Expiry

She silently ate while he stared at his phone, giving the waitress only a wan smile when she came to refill their coffees. The wind and rain surged and washed against the big window beside them. There was music playing, old music she didn’t really know, part of the diner’s retro concept. Their food cooled to room temperature before she finally said, “I didn’t want you to go in the first place.”

He glanced up at her, still distracted. After a moment, he shrugged and said, “I had to know.”

“And?” She tried to sound casual, conversational, and failed. “What did you get? What’s the verdict?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

“I don’t, but you went anyway, and so now I have to know.”

He took a sip of his coffee, winced, fumbled for sugar and cream and a tiny spoon to mix them, took another sip. “I’ll tell you mine after you get yours.”

“I’m not getting mine. I don’t want to know. I don’t think I could handle knowing.” She leaned in, over her half-eaten plate of Belgian waffles. “And I don’t think you’re handling it either.”

“I’m handling it fine.”

“Really? How long do you have then? What’s the end date on this thing?” She gestured with the end of her fork, her chest and then his. “Us?”

He sipped the coffee again, added more cream, delaying. “We have some time.”

“What’s ‘some time’? What does that mean? A month? A year? They’re supposed to give you a date and time, like an appointment, all set in stone and unavoidable, right? So what does it say your—?”

“Jesus, Angela…” He looked around the diner, making sure the few other patrons were at least pretending to ignore them. Quieter, he continued: “Eight months. Eight months and change. It doesn’t say how.”

Her eyes went wide. Eventually she breathed. “But—”

“That’s around the time I usually go skiing with Victor and those guys. Maybe if I don’t go? But that’s not supposed to… you’re not…” He paused; there was a tremble in his hand that rattled the coffee cup against the saucer, and he put the whole thing down. “It’ll just happen some other way. That’s what the pamphlet said, anyway: you can’t get out of it.”

“Maybe it’s wrong, and—”

“Sure.” He pushed piles of scrambled eggs around his plate with his fork. “I made an appointment for you.”

“I told you, I’m not going.”

“I need you to.” It was his turn to lean in. “I need you to. I need to know if we go together. It’ll change… it changes things.”

“I wish they’d never invented the stupid thing. It’s not right. We’re not supposed to know things like this. We’re just not supposed to. If...” She trailed off, shook her head, went back to eating, wouldn’t meet his eyes again, not for the longest while.

Outside, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Cars would pass occasionally, almost silent except for the sound of tires on wet pavement. The waitress came and laid the check tablet; he waved his phone over it and it beeped as ‘paid’.

She slid her phone across the table to him, but he waved it off. “I already got it.”

“No.”

“Angela—”

“No, look at it.” She gestured to the phone. She wouldn’t look at him. “I went months ago. With my sister. When they were first open, before we were serious.”

“You lied? I thought you ‘couldn’t handle knowing’.” He hesitated, afraid to look, to know. But he heard his voice ask, “Eight months?”

“No. Joon, it’s… just look at it.”

He had to make a conscious decision to pick her phone up from the table, an act of will. He tapped the screen, read the information that appeared there. Eventually he put it down.

“You’ll be what, then, ninety—”

“A hundred and one. Em makes it to one-oh-three. I guess I’m not surprised: Gammy lived to her late nineties, and she lived most of her life in pre-reform private healthcare. I think mom told me she had good insurance though.”

“You’ve known this the whole time?”

“We’d gone on three dates. We hadn’t even slept together yet. It wasn’t your business then, and then later when it was, it was too late to tell you. I didn’t know how to… I just couldn’t.” She finally looked him in the eyes. “How mad are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does!”

“Eight months from now—“

“And change.”

“—Eight months and change and it won’t matter.” He finished the coffee, slipped his phone back into his pocket. “Do you want me to move out?”

“Why on Earth would I want you to move out?”

“So you can get on with it. So I can. I’ve got a lot to cram into eight months. There’s work to finish or hand off before I quit. Going to see my parents, and Eun-Ae, and maybe Freddie. There’s bucket list stuff. And I still want to go skiing at some point. So if you don’t want me around the place while I do all that I would under—”

“You’re an idiot.”

“What?”

She shook her head, dumbfounded. “You’re not moving out, Joon. First off, it could still be wrong—”

“Have you seen even one feed item about them being wrong?”

“They could be paying people off, you don’t—”

“Angela.”

“They could be. They could be wrong. Nothing is ever a hundred percent, nothing ever. So you’re staying, and if you want to take time off from work, and do your damn bucket list or whatever, that’s fine. But you’re staying.”

“And if they’re right?”

“Then you’re staying because... I’d miss the cat too much.”

“I was going to leave you the cat, Angela, he—”

“You’d better fucking leave me the cat. I’m the one that feeds that cat.”

“Ok, ok—”

“He’s basically my cat at this point anyway.”

“Ok.”