Lovely Monster

by Shaylee Europe

  I leaned forward and hugged her tightly. “I wouldn't have wanted anything newer. This is perfect,” I told her.

  I felt her choke up, and when I pulled back, she was drying her eyes. I laughed at her, and moved to Dr. Marstens. He smiled at me and held out his hand for a shake, and I took it, then pulled him forward for a quick, non-cute hug.

  He laughed when I pulled away. “You're welcome, Falon. The hug wasn't necessary,” he replied.

  “Good, because you're never getting another one,” I told him, smiling.

  I did hug Julie's mom, and her dad gave me a pat on the back. “I hit the open road when I was a kid. Best week of my life. I ended up missing my sweetheart,” he said, hugging his wife to him.

  I automatically looked to Julie, who was listening to Ava. I took in how beautiful she was, in her floral dress, and her hair holding a wave rather than straight. She looked like a pixie among all of them, ethereal and delicate.

  “Not sure if I could leave your daughter, sir,” I told him.

  When I turned around, they both were smiling, and that made me feel good. It always felt nice when you knew you had the approval of her parents.

  ♥

  Mr. Michaels and Jesse worked at the grill, while Liam talked over them, telling them how he wanted his burger and giving them tips. Both men looked ready to tape his mouth, but neither did.

  Hilary's parents came too, so there were ten of us there. I figured that was a perfect amount of people for my eighteenth birthday party.

  I eventually looked into the envelope and when I did, I tried to talk Ava into taking it back. She refused. It was just money to run with, she told me. It didn't change the three zeros after that one, or the mild heart attack I thought I might have when I counted it.

  We all ate around two large picnic tables, having realized we were at the park in town. At least if my first guess had been right, and Liam had deserted me, I would have been able to find my way home.

  Julie didn't talk much, but she listened to everyone. No one else seemed to catch the looks she kept getting across her face, but I did. I felt myself beginning to breathe as I noticed how scared she actually looked, especially when she looked my way.

  Worried, I grabbed her hand after we finished eating the burgers, and brought her with me to the truck. She smiled softly, and she got in. I got in the driver's seat and closed the door.

  “Alone time?” she asked, sitting against my seat sideways. Her knees were pulled up in the seat. Her head was laying against the back of the seat, against the rear window.

  “You look close to a breakdown,” I told her, moving my hand toward her face. She leaned into my hand, closing her eyes. “Is this about the truck? Because I'm not leaving, Julie. I would-”

  “Everything is okay,” she said, pressing her hand against mine. She opened her eyes, and her green hues held mine. “Whenever you want to pack up and go, you know I'll be here waiting for you.”

  “You wouldn't go with me?” I asked.

  Julie smiled softly, but it was mostly for my sake. There was no happiness in that smile. “Your dream was to leave on your own. Be by yourself, remember?” she asked.

  “And then I fell in love with you, and that changed,” I informed her. “You don't honestly think I'd ever leave without you?” I asked, watching her reaction as she sat up again,

  She looked conflicted, and upset. I didn't know what I was suppose to say, or do to make her feel better. I didn't even know why she looked so fragile.

  “Why not? Falon, you can't surround yourself with just me. You have to live,” she said, and suddenly, things felt like they were on a completely different ball field.

  “I've never been more alive than when I'm with you,” I told her slowly. “What is this all about, Julie? What aren't you telling me?” I asked.

  She looked at me, and then she licked her lips. “I-”

  “Cake!” Liam said, banging against my window. “They're cutting the cake, lovebirds,” he said, hitting my window again.

  “We're coming,” Julie told him, and then she reached for her handle. I reached for her hand, and she stopped. She looked at me, and she raised her brows in defeat. “I'll tell you tomorrow, after your party,” she said.

  That meant something bad, and it was all I thought about as we ate the cake. It was the one recurring thought in my mind that replayed over and over.

  She's going to break up with me. I thought, and fell for it's cunning disguise. She's realized it can't work and she's going to leave me. That's why she has to wait until it's not my birthday.

  I gave her what she wanted, and didn't ask her about it. Even though I worried about it, I made it my mission to be extra sweet to her. I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong.

  Maybe I wasn't soft enough, or I didn't hold her as much as she liked. A lot of girls liked being cuddled. Maybe I wasn't cuddly enough. Or I wasn't being vulnerable enough. I still had yet to tell her about my burns, or my relationship with my mother. Maybe she regarded that as not opening up.

  I knew if she would just tell me, I'd fix it. I'd change whatever it was she needed me to. I didn't want to lose her, and I knew she knew that. I knew she had to know how much I loved her.

  No one else seemed to realize that something was wrong. About an hour after cake, the adults all started planning to leave one by one, with large smiles on their faces and remarking at how cute Julie and I were together.

  I held her closer than usual, and smiled when they would say it. “Beauty and the Beast. Couldn't live without her,” I'd say, and Julie tensed in my arms.

  Maybe I was too clingy. Julie said be open, not become a leech. Maybe I was suffocating her by being around too often, so I gave her some distance, and thought about what I should do before I just did it.

  The suspense was killing me.

  Ava and Dr. Marstens were the last to leave, and then it was just Hilary, Liam, Julie, and me. We all talked for a while, or mostly, Julie and I listened to Liam and Hilary talk, and watched them touch and tease each other.

  It was only a few minutes before they told us they were walking to the pier. They invited us, but when Julie said no, I said no too. We watched them walk away, and then things really grew stressful for me.

