“It’d be quick. You wouldn’t feel a thing.”
Two silhouettes – a young woman and a young-looking man – sat on the beach.  It was winter, when the hazy fog enveloped the coast.  The two didn’t mind the cold vapor that blanketed them, though, because they stayed close and kept each other warm.  The waves curled and crashed below them, slowly eroding the speckled shore.
Rhiannon brushed the sand out of her hair – mahogany locks, which Guy adored.  In recent months it had begun to lose its luster.  “How many girls have you taken to the beach before?” she asked.
“Maybe a couple,” Guy said, shrugging.  “Not as many as you think, trust me.  Sitting on the beach is a pretty recent trend.  The Victorian ladies didn’t like getting sand on their bathing-dresses, I believe.”
The girl smiled at that comment.  Guy had begun treating her differently since the diagnosis, but his humor remained intact.  “So what did you do with your old girlfriends back then?  Sit around and drink weak tea?”
“We drank tea with our pinkies up, naturally,” Guy remarked, making the couple to laugh.  The chuckling lasted shorter than it should have.  Guy returned to his neutral smile, a look Rhiannon hated.  He had his lips curled into a grin, but his gentle eyes were cold with grief.  They were the eyes of a man staring at a corpse in a casket. 
A breeze kicked up, causing the two to pull closer.  “I miss the summer,” Rhiannon commented, shivering.  “I wish I could see another one.”
“What?” Guy perked up, startled.  “How many more months?”
“They don’t know,” the girl admitted.  “But they say that if I make it past March it’ll be a miracle.”  Rhiannon spoke the words, but she didn’t think of them.  She tried her best to never think of the future, and only focus on the now.  Guy helped her forget.  He had a warm hand to clutch on to in the middle of an unforgiving winter.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” the man said, his face red with frustration.  “You don’t have to leave. You can stay with me.  Please stay with me, Rhia.”
“I don’t want to be like you,” Rhiannon stated softly, clutching on to Guy tighter.  It was a quiet, but stubborn reaction that Guy had been sick of hearing.  “Living for so long, watching everyone you love get old … that sounds like suffering.”
“We’ll have each other,” Guy whispered, his soothing voice radiating deep in his lover’s head.  “I’ve been afraid of eternity for so long, Rhia, believe me.  But I’m not afraid when I’m with you.  We can be together.  I can show you what I’ve seen.”
Rhiannon looked away; she did not like this conversation, and ended it by kissing Guy, silencing his voice.  The man noted how her lips were dry, a product of the medication she was taking.  At first he couldn’t understand why modern doctors would give medicine to the terminally ill.  Then he remembered that its purpose wasn’t to heal, only to alleviate the pain.
*
Around noon the two went to town to get lunch.  They went to a seafood restaurant by the docks, which was one of Rhiannon’s favorites.  Guy had always been nervous about seafood after a dangerous fishing accident he was involved a century earlier, and opted to have a burger.  “So, what do you remember about the other girls?” she muttered, taking a bite out of her lobster. 
“You just won’t let that die, will you?” Guy sighed.  “Only their faces.  Some of them when they were young, but you remember most when they’re old.  There’s also the grief.  Not that temporary grief when you bicker with them, or even that bitterness after you break up with them.  It’s the pain in knowing that they’re gone forever.  That you’re never gonna see them again.  I’m not particularly nostalgic for any time period or age, but when I lose people it hurts.  When there’s nothing left but a memory of their wrinkled face.”
“I guess you won’t have to worry about me, then,” Rhiannon said, glumly smiling down at her meal.  “I won’t be old like that.  You can remember the idiot girl who found a thousand year old man attractive.”
“Two thousand,” Guy corrected.  “Don’t make me feel like an old man.  I’m just as hip as you young whippersnappers!” 
The girl chuckled.  Guy never sounded like a senile sage, despite his experience.  He had the face and humor of your typical twenty-something.  Also, unlike some who have been around for as long as he has he’s maintained his sanity.  He was wise, but practical.  He traveled and lived, but mostly observed. “Guy, please, I want you to move on after I’m gone,” she said.  “Just let me be another face.  It won’t hurt you as much if I’m just a memory.  Please keep living, you deserve that.”
Guy stayed quiet.  He could recall all the way back to when he was called ‘Gaius.’  He thought about everything he’s lost over his life.  Nothing, he believed, was permanently gained, only temporarily held close before it’s ripped away.  “Even if I go crazy because of it,” he said.  “I’ll never forget you.  I’ve lost a lot, but none of that matters if I can keep you.”
“Please,” Rhiannon said, her eyes watering.  “I want you to move on.  I want you to be happy.  Move out of town tonight if you want.  Your last thought of me doesn’t have to be some bald girl in a hospital bed.  I want an end Guy, and you’ll never have one.”
Rhiannon’s lover agreed with her, but stayed quiet for the rest of the meal.  At one moment the girl went to the bathroom.  When she came back she said she felt funny, and asked if Guy had done something.   He only shrugged. 
The meal concluded and the two walked to the bus stop together.  “I still feel odd,” the girl insisted.
“That’s because you haven’t felt healthy in a really long time,” Guy said.  When she asked him to elaborate, Rhiannon got no answer.  The bus soon arrived and the two said their goodbyes.
“See you soon,” she said.
“Count on it,” he said, wearing a plastic smile.  As she disappeared behind the bus door, Guy couldn’t help but admire her beauty.  It seemed a kind of timeless, eternal beauty now, thanks to him.  He knew that once she found out she would get angry.  She might hate him.  But Guy also knew that she’d one day understand and forgive him.
After all, she’d have all eternity to.