P.S I'm Dying,

When Christmas came John and the guys celebrated my birthday by performing a concert dedicated to me. I had received Eli’s package of blood the week before. It took me three days to finally work up the courage to take my blood and send it took him and even three more days to inject myself. If you’ve ever done drugs, well it’s kind of like that, without getting addicted or coming down from the high. I eventually had to tell John about Alex’s Disease and Eli and the whole story of why I was in Britain. He smiled at the end and said it would be a great song. My relationship with John wasn’t much, but it was enough.

Surprisingly I was bold enough to call my mom. She was upset that nobody told her what had happened. (I’d convinced Lord Worthington that I was going to tell my mom, and gave him John’s home address instead of hers) I apologized, but told her that it was for the best. She apologized, too, for not telling me the truth, but I told her it was okay.

Then she offered to come with me and the band on tour, but I turned down her down, saying that it was time to cut the metaphorical umbilical cord.

The tour lasted a year and it was amazing. I met so many people, plus other famous bands, and even sang some songs on stage during the concerts (John is great at convincing me to do stuff I don’t want to).

But a week before my seventeenth birthday, things took an unexpected turn.

John and I went for ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s. It’s ten o’clock at night and, yes, we’re eating ice cream.

“So, how do you like your Phish Food?” he asks with a smile.

“It’s great, how do you like your Cherry Garcia?” I mock him. He’s been making fun of me all week, just because I’ve never been to Ben & Jerry’s, so I just decided to go now.

He smirks, “It’s super”

I roll my eyes, “Ok”

Then he looks down nervously, “Can I ask you something, Kat?”

I shrug and lick my spoon, “Sure”

“Will you taste my ice cream?” He asks earnestly. I look at him incredulously, “Uh, sure?”

He smiles and hands me his spoonful of pink ice cream. I stare him weirdly before I put it in my mouth. It’s actually pretty good, despite the fact that I don’t really like cherries. I savor it for a moment and as it dissolves in my mouth, I feel a chunk of something. Chocolate? No, it’s too big and it doesn’t taste like anything. I cough and spit it out on the table.

As I realize it’s a ring, John says, “Do you want to marry me?”

My jaw pops open and my eyes widen. What? I stare at him for a few seconds before I run out of the ice cream shop.

________

John finds me a few minutes later sitting on a bench outside the mall. “So, I’m guessing that’s a no?”

I try to say something, like how he’s amazing and insanely nice and just awesome, but I can’t even remember how to speak.

“It’s okay, I just wanted to make sure, before I...” he sighs.

“You what?” I manage to ask.

“Before I did this,” he turns around and waves at some random cars. I look at him incredulously, is he mental? That’s when someone steps out of a black SUV and my heart stutters. It’s Eli; oh my gosh! I stand up and look at him carefully as he walks over to us. He hasn’t changed much in the last year. He still has long black-blue hair; still has pretty violet eyes; still manages to make my heart do weird things.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him in surprise as he stands in front of me.

“I came to ask you to take me back” he says completely seriously.

I blink at him as my stomach flips nervously, “I-but, Amelia?”

Eli smirks, “It didn’t work out; she was just kind of... boring” his eyes glint mischievously.

I feel the urge to smile, but instead I frown, “But I’m with John now,” actually he had just proposed, but I didn’t need to say that.

That’s when John speaks up as he walks over to stand beside Eli, “I’m the one that called him; I know you still love him. It wouldn’t be right to keep you while you were miserable”

“I’m not miserable” I say stubbornly, “And I love you”

“No, you don’t,” he says with a sad smile, “But thanks for saying it”

I frown. “I don’t want to hurt you, John”

“You’re hurting me with your pity, so please, just go? For me?” he asks.

I open my mouth to refuse, but he’s right. I don’t love him, and it wouldn’t fair for him to be with someone that doesn’t appreciate him, “I’ll miss you”

He leans over to hug me, “Me too,”

For some reason I laugh, “I can’t believe I’m turning down John O’Callaghan”

John lets go of me and laughs as well, “You’ll always be the one that got away. About time, really. Every musician has one of those; I felt like I was missing out”

I roll my eyes.

Then John O’Callaghan walks away from me, into the darkness. I have a feeling he’s only doing it to give me privacy, since his car is parked the opposite direction and my stuff’s still at his place.

As I turn back to face Eli, he embraces me and holds me against him tightly. “I’m so happy to see you” I say truthfully, as my throat swells with emotion.

“That day at the airport, I came to tell you how I really felt, but I saw you kissing John and I just... I don’t honestly know. My mouth was rambling away and before I knew it you were gone.”

My breath hitches in my throat and I hug him tighter as he keeps talking, “I was stupid. I know. And even if it’s too late, I just want you to know that—” he takes a deep breath, “I love you”

I blurt out, “I love you squared”

Eli pulls back and stares at me incredulously, “Squared?”

“I—um, you know, like in math, like, when you square a number it’s like two so, like, ‘too’, y’know? But, like, not really, ‘cause it’s multiplied by itself, so it really isn’t—“

And he kisses me, interrupting my incoherent babbling, and it’s okay, because I’d pick kissing him over talking any day.