1. The Countdown Begins

ELLIE

"I'm so sorry, Miss Carter. But I'm afraid your cancer is back. And from the looks of it, I would say you only have about six months left."

That's what all Dr Brandon said, like he was telling me the wifi was down or the vending machine was out of my favorite chips. He acted like this wasn't the end of my life as I knew it, and I just sat there in silence, blinking at him and wondering why the hell the walls weren't shaking, or an asteroid wasn't falling out of the sky to wipe us all off the face of the earth. I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I was going to die.

I think I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because I didn't know what else to do. Dr Brandon looked at me like he'd seen this kind of reaction before, like people in shock were just part of the job. I wanted to scream until my throat felt raw and shattered beyond repair. I wanted to ask him to take it all back, since the months of chemo had apparently done fuck all to actually help me. I wanted to punch something until my knuckles bruised and I couldn't even lift my hand properly.

Instead, I just shifted in my seat and said, "Okay."

Let me back up a bit. My name is Ellie Carter, and I'm a twenty one year old premed with a minor in anxiety and coffee addiction. I live with my Aunt Carol in Maplewood, since both my parents died in a car crash seventeen years ago while coming back from a high school reunion (I still despise them to this day for dying over something so stupid. Until about ten minutes ago, I thought the worst thing that could possibly happen to me this semester was flunking out of Organic Chem. But now, Professor Lambert can kiss my ass for all I care.

I'm not one of those girls with a huge following on I*******m or a highlight reel of them at a party with their underwear so fucking tight that you can basically see everything trying to spill out. I've never even dyed my hair, unless you count that one time in eighth grade when I tried to turn my hair blonde because Stacy Withmore (the most popular girl in eighth grade) had blonde hair, and I ended up looking like a pumpkin because I left the dye in too long. I've played it safe my whole life, because I believed that if I was careful enough and responsible enough, then nothing bad would happen to me.

Well, guess what?

Cancer doesn't give a fuck about how careful you are. It's like the ultimate mean girl in school, who will kick you even when you're down and spit in your face as you try to hide from her wrath. And unfortunately for me, I wasn't good enough at hiding.

I was diagnosed about a year ago, and my life has never been the same after that. I started chemo a few months after that, and Aunt Carol and I really thought that this would work out. We'd caught the cancer early, after all. So I should be fine, right?

Someone forgot to tell that to the fucking cancer cells that were floating around in my bloodstream.

"Miss Carter, I will be referring you to a specialist who will prepare you for situations like this," Dr Lambert said. "We can keep you on the chemo to give you more time, but that's the best we can do."

I glanced over at the clock, and saw that it was nearly midday. I was supposed to be in my Bioethics class in about an hour. And even though every fibre in my body wanted to curl up in bed and pretend none of this was real, I couldn't afford to miss more classes. I didn't miss the irony of still caring about my attendance record, even though it wouldn't matter in the next few months.

Nothing is going to matter once I'm gone.

I left the hospital with a numb face and a long prescription for drugs that wouldn't save me, and they would probably just make dying a little less painful. The nurse had handed me the drugs with a solemn smile, and I tried to smile back at her but all I could manage was a tight grimace. When you're so close to dying, you don't really worry about being seen as polite anymore.

The walk back to campus took longer than usual. I hated how the sky looked so blue and beautiful, I hated the sound of birds chirping, and when someone laughed behind me, I wanted to turn around and punch him in the fucking throat. How could everyone just keep living their lives so peacefully as if my whole world hadn't been shattered today? How could they go on when I was on the brink of losing my mind?

I got to class five minutes too late. Professor Daniels glared at me as I walked in, and I gave him a smile that probably looked more like a grimace. I took my seat at the back, then I opened my laptop and tried to pretend I was still one of them. I tried to pay attention to the slides, but I couldn't focus. All I could think about was how ridiculous it was that I was still here, pretending everything was normal. I was still taking notes I wouldn't need in six months, and highlighting lines in a textbook that wouldn't matter once I'm six feet under.

