Chapter Text
The streetlights.
They were buzzing. Loudly.
The drugs Boris had given me sharpened the noise, leaving the buzz free to dig into my ears as I watched him dart away and run back towards his home, the red sweater he was wearing seemingly emitting a soft glow under the warm yellow beams of light, perfectly outlining him against the deep night sky.
For a moment, I wondered if I would ever see him again. If he would really come to meet me like he promised.
But somewhere deep down, I think I knew that I could persuade him to come now. That I wouldn’t have to wait, as guilt and regret ate away at me from inside, to see whether or not he’d follow me to New York.
Really, I did know how to get him to come; that part was easy enough, was it not? Three small words, never before said, though we both knew it well enough without me saying it to him there in the street.
But, perhaps rather stupidly, I worried about what he’d think of me if I were to say it so openly.
Regardless, I didn’t know what I would do without him. Ridiculous, I know, especially considering I’d been on my own plenty before; and even I was well aware that Boris was never particularly good for me in the sort of way any adult would’ve told me I need.
But despite even the acknowledgment that he might as well have handed me a shovel to dig myself into this hole that I now found myself in, I was unable to shake the feeling that to be without Boris was to be without any semblance of life or love. Boris created a world with no rules, a world that softened the hurt and amplified fulfilling numbness with sprinkled excitement in the way that I so heavily craved. Whether we were stumbling through the playground at the dead hours of early morning, drunk or stoned out of our minds; or simply perched in front of the television with overcooked and under seasoned steak; he was a break from the monotonous continuity of grief in the foreclosed desert.
He’d become my own small world, our lives irrevocably intertwined together in a way that was difficult to describe in a way that seemed appropriate; there was, after all, not quite a word for what Boris and I were, this much was clear.
Despite how foggy and drawn-out this recollection may seem, it was a split second decision, and one that I made rather clearly (or at the very least, I hoped that it was clear; there was most definitely a thick sort of cloud of shock or something of the type still fogging up my mind).
“Boris, wait!” I called out, Popper still squirming uncontrollably in my arms as he stretched out in an attempt to get to him.
He stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“I love you.”
The words fell from between my lips quickly and effortlessly, as though they had simply been waiting for the chance to escape. I watched him process what I had said, my heart beating fast and heavy with pointed anticipation.
His head turned almost imperceptibly back towards me the second I said it. It was almost as though I could hear what he was thinking as he mulled over his options.
Looking back, I suppose I feel some sort of difficult to place shame towards the undeniable intimacy of the moment—but in that split second of waiting with bated breath, all I could feel was my heart in my throat and the painfully sharp hope that stabbed through my chest as I awaited his answer.
His shoulders dropped slightly, and he turned around to face me, his lips cast off to the side in a half-hearted scowl.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” I said, raising my eyebrows.
“I will come. We’ll go to New York. Tonight.”