Lucy has always been a good girl. The most
hardcore thing she's done in her life was falling for a divorced man ten years
her senior.
But he was the love of her life and she married
him. When her Peter Pan of a husband decided to divorce her, she thought it was her
chance to start anew. That was until she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Besides
looking like Britney circa 2007, she is taking it well, real well. You might see her
walk around the hospital during chemo sessions with bright colored wigs and
outrageous t-shirts that seem to shock the most conservative employees. One of
them reads F U CANCER.
I found him leaning against my car in the parking
lot.
I got a Sixteen Candles flashback. He looked just as
cool as Jake Ryan. The only difference was that he was leaning against my car, not
his.
Oh, to be sixteen again. And make the same
mistakes over and over. I wanted to get in the car with him and make out until I
couldn't feel my lips anymore. I instinctively touched my lips and smiled to
myself.
I met his eyes and smiled, but he gave me a
serious, dark look.
Uh-oh. This wasn't going to be
good. The butterflies in my stomach would be dead and gone pretty
soon.
I let out a breath, mentally preparing to his
apology.
It was a mistake, we shouldn't have...I
shouldn't have started it. Ugh.
He looked nervous, and so was I. This was going
to be a mess.
Then, suddenly, I knew how to break the
tension.
“If you're hitting me up in this
parking lot to score more crack, I'm sorry to say you're on the wrong
track,” I told him, smiling, as I approached the
car.
“What?” He looked confused as if
the thought hadn’t even crossed his
mind. Huh.
“Come on, you already went through your
whole bag of candy or most of it, and you want to know if I can get you some
more.”
“More?”
“Yes, more. You want more Bonkers, right?
I should have known better. I'm basically feeding an addict now. Shame on
me,” I teased.
“I didn't want to ask for more
candy,” he laughed.
“Is this about the other night?” I
asked him, unable to hide the frown on my face.
“Yes,” he replied. He just stared at
me but added nothing else.
“I know what you're going to
say,” I told him.
“You do?” he asked and gave me a
suspicious look.
“Yes. It's okay, really. You
don’t have to say anything.”
“What do you think I'm going to
say?”
“You’re going to say you think it
was a mistake…we shouldn't have done it, yada yada yada,” I said
gesturing. He cracked a smile. “You’re going to say it was just a spur
of the moment, which it was. It was a great spur of the
moment.”
He nodded in
agreement.
“It was a great spur of the
moment!” He flashed a charming smile.
“It was, wasn’t it?” I leaned
against the car next to him, feeling a little more relaxed. He didn’t
seem too upset about the kiss, after all. I felt suddenly lighter as if a weight had been
lifted from my shoulders.
“Yes, it was a spur of the moment. But it
wasn't a mistake,” he said. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his
jeans and gave me a look that made my stomach flip, and my heart took off, happily
drumming away.
Now I was just dying to hear the rest, but he just
kept staring at me.
“It wasn't?” I asked and he
just shook his head slightly, failing to contain a smug
smile.
“The reason why I ran out the other
night,” he started, “well part of it has to with the fact that I'm a
doctor and you're a patient here. I go back and forth thinking is not very
professional of me to engage with
you–”
I started laughing. I couldn't help
it.
“What?”
“It sounds like you're the teacher and
I'm the underage school girl,” I
laughed.
He laughed with me, and I loved the way his eyes
brightened when he did.
“I don't think we are breaking any
rules. Technically. Well, I’m not completely sure, but it wouldn’t seem
like it.” I gave him a flirty grin.
He placed an arm on top of the car and he turned
around, leaning toward me. He was dangerously close, and I had to remind myself to
keep my horny hormones in check.
“Well, when I got home I regretted leaving,
but another reason why I did it is because I thought we were rushing it. Actually, let
me rephrase that: I was the one rushing
things–”
“You left because you thought we were
going to fast?”
“Well…yes. I mean I might have gone
a little too far that night. It doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy every second
of it, but I felt like I was the one pouncing
you.”
I burst out laughing because he sounded
ridiculous. Did he think I regretted him coming after me in the pool? Quite the
contrary. He stopped talking, and I saw his eyes fixated on my mouth. A devilish grin
spread across his face. My laughter subsided, and my breath hitched. The way he
was looking at me made me feel like I hadn’t felt in a
while.
He looked at me as if I was desirable. I
hadn’t been desired in a long time. I could have understood if he had been
attracted to me under normal circumstances, but I was not the same Lucy anymore.
Therefore, I had no idea how could he possibly be attracted to
me.
“I like you, Lucy. I want to go out with you.
We'd probably better keep it on the down low, but I want to see you. Away
from here.” He looked around in the parking lot, but we were alone. He then
looked at me as if waiting for an answer, but I was still processing his
words.
“What? You’re crazy,” I told
him. There was both shock and thrill in the tone of my voice. I was perplexed
and flattered.
“Am I? Why? You’re still
single, right?” It sounded like he was mocking me. Ha
ha. I frowned and narrowed my eyes at him. I didn’t
understand what game he was playing. Was he really asking me
out?
This was crazy. Bananas. Completely
idiotic.
“Why? For one, I’m
sick.”
“I’m around sick people all the
time,” he said, the corner of his lips twitching
up.
“I’m toxic.
Literally.”
“Nahhhh. You’re not that bad. I
don’t think your toxicity levels can get in the way of
dating.”
I couldn’t believe it. I thought he was just
going to apologize for not calling me. I never thought he’d say he wants to
see me. Me. Did he have any idea of what he was asking? He needed a good dose of
reality.
Time to lay down the ugly
truth.
“You want to date me, huh? Some days I
can barely hold myself up together. I have no hair left save for my eyebrows and
eyelashes and when I look at my reflection, I feel like I’m staring at an alien. I
have an ugly looking breast that reminds me every second of my life what’s
wrong with me. I’m at the lowest I’ve ever been. And you want to
date me?”
My words left him completely unfazed. He still
wore a silly smile on his face. I had just given him a half dozen reasons why he
should leave me alone and he didn’t seem worried in the
slightest.
“Don’t you realize I’m
probably the most qualified person? I’m indirectly a pro at all the things you
just listed. No one can understand it better than me because I deal with it every
day.” The tone of his voice was cheerful, but then a thought clouded his eyes.
“Well, I guess the only person who could be more qualified than me would be
a cancer patient or a cancer survivor because they would really know what it means
to have experienced what you’re going through. But I’m a close
second.”
He sounded almost cocky. This was a side of him I
had never seen before. I knew I should have been turned off by it, but I instead I was
intrigued by this super confident version of Dr. F. I hated to admit
it.
“I don’t
think–”
“How about Friday?” he
asked.
“I
can’t.”
“You can’t or you’re making
up some kind of excuse in that pretty alien head of
yours?”
I broke into a smile. “No, I really have
plans. Family dinner.”
Hilaria Alexander was born and raised in the
south of Italy, where her family still lives. She attended college in Naples and spent
one year in Tokyo, Japan, as part of a student exchange program because she was
crazy enough to pick Japanese language as her major. She now lives in Oklahoma
City with her husband and kids.
When she isn't at work, she is reading,
catching up on her favorite TV shows and coming up with new stories she
doesn't have time to write. She loves traveling and is a self-proclaimed concert
addict. If you have questions about her, including how an Italian ends up moving to
Oklahoma, ask her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. She's the author of
Prude and This Love. F U Cancer is her third novel.
