Chapter 3 Ellis #3
Why the fuck did that just come out of my mouth?
Her expression stiffened slightly. “Oh.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said quickly, practically inhaling a lungful of air into my deflating lungs. “Years ago. I mean, we haven’t talked in years. Like, high school girlfriend.”
Shut up! I screamed internally.
How the fuck was I supposed to salvage this?
I looked at her. Overalls… overalls. Profile picture.
Dog.
“What kind of dog was in your photo?” I blurted.
She blinked, then laughed and shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea. He’s a rescue, definitely something terrier in him. His name is Mocha.”
“Oh, cute,” I said, genuinely meaning it. I did love dogs.
The interaction seemed to ease the cloud of tension that had been hovering over our table, and I took a more relaxed breath as she pulled out her phone to show me some pictures. I nodded at the appropriate intervals, throwing in the occasional “adorable” and “so fluffy” where required.
Normal.
Things felt normal, like I was just a regular twenty-one-year-old on an awkward not-a-date.
Then she brought the hammer down.
“So, Ellis, where do you see yourself in five years?”
My stomach twisted at the totally normal, if slightly job-interview-y, question. I had zero answers. I didn’t have a five-year plan. Or a one-year plan. Hell, at this rate, I didn’t even have a one-month plan.
I opened my mouth, but no words found their way out.
Katie’s face took on a puzzled expression. “You all right?”
“Yeah…” I let out a sharp exhale, the next words tumbling out before I could stop them. “It’s just hard to plan when you don’t know how much time you have left.”
Her expression shifted.
The not-a-date was over.
Ellis [10:46am]
Never again…
I sent the blunt two-word message to my mother and pocketed my phone as I began walking briskly away from the café. The date had ended with an awkward hug and a few polite niceties before we parted ways, and I cringed the entire walk, secondhand embarrassment eating me alive from the inside out.
Location-wise, I knew exactly where I was. Just a five-minute walk from Dr. Mason’s office. And she was about to get an earful for putting me through that.
The entire encounter would now live in my brain rent-free for the rest of my life, playing on the highlight reel of cringiest moments that visited me at 2:00 a.m. when I couldn’t sleep.
“God, Ellis,” I groaned aloud, arms folded tightly across my chest as I walked down the street, replaying the last hour like a postgame analysis, except in this version, my team had been absolutely annihilated, and now I had to relive every second in painful detail.
Dr. Mason would probably say she was proud of me. Proud of me for trying.
How nice for her.
I was exhausted.
I had come face-to-face with the startling realization that I had no idea how to talk to people in my own age bracket, and that I didn’t know how to talk about anything other than my illness. And how could I? My entire identity revolved around it.
Tears burned in my eyes, and I blinked them back furiously.
How was a person meant to casually chat about future goals and normal things when your future felt like it was running against a countdown clock?
How was I supposed to tell someone I enjoyed this new chance at life when I lived with the constant awareness that the only reason I was sitting there, living and breathing, was because someone else had died?
My head hurt.
As I continued on my determined path toward Dr. Mason’s office, a door opened beside me, and the jingle of a bell startled me.
I paused as a woman stepped out, her lips curved into a blissful smile. She held a small brown bag and looked far more at ease than I felt. The door swung shut softly behind her, and she turned on her heel, sighing contentedly before walking up the street.
I glanced at the shop she’d exited. The name printed across the window read:
Margaret’s Mystique – Crystals, Tarot & Medium
I blinked, staring at the different colored stones. Crystals, I reminded myself. A memory hit me full force. Alexis and me sitting on her bed, flipping through book after book about all the different types of crystals. She’d given me so many stones for healing, for strength, for hope.
A small tarot display sat in the corner of the window, and I narrowed my eyes.
Alexis used to pull my cards whenever she said she felt lost, shuffling the deck with such exaggerated drama it had been hard not to laugh.
Then she’d launch into some vague, ominous interpretation that barely made sense.
I never took it seriously.
I just took her seriously.
In my opinion, it was all a load of crap, and if you gave someone just enough information, they could make up anything based on the cards that fell out of the deck.
Yet, despite my less-than-stellar opinion on it all, I paused. A tingling crept down my spine as sunlight caught the crystals in the window display. Something gnawed at me. Something I couldn’t quite explain.
The urge to enter the store hit me so strongly that, before I knew what I was doing, I opened the door and walked inside.