december 8th
dallas, america
GUESS WHAT, IT WAS A SATURDAY NIGHT AND I WAS MENTALLY SHATTERED. My feelings were destroyed, soul turned black and heart stopped monitoring right things. Lies, my soul already was black. Maybe that was a bit too much, but I was just incredibly annoyed by the fact that Xavier did not have the capacity of giving me one single call. Hi Autumn, I'm calling you to tell you that I landed in New York and I'm doing fine. No! None of that!
"Your staring at the wall as if it's your next victim," Valentina said as she sipped her wine as if it was tea.
"Xavier doesn't pick up the phone, neither does Lily-Rose. I hope their plane crashed into a building and nine eleven can peacefully be revived," I hissed. Quite sure I sounded like an angry cat – which I was. My pussy was angry too.
"They're probably having sex," Gwen said with a mischievous grin decorating her face.
"Gwen!" All the girls yelled in unison.
"Joking, joking. Damn, y'all really need to get dicked down tonight, because I can feel the tension," she mumbled.
"I haven't had sex since October 30th," I moaned.
"I haven't had sex since birth," Fadoua said as she sipped her orange juice.
"I haven't had sex since... well, that was yesterday actually," Valentina shrugged and we all looked at her in confusion. "Oh, it's nobody."
"Spill, spill, spill, spill," we all said like the close cult members we were.
"Alex," she finally sighed.
"Alex?" Fadoua asked offendedly.
"Drew?" Valentina replied in the same tone.
"Drew is cancelled, I didn't feel shit for that man. And also, we never had sex."
They exchanged some weird looks that I wasn't able to understand, so we just continued talking.
"Wait," Gwen said, "so you haven't fucked Drew in all that time?"
"Who, me?" I asked.
"Yeah, you. You two have been hanging out more and more lately, so I thought-"
"You were wrong," I interrupted her.
"But Drew is handsome, though," Sadie who had been quiet all the time suddenly added herself to the conversation, "Right?"
"He is. Autumn and Drew are those two friends who always have a thing for each other and end up together in the end like that Love, Rosie movie, you know?" Valentina asked.
"Loved that movie," Fadoua said, "but I hope Autumn won't get pr-"
"No more spoilers!" I said, "I still want to watch it."
"Oops," Valentina and Fadoua both said at the same moment, where after they started giggling.
X A V I E R
Lily-Rose and I walked through the crowded corridors of the biggest publish house in New York. Busy men and women rushed from one room to another, crossing the corridor and of course bumping into us. Some had lots of papers in their hands, so when they hit either Lily-Rose, me, or both, it all fell like whirling snowflakes over the ground. They would apologize several times and then bend to collect their stuff. The view was arousing, especially when it were women in short skirts.
"I will always remember," I quietly sung to avoid an awkard silence between the two of us, "the day you kissed my lips. Light as a feather and it went just like this."
"Is there anything you can't do?" Lily-Rose asked to which I started chuckling a bit. She looked at me with her brows raised and I shook my head as a gesture that it was nothing special.
"Autumn said the exact same thing," I explained.
"You don't realize how much you talk about her, do you? And I suppose you don't say everything you think, so she must be in your mind like all day."
"I do?" I asked with a high-pitched voice as I bit my lower lip. She nodded.
"It's cute."
"It's driving me bloody mad." I let out an extravagant moan and facepalmed myself. "She needs to bugger off, you know?"
"She thinks about you a lot too. Don't tell her, but she dreams about you so much."
She dreamt about me, perhaps even the same times I dreamt about her. Perhaps comparable dreams, dreams in which we both were happy together, dreams in which I wasn't ill. I would care for her when she caught the flu and laid there in bed, now it was the other way around – she wanted to care for me and it felt so indescribably wrong.
"Dreaming again?"
"I think we're having a meeting in this room." I walked inside the room, greeted the people around the grand, black table and sat down only to feel incredibly dizzy after the walk.
I couldn't hear a word of what the CEO was talking about and instead focused on my breathing. Breathe in, breathe out. The hands on my legs suddenly didn't look like mine, they were shaking and paler than I remembered. When I closed my eyes, all sounds around me became more powerful – loud and intimidating. The noise of movement of feet was heightened, every clear of one's throat. Voices blurred away and were replaced by vague, dark words.
I then realized that I was having a panic attack due to my dizziness. Must've thought that the dizzy feeling was going to make me faint, therefore must the panic have been formed because of that fear.
A hand grasped my shoulder and my reflex did not let me down – I backed off a bit and opened my eyes wide open.
"Don't touch me," I said under my deep breathing.
Lily-Rose looked at me with a concerned expression decorating her lovely face and shook her head at me.
"You're not doing well."
"No fucking shit, sherlock," I replied. The employees of the publishing house all gasped because of my odd manner of using the English language. "I need to get some fresh air."
The sound of my own chair being shoved over the black floor, which looked like glass, succeeded in giving me goosebumps all over my arm. I tried to get out of the building, but my respiration thought different. I couldn't get it into a normal pace and it made me physically exhausted. Everything around me was fading.
When I finally got outside, my phone started buzzing in my pocket. I picked it out of my pocket and I thought I was going out of my mind when I saw Heather's name on my screen.
"Heather?" I asked as I clamped the device against my ear. Hands were still shaking. Every sound or touch scared the living fuck out of me.
