by Abby Gale
Dedication
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgement
About Author
From Author
Dedication
To Beatrice…
My sister…my best friend…forever
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
Author’s Note
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.
The ride to my college was silent but music came through the radio. I was humming to myself along with the songs, but it wasn’t because I was cheerful, it was mostly like reflex. And it wasn’t a coincidence that the songs I chose to sing were depressing.
Getting out of the car outside the campus walls, I started to walk toward my building. My hand grabbed my bag tightly as the other hand became a fist. I bit my tongue, this small pain distracted me enough to continue walking even though the ache in my leg was getting worse with each step.
I headed toward the cafeteria, cursing all the steps and stairs in this building. Thankfully, my best friend Tris saw me and came up next to me, linking our arms, pretending like we were chit-chating instead of rubbing in my face how miserable I was.
I wanted to thank her, but I had to climb down these stairs before I broke my teeth from gritting them so hard.
Finally, we came to a stop in front of the table and I sat down, panting silently because of the pain, but I got a grip on myself when Tris hugged me.
“Thank you, Tris,” I whispered.
I didn’t have to explain what this “thank you” was for, she understood. Because Beatrice was the person that ripped down my walls, even though I tried to build them high and impenetrable, reaching out to me and becoming the sister I never had.
“What is our next class?” I asked to Tris. I was too careless with our schedule to learn it, thankfully my best friend was the responsible type while I was the one who read books during class and studied my ass off just before the exams.
“Chemistry,” she answered cheerfully. That was her favorite subject. I loved chemistry, but that class didn’t give me much opportunity to read my novels. I sighed and stood up when I noticed it was only fifteen minutes till class. Normally that wasn’t a short period of time for other students, but for someone like me…it was the time I needed to walk up to the classroom.
Tris stood up with me as well and linked her arm through mine again as we started to climb the damn stairs. My swearing was alternating between the architect who didn’t think of building an elevator to the cafeteria and the damn stairs that looked like they were getting more and more each day.
Finally, I could reach the Chemistry wing of the building, panting. Normally, my place was in the middle of the second row, but today there was a guy, muscled like a mini-Hulk, at the first row and with my petite frame I wouldn’t see a thing if I sat behind him. I headed toward the window side desks, passing by the mini-Hulk on the way.
I didn’t see his face until I passed by him. At first glance I could only notice his well-built frame, but when I saw his face…I lived the biggest cliché of my life. After a heart beat of checking him out, with the painful reminder of my leg, I moved toward my desk and sat down to have some relief over my leg.
I hardly noticed the class notes on the desk, courtesy to Tris, as the professor came into the classroom. The professor started his lesson without wasting a second, but I was busy checking out the guy in the front row.
He looked like a guy from my dreams–broad shoulders, muscular arms, dark and stylishly messy hair…he was gorgeous and I was awestruck by his good looks.
Shaking my head I turned to look out of the window, but within a minute my gaze turned back to look at him. I couldn’t help it even though I tried so hard. But when I heard his raspy, deep voice as he asked some questions during class, I was sold.
I counted the minutes till the professor dismiss us. I hoped I would never see him again and would never feel this strange pull and the confusing feelings that came with it. I didn’t need to feel this way on top of everything else.
Finally, when the professor dismissed the class, I sighed in relief…but it didn’t last long.
The relief faded away the next day, at the lab class. I was in the same group with the mysterious-dream guy. The chemistry lab was the hardest class of my department and as an addition to all struggles I’d been through, I had to try not to be distracted by him.
But it wasn’t that easy.
His place in the lab was just in front of mine. I had to face him, every day, for the next four months. Like this wasn’t enough, on our second day, the lab assistant gave us the same chemical experiment, but thankfully, we had to do everything separately.
Working on the experiment, I tried to be sure I was doing everything right. Not being able to sit down was enough pain in the ass and I couldn’t ignore the pain that radiated from my leg.
Taking a slow breath through my nose, I closed my eyes, tilting my head back, hoping the pain will be subdued. When I noticed it didn’t work, I opened my eyes, only to be captivated by dark brown orbs.
