She nodded. She moved her hands and rested them against her forehead again. “I didn't think it would come back,” she said.
I narrowed my eyes. “What?” I asked gently.
Without looking at me, she faltered. “My cancer.”
Silent Screams
“If we knew the woe and heartache
Waiting for us down the road. . .
Would we waste the day in wishing
For a time that could ne'er be?”
May Riley Smith
If We Knew
♥
I honestly think that nothing happens by chance. I believe everything happens for a reason, and sometimes, we aren't meant to know those reasons. We all have a destiny, and a path we are suppose to follow, and along the way, there are forks in the road, and potholes, and sometimes the path looks like the woods, and you don't know if you're still walking the same road or if you've gotten lost.
I also believe that sometimes, we get thrown these curve balls. We get happy, and settled, and forget about all of the bad things that can happen. We stop and think we've found a place of rest and solitude, but then something snaps, and you realize exactly how fragile, how destitute this life really is.
She's the main reason for my happiness. Not the only, but the key factor. Without her, a part of me is missing, and I think God knows that. I think He understands, because, well, He did create her. I'm sure He knew how wonderful she would be when He decided to make a Julie Michaels.
I'm also positive He knew He would have to make her strong. Beauty is so often the only thing a person has, and when tragedy strikes, they can't rely on that to keep pushing forward.
Julie has strength, and she's a fighter.
But I still hate her. I think all love comes with some amount of hate attached on. You have to hate someone that holds the power to break you with a simple statement.
And I am nearly broken. I feel so close to shattering, I might never recover, and all of it is centered around Julie. Julie and her disease, the disease she didn't tell me about. Not while I was confiding in her about the pain I felt, the moments I considered killing myself to get away from everything. All of my regrets about what I had put Ava through, about how I had isolated us from the normal world, nothing ever clicked in her mind to tell me about the cancer she had. The cancer she had before she met me. The cancer she had with Thad.
And I hated her. I hated that she couldn't tell me, so when it came back, I would know, and I would be prepared. I wouldn't be standing there, with a dorky grin on my face as she told me. I would have been armed, and ready, standing by her side and encouraging her.
But here I was, two days without seeing her, or Liam, or anyone else associated with them. I hadn't called, or texted, or made any notion to get up from bed.
It felt worse than those three days that I had missed Julie because of my stupidity.
I could see her, anytime I wanted. I wasn't sure why I wasn't with her now. I didn't know why I wasn't consoling her.
Actually I did. She had hurt me.
All of the crap she had spat at me about opening up and letting her in, letting her feel the hurt I was feeling was all lies. One way street. I could tell her all my deepest and darkest secrets, but she got to pick and choose the ones she wanted to keep.
I don't want to be defined by my cancer anymore than you want to be defined by your burns.
That was what she said. That was what she meant, and I was fairly certain she had succeeded until it came back and ruined the blissfully ignorant train I was riding on. We had derailed and exploded.
All that was left was the fragments and broken parts, and I didn't know if it would ever be okay again. If we would ever be okay again.
♥
It was Liam that finally texted me. The text read simply: Wanna hang? I texted back that I did, and ten minutes later, Liam picked me up and we left.
Ava had been taking the news badly. She loved Julie too, and Dr. Marstens had suspected. Not sure, but the signs were there.
Everyone but me could see them, I guess. I was the blind bat in all of this. I hadn't seen it coming, and maybe that was why it hit me the hardest.
I questioned that theory as I got in with Liam. He looked horrible. Dark bags beneath his eyes, the eyes themselves strained with thin red lines, his hair completely disheveled, and everything about him was just off.
His radio was so loud, I thought my eardrums might bust, but I said nothing as I buckled my seat belt, and held on as Liam sped out of my yard. If Ava saw him, she was throwing a hissy fit.
I knew the reasons for that strain on his face. The cause was the same one that made me look more like a monster than I had before.
He finally knew.
Julie had finally told him. Just as she had told me.
I replayed that conversation in my head a million times. I remembered the look on her face as she told me about the two times before she had went through the chemo and radiation for the disease. I could still see her face as she explained what that was like, having it at twelve, and then again at fifteen.
“Say something,” she had begged
