Three Months

Paisley's Fake, Belated Christmas

Loving Jude Andrews is probably the worst mistake ever.

            The second he struts into my room carrying a backpack over his shoulder with a huge grin plastered on his face, I know that there was something going on. As of now, it has been a month since my treatment started, since I started wanting to live for Jude. Every single chance he gets, he shoves it in my face that I lurvvvve him. He enjoys taunting me, and naturally I usually just taunt him back.

            Underneath his hood (yes, he’s still wearing those stupid black hoodies. On the plus side, they’re really warm) a large smile stretches over his mouth, exposing his impossibly white teeth. Seriously. I still, to this day, don’t understand how he gets his teeth so white. Whitening strips? Bleach? Paint?

            There’s a cup in his hand, possibly a drink. I regard Jude with a cautious look, but his bright green eyes remain happy and jubilant. He comes to sit in the hospital chair right beside my bed, swinging the backpack off his shoulder as he sits down. Before I have a chance to question him, he pulls out a Christmas sweater. A very, very ugly one. It’s red with white fluffy stuff bordering the sleeves and the neck and waist, and I can vouch for anyone that it’s shedding. It has these atrocious designs on the front of it—fat reindeer, a child dying from eating too many Christmas cookies, and other horrendous images that I will never be able to get out of my mind. Jude must notice my horrified expression, because he just chuckles and tosses the ugly sweat into my lap.

I want to swipe it off my lap, but then Jude pulls out two Christmas mugs with ‘HOHOHO SANTA IS COMING’ written on the side of the pair. The handles are red, and they look fuzzy. He then proceeds to pull out a plate of Christmas cookies with seran-wrap over the top of them to preserve their deliciousness. And to top off the Christmas-oriented presents, he takes the Christmas sweater off my lap and slips it on over his black t-shirt after unzipping his hoodie and tossing it into the chair beside him.

            And then he smiles at me. A genuine, Jude-like smile. I can’t help but smile back, and when I do, I know for a fact that loving Jude Andrews was the best decision ever.

            “Merry Christmas!” he exclaims, raising his hands in a jazz hands manner.

            I stare at him, a smile still on my face.

            He scratched the back of his neck nervously, a grin replacing his broad smile. “I know it’s a little late,” he admits, “you know, with it being the middle of January and all. But I figured that since you didn’t get to celebrate Christmas because of, you know, that you’d get to celebrate it now! How does that sound?”

            “This is weird.”

            He shrugs. “Never said I was normal, now did I?”

            “No, you certainly didn’t.”

            Jude picks up the plate of seran-wrap covered cookies and shoves them in my face. “Here. Snickerdoodles. Your favorite.” He then picks up the cup that he placed on my bedside table when he sat own and shoves that in my face as well. “Banana milkshake. Also your favorite.”

            I grab both items, but I can’t stop staring at him. Eventually, I use the milkshake to gesture toward his Christmas sweater. “That’s hideous, you know that?”

            A tentative grin. “Yeah, I know. I only do it for you.”

            “You’re perfect, you know?”