Free You Take It From Here by Pamela Ribon

and oblong.
    “It’s cancer,” she said.
    I sat up so quickly I spilled my drink.
    “Damn, I should’ve known you’d get scared!” Smidge cackled, wiggling a hand like she was trying to erase what just happened. “I was kidding! I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
    I wiped chunks of boozy ice from my thigh as I scolded, “Now, why would that be funny?”
    “I don’t know. The mojito made me say it, Danny. Don’t be sore.”
    When it came to Smidge, sometimes she was definitely kidding, sometimes she was kidding but she wanted you to pretend she was serious, and sometimes she was seriously out of her mind. It made it hard to know exactly when it was time to take action, or if it was a better idea to wait a few minutes, long enough to accurately assess the situation.
    I couldn’t summon the courage to ask Smidge just how bad the cancer was until an hour or so later, once we were back at the hotel room, safely away from the public. When she realized I had some doubt, her response was to hurl various items from her suitcase directly at my head. They were mostly clothes; soft, squishy things I could easily catch or watch pathetically float to the floor like exhausted streamers. Every once in a while she’d find something with better aerodynamics. Her toothpaste comes to mind as a particularly effective missile.
    We squared off on either side of our hotel bed. Smidge wore her taco pajama pants and a yellow camisole. I was still fully dressed from the evening, what with all the defending my body from personal injury I’d been doing.
    Smidge had weaponized every item from her suitcase save for a bottle of whiskey, which she then grabbed like a baseball bat. While it made me momentarily nervous, I knew it was for drinking, not battery.
    One of our traditions on these trips was to pack the bottle of wine we’d bought on the last one. But in China we feared the bottles of so-called Chinese wine, and opted for what we saw others copiously drinking: Johnnie Walker Red.
    Smidge sat at the edge of the bed, whiskey bottle tucked between her legs. Her hair had fallen out of its ponytail and strayed in wild bunches in front of her face. She quietly stared at her hands.
    “I wasn’t thinking about how you’re just now finding out about this,” she finally said. “I should be nicer about giving you some catch-up time.”
    The mattress creaked underneath me as I sat down beside her, causing the much-smaller Smidge to roll toward me, just slightly. “I’m really confused,” I admitted.
    “You’re in shock,” she said. “I confess I was hoping to take advantage of that. Have you saying yes before you got a chance to wrap your big brain around it. But I need you to hurry up so we can get to the important stuff.”
    I took a deep breath, and as I held it I imagined Smidge’s lungs, how maybe she couldn’t take that same breath without thinking of what was going on inside her. I don’t think I’ve taken a deep breath without thinking of her ever again.
    Smidge twisted the top off the bottle before lifting it to her mouth for a swig. “I didn’t get much of that martini,” she said. “This feels good. This’ll be my new drink of choice. Danny, let’s start being whiskey drinkers.”
    “Okay.” I sounded miserable, which seemed to spark Smidge in another direction.
    “Sooooooooo!” she sang. “What’s going to happen is that nobody’s going to find out what we’re doing. This is our secret.”
    I snorted. “Yeah, right.”
    She nudged my hand with the bottle, trying to force me to take it. “Drink on it. We’re not telling anybody about this.”
    “About what?”
    “Any of it. The plan, the cancer, the future. Only these walls will know what we’re doing, otherwise it won’t work.”
    I pushed the bottle away. “No. That’s insane. We have to tell Henry, at least. Doesn’t he get a say in whether or not he wants me to be his wife?”
    Smidge nodded, her jaw locked. “I need you to remind me of something.