One Night Only
Authors: Abby Gale
ONE NIGHT ONLY by ABBY GALE
Copyright ©2016 by Abby Gale | All Rights Reserved |
Cover illustration and book design by PopKitty Reviews
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except the brief quotations for reviews. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Edited by PopKitty
Blurb by PopKitty-Abby Gale-SueBee
Proofread by Anastasia
This book is based on a true story, but it is also a fiction.
In this novella, you’ll read truths, modified truths and lies.
I’m not gonna tell you which is truth and which is a lie, but I’m gonna tell you that writing this short story wasn’t easy for me.
I don’t want you to enjoy reading this…
I want you to feel…
And ask yourself what would you do…if you had One Night Only?
I was wrong.
I was wrong my whole life.
They said “There is love,” and I didn’t believe them.
“Love hurts,” they offered, but I didn’t think that was true.
“Love is a weakness,” they insisted and I laughed at them.
Love was just a popular belief and a childish notion to me. I had more important things to deal with than “being in love”.
I had never understood why people bothered with all the drama of love if the only thing it did was hurt people or become their weaknesses.
Didn’t they have real life struggles instead of playing the love game?
Girls like me wished to have their life –a normal life. These girls, me included, went to bed every night in hopes of waking up as a normal young adult. But as we were disappointed every morning, these girls were seeking trouble for the sake of love…this was ridiculous.
These were the thoughts that molded my life for twenty years. I believed them and laughed at every “love” word I heard.
I was wrong, ridiculously so.
But the most ironic thing was…the moment I noticed my mistake, it was already too late. Because of my stubbornness I missed the chance of finding happiness in my life.
I was too late for love…
And now all I had was one night only…
Another PET scan was done.
It was so hard to stand, let alone walk, because of the pain all over my body. My muscles were screaming in agony, but I had to live with it; I had to go to school.
I had to work hard for my life, even though I had no idea how much longer I had.
I had to build my future, even though I wasn’t sure if I had one.
I was still standing tall on my two feet. I was dealing with whatever life threw at me and my determination was enough to carry on.
Each person in this life was living their lives pursuing their happiness, but they were mostly settling to just be content.
Being content wasn’t the same thing as being happy, but it was enough to continue.
As an addition to all this fucked-upness in life, I had a disease, a cancer. But I got used to this fact. Living with bones that felt like they would break any second turned into a routine after a while. Being afraid of your every step because of the pain was old news. The routine MRI didn’t bother me any longer. And being friends with the whole hospital crew wasn’t important anymore.
Life was everything between bad and content. If you could still deal with daily drama, if you could still breathe through everything, then you were in the position of moving on.
Life was too short to stop, it forced you to move on…
I pretended like I was listening to whatever the doctors said, but in reality I was bored as hell. The scene was always the same –a crying mother, a father in misery, and a bored me. But after all those years of hearing every possibility and every scenario regarding your health, it wasn’t interesting enough.
I looked at the clock on the wall, making a small calculation. If I quickly grabbed breakfast at the beach I could still be on time for my lessons.
A hand on my shoulder brought me back to the present. My bald doctor patted my shoulder awkwardly, trying to reassure me. For what, I didn’t know.
“If your pain gets worse, you can come here and we’ll give you something to stop it. But other than that, live your life, April,” he said and I couldn’t stop my sarcastic laugh.
“Sure, doc. I throw a party everyday.”
I felt bad for a moment when I saw the guilty look on his face, but I was serious about throwing a party –me, my computer and my book; we were a good trio.
When I got out of the doctor’s office, my mom looked better, but her voice was raspy as she said, “April? What do you want to do now, baby?”
It was a perk of having cancer –your parents always asked what you wanted to do. Not only your parents, everyone was doing that like you were royalty.
“Can we stop by at the shoreline? I’m not hungry, but the ocean air might help,” I said.
My voice was normal. I wasn’t crying…I gave up on crying long ago. It didn’t change a thing, instead, it only added a headache and swollen eyes to the pain all over the world.
And I had enough pain to last me a lifetime…literally.
I chose a café which had the best ocean view and ordered toast with a glass of orange juice. I knew for sure even that would be too much for me, but it was a good distraction from my parents as they tried to make small talk with me. With my one-word-answers I hoped they would understand that I wasn’t in the mood for any social interaction.
As I watched the ocean under the grey sky, I thought of the things I missed in life.
I had never skated when I was a kid because of the fear of a broken leg and now, a tumor was eating my bone. I would have preferred it to be broken while I was having fun.
I’d never had a boyfriend. I was too busy with building my future like a true workaholic. Also, I was too stubborn to look for love because of my lack of belief in it. As you can guess, I’d never fallen in love since I didn’t care of it.
Maybe it wasn’t my lack of belief in love…maybe there was no space for love between the doctor appointments and PET scans. Hospitals weren’t the places you could find love like they tried to make you believe in books. Those places were full of pain, sorrow, and misery.
“April, baby?”
My mom’s voice rescued me from the memories of hospital hallways.
“Sorry, what were you saying?”
“I asked if you want to go to the school, baby,” she asked, adding “baby” in her every sentence like that would make me live longer.
“Sure. A college education is important,” I answered. As soon as the words left my mouth I wanted to take them back as they were filled with heavy sarcasm, but it was too late for that.
Thankfully, my parents only nodded, but it made me feel guiltier.
It wasn’t their fault that I had to deal with this shit, but no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t help but be bitter.
It must have been harder for them, though. To live with the loss, remembering it every passing day…this didn’t sound like a happily ever after.
Maybe I was the lucky one…for being the one who left.