He wanted to move. He knew he had to move but somehow, he shut down. All his senses failed him instantaneously ; he could feel himself going numb as he stared at the phone screen.
There were dry tear strains on his cheeks but he barely noticed. Even if he did, he couldn't care- not now. Their conversation played over and over in his mind until it felt as if his brain was just a broken record.
She said she was dying.
Dying.
Florentine, the one girl whom he admired the most, she could be dead.
Brent had always thought of Florentine as a happy person. The one who smiled. The one who'd spread joy. She was everything he was not. He was uptight and somber yet when he first talked to her, it felt like he could be someone else - Batty. A side of him that he never explored, a side that got lost somewhere in the remnants of his childhood. She resurfaced it. She made him smile like a grinning fool.
But today when he talked to her, something inside him shattered into a million pieces. Her voice - it was breaking and desperate. It broke him because Florentine - she had always been strong. Or she seemed to be. And today, she was not.
All that he longed for was to comfort her. To give her the strength he didn't have.
To be fairly honest, it was the most unexpected, the most cruel situation he ever had to face. He didn't know what to do, how to think or even how to feel.
He hunched over, wrapping his arms around himself and he cried.
He couldn't remember the last time he cried but he did know that it was long ago. Even as a child, he rarely cried. Her mother often commented on how she felt as if she was blessed with proper sleep at nights when he was a baby. Yet, that day, he cried. Poured his heart out to the dusty concrete ground and the shriveled flower at his side.
Brent gasped for air.He wanted to stop however it comforted him in light of the situation.
And when he did stop crying, he stood up.His legs almost buckled under him but he stood nonetheless. He was drained out of any emotion whatsoever. Gripping the railings, he looked out to the tiny town barely able to watch anyone yet he heard it all.
How the cars honked, the light chatter that seemed to surround him or how many laughed at the same instant without realizing it.
It awed him- the liveliness of the place. It was so alive - quite contrary to what he was feeling.
Brent decided : he was going to make her so happy no matter how long she had.
a/n : special update gift since y'all got call ended to #52 in short story. get ready for deep thoughts and lessons on non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the upcoming chapters. their first meeting is in the next chapter or so. yay!
Look at this cover made by @Driftingoceans
How is it?