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Once in a while, Rey finds himself taking the path for Takodana Park on his morning run. He tells himself he needs the extra space, the quiet of the park, the cool shade under the trees as a respite from yesterday's leftover heat still radiating up from the concrete. He tells himself he just likes that tree in the center of the park, the big one shaped in that perfect, wide, symmetrical way like the ones they show during the theme song of nature documentaries.
Sometimes he does a double-take when a shadow runs deeper, darker under that tree, thinking maybe she’s there. A girl he’d seen once, years ago, and the only person he’d ever met who seemed to feel as alone as he did.
He’d recently started his morning runs, was still sorting out his route. He couldn’t hear anything over his breath, his feet on the pavement, but he saw her, curled up small under the tree. From a distance she seemed asleep, but closer he could see she was crying, her face tight against her knees. Before he could think better of it he’d slowed, veered off the sidewalk.
When Rey sat down next to her and leaned against the tree, the girl's arms tightened around her legs and she went dead silent, but she didn’t look up.
“Are you alright?” he asked, and tried to let his voice be the hug he didn’t dare to give.
Her voice was shaky, so quiet he could barely hear it, even in the early morning silence. “Not really.”
“You’re not alone,” he said, and winced, thinking how cheesy it might sound.
Her laugh was harsh, and when she looked up her eyes were so red he closed his own eyes, imagining how much hers must've hurt.
“I ought to be,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “you aren’t. Not right now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and then her lip trembled, and tears tracked down her cheeks. Her face barely moved, like she was holding together the pieces of a mask, like she barely had any tears left. He’d seen that face in the mirror countless times, and in that moment he tried to be the person he’d always needed.
He put his arm around her shoulders, and when she leaned into him, he held her face against his chest and rubbed her upper spine until her breathing slowed again. When she sat back up, she let the outside of their thighs stay pressed together, and sighed heavily.
“I killed my father,” she said, running her hands through the grass.
And that was a lot, if Rey was honest; he’d dealt with plenty of loss but never death. “Tell me,” he said.
“Before I moved here the last thing I said to him was that I hated him, that he was holding me back. He’s an alcoholic. He was never around, and I was always always waiting for him to come home. He crashed his car yesterday. And now I can never take that back.”
Rey was struck speechless then, by that mirror of the guilt he’d silently held close since his own parents left him as a child. So he pulled her back into his chest, and she turned to wrap her arms around his waist, and they sat there until the sun started to come up and the rough bark of the tree had rubbed bruises into his spine.
He stood up and took her hands to pull her up next to him. She was as tall as he was, standing, and he took her face in his hands and kissed her. It was a chaste thing, soft, but with her hand fisted in his shirt she held him there for a few breaths.
When he got home, he didn’t know if the pain in his chest was from how hard he’d run or how bittersweet her smile had been before she turned away from him. She must’ve moved away, after that, or made every effort not to be found, because no matter how many times he ran through that park he never saw her there again.
Rey didn’t like much poetry, had never gotten into it, but once he’d stumbled across a poem on the internet that just clicked. It felt silly, but whenever he read it he felt exactly the same as he had after that morning in the park. Deeply sad, but seen, somehow. He bought copies of all three of the poet’s published collections.
The poem was by an elusive poet named Bennett Organa, and it was called “Shade.”
Shade
My face was running
and so were you and
I couldn’t stop but
you did.
I need.
I needed and you didn’t
know how to love but
you did.
I was only shade
and you the tree that made
me; impossible,
I thought,
but you did.