I could tell Ava was worried, but I tried to assure her as much as possible that everything would be okay. It really wasn't a big deal.
♥
I went to the Michaels house a few days afterward, still waiting anxiously for the results. I ate dinner with them, played video games with Liam, and then, I went upstairs.
Julie hadn't been down all night, and though I had been dying to go up and see her, I knew she needed rest, so I stayed back. I tried to just be with her family, and Hilary, who came later and stole Liam for herself.
It was after her dad nudged me toward the stairs that I finally went up to see her. I was still worried that I might wake her, but when I creaked open her door, she was awake, and she was crying into her pillow.
“Julie?” I asked, coming the rest of the way in. Her room was dark, and cold, but I could see Julie, curled up in her blankets, clutching her pillow and sobbing.
She turned her face toward me, and then returned it back to the pillow. I went to her as fast as my legs would carry me, and quickly grabbed her in my arms.
And she cried. She cried against my chest, and she hurt. I could feel her pain, and I could see the small purple dots along her arms and chest. I was sure there were more on her stomach. The bruises caused by my tickling.
And I said nothing, because I knew what she was feeling. I just held her, because sometimes, that's all you can do.
♥
That night, I stayed, and Julie feel asleep with tears still in her eyes. I held her the entire night, and slept little. Mostly, I stared at her, and tried to commit everything to memory.
I memorized each tiny freckle on her face, the ones that were light and pink across her nose. I ran my fingers through the strands of spun gold in her hair. I traced her mouth, her nose, her neck, every part of her, felt like a part of me.
She was me, and I was her. I would love her no matter what happened. She knew that, and I knew that, because this didn't come often. Soul mates were hard to find, but they were out there, and the time that came when you might lose them was not something easy to get through.
I loved her, and she loved me. That would never change.
I would stay here for as long as she needed me, holding her and loving her.
♥
It wasn't until the next week that the doctor called Julie. We went to the appointment, but I already knew what he wanted to talk about. I just needed to hear the result, and I would deal with Julie later.
She was getting worse. She was taking chemo, and radiation, and she told me that it always looked bad before it cleared, but I wasn't accustomed to seeing Julie so frail.
She had lost weight, so much that she looked too small to hold to me. I was always afraid I might crush her, or break something, though she would laugh at it.
She needed a transplant. She was dying in my arms.
And then the words came out, and we all stared at him.
“You're sure?”
“It's not a strong match, but it is a match,” he told us.
Julie smiled. “You found a donor?” she asked.
The doctor nodded. “There's still a risk that your body could reject it, but it's the best we got. It's the closest we've gotten to a match for you,” he told her.
That was when Julie looked at me, and she knew what had happened. She stood from her chair so fast it scared me and her mom. The look of fury she held was terrifying.
“How could you?” she said to me, and her body was quaking in anger. “How could you go behind my back-”
“I told him to,” her mother said, and for a moment, Julie turned her anger to her.
“So, everyone has just been keeping quiet about this all week? Everyone has just been waiting to hear if the lying and backstabbing paid off?” she asked.
“Julie-”
“No, Falon. You lied to me,” she said, looking at me again. “You sat there and lied to me. You went behind my back, and didn't care about what I wanted!” she said, and started to leave. When I tried to stop her she pushed me away and disappeared.
Her mother looked distraught, but it was Julie I was worried about. Julie and her dizzy spells, and her headaches, and her fainting in the middle of traffic.
I ran out behind her. She had already pushed through the doors to the waiting room, and I saw her going outside. I called her name, but she didn't stop. She looked like a woman on a mission. A fragile Cinderella running away before the clock turned twelve and turned all the glimmers into pumpkins and mice.
I came outside, having to block my eyes from the momentary blindness the sun had caused. It's heat was evident, and gave me yet another reason to find Julie.
She was walking out of the parking lot, on the sidewalk. She moved with a fierce determination, and was not slowing down, especially for me. She was headed somewhere.
“Julie!” I yelled, and picked up my pace. She didn't stop, and she didn't speed up. Instead, she chose to completely ignore me. She kept walking along the sidewalk, and pretended I wasn't there.
I ran toward her, finally catching up with her moderate pace. I reached out to grab her hand, the make her stop, but she snatched it