"Xavier!" She sounded rather relieved. Suspicious.
"Heather," I breathed out, "why are you calling me?"
"Why are you ignoring the calls of your parents and your hospital? They have no idea where you are!"
"I-I'm..."
"Xavier, where are you?"
"I'm in New York."
My thoughts were like one big tangled mess crossing each other, pulling each other away from me, but all wanting to be specifically thought of. I did my best to get everything in the right order; I was currently in New York to do business. I told my parents and the hospital that I was going to Texas for only one day to handle some things off which they approved, but little did they know that I'd be gone for a week. The many calls didn't come as a surprise, because they were worried about my health.
But I had to finish the work I had started. Only a nice publisher, that's all I had to find. I had hired the best people in the world to create the most outstanding, eye-catching magazine possible, so the publisher wouldn't be a problem. One in London and one in New York. And if I was able to go back here for the second time, if I wasn't dead yet, I would quickly go to Texas to quietly check up on Autumn. That was the plan, that was the plan.
"You out of all people I know is the one who knows so much about leukemia and how fast it gets dramatic, because you've been there before. You know that your little trip could kill you, you're in the beginning stadium of your treatment!" Heather's voice still sounded very soft although she was frustrated and it made me remember the times we fought about nonsense. How she'd get mad over nonsense and how I would respond to that. No matter what, she was always cute and innocent. If I went, I'd miss her.
"I know what I'm doing," I said calmly. Hearing my exes voice made my panic attack slowly fade away. "I know damn well what I'm doing."
"It's a suicide mission, you are murdering yourself and you know that."
"It's such a privilege, isn't it? My fellow tired chaps need to buy all kinds of expensive materials to end it. For instance, a gun to shoot yourself through the head and do not forget the bullets. Or others who need to cut their arms which must hurt like hell, that's even worse than needing to buy a gun. So having leukemia is a privilege, I can just watch myself suffocate in white blood cells. I'll just lay in bed all day waiting for my end to near. Could do the last bits of work in the hospital before my body decides to give up. I think it's wonderful."
There was a long, dead silence between us. She breathed into the microphone and got interrupted by herself trying to get more air into her lungs. I imagined her face, her bright face with those blue eyes and blonde hair.
I never loved her, but I loved what she gave me. A bit of hope. But hope is an ugly word, just like faith.
"You've made a choice." It wasn't a question she asked me, it was a statement. She knew it for sure and she didn't want her conspiracy theory to be a secret. All she wanted was for me to know that she knew what I was doing, that she knew what I was getting at.
And she was right. I had made a choice the first of November, the official agreement. The idea of it came up when I knew for sure that abnormal white blood cells were spreading through my body. When my nose had started bleeding in my office and I had to put two tampons in them while Autumn watched me, she knew it too, but she didn't want to know.
"I don't want to go through this again," I whispered.
"I always want the best for you, but-"
"If you care about me you accept my choice. Try wave the thought away that I'm being selfish and try to be me for a second. Try to imagine that your leukemia is stronger than your leukemia when you were seventeen. When I was a teen, I had hope, because I was happy. I had a whole life in front of me, I wanted to fight against it. Winning the fight was something I regret to this day, because it changed me completely. You've seen how I've changed," I explained quietly, "I'm not myself anymore. And I can't. Keep. Doing. This."
"Xavier, all I can say is that I have so much hope. I have so much hope in Autumn that she can change you, that she will make you want to continue a life. That she makes you see how bad you want to keep going on, become her husband and grow a beautiful family. Before you tell the hospital your plan, please, talk to her one last time. And if you won't do it for yourself, do it for me."
That same night I laid in the bed of my hotel room. It wasn't snowing outside, so I could see the black night sky. The longer I stared at it, the weirder it made me feel. I wondered if that was going to be what I was going to look at forever.
My phone buzzed once again on my nightstand and lit the area beside me. Autumn was FaceTiming me. But of course she was. Before I picked up, I checked the time and the date. It was two thirty PM and December ninth, a Sunday. She went out the evening before, which meant she must've been really wasted.
"If it isn't my favourite alcoholic," I snorted when I picked up and her drunk face appeared onto my screen. How did she succeed in still looking beautiful although her hair was a mess and dark lipstick smudged out all over her face?
"I wanted to see your face," she mumbled. It looked like she was outside in an alley, there was no one around her though.
"Here you go. That'll be a hundred pounds, ma'am."
"Are you flirting with me?"
I laughed and shook my head.
"I'm always flirting with you. How drunk are you?"
"I've been thinking about what time it is and every time I think I know the time, it changes!"
"Very fucking drunk," I chuckled. "Autumn?"
"Yes?"
"Stroke that pluck of hair out of your face, I want to see your eyes."
She did it and smiled at the camera. She was breath-taking, literally. My heart pounded like crazy and all I wanted to do was hold her in my arms, smell the perfume she always wore and force myself to never forget that scent so that every time something similar made its way into my nose, it would remind me of her.
But I also didn't want to be reminded of her. I was being reminded of her all day and all night.
"I think I miss you already," I said softly. It frustrated me how my voice automatically became softer when I talked with her.
"Ah! That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me!"
"You sure? Wasn't it that time when I said that you have a nice butt?"
"That was amazing. You have a nice butt too."
"Thank you," I laughed. "Autumn?"
"Yeeeees."
"Perhaps you should go home."