Title: F U
Cancer
Author: Hilaria
Alexander
Release Date: Dec
29, 2015
Find on
Goodreads
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.
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