He was looking at me…
Why was he looking at me?
“Inspiration from above? Is that the secret of your success with the experiment we had yesterday?” he asked with a crooked grin on his incredibly handsome face.
“Inspiration has nothing to do with this job. Just follow the steps. It is science not literature,” I snapped. I didn’t mean to sound harsh, not at all, but the pain consumed me and the anxiety of being in such proximity with him confused me.
His smile faded as he nodded his head, “Right. It was a silly question.”
I wanted to slap myself.
Why did I have to snap at him?
Why did I have to be this bitter?
Fisting my hands on the granite surface of the lab desk, I closed my eyes for a brief second again. But this time, he wasn’t looking at me when I opened them.
The next day there was chemistry class before lab time…again. But I was too late to grab the notes from the department, I headed directly to the classroom, hoping Tris would be there with my notes. I was glad the professor was nowhere to be seen, yet.
Tris sighed in relief when she saw me, like she was happy that I was still in one piece. Smiling weakly I walked toward her, looking around the class. I stopped for a heartbeat when I caught him looking at me…
His eyes were shining bright like two ambers, looking lighter than normal with the sun rays. A crooked smile formed on his face, probably because of catching me ogling him. I felt my cheeks heat up, tearing my gaze away from him. Meeting Tris’ questioning look, I shook my head and walked past him without a second glance. I was angry at myself for being so weak whenever I saw him.
Thankfully, the professor came in the moment I got to my place so Tris didn’t have time to question me. I knew she would read me like an open book even if I said his name out loud. I took a deep breath and started analyzing him instead of listening to the lecture, trying to understand the fascination he spiked in me.
He was good-looking, attractive…that was the first thing anyone could notice about him. Also, he was popular in the department –everyone was trying to talk to him, he was never alone, always in a crowd. And beside all of these things, he was rich as hell. I didn’t have to hire a private investigator to find that out. Coming to the college with a brand new Audi R8 wasn’t a common thing in my life.
I think it was easy to have some attraction toward him…
But all I did was try to stay away from him.
For two weeks, I’d managed to do that. Even though I couldn’t help but watch him from afar. That was out of my control, my eyes always searched for him, trying to understand the man behind the good-looks.
And I wished the man underneath wasn’t lovable…but he was.
His questions in the class were hard not to be noticed. He was smart, his questions were on point, giving me food for thought and sometimes teaching me more than the text books in front of me.
I saw how he cared and tried to console his friend when she was down. He was a loyal friend, caring…as much as he was fun.
No matter how hard I tried to keep my distance to him, he made me
smile with his random comments during the lab experiments.
Still…I did everything in my power to steer clear of him, trying not to make eye-contact or small talk but even that was inevitable.
“Who is that?”
I lifted my head from my doodle to look at Elaine, my other best friend but since her schedule was different I couldn’t spend enough time with her, “What?” I asked, remembering her question as she sat on the bench beside me.
“This guy, always looking at you whenever I see him,” she nodded her head toward the opposite table.
I followed her gaze and my eyes locked with Ashton’s.
I didn’t know why, but at that second, I felt something pass between us…something deep. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him, I couldn’t even breathe. There was intensity in his eyes, pulling me deeper into his brown orbs.
I watched, mesmerized, as he stood up, coming toward my table with purpose.
“Hey,” he said with an easy smile.
“Hi.” My voice was breathy.
He stood there, totally at ease, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a textbook as my heart picked up the rhythm.
Taking a slow breath I straightened my back before asking, “Do you need anything?”
I held my breath as he pulled out his hand from his pocket, rubbing his neck with a troubled look on his face.
“I…was there anything we were supposed to bring with us to the lab today?” he asked as I watched his Adam’s apple move sinfully.
Swallowing the nerves I shook my head, “No, I don’t remember anything special. Just a normal lab day.”
“Yeah, sure…see you later, then. Thanks,” he murmured and winked before turning to leave.
He winked at me!
Holy…shit!
I wish I could tell you that after all these little interactions, he made me believe in love and I lived happily ever after…but no. That didn’t happen because this was real life and those things didn’t happen except in books.
