On Second Thought(45)

“Hi, Jonathan.” I stood up, my face flaring with heat. Was he going to bring up Friday night? Or the fact that Eric announced that I complained about my job? More likely, he was going to deliver another lecture about punctuality and godliness. He did have that Calvinist preacher vibe.

Jonathan closed the door behind me and sat down, regarding me with his unblinking, pale blue eyes. His office was not a place where happy conversations occurred. Not with me, anyway.

“I’m sorry I’m a tiny bit late. I was talking to my grandmother, and she has dementia, a little anyway, and it was hard to get her off the phone. But she’s very sweet. A widow for a long time. How was your weekend?”

“Please sit down,” he said. His voice was very deep, almost a growl, like the dragon Smaug from The Hobbit movies. Rachelle was convinced it was the one sexy thing about him, but everything he said to me always sounded very...disdainful.

“Have you seen The Cancer Chronicles this morning?” he asked.

“Uh, no.” The CCs were supposed to be done, though Eric had run a maudlin piece about Nathan just after he died. “Jonathan, speaking of Eric, I’d like to keep our, um, little scene from the other night to ourselves, okay? We’re...well, we’re getting back together.”

“Are you?” An eyebrow lifted.

“Yes. Probably. I mean, definitely. It’s just a blip.”

He sighed, then turned his monitor around so I could see.

It was Eric’s blog, running as usual under the banner of Hudson Lifestyle Online.

The Cancer Chronicles by Eric Fisher, it said, and then the headline:

Cutting Free from the Corpse of My Old Life.

On Friday night, it began, I made a difficult, exciting decision. To live life large. In order to do this, I had to assess what had been holding me back. Now that my Cancer Journey has drawn to a close, and because the Universe has shown me how fragile life is, I had to make some changes.

The first step was big. I had to separate myself from a person close to me, even knowing it would cause her pain. But sometimes pain makes you stronger. It did in my case. The pain of cancer was the fire that burnished my soul. (Sigh. There really hadn’t been much pain.)

On Friday night, I used my strength to cut free from the person who represented the old, sick me: Sunshine.

The corpse of his old life was me.

My lips started to tremble, and the words jumped around on the screen.

He had to break up with me, the blog said, despite my tender loving care during his “life-and-death battle” because I was “the weight around his ankle,” dragging him under. My lack of support, my love of the status quo, my failure to understand that life “demanded more” now that he had “stared Death in the eye.”

He described my anger on Friday. How I kept eating lobster (I regretted that now). My insistence that we should get married.

Rather than focus on the heart of the matter, she repeatedly asked me about the Tiffany engagement ring I bought her. And I had bought her one, but that was before I understood my life’s new meaning.

And while he regretted having to hurt me, he was nonetheless “ready to take on the challenge of living life in the moment.”

Jonathan was silent. Outside his office, the rest of the staff was silent. So they already knew.

“Please,” I whispered. “Take...take it down.”

“Look at the comments.”

I tried. I was blinking rapidly, as if the computer were about to slap me, which, metaphorically, it already had.

There were 977 comments.

The blog posted at 6:00 a.m. every Monday.

977 comments in two and a half hours. No, 979. Nope, 985. 993. 1001. 1019.

Oh, my Jesus.

This guy is a total dick, the first comment read. She’s better off without him.

Bruh, good for you! said the second. Women always think it’s about them.

As a leukemia survivor, I also had to scrape some people off my shoe...

This column makes me sick. He used her, plain and simple. Live life large, my ass. He should be...

Outside Jonathan’s office, the phone started to ring. Another line. Another. I could see the lights on Jonathan’s phone. The magazine had five dedicated lines. All were lit up.

“Take it down, Jonathan,” I said, my voice shrill.

“I’m not going to do that. I’m sorry.”

“You have to! You hate this column anyway.”

1034. 1041. 1075. God, it was going crazy! I put my hand over my mouth, unable to process what I was seeing.

Jonathan turned the screen back and clicked a few keys. “Our Facebook page has seven hundred new likes since yesterday. The story has been shared on social media more than a thousand times.”

Oh, shit. Shit! The blog automatically linked to our Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter accounts...all of which I’d set up when I started work here.

“Take it down!”

“Ainsley, I can’t. It’s gone viral. I’m sorry.” He almost sounded sincere.

“So? That’s my life there! That’s me being humiliated! Please take it down.” Tears were spurting out of my eyes.

Jonathan folded his hands together. “You’re the one who fought for this column. I’m sorry it’s your personal life, but that was exactly what you and Eric wanted. And clearly, we can’t turn away this kind of exposure.”