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Even before her mother passed, love seeped out of her like condensation on a cold glass, a steady trickle leaking through her every pore, every hole in her body until the day she left her and broke the dam. Boo was there when that happened, though, and loving her had always been easy.
“I’ll take it,” Boo had said, and she meant it. She laughed not because she thought she was joking, but because she knew she wasn’t. It poured out of her. Boo brought it out. she always had. In the same way her mother did, in the same way her father did, in the same way Claire did, and now, in the same way that stupid priest did. They all pulled it out of her like magnets, and Boo was the only one who never took cover and ran from it. Boo was the only one who faced her love head on. Embraced it, even.
When he leaves, she drowns in it. The sobs wrack her body until early hours of the morning when the only feebly formed escape she has overtakes her into unconsciousness.
Boo is waiting when she gets there, already riding the waves of it like the depths of the ocean have never scared her. (And they haven’t.)
Boo holds Hilary in her hands against her chest in the same way she always had, and she tells her, “He was hot.”
She only nods. “Unfortunately he was much more than that, too.”
“Not enough, though,” Boo chides. “I’d have picked you.”
“Not much of a consolation, Miss Antichrist,” but she’s laughing as she says it. It’s like learning to swim all over again.
Boo’s silent for a moment, and in all of her dreams of Boo, Boo’s never kind enough to be angry about it. Even on the nights that Boo’s presence isn’t enough to keep her treading water, Boo is never cruel. She has every right to be. But she never is.
“I’d pick you over anyone, not just God,” Boo says, and she exhales, water filling her lungs again.
“I love you,” she coughs out, and Boo shines.