And finally, she posts something again
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
For years, Gerri thinks she'll be the one to go first.
She never says it aloud.
It feels rude, like discussing the bill before dessert arrives.
But the math is the math.
She's older. Significantly older. Old enough that strangers occasionally mistake Roman for her son, if they're standing in the wrong light.
The joke gets less funny over time.
Then funny again.
Then, eventually, neither of them bothers reacting.
Time sands down embarrassment before it sands down anything else.
When Roman turns 50, Gerri’s 71. She buys him a watch.
He hates watches, always has. He claims they're oppressive.
"Time is already following me," he says. "Why would I strap it directly to my body?"
"You're fifty."
"Jesus Christ."
"Exactly."
She fastens it around his wrist herself.
Roman looks down at it, then at her.
Something unreadable passes between them.
Not sadness, not yet.
Just awareness.
The feeling of standing on a shoreline and seeing the tide begin to change.
The strange thing is that Gerri keeps getting older, but Roman doesn't.
Not really.
Not in the way he's supposed to.
His hair grays, his face settles, he complains about his back.
But beneath it all there's something stubbornly unfinished about him, like part of him never learned how to become an old man.
Even at 55, he still interrupts people.
He still makes inappropriate jokes, still calls her just to tell her about something ridiculous he saw online, still sounds delighted whenever she answers.
Gerri grows accustomed to it.
Dangerously accustomed.
One winter Roman forgets a word, a simple word. He laughs it off.
Then it happens again.
And again.
Small things.
Tiny things.
The sort of things everyone experiences, until suddenly they aren't tiny anymore.
The diagnosis arrives on a Thursday; Rainy, Unremarkable.
A day that should have belonged to nobody.
Gerri sits beside him in the doctor's office.
The physician is speaking gently.
Roman is making jokes.
The world narrows to a pinpoint, then goes silent.
Afterward they're standing in the parking garage, cars passing.
People living their ordinary lives.
Roman staring at the concrete floor, Gerri waiting for him to say something.
Finally, he laughs.
A terrible sound.
"Well."
She can't answer.
Because for the first time in decades she's genuinely frightened; Not of death.
Of chronology.
Of sequence.
Of the story unfolding incorrectly.
"You know what pisses me off?" Roman says one evening months later.
They're sitting in her apartment, the television on mute, the city glowing outside the windows.
"What?"
"I spent twenty years making age-gap jokes."
Gerri closes her eyes.
"Roman."
"No, seriously."
His smile is thin, fragile.
"Statistically, this is bullshit."
"Stop."
"It's rude."
"Roman."
"It's deeply inconsiderate behavior from the universe."
She turns toward him; his face catches the light from the window.
Older.
Softer.
The edges wearing away.
For a second she can almost see all the versions of him at once.
The obnoxious thirty-year-old.
The frightened forty-year-old.
The man beside her now.
Every age layered together.
Still unmistakably him.
Still somehow unfinished.
The sight hurts, because suddenly she understands something.
The future she'd feared all those years was never really about her dying.
It was about losing him; she just hadn't known it yet.
As time passes, Roman begins slipping away in increments.
A missed memory, a repeated story, a moment of confusion.
The apocalypse arrives so quietly.
Not with sirens, not with fire.
With absence, with entire rooms disappearing from a person's mind while they're still standing inside them.
Some days are normal, some days aren't.
Gerri learns not to predict which kind she's getting.
One afternoon they're sitting in a park.
The trees are moving gently overhead.
Roman is watching children play in the distance; he's been quiet for a long time.
Eventually he speaks up, "Can I tell you something awful?"
"Always."
"I'm not scared of dying."
Gerri looks away; she already knows this.
Roman has spent his entire life treating death like a punchline.
"What are you scared of?"
His answer comes softly.
"So much of me already feels gone."
The words hang there.
Heavy and Irreversible.
Gerri reaches for his hand.
His fingers close around hers immediately.
Reflex deeper than memory.
The body remembering what the mind cannot.
She nearly breaks then, right there on the bench.
Because she realizes she has spent years preparing herself for a death that would happen all at once.
Nobody prepared her for this, for loving someone gradually beyond the edge of where they can follow.
Near the end, Roman has a good day.
One of the rare ones.
A miraculous one.
He's lucid, Funny.
Entirely himself, for hours.
They're sitting together at dusk, the apartment quiet.
Summer air drifting through the open windows.
Roman studies her for a long time, long enough to make her uncomfortable.
"What?" she asks.
His smile appears; Warm, certain.
The smile she fell in love with despite every reasonable objection.
"You know," he says, "I always thought you'd leave first."
The words hit like a physical blow.
Gerri looks down, unable to answer.
Roman keeps watching her.
The city outside hums softly.
Traffic, voices, life continuing.
"I really believed that."
"I know."
He nods.
Thoughtful.
Then he reaches for her hand.
His grip is weaker now.
But familiar, still familiar.
"Sorry."
The apology is unbearable.
Not because of what it means, but because he means it.
As though this was something he chose, as though he has somehow failed her.
Gerri squeezes his hand hard.
Hard enough to hurt, hard enough to anchor herself to the moment.
"You idiot," she whispers.
Roman smiles.
For a second he looks young.
Not physically; Just entirely, recognizably himself.
Then the expression softens.
And fades.
And time continues doing what it has always done.
Taking.
Taking.
Taking.
Years later, Gerri still catches herself reaching for her phone when something ridiculous happens.
Still hears a joke and thinks of him, still turns to tell him things.
The habit survives the person; that's the cruelest part.
Not the ending, but the momentum.
The way love keeps moving after it has nowhere left to go.
And sometimes, very late at night, she thinks about all those years she spent believing she was closer to the finish line.
As if time were fair, as if chronology were a promise.
As if the person who arrives first must always leave first.
Outside, the city hums.
Inside, the watch she bought him sits in a drawer she never opens.
Still keeping perfect time.