And there was still so much I wished I could do.

All my life, I'd always wanted to travel. I've always dreamed of backpacking through Europe, visiting small towns and ancient cities. I dreamt of sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower with Aunt Carol, or eating cheesecakes on the gondola in Italy. But all of that seemed like a distant dream now. Maybe in another lifetime, I would get the opportunity to do that. But I highly doubted I would be allowed to travel in my current condition. Who would let me across their body with an IV bag strapped to my back?

Maybe Switzerland, but I did not want to find out.

As I sat there staring at my laptop, I started writing out all the things I still wanted to do, but I probably wouldn't get to do them now. Most of them were stupid (actually all of them were stupid), but I still wanted to do them. When I finished, I stared at them and read the list with a small smile on my face:

Ellie's Bucket List:

1. Visit Disneyland and go on every single ride.

2. Go to New York, jump in front of a taxi and say "Hey! I'm walkin' over here!"

3. Spend a weekend skiing in the Alps.

4. Get drunk on a rooftop in Paris and slow dance under the stars.

5. Eat a cheesecake on the gondola in Italy.

6. Learn to salsa.

7. Crash a wedding and pretend to be someone's date.

8. Go skinny dipping (preferably not alone, or in freezing water).

9. Meet an actual celebrity, not a TikTok influencer.

10. Tell Aunt Carol I'm sorry for every time I rolled my eyes at her.

11. Write a letter to my future self, and one to the people I'll leave behind.

12. Forgive my parents for abandoning me.

13. Lose my virginity.

I stared at the last one in silence, barely even seeing what I’d written properly. And I know what you’re thinking. I'm twenty one, and still holding onto it like it's something sacred. But the truth is, I was just scared. I was scared of it not meaning anything, or meaning too much. I was scared of being vulnerable in front of someone who could laugh at me if I told him what I wanted. So I just waited and waited. And now, I'm out of time.

I closed my laptop and looked up slowly. The class was still going on, but I needed some air. I couldn’t stand being there for one more second, watching Salma Gonzalez flip her perfectly straight hair over her shoulder and making all the boys swoon like lovesick puppies. I shoved everything into my bag and walked out, ignoring the looks I got and the way Professor Daniels was looking at me. What were they going to do? Expel me? Joke's on them, I'm already on my way out.

Unsurprisingly, campus was crowded. I wasn't paying attention though. My mind was all over the place, and I was halfway across the quad when suddenly…

WHAM!

My shoulder smacked into someone's chest so hard that my bag dropped, and my laptop nearly cracked open on the sidewalk. I stumbled back as I fell flat on my butt, and I was just getting ready to apologize when I looked up and saw him.

Beck fucking Ryder.

(Fucking isn’t actually his middle name, but it might as well be).

Of course it was him. The annoyingly tall, tanned and tattooed Greek God of a man who looked like exactly what you imagine a frat boy would look like. He was wearing a black tank-top that showed off his biceps, and would cause every single woman in a hundred meter radius to swoon at the sight of him. His jawline was sharp enough to cut through steel, and his eyes were so dark, unreadable, and laced with something halfway between amusement and irritation.

And I could have sworn that in that moment, as much as I despised the bastard, my ovaries quivered a little bit.

"Watch where you're going, Buzzkill," he said, turning away from me and breaking the illusion immediately.

"Excuse you?"

“You heard me,” he scoffed, then he stepped around me and kept walking like I wasn't even worth a second glance.

That… that… fucking entitled, arrogant, self absorbed…

I couldn’t even find the right words to describe him. He was the living embodiment of the word ‘asshole’, and the most egotistical sonofabitch I’d ever had the displeasure of meeting.

And yet, as I watched him walk away, with his broad shoulders and tiny waist, and a butt that I just couldn’t stop staring at, I felt something shift inside me.

And I knew, even in that moment, that I wasn’t going to let anyone else take my virginity expect him.

***