Chapter 38 Love me love me
Chapter 38 Love me love me
SOFIA'S POV
"Okay I'm down to two places we can go to the pizza place or just eat in the car," Nova says settling in the driver's seat. She throws her bag in the bag now fully looking at me. "I just talked to my dad," I take a deep breath in.
"I need to go to my appointment right now."
"Your appointments are on Fridays."
"Yeah this one is different," I say calmly. I've gotten used to the scares.
She reaches for my hand. "I'll take you. You don't have to get nervous telling me that." How did people ever believe her facade as the girl who doesn't date? She's so openly gentle.
I text Mila on the way just to make sure she doesn't worry because I'm her ride. She opens the center console filled with chocolate bars that I like. "I know the hospital doesn't have these," she says casually.
Sometimes I ask myself if she sees how different she is from her parents. She's easy to like when you're interest is in her and not what she's connected to. "I really really like you," I say pulling her face gently to kiss her and she giggles into the kiss.
"I like you too Tinks. A lot more than you know,"
"I don't doubt that,"
I turn on the radio to my favourite song "Be your man by G flip".
"This is my favourite song,"
"I've never heard it before,"
"G flip is my favourite artist," I fangirl and watch her laugh freely as she drives.
"Is there anything else i don't know?"
"I've always wanted someone to fight for me the way my friends and family do,"
Her grip on the wheel tightens.
"Sofia I –"
"I know. I wasn't hinting, just answering your question,"
The hospital smells like antiseptic that never leaves your skin, no matter how long you sit there.
I tell myself I’m used to it now.
That doesn’t stop my fingers from tightening around the edge of my sleeve when Nova walks me in.
She doesn’t let go of my hand immediately this time. Just holds it a second longer than necessary, like she’s memorising the shape of it.
Then she does.
"Wait here,"she says softly, already reaching for my shoulder like she might change her mind.
I nod before she can see too much of my face.
Inside, the fluorescent lights are too white. Too honest.
The doctor is already waiting.
She smiles like people do when they’ve been trained to deliver bad news gently enough that it almost feels like kindness.
"Sit, Sofia."
I do.
There’s a pause where she flips through my file, even though she already knows everything in it. That part always feels like theatre.
Then she looks up.
And doesn’t soften her voice this time.
“Your condition has progressed.”
I swallow. My throat feels too small for air.
"How bad?"I ask, but my voice doesn’t sound like mine. It sounds borrowed.
Her pen stops moving.
"That lung is extremely compromised. Any significant stress event—physical or emotional—could trigger a collapse we may not be able to reverse."
The words land one by one. Not as sentences. As weight.
Collapse.
Not able to reverse.
My hands go still in my lap like they’ve been told to behave.
There’s a sound somewhere in the room—maybe a machine, maybe my blood moving too loudly.
The doctor continues, but her voice is further away now.
"There is an experimental treatment. You would qualify, but only if your current condition remains stable enough to tolerate it."
I almost laugh.
Stable.
As if anything about me has been stable for a long time.
My chest tightens on instinct, like my body heard the word stress and decided to betray me early.
"Will it work?" I ask.
A pause.
The kind that is already an answer.
"I can’t promise that."
Silence stretches.
Then, quieter–
"You should tell her. The girl outside. She’s very worried."
My head snaps up before I can stop it.
"She’s engaged to someone else," I say flatly, like that explains everything.
Like that ends it.
The doctor studies me for a second longer than comfortable, then gives a small nod. Professional. Detached. Understanding in a way that doesn’t require her to feel anything.
"I’ll give you a moment."
She leaves.
The door clicks shut.
And for the first time, the room feels too big for my body.
Nova is outside exactly where she was before, like she never moved at all.
She stands the moment she sees me.
That’s her thing.
Always reacting like I’m something she was afraid might disappear.
"All good?" she asks.
Her voice is light, but her eyes aren’t.I nod. She doesn’t push. Of course she doesn’t.
"Okay," she says instead, like she’s choosing not to know.
Then she smiles. It's small, careful.
"So… pizza still stands?"
Something in my chest pulls tight at how normal she tries to make it sound.
"Of course, Tinkerbell." She exhales like she’s been holding her breath since I walked in there.
For a while, she’s back to herself again.
At the pizza place, she disappears inside to order takeout. I stay outside, leaning against the car, watching people pass like nothing inside any of them is breaking.
Her phone buzzes.
Once.
Then again.
It lights up against the dash when she leaves it.
A name flashes across the screen:
Victorrio
It feels wrong immediately. Like a second life bleeding into the first. Then it rings.
And I don’t mean to look...but I do.
Her name on the caller ID feels heavier than it should. The second ring stretches too long.
Then Nova comes back out.
She sees the phone in my hand before she sees my face.
Everything in her changes.
Not suddenly.
But carefully.
Like a door locking from the inside.
I hand it to her without a word.
Her fingers brush mine, and even that feels different now. She looks at the screen. The smile she had inside the restaurant doesn’t survive it.
"Shit," she breathes.
Then she answers. "Yeah?"
Her voice is gone in one second.
Replaced.
Tighter. Colder. Practiced.
I watch her shoulders shift as she turns slightly away from me.
"Yes. I know. I’m on my way."
Pause.
Another voice on the line, too low for me to hear. Her jaw clenches. "I said I’m coming." She ends the call.
Doesn’t explain.
Doesn’t look at me properly when she says, "I have dinner with the Carusos."
Like that name means something I’m supposed to understand without asking.
I already know, but I ask anyway.
“Your fiancé?”
A beat.
Then she shakes her head once.
"It’s not real, Tinks."
Her eyes find mine again—just for a second.
"I only like you."
The words should feel like relief.
They don’t.
They feel like something I can lose.
I smile anyway.
Because that’s what I do now.
"Drop me at school," I say. "Mila texted."
She hesitates like she wants to say something else. Something real. But whatever lives on the other side of her life pulls harder. So she just nods.
"Yeah. Okay."
And when she drives away, she doesn’t look back long enough for me to pretend she might have stayed.
"I almost called Luca to get me," Mila says in the dark. She gets in the driver's seat this time because I'm still a bit nauseous from the blood tests.
"Have you seen the headlines?"
"You know I'm not chronically online"
"Well someone took a picture of you and her in her car but your picture is blurred.,"
"Then it's just a picture,"
"No it isn't. She's cupping your face in it ,"
I sigh.
The doctors words still fresh on my mind. No stress. " I don't care how I'm painted Mils. I know the truth," I say and she focuses on the road.
At the apartment she sets two paper plates for the pizza not caring that it's dairy free. "Sofia is everything okay? You had one of those emergency appointments and Paolo mentioned you snapped at him," she starts. Ofcourse he told her.
"Yeah. I am. I'm just....in love with someone who's living a double life and i can't tell which one ends with her choosing us," I say.
That part is true.
She's been taught to suppress her emotions and feel nothing when needed. It just scares me a little when she's with her parents.
"Then why don't you tell her?"
"Because she’s here," I say quietly, "and she likes me."
I swallow.
She looks at me like I'm a girl with a normal life. Like she isn't scared of wanting me because I'm sick. No one has ever looked at me like that."
She's quiet now. Processing the words I've learnt to layer into smiles and nods.