Hospital Beds and Memories

The next day Alex disappeared to pick up Lisa from the airport. I just hoped I wasn’t going to be too awkward when I met her. It was going to be another person I had to introduce myself to and explain all my problems too. But I had to do it, as much as I hated meeting new people. I just wasn’t good at this stuff. So, while Alex was picking up Lisa, Jack and I were in the front lounge of the bus doing random shit.

We were discussing whether pancakes with maple syrup or pancakes with chocolate were better. You know, just a casual conversation I often had with Jack. These discussions would often lead to us seriously debating until we came to the conclusion that both were pretty good. We really were the weird couple that everybody knew.

Suddenly the door opened and Alex came in with a girl behind him. I actually recognized the girl, but I didn’t know where I saw her.

Jack looked over to them and groaned, “there’s going to be girl products all over the place now! I can deal with the stuff of one girl, but two girls is way too much. Cassadee better not join us as well.”

I raised my eyebrows at Jack before disappearing off to the bunks and getting something out of my bag. Before Jack could ask me where I had gone, I opened the box of tampons and poured the entire contents over his head.

I grinned at him. “Can’t get any worse than that.”

“They could be used,” Alex pointed out.

Jack looked around himself and picked one up before handing it to Lisa. “Free tampon?”

“Umm, I’m good, thanks.” Lisa shook her head and laughed. She then looked at me. “Oh my god, Alex. This is that girl that found your USB stick after Jack had lost it; you know, the USB with all the demo’s on.”

“That was you?!” Alex gave me a surprised look. “You’ve been together for that long?”

“No,” Jack shook his head, “we have known each other for that long, we’ve only been together for about 7 weeks now.”

I frowned. “Seven weeks? It feels like so much longer! We’ve been moving so fast.”

“Well, we skipped the whole dating phase, and we basically already lived at each other’s places. You could basically call our friendship the dating phase, if you want to, which would mean we would have been together for just over four months or something.”

“I don’t really care, it’s just time. I don’t even know how you know all that stuff. I only found out yesterday that it’s already April, like what the fuck!” I started picking up all the tampons and putting them back in the box. If I was going to stay as broke as I was at that moment, I wouldn’t have been able to afford any new ones when the time came.

“At least I now have someone to get ready with tomorrow.” Lisa smiled while Alex went to put her suitcase in the bunk area.

“I still have to buy you a dress!” Jack jumped up.

“No,” I groaned and did the opposite of what Jack did, and fell back onto the couch, “I don’t wanna.”

“Come on.” Jack tried pulling me off the couch, but I just fell onto the floor instead.

I tried crawling to the bunks. “You can go and buy yourself a nice one.”

He picked me up by the waist. “One that makes my boobs look good?”

“Yes,” I squirmed around to get out of his grip, “to make sure all the guys want you.”

“You promised me you’d come.”

“Fine,” I sighed and he put me on the ground, “but only because I know you will guilt trip me.”

----

We entered the dress shop Jack had dragged me to. It was pretty small, but very big for a shop that only sold dresses. Everything was ordered on dress size, so it should be easier to find the perfect dress without being disappointed. I didn’t know how Jack knew about this place, and something told me I didn’t even want to know. It wasn’t necessarily because of a previous girl… ok, it probably was.

Jack pulled me along again and started heading to the size 8 section. “I still remember your dress size. You told me once.”

“Umm, Jack,” I mumbled shyly, not wanting to disappoint him, “I’m not the same size anymore.”

“Oh, that’s ok, you’re still perfect to me.” He smiled down at me and looked at the larger sizes. “What’s your size now?”

I let go of his hand and walked to size 4 instead. If I would have trusted my voice, I would have said something, but I was too afraid to start crying. You might think, ‘but you’ve dropped from an 8 to a 4, that must be amazing’. Well, no. I had lost a lost more weight than I initially thought I did.

“Oh,” Jack didn’t know what to say. He probably wanted to ask me how and why I had dropped to this.

“I’m underweight,” I whispered timidly. “I didn’t do it on purpose. It just happened because I-”

“Hi, how can I help you today?” A very excited and fashion-loving girl asked us.

I didn’t get to finish my sentence. Just when I was about to tell Jack about my leukemia, something--or someone--had to come in between. The first couple of times, it was my fault, but this time it wasn’t. But maybe it was for the best; maybe I could wait with telling Jack a bit longer.

“Well, we have to go to an event tomorrow,” Jack explained and pointed at me, “but I forgot to tell her and now she doesn’t have anything to wear. So, I want to buy her a dress, it doesn’t matter how much it costs.”

“I do care,” I raised my hand.

“No, you don’t. I’m only getting you the most beautiful thing you find. I’m not going to force you to buy anything cheap. And don’t you dare choose something because of the price. I know you’ll look for something that doesn’t cost too much.”

“Ugh, fine.”

The girl and Jack proceeded to choose five dresses to begin with. Let me repeat ‘to begin with’. How was I supposed to survive that! I could barely survive putting on one dress. This was going to be a nightmare, but I wasn’t going to do it for Jack. He seemed so excited, weirdly enough, and I couldn’t ruin that.

I tried on many dresses; pink ones, blue ones, short ones, long ones, ones that were plain, ones that had a lot of glitter, and many in between. It was pretty tiring and annoying to put the dresses on and off, and I hated the fact that I always saw all the bruises in the mirror. But Jack’s reactions were totally worth it. Sometimes he would agree with me, but other times he would freak out or smile. It wasn’t until I was on dress 17, the last dress, that I had realized that Jack was taking pictures of me on Snapchat.

“Jack,” I whined, “you know I don’t like that!”

“I couldn’t help it, you look so beautiful in so many of them!” He argued and started showing me a couple of them.

“Now everybody knows who I am!” I saw many photos that included my face as well.

“I’m planning to keep you around for a while, now’s the perfect time for everybody to know. And they can’t deny that you are beautiful, so there’s that.”

“Jack, no,” I moaned.

“I’ll make it up to you by giving you this dress to try on,” he handed me something he had placed on the chair next to him.

I looked at it and scrunched my nose up. “It’s very short.”

“Please try it on!”

I hesitated, but Jack’s eyes were pleading me. “Fine, I guess trying on one more terrible dress won’t be that bad.”

But when I disappeared back into the changing room and looked into the mirror, I changed my mind. This dress was not terrible. The opposite actually. I actually was wearing a dress I liked. What were the odds?! Of course, it had to be the last one I tried on. But I really did like it.

I took it off and put on my normal clothes before going back to Jack. He frowned and pouted when he saw me. “I don’t get to see it on?”

“You’ll get to see it tomorrow,” I grinned.

“Are you saying yes to the dress?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

“Oh god, please don’t say that,” I laughed, “but yes, I like it.”

“Now we need shoes!” Jack yelled out and started dragging me through the store again.

Never had I ever seen a guy so enthusiastic when shopping for their girlfriend.