Everything Changes

late.”
    “I always am. Just ask her.”
    “Don’t you two get along?”
    “As well as anyone can get along with the overbearing mother of her dead husband,” she says.
    “So, no,” I say.
    “I guess not. She and Paul are constantly checking on Sophie, like there’s no way I could be taking care of her properly without Rael there to help me. And I don’t know if I’m projecting this or it’s real, but I feel like I’m not allowed to seem happy around them. Like, how can I be happy when Rael’s dead, you know?”
    “Are you ever?”
    “What?”
    “Happy.”
    She sighs. “I have my moments.”
    It’s begun raining by the time we reach the Spandler building, just a faint mist, and Sixth Avenue is chilly and gray. Tamara isn’t wearing a coat, so she stands shivering under the building’s awning, hugging her arms to her sides for warmth, her shopping bag between her knees. I look into the lobby uncertainly.
    “What are you thinking?” Tamara says.
    “I’m thinking I can’t go back up there,” I say.
    “You’re worried about the biopsy.”
    “Of course I’m worried. I don’t want to die.”
    She reaches forward and grabs my forearm. “Zack. You’re not going to die.”
    I nod. “Suddenly, nothing in my life seems right.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. “My life, this job, getting married. I feel like none of it makes sense to me.”
    “You were just saying how well things were going,” Tamara points out.
    “That was what I thought,” I say. “But now everything makes no sense. There are so many things I want to do with my life that I’m not doing. If I did die, I would die never having done them.”
    “So what are you going to do?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. “I think I just need to get out of here for a few days, to do some thinking.”
    “You’re going to just sit in your room until Friday, waiting to hear the results of your test?” she says. “You’ll go crazy.”
    “I’m going crazy here,” I say. “If I stick around, I’ll be climbing the walls.”
    Tamara takes my hands and centers herself in front of me. “Zack,” she says softly. “Is it possible that you’re overreacting a little?”
    I look at her dark, wide eyes and the soft lines of her lips. I wonder why I’m finding her so utterly captivating today. “I’m beginning to suspect that I’ve been underreacting for some time now.”
    Her smile conveys perfect understanding. “It’s going to be okay,” she says. “I know it.”
    “Maybe,” I say. “But until it is, I just don’t want to be here.”
    “Okay, then,” she says. Her face is burnished pink from the drizzle, and she looks adorable bouncing in place lightly to keep warm.
    “Tamara,” I say, a powerful rush of warmth vibrating in my chest. “You’re the greatest.”
    She smiles, and steps forward and there we are again, in one of our patented hugs. I inhale the clean aroma of almond shampoo and scented soap. “It’ll be okay,” she whispers in my ear, giving me a light kiss on my temple. And then, without any warning, I pull back and plant a kiss on her lips. It’s a medium-length kiss, openmouthed, with only the incidental contact of tongue, and maybe it could have been explained away later as an accident, except that while I’m kissing her, my hand comes up to brush the cool, damp skin of her cheek. Her lips are amazingly yielding, built for kissing, and seem to absorb mine automatically, ready for them, even though I’m not sure she’s actually kissing me back. The rhythmic patter of the rain is all around us, punctuated by the swishing sound of taxi tires rolling through puddles, and when I finally pull away, her eyes are wide and questioning, her lips still in the half-opened position of a kiss.
    We look at each other for a long moment, my lips still reeling from the sense memory of hers. She nods slowly, as if to register the kiss in some internal log, and then flashes a bemused smile and says, “What was that?” There is no anger in her voice, nor even surprise, for that matter. Her tone is inquisitive and even mildly amused.
    “I have no idea,” I said. “It just seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
    “Well,” she says. “You certainly did it.”
    “I’m sorry—”
    “Don’t.” She waves her hand to cut me off. “Don’t apologize. You’ll just make it weirder.”
    “Okay.”
    She leans forward to hug me again, and gives me a light kiss on the cheek, as if to