I didn’t give a shit about crying in public anymore. I’d become quite comfortable with it over the past year. I knew it was a sign of love. The love of life. The love of another. I was pretty sure my face was scrunched up in a full-on ugly cry. My cheeks were already wet.
We’d been holding our breath for quite some time. With each passing day, Drake’s chances of survival increased, and this was the day that determined so many of the statistics we’d clung to. A year after a transplant, these counts determined our long-term fate.
But they also determined a short-term desire.
We thanked Dr. Chidozie profusely, and all the other staff we recognized on our way out of the hospital, and made our way to Drake’s Ford Fiesta. He put both hands on the steering wheel, pausing, staring at the wheel, still in disbelief.
I placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not a dream, babe. You made it.”
He glanced up. “We made it. I only wanted to do it that way, Fairy. Only if it was we.”
He leaned over to kiss me, taking my mouth with absolute passion, his tongue snaking around mine. It was suffocatingly hot in the car, the scorching LA heat had made it into a furnace, and we both began to sweat. I tasted his salty lips, he drank in mine. Neither of us cared. This was life. This was life in all of its beautiful, ugly, sweet, and salty glory. I’d never felt more alive.
I suspected neither did he.
When we finally pulled back from an embrace I thought I’d never be able to peel myself away from, I smoothed the edges of my lipstick. “Why do I even bother putting it on?”
Drake smiled. “Because I like it.” He turned the key and the engine roared.
“You said you might trade in the car. Maybe that’s what we do today? Celebrate?”
“There’s only one car I’m trading this in for.”