See You in the Morning

3 // Aria

Nearly three thousand miles away beneath the vivid, setting California sun, Lyla Duncan holds her boyfriend Lucas Sherrill's hand.

The handsome, varsity basketball player looks peaceful as he sleeps with the light painting fine lines across his cheekbones. Lyla glances lovingly at his head full of thick, umber strands, committing to memory every lick and coil.

His hair had been a dark, buttery blonde when they first met.

It was early October of her freshman year. Rushing for a sorority had been a lot more work than she bargained for, and she ultimately decided to withdraw her bid. She was walking back to her dorm in Rieber when she passed the UCLA Men's Basketball team passing out free water bottles on campus. At nineteen, Lucas Sherrill was limber and dashing, and Lyla only realized when she arrived back in her dorm that the athlete had given her a water bottle with his number written on it.

Their first date lasted over six hours.

It began in a delightful coffee shop (Lyla's kryptonite) that turned into a spontaneous drive in Lucas's Toyota Prius to the Santa Monica Pier. He knew the greater LA area well enough to show her all the nooks and crannies of his favorite spots around the city. She had belted off-key along to Shakira in his car with the windows down, her glorious honey-brown locks whipping in the air (Lucas's kryptonite).

They became inseparable after that.

Lyla became a fixture at all of Lucas's games, cheering him on from the stands. And Lucas got to know all of Lyla's friends, including her East Coast bestie Josie Chen, along with her roommates Charlie and Stella, and her closest college friend Pearl Nishimura, a brilliant yet somewhat scatterbrained girl studying to be a doctor.

But halfway through his sophomore season, Lucas began to complain of frequent pain behind the knee. After a month of icing, compression, and hours spent at the school's sports clinic, it became clear something else was awry. The doctors called it Ewings sarcoma, a very rare type of cancer that can become aggressive if not treated immediately.

He'd taken the news in stride. His coach, teammates, parents, and friends were all incredibly supportive and optimistic. Lyla, being tenderhearted and kind, had cried when Lucas shaved his glorious, blonde hair prior to starting chemo. Still, he cracked jokes and maintained his playful demeanor if only to make her laugh.

Watching the love of her life suffer had been its own special kind of hell. Despite the overwhelming uncertainty of his odds at beating the damn diagnosis, there were a few hidden blessings to having cancer.

For one, the bond between Lucas and Lyla matured quickly.

Lyla wanted to be by his side as much as she could while he endured rounds of infusions and drug treatments. She shifted her class schedule to spend time with him as he recovered at his parents' home in Brentwood, often studying or doing her homework from the Sherrills' house.

Occasionally, she'd eat meals with his parents Chuck and Dorrie, who'd send her back to campus with tubs of homemade lasagna and cookies. After a time, the Sherrills felt like the family Lyla always wanted to have, the kind of family threaded by love and genuine affinity for each other instead of mere tolerance.

Lucas's hair eventually grew back, though its color changed to a darker, matte brown.

He resumed his athletic career, playing a few games towards the end of his third season. He and Lyla celebrated their one-year anniversary eating ice cream and paddling in swan boats out on Echo Park Lake. They even began to discuss marriage, as neither of them felt the need to wait any longer considering that cancer had already tested their commitment to one another. But when July came around, Lucas began to feel a familiar pain in his hip and lower back.