Fool Me Twice

by Carrie Aarons

You think you’re prepared for it … the death of someone you love. But you can’t know. You can’t know the kind of dagger, the dull kind inserted slowly into the muscle that the world views as the symbol of love. It rips apart every piece of flesh, every nerve, every vessel, every synapse.

You never know if you’ll be breathing in the next second after this one. Which is why I take every chance those precious seconds give me.

If you don’t think you’re the best, why the hell would other people think that?

Especially Henley. That girl has no weakness, and the last thing I want is sympathy from the spitfire. I wouldn’t be able to bear seeing pity in her eyes when she finds out I was the kid in elementary school with cancer. The one who missed six months of school for chemo, the one they had fundraisers for, the little boy whose shaved head appeared in his second grade yearbook.

It’s at this moment that I know, even if she isn’t saying it, that she loves me, too.

I’ll never find someone I love as much as him. I don’t want to find someone.