Why did I have to answer that phone call? That evil, evil phone call. That phone call changed my life. That phone call shattered my heart into a million tiny pieces.

It came the day after my twenty-first birthday.

My boyfriend, Griffin, had taken me out to dinner, a birthday celebration. It was one of the most romantic things he had done for me.

We had gone to The River Café, a candlelit dinner.

While eating the main course, he had taken my hand in his, and had looked me right in the eyes. The candlelight’s reflection flickered in his warm, light brown eyes. I began to feel faint. That’s how I always felt when he seriously looked at me.

A small smile spread across his face.

“Jacqueline,” he had said my name. “You think you know how I feel about you.” He sighed. “But you really don’t.” He paused. “What I’m trying to say is,” he stuttered.

I could tell he was having a hard time trying to find the right words to describe how he felt.

“Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it: I love you.”

I couldn’t breathe. My eyes started to itch. I soon realized that my eyes were filling up with water.

“Griffin,” I said breathlessly. I squeezed his hand and gulped in air.

The tears began to fall. “I love you, too!”

He chuckled, then leaned over and kissed me. It was perfect. It was the kiss I would never forget.

I now realized it was true. I really did love him!

He was the first boy I ever felt about that way.

He dropped me off at my house, kissing me goodnight beforehand.

That night I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

***

I had woken up at 1:30 in the morning.

I heard a faint ringing noise, and once I was awake more, I realized it was the phone.

Quickly, I got up and walked into the kitchen to answer the phone.

“Hello?” I quickly asked into the phone.

“Is this Miss Jacqueline Reese?” the man on the other end asked.

“Yes, this is she.”

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but there has been something terrible that has happened.”

I gasped. “Is it my mother?”

My mom had been fighting breast cancer for three years now. I had moved out that same year, since she had ended up in the hospital many times, so we both decided upon having her own room at the hospital.

It was a nice room; it didn’t even look like it was a hospital room.

“Please, tell me it’s not my mother!”

I couldn’t imagine a world without my mom. She was my only family left. My dad had passed away four years ago from a gunshot wound in Iraq.

I had grown closer than ever with my mom since my dad’s death and her being diagnosed with cancer.

“No, it’s not your mother. But it is about someone else that is close to you.”

The only other person I was extremely close with was my best friend Lindsay, and then of course there was Griffin.

“Lindsay?”

“No, not Lindsay, it’s…”

“Griffin,” I declared. I didn’t even make it come out as a question. He was the only other one I ever cared about. I knew it had to be him.

“Yes.”