Accidental Kiss (Accidental Hook-Up 2)

Somewhere I hit upon the idea of a loan shark. It went against my better judgment, but I did it. The debt was paid, but now I owed so much more money to them.

And their patience had run out.

The doctor came back into the room looking at my file. He was a short, chubby, jovial man that I’d been seeing ever since I came to San Diego a few years before. I liked him. He was a no nonsense type of guy who told it to you like it was. When he’d discovered the cancer he didn’t sugar coat it or water down what it was going to be like to fight it. It was going to be “hell on earth”. Those were his exact words. And he was right.

I decided then that I had to either fight or wait to die. I decided to fight.

I liked to think that he was part of the reason that I fought so hard. He didn’t let his patients feel like victims; he made sure they felt like fighters.

And fight I did.

“Libby, I have your results here,” Dr. Shay said.

“Ok, what are we looking at?” I asked optimistically.

“Well, it looks like you are still cancer free. I don’t see any markers for cancer at all. So, everything looks fantastic.”

I let out a sigh of relief and held my hands to my mouth. I was shaking inside. All of the nervous energy and stress I’d been holding onto slowly began to release from me. It was all going to be ok; I was fine.

When I slid into the driver’s seat of my car outside of the doctor’s office I waited a moment before I started the ignition. I was still shaking, still fragile, and still too emotional to drive. I was cancer free. I should have felt like I was on top of the world. Instead I felt like I’d been given a sentence of prolonged torture.

I now had to deal with the problems facing my life, now that I had been given my life back for sure. I knew I wasn’t going to die from illness.

Fifty grand. That was how much I owed the Scarlucci’s. I’d tried to make payments when I could, but all of my savings were tied up in the school, and there was not much left after business expenses and my own meager standard of living.

As I drove home, my mind began to wander. I turned on the radio and let it blast out the hits of the early millennium rock and roll. They were some of my favorite songs and many of them I hadn’t heard in years. It was all an easy distraction. There was so much in my head that screamed at me, I was sure my head would explode at any second. Getting lost in some familiar songs at least helped to numb this madness.

And it would have been a welcomed relief. Anything that would take away the pain and worry that was becoming my constant state of being. I just wanted to let it all go.

As I drove towards home a thought drifted into my head. The moment I grasped it as an actual concept I wanted to throw it away. It was the worst idea I could have come up with and I refused to do it. There was no way I’d ever be able to swallow my self-respect that far down.

But it was a real possibility, that could have made all of my problems go away.

Mason Savage…

No. I won’t do it.

The type of money Mason had, I was sure he could pay off my fifty grand debt and then let me pay him back when I could, and probably never even worry about it. He wouldn’t have even missed it and it was a fair assumption that he would have told me not to bother paying him back.

But that wasn’t me. I could never ask someone I only knew somewhat to just loan me money when I didn’t know I would ever be able to pay it back. (Yet, it was easier and somehow more acceptable to do this with a loan shark who was now going to kill me)

I was aware of the failed logic, but still it was different somehow.

Why couldn’t I just ask him? I could explain everything and see what he said.

Wow, this was something I was actually considering? No. I would never do that.

I’d learned my lesson with the loan sharks. At least that was their business and I didn’t have to respect them. I wasn’t going to ask someone for a handout as a friend.

Were we friends? Mason and I? No… we were barely acquaintances. But what if we were something else…?

“Girl, get a grip,” I said out loud. My mind was coming up with the worst possible solutions and scenarios to my problems. I would find another way.