I could only find one candle that was even remotely close to the trademark coffee scent. It was called Donut Shop. Donut Shop actually smelled nothing like coffee, but I was betting on the fact that maybe Caroline was too hopped up on drugs to notice.
You should know that I also stopped to get her an actual donut after that. I realized that if she could in fact still smell, and I arrived with a donut candle sans donut, then it would make me the shittiest friend ever.
She didn’t quite understand any of this by the time I got to the hospital and explained it to her.
“ Thanks for the donut,” she said smiling as I stuffed the candle back into my purse. Note to anyone that cares: they don’t actually let you light candles in hospitals due to the whole fire hazard thing… not even if you promise to be really careful.
“ How has life in prison been?”
“ Can we not talk about it? Don’t you have any juicy stories yet? You’ve been living on your own for a while now… I need to hear about something other than my illness for like five minutes. The other day you mentioned you were working on meeting guys? Any luck?”
I nodded and broke off a piece of the lemon pound cake. I hadn’t actually told anyone about Beck yet. To be honest, at that point I still wondered if maybe I had a brain tumor like that doctor did on Grey’s Anatomy and Beck wasn’t actually real at all. Wait, was Denny real? I couldn’t remember.
I went out on a limb and told her about Beck anyway.
“ He just walked up to you at a funeral home?” she asked, thoroughly confused.
“ Yeah, it was really weird.”
The sunlight streaming in through the window highlighted her dark brown hair and hollowed cheekbones. I hadn’t remembered her looking so pale the week before.
“ But you said he was really hot?” She arched her eyebrows suspiciously.
“ Yes, much too good-looking for normal girls.”
“ Maybe he’s a prostitute,” she offered.
“ Maybe he’s a Russian spy,” I said, my eyes growing wide with wonder.
“ Maybe he’s a neo-Nazi,” she replied with a grin.
“ Oh! Maybe he’s the Zodiac killer,” I said, thinking I’d most likely nailed it.
She laughed and tipped back a sip of her hot chocolate. “I thought they caught that guy in like the 80’s.”
“ No. The person they suspected it to be passed away and then the strange calls and killings stopped happening, so they just figured it was him.”
“ I doubt Hot Guy is a crazy person. You should have faith in people.”
I rolled my eyes and shot her a you-know-better-than-that stare. “You sound like him.”
“ Huh,” she smirked. “I like him already.”
“ I’m thinking about letting him come on the road trip with me…” I all but whispered, scared of what her reaction would be. Ninety-nine percent of me assumed she would throw the rest of her donut at my head as an attempt to knock some sense into me.
“ You should. If I weren’t about to freaking DIE, I would go on a road trip with a random hot guy. What do you possibly have to lose?”
I flashed her a pointed stare. “Uh, my life...my virginity…my freedom…my parent’s trust.”
“ So nothing of importance?” she laughed, smoothing her hair back into a ponytail. Her arms were so small, skin and bone, if that.
I smiled at her and shook my head.
“ It doesn’t matter. I’m not sure I should go at all anymore,” I muttered.
“ Why!?”
I didn’t answer because the reason was staring me in the face and she wouldn’t take too kindly to my response.