  I looked at her as she leaned against the table, her hands folded as when in prayer and pressed against her lips. She looked so far away, that I knew that even if I reached out and touched her, she wouldn't know. She wasn't here, with me.

  It felt worse that way, to have her near me, but not with me. She was gone, and I was here, watching her, and kicking myself for whatever it was I was doing to make everything so horribly wrong.

  “Thanks for the party,” I told her, and she turned. She smiled and tilted her head.

  “You're welcome. Ava did most of the stuff though,” she told me. “I just pointed her in the right direction.”

  “I wouldn't have had a party if it hadn't been for you,” I told her. I felt the weight beginning to feel heavier against my chest. “If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here, staring at the most beautiful creature that I've ever seen, and being scared out of my wits.”

  Julie looked at me, and then she started to say something. I reached for her hands and shook my head.

  “No, just listen. I love you, Julie. And if you're wanting to break up with me, just tell me what I'm doing wrong, and I'll change it. I'm-”

  “Breaking up with you?” she asked suddenly. She didn't look amused, but more so frightened. “Why would you think I'm going to break up with you, Falon? I love you,” she said, and voice tottered on desperation.

  She looked so close to falling apart.

  “Because you wanted to wait until after my birthday. You've been distant and quiet all night, and I know I'm not being as open as I should be. I just don't want you to give up on me,” I told her.

  She started to cry, and that shook me. Julie lifting her hands to her eyes, and standing up to move away, it both confused and scared me. She breathed in deep
ly, and she shuddered as I stood up.

  When I went to her, she molded into me, and buried her face against my chest. I held her as she cried and jerked, and choked on her sobs, and I was scared.

  “Julie?” I whispered softly, but she just clutched my shirt and cried harder. A part of me looked around and expected for Liam to come anytime and hit me, demanding to know why I was making his sister cry.

  I didn't know!

  I wasn't sure what I had said that caused my Julie, my strong, stubborn Julie, to become the crying, fragile doll in my arms. It was bewildering.

  “I didn't. . . wanna ruin. . . your birthday,” she said, pausing between sobs. She holding my shirt so tightly, I knew it would be a stretched, wrinkled mess by the time we were done, but I didn't care.

  “What's wrong, Julie? Just talk to me. I want to help you,” I told her.

  She took in a ragged breath, and then, she controlled her crying. She pulled away from me, and I watched as she walked around me and sat down on the bench again.

  She was really scaring me. Watching her run her hands over her hair and avoid my eyes, she really terrified me.

  “I haven't told anyone yet,” she said, her voice low. “I told you you would be the first to know,” she said, and suddenly, I knew, and I dropped to my knees in front of her, holding her hands in mine.

  “What did your doctor say? Something wrong?” I asked, and couldn't mask the new fear that entered my voice.

  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 me, her eyes wide and wet. She looked forty rather than seventeen. All I could do was ask why.

  Why couldn't she have told me? Why was I the last one to hear about the disease that had taken over her life? Why did I have to open up and spill every bloody secret of my past, but she got to hide hers?

  That was when she pulled that famous line from her pocket. I don't want to be defined by my cancer anymore than you want to be defined by your burns.

  I cursed, and left. I left her sitting on a park bench as I drove away. I left her alone as I went out into the middle of nowhere, on some random dirt road, and screamed at the top of my lungs. She was crying her eyes out as I punched and kicked and curse, and yelled everything that I was feeling at my new old truck. I was sure I wasn't the first crazy guy that ever beat up the eighties model Ford.

  And then I went home, and I stopped going to the hospital, or talking in general. I slept, and I dreamt of Julie being chased by this large red ball of spikes and fire (because my dream world imagined that it was what cancer looked like) as she ran to me, but never would quite make it, despite me holding my arms out and screaming for her.

  I had shut everything off and became numb to all the things around me. I just laid in my bed, and said nothing.

  Until I had asked God why.

  Why Julie? Why now? Why did her cancer have to come back, and why did she have to keep it hidden from me? Why was He doing all
of this to me?

  For a while, there was only silence. No answer. I got on my knees, and tried asking again, still no answer. I wondered if maybe I was praying wrong, and then Liam texted, and then I was in his car, and he was driving like a maniac.

  ♥

  “Liam,” I said, touching his arm, but he chose to ignore me. He chose to keep his foot pressed against the gas pedal and help the increasing speedometer to seventy.

  I was a guy. Fast cars and women were suppose to be my thing, but with my woman alone with cancer, I didn't figure a fast car was going to help my situation any.

  “Liam!” I yelled as he took a corner too fast, and the car skidded across the road. I held to my seat, watching as things spiraled around us as the car spun.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Liam trying to get a grip on the car, and I saw that look of fear written across his face as if he hadn't realized what he had been doing and had suddenly awakened from a bad dream to this reality.

  And then, as quickly as the car had began to turn, it stopped. A tornado of dust surrounded us like a beige curtain, and I could smell the bitter scent of burning rubber. It attacked my senses.

  My hands were shaking, my voice felt like that gelatin that makes farting noises when you push against it.

  I whispered a thank you, and realized it was to the Lord.

  And then Liam's door flew open, and I turned to see him storming from the car. I heard him begin to beat against his car, and scream. I felt like I was watching a replay of my night after finding out.

  I got out, having to force myself to clutch the handle. My hands were still shaking too badly for me to grip anything with confidence. I eventually did get the door to open, and I got out.

  It was only seconds after I closed the door that Liam was on me, and shoved me against the car. The shock of it was combined with the rage on his face as he began to yell at me.