Status: In Time

To Caress My Day

Chapter 239: When Does The Pain End?

One day.

Twigs had allowed herself one day off from the volleying stresses of her life determined to cripple her down to her knees. Sadly, it was a momentary decision brought on by the urgency for a self-care day.

On her nightstand, her phone was going off right by her ear with text messages dispatched one after the other, jarring her instantly from a deep slumber. Glancing around like a dazed person trying to hold on to their sanity, Twigs eventually realized where the sound was coming from and picked up her dinging device, her stomach roiling with dread. Her thoughts went to her mother, and the current condition she was in due to her newly diagnosed cancer. But when she checked her barrage of demanding messages, she noticed they were solely from the members of Neon Jungle, and that they were all congruent to each other in their coercion that she get her butt online so they could talk to her face to face.

Wondering what the hell was going on, Twigs texted Amira back letting her know that she would be online in a minute. With her heart galloping, she set her phone back on her nightstand and fetched her laptop that was sitting on the pillow next to hers from her late night video call with Seth minutes ago. Turning it on, she logged into her laptop and then texted Amira a second time to tell her that she was ready for the video call request. Twigs soon receives a ringing request from Amira and accepts it.

What she didn’t expect to see was that she was accepting a request to be in a group chat with each of Neon Jungle and Simone all the way in California, all appearing quite peeved. There wasn't a single warm greeting, or sunny smile in view. Just silence and glares aimed directly at her which was unlike anything she’d ever collected from all five ladies at once.

Brows furrowing with concern at why she was being a target for their ire, Twigs tentatively parted her lips to speak up. “Um…is everything okay?”

Amira was the first of the ladies to reply, and what she had to say was still earth-shattering for them all to hear a second time. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell us your mother had Cancer, Tahliah!?”

Going still, Twigs felt the blood drain from her face and the tears she’d thought she’d bypassed up until now returning once again to blur her vision. Swallowing hard at the gruesome reminder of her mother’s present state, the young dancer had to give herself a moment of preparation before taking the first approach into this firing range.

Her mother had Cancer.

When would such an annihilating announcement ever lose its profounding impact on people?

Since receiving the news, Twigs had repeated it in her mind a million times again and again. At first, because it was impossible to believe that her capable beloved mother could be cursed with such a disastrous disease that has been notorious for taking scores of lives. These days she recites it to herself because it was a grisly fact that needed to be faced no matter how hard it is for her to swallow. Surely from the many times she’s chanted it in her head it’d be enough to dim its unwanted presence!

Why then hasn’t it?

Why is hearing it again and again comparable to being butchered by a deadly kitchen knife?

When does the pain end?

God, Twigs didn’t need this cross-examination from her friends right now! She and her step-father, Luther, had been trying to navigate everyday around her mother’s Cancer like it wasn’t capable of cutting her life short. The doctors had assured them that she didn’t have a drastic form of the disease as if that was somehow supposed to make the austerity of Cancer itself any insignificant.

“How long have you known about this, Tahliah?” Simone pressed to know, blinking back the burning hot tears threatening to gush out and spawn a scene. Her team in California would probably tell her that this news wasn’t that big of a deal and that she should get some sleep for a huge photoshoot tomorrow morning for some magazine, but Simone couldn’t allow herself to snuggle cozily in bed knowing what her friend is going through back home! None of them could.

Twigs wouldn’t be able to bring herself to do the same to them if the roles were reversed, so why should they desert her when she needed them most?

“How did you find out?” Twigs managed to whisper out, unable to raise her eyes and meet them head on with her friends. She was too damaged, and contrite for holding back such despairing news.

“My mother. She heard it from old Kathy McDuffy who heard it through the grapevines as we all know!” Amira answered with an eyeroll. It wasn’t the right time to have an attitude, but she couldn’t help it when mentioning Kathy McDuffy. If the old woman so much as saw you with her own beady wrinkled eyes, you best believe everyone in town would know what you were doing, what you were wearing, who you were talking to, and who you were seen with. The woman just didn’t know how to shut her mouth!

Swamped by her bubbling emotions, Twigs ran her hands over her face in hopes it would aid in making her feel a little bit balanced enough to talk this out with her close friends. But alas, it didn’t. It made things worse by disengaging the floodgate she hadn’t known had been full to bursting then. Still averting her eyes from them, Twigs concentrated on trying to keep her heartbreak at bay. “I…I-I can’t talk about this right now, you guys. I’m sorry, I just…I can’t.”

“No, wait! You have to say something, Tahliah!” Jess pressured, not trying to sound like an inhuman jerk by refusing to let her back down. She’d honestly find it easier to let this go for now if she hadn’t ever met Araceli in the first place. The woman was a saint, or at least shined that kind of energy. She made you adore her by simply speaking, and smiling. There wasn’t a kinder woman in all of Britain. “I mean, don’t you think you owe us that at least? The entire time we’ve been hanging with you, you’ve been keeping this a secret from us about a woman we’ve come to love like she was our own too! Have you really been hiding behind a smile all this time?”

Everyone was asking Twigs informative questions, but Asami’s mind kept going back to the person Twigs loved most besides her parents and friends. Her boyfriend. If she wouldn’t share with them the news of her own mother’s disease for whatever reason, then perhaps the man himself knew about it all this time. “Does Seth know about this, does he know about your mom having cancer? Were we five the only ones you hadn’t told?”

“Oh, hell no, he better not have!” Simone barked before Twig’s brain could configure any words together in the form of a response. The thought of living in the same state as someone who knew about Araceli’s cancer did NOT sit well with Simone. Especially because she held him in such high esteem all this time. “I’d like to believe he would’ve at least told me considering we live in the same damn state now!”

“I said I CAN’T talk about this right now!” Twigs exclaimed to them in desperation. She was a woman on the brink of another breakdown and they weren’t helping at the moment. All these questions, and feelings of anger and betrayal towards her were well-deserved, she was sure of it, but she just couldn’t handle it right now on top of her own grieving.

Sadly, Simone and Neon Jungle didn’t stop. They kept going. Their eyes were shimmering with hurt as they kept launching questions after questions, overlapping one another to the point of incoherency.

Finally reaching her breaking point, Twigs snapped with a shout. “I SAID I CAN’T HANDLE THIS RIGHT NOW! I JUST WANT EVERYONE TO LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!”

In the heat of the moment, Twigs slammed her laptop shut, abruptly ending the call with her close friends. Now there was nothing but silence to fill the air in her bedroom. For a while, Twigs sat there, stunned by her outburst. Her glistening eyes bore down at her laptop as she let the tears take over, her mind going back to her friends.

My god, what was wrong with her?

Twigs never treated her friends like that before. They were only concerned for her wellbeing while also feeling hurt for being left out in the dark, and she thanked them by screaming at them and ending the video call without so much as a goodbye! This was a day that was supposed to be about self-care. Now, Twigs found herself sagging back down under her blankets, not to sleep, but to weep over the state of her life. Her mother has cancer. She just fought with her closest friends. Her boyfriend now practically felt more made-up than real these days.

For the remainder of the day, Twigs laid in bed, fluctuating from sobbing to sleeping. She didn’t want to acknowledge anything outside of her blanket and outside of her own misery. And so she didn’t.