He got that right. He was messed up about everything else. But he got that right.
“But even with the sale of the apartments, the liquidation of everything but my truck, I still owe my dad fifty grand,” Tag continued.
“Wasn’t that an inheritance?”
“I didn’t want an inheritance. I wanted to build my own road,” Tag argued. “I told him I would pay it all back by the time I was thirty. Thirty ain’t gonna happen, Mo. So I needed to find a way to pay it back sooner.”
“The fight.”
“Yeah.” Tag nodded. “The fight. It just so happens I got offered a title fight that would pay me fifty Gs if I won. And I had absolutely nothing to lose.”
“And after the fight?”
“I was going to take a trip to Dallas, see my mom and my sisters and pay my dad back. I haven’t seen them in a while. Then . . . take a hike up into the hills above that overpass in Nephi.”
“The one where Molly was buried?”
“The one where Molly was buried,” he confirmed. “Hike up into the hills. Take a pill. Watch the sun-set as I went to sleep.”
“That’s it?” I asked, reining in my temper.
“That’s it,” he answered, with no temper at all.
I felt the rage surge in my chest and pop in my ears, but I kept my voice level. Apparently, he hadn’t thought he needed to say goodbye to me.
“So you left the tapes. Why?”
“It was my way of saying goodbye. I wanted Millie to know how I felt. Every step of the way. Falling in love with her. I never wanted her to have a reason to doubt me. I wanted her to know it was real, that is was perfect, that it was the best gift I’ve ever received.”
“And you repay her by taking that gift and tossing it?”
Tag was silent, staring at me, his face a study in compassion. Love lined his face and leaked from the corners of his eyes.
“I love you, Mo. You know that, don’t you?” he said gently. And I knew he did. I had no doubt whatsoever. But he had a hell of a way of showing it.
“Fuck you, Tag!” I hissed. “I know what you want from me. I know you want me to tell you I support your decision. But I’m not that selfless. I’m not that friend. I don’t want you to suffer. I really don’t. I would share that burden if I could. I’d spell you on the worst days if I could, because I know you’d do that for me in a heartbeat. But I’d rather see you suffer than say goodbye. Sorry. If that makes me an asshole, then I’ll change my name. Just put it on a nametag, and I’ll wear it. I don’t give a shit. When did you start being afraid of a little pain?”
“That’s not it, Mo.”
“Bull-shit!” I roared. “You owe it to the people who love you to battle. You owe us!”
“It’s not my pain I’m worried about, man,” he said it so softly I barely heard him.
“Where is your rage? Where is the green-eyed monster who wanted to kill me just for breathing his sister’s name? Where’s the guy that grabbed the bull by the horns in Spain just to see if he could? Where’s the guy who shot a man to protect me, who threw himself in the line of fire? Let me get this straight, Tag. You would die to save my life, but you won’t even fight to save your own?”
“Not if I have to put people through hell to do it.”
“Take off the cape, bro. Take it off! Or I’m going to beat the hell out of you, put you in a strait-jacket, and start pumping you full of chemo myself. You watch me.”
“I love you, Mo.”
“Stop saying that, Tag!”
“I love you, Mo.”
I felt a splintering sensation inside my chest, and I knew I had to get out before I lost it. I rarely cried, but I had a tendency to store up the grief, tucking it away in hidden compartments, boxing it up, building partitions. I hoarded my grief. But now I was bursting at the seams, unable to escape the towering feelings that had been threatening to bury me since Millie called and told me Tag was gone. I was falling apart. And I had to go.
IT TOOK ME several days to make the tapes. It had started out as a way to say goodbye, a way to express my feelings, my love for Millie in my own words. And as I told our story, I realized what a miracle it was. Moses was right. I got a miracle. And with every word, every tape, I became more convinced of it. The problem was, I didn’t know how to stop. I didn’t want the tapes to end. I couldn’t say goodbye.
When I got the call about the fight, I put the tapes I’d completed, along with the tape recorder I’d borrowed from Henry, in the filing cabinet in the office at the gym, and left the key in an envelope for Millie. But I still had so much to say. I would remember something else, something I’d missed, something I wanted to tell her, and I would want to call her and talk to her. Then I’d remind myself of what the doctor said—stage four glioblastoma—and I would consider all the terrible things I’d read and researched about my diagnosis. I’d think about the pictures I’d seen, recite the survival rates. I’d think about the way I would die, the way I would suffer, the way those closest to me would suffer. And I wouldn’t let myself call her. Instead, I went searching for a tape recorder of my own so I could make more tapes.
I ended up spending the next day, when I should have been on the road to Vegas, going from pawn shop to pawn shop looking for one. I hit pay dirt at the fifth shop I tried when an old woman sold me a dusty hand-held tape recorder from her back room, along with an unopened package of empty cassettes, all for a hundred bucks. She’d told me, straight-faced, that I was getting a deal. She was probably right. I would have paid two hundred.