With This Heart(10)

“ Abby Mae McAllister.”

“ Well Abby Mae… it’s now 3:08 in the morning.”

“ That’s late,” I said.

“ Early,” he corrected.

“ What’s yours?”

“ Beckham Dilan Prescott.”

What a fancy name. Much better than Abby Mae.

“ Well Beck ham , we should go to bed,” I declared, because it seemed like he wanted to hang up. I could’ve talked for the rest of my life.

“ You’re right. Morning, Abby.”

I smiled at his joke. “Morning, Beck.”



After I’d hung up, I stared at the phone screen in a daze. Beckham Dilan Prescott , I repeated out loud.

…



Caroline was still in the hospital on Wednesday, which rendered our coffee shop idea null and void. Instead, I picked up two hot chocolates and a piece of lemon pound cake from Starbucks on my way to the hospital. It seemed like a shitty alternative, but at least it was something .

Caroline deserved a freaking normal Starbucks experience.

On a whim, I drove past the hospital and headed toward the mall to find one of those candle stores. I hadn’t actually been to the mall in years, it always seemed like too much of an undertaking, but there I was, meandering through housewives and pushy sales people. No, I don’t want to try your hand cream or hair straightener, I just want to get my cancerific friend a candle.

I could only find one candle that was even remotely close to the trademark coffee scent. It was called Donut Shop. Donut Shop actually smelled nothing like coffee, but I was betting on the fact that maybe Caroline was too hopped up on drugs to notice.

You should know that I also stopped to get her an actual donut after that. I realized that if she could in fact still smell, and I arrived with a donut candle sans donut, then it would make me the shittiest friend ever.

She didn’t quite understand any of this by the time I got to the hospital and explained it to her.

“ Thanks for the donut,” she said smiling as I stuffed the candle back into my purse. Note to anyone that cares: they don’t actually let you light candles in hospitals due to the whole fire hazard thing… not even if you promise to be really careful.

“ How has life in prison been?”

“ Can we not talk about it? Don’t you have any juicy stories yet? You’ve been living on your own for a while now… I need to hear about something other than my illness for like five minutes. The other day you mentioned you were working on meeting guys? Any luck?”

I nodded and broke off a piece of the lemon pound cake. I hadn’t actually told anyone about Beck yet. To be honest, at that point I still wondered if maybe I had a brain tumor like that doctor did on Grey’s Anatomy and Beck wasn’t actually real at all. Wait, was Denny real? I couldn’t remember.

I went out on a limb and told her about Beck anyway.

“ He just walked up to you at a funeral home?” she asked, thoroughly confused.

“ Yeah, it was really weird.”

The sunlight streaming in through the window highlighted her dark brown hair and hollowed cheekbones. I hadn’t remembered her looking so pale the week before.

“ But you said he was really hot?” She arched her eyebrows suspiciously.

“ Yes, much too good-looking for normal girls.”

“ Maybe he’s a prostitute,” she offered.

“ Maybe he’s a Russian spy,” I said, my eyes growing wide with wonder.

“ Maybe he’s a neo-Nazi,” she replied with a grin.

“ Oh! Maybe he’s the Zodiac killer,” I said, thinking I’d most likely nailed it.


She laughed and tipped back a sip of her hot chocolate. “I thought they caught that guy in like the 80’s.”

“ No. The person they suspected it to be passed away and then the strange calls and killings stopped happening, so they just figured it was him.”

“ I doubt Hot Guy is a crazy person. You should have faith in people.”

I rolled my eyes and shot her a you-know-better-than-that stare. “You sound like him.”

“ Huh,” she smirked. “I like him already.”

“ I’m thinking about letting him come on the road trip with me…” I all but whispered, scared of what her reaction would be. Ninety-nine percent of me assumed she would throw the rest of her donut at my head as an attempt to knock some sense into me.

“ You should. If I weren’t about to freaking DIE, I would go on a road trip with a random hot guy. What do you possibly have to lose?”

I flashed her a pointed stare. “Uh, my life...my virginity…my freedom…my parent’s trust.”

“ So nothing of importance?” she laughed, smoothing her hair back into a ponytail. Her arms were so small, skin and bone, if that.

I smiled at her and shook my head.

“ It doesn’t matter. I’m not sure I should go at all anymore,” I muttered.

“ Why!?”

I didn’t answer because the reason was staring me in the face and she wouldn’t take too kindly to my response.

“ It better not be because of me!” she bellowed with a hard stare.

I blanched. “I can go on a road trip anytime. You’re really sick, Caroline.”