"Oh, that's right. Jilly is the one who had cancer. Goodness, it wasn't too long ago. Is she doing all right?"
What? Mom's words made no sense.
Jilly didn't have cancer.
She was annoying. Not sick.
She'd fought like a bulldog. She couldn't be...
Except Aiden had said she had short hair. Noah had always remembered it long, down past the middle of her back. Had she lost her hair because of chemo?
"Are you sure?" His voice sounded foreign when he uttered the question. Hoarse and thick.
"Oh, honey. I would have to look. I think I saw one of those online fundraisers on social media. You know, something about helping pay off medical bills. It might've been someone else."
Yes. Maybe it was someone else.
But the tightness in his chest didn't ease up.
Mom had to be wrong. Jilly was too young to have cancer.
"Mom, I need to go. I have to touch base with Aiden about this contract we're working on."
It was an excuse, but she let him get away with it.
"I love you, honey."
"Love you, too, Mom." The words choked him up a little this time, and he didn't know why.
Instead of heading for a shower, he went to his office.
His skin felt too tight on his body. The stupid computer took too long to boot up.
He only hesitated a second before he logged on to one of the social media sites he hadn't visited in years. He hated trying to navigate social media. None of them were user-friendly for people like him, people with vision impairments.
It took too long for him to search for Jilly. They weren't connected on the app, so he could only find a snippet of information about her.
No way was he sending her a friend request.
He kept searching, this time looking up Iris's profile.
And he found it. The fundraiser his mom had mentioned, with a public status so that anyone could see it. He scrolled through Iris's other posts, but couldn't find anything else about Jilly's cancer.
Finally, he sat back in his chair, reeling. Jilly had breast cancer.
Was she okay? Was she still getting treatments?
It shouldn't matter to him.
She was nothing to him.
Knowing about it didn't change anything.
But as his thoughts whirled in circles, he realized he was pressing his palm against his forearm where she'd touched him earlier.
