel cheap, Haley.”
“Then it’s good you got that phone call, I guess. Sounds like you’ll be feeling richer any day now.”
7
It wasn’t until three days after their doctor’s visit that Owen’s mother came into his room, sat on the edge of his bed, and finally told him what he already knew.
“I’ve got a good news–bad news situation to share with you, Owen. The bad news is that there’s been a recurrence of the leukemia. But the much more important good news is that there’s a treatment that will cure it. You’re going to get a transplant in which your bone marrow is replaced by someone else’s that doesn’t create leukemia cells.”
The whole time she was talking, his mother managed to maintain a smile. Owen knew that there was nothing to be happy about. Since the moment he left the doctor’s office, Owen had been googling like crazy the possible treatments for a recurrence of AML.
It took him a beat too long to realize that if his mother were actually imparting new information, as she thought, then he should have said something or at least changed his expression.
“Who’s going to be the donor?” he asked.
“That’s still to be determined. Your father or me, hopefully. If not, we’ll go to the national database. But don’t worry. We’ll definitely find someone compatible.”
The American Red Cross, or whatever the website was where he had read about this, had a contrary view. According to them, it wasn’t easy to find a donor, and the best chance was a sibling, which he didn’t have.
“Okay,” he said, largely because he didn’t know what else to say.
“You, me, and Dad are going to see a new doctor tomorrow. The doctor in charge of the treatment program. So, you’ll miss school. Another piece of good news, right?”
He actually didn’t want to miss school. The orchestra was rehearsing for the opera, and he was in the running to be first violin. As soon as this thought hit him, however, he realized it would never come to pass. A bone marrow transplant meant he’d be missing most of the rest of the school year. All those things that seniors had to wait four years to achieve—final concerts, the senior prom, hanging out with your friends—were not going to happen for him. Nevertheless, he smiled, because he knew his mother was trying.
The next morning, Owen sat between his parents in Dr. Cammerman’s office at Memorial Sloan Kettering, which his mother had already told him several times was the premier cancer hospital in the country, if not the world. If their new doctor was as big a deal as Owen’s mother claimed, he certainly didn’t have the office to back it up. There was barely enough space for the third chair to fit across from the desk.
The man himself didn’t look any more impressive than his surroundings. Bald, with a goatee and oversize glasses. If it weren’t for the fact that his white lab coat had DOCTOR stenciled above the pocket, Owen might have assumed he was a janitor.
“The procedure is going to be difficult, Owen,” Dr. Cammerman said. “So let
