I felt a smile cross my face. “I've been asking myself the same thing. Looking back, it all makes sense,” I told him.
Liam wiped beneath his eyes, and laughed. “Yeah. I should have known when she passed out. But she was so stressed with school, and then she was with you, and she looked so happy. I thought maybe she was afraid you would leave her,” he told me.
Like you did when she told you. He didn't say it, but it was what hit me. Her fear had been realized when I had stormed away, leaving her and her tears in a cloud of dust.
“She told you first, didn't she?” Liam asked, and I nodded.
“She didn't want to, because it was my birthday, but I finally managed to force it from her,” I told him.
Liam sighed, and he ran his hands over his eyes. “She told Hilary and me that Ava had called. I think Hilary guessed, but she didn't say anything,” he said.
“Hilary knew about her having cancer before too?”
Liam nodded. “I told her.”
I fell silent, and rolled my eyes, laughing at it slightly as I turned around and started toward the car again.
Everyone but me. The only innocent party was Ava. She had been just as blind as I had been.
“Wait! Julie never told you about before?” Liam asked.
I started to answer, and then I realized he couldn't hear that and I turned around. “No, she never told me about the two times before she had fought cancer. All the times we were together, and I spilled my past secrets, she never once told me that she had been through what those kids at the hospital are going through,” I told him.
Liam stopped, and he looked at my with a depleted expression. “I thought you knew. I honestly did.”
I sighed and shook my head. “It's fine. I know now,” I told him. I ran my hands over my face and then laughed. “I know, and I left her. She was crying, and sick, and I left her because I was so angry at her. I'm still angry at her,” I told him.
Because Liam understood, he nodded. I think he was the only person that could understand, because our minds ran along the same wavelengths. We both went to anger before hurt.
Together, we were both creeping toward the hurting part of this process. Slowly, but surely.
“You just want to yell and scream at her, even punch her, and you can't. Even if you could, you wouldn't, because it's Julie, and in the end, she's only trying to protect you,” Liam said.
I smiled slightly, and I leaned against his car. “Playing hero. Trying to save someone,” I said, remembering when she had told me to stop and left me in my car alone.
“That's our Julie.”
“Yes, it is.”
♥
That night, I lay in bed and prayed again. This time, I asked for forgiveness, and strength.
And then, I begged Him to protect Julie, because I couldn't. I asked that He help her, because I couldn't.
I asked Him to keep her strong, and I knew He would. He had made her strong, and He would keep her that way.
And then, just as I was falling asleep, I heard Him.
And He told me to love her.
♥
So, I did.
I knew I had to do something to prove that I loved her though. I wasn't about to spend my money on a tattoo with her name, too many horrible ways that could end, but I had an idea.
I bought a stereo, the big kind, with a tape deck. And then, I grabbed the cassette I had, one in my stash of many hard to find cassettes, and I made Julie a mix tape.
I made two.
And then, I gave Liam very strict instructions, and I waited.
♥
I had picked a bunch of flowers, all colors and types from around the park. I tied them with a red ribbon. I bought an adapter that would plug into the cigarette lighter in my truck, and then I plugged the stereo, and a string of lights into it.
They were a white line, with white lights through out. I decorated my truck with them, and then looped the other lines that fed from that around the small circle that was my area.
I was more prepared for this meeting. My best pair of jeans, a nice, clean, non-kid smelling shirt, and my favorite, faded leather jacket, and I wasn't worried about anyone else. Only her. I was only trying to impress her this time around.
There was no doubt in my mind that she would wonder what was going on as soon as Liam started playing my mix tape in his Trans Am. When no one started rapping, and she heard the songs, she would immediately know that this had something to do with me. The track list was settled around Julie, that was why the tape had Julie's Monster written across it.
The songs went in this order:
Linger by The Cranberries
Cool Kids by Echosmith
Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana
Blue by Angie Hart
Asleep by The Smiths
You Are The Best Thing by Ray Lamontagne
Dying by Hole
Drops Of Jupiter by Train
The Nearness Of You by Ella Fitzgerald
Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles
Gypsy by Suzanne Vega
And then, the showstopper, the one I didn't start playing until Liam stopped the car. I pressed Play on the stereo and Lucky Dube began to sing Julie, Julie.
Julie got out of the passenger seat, her face somewhere between amused and worried as I began to sing with the
