Work Text:
The flowers died on Monday.
But that’s never the start of a story, is it? Only the end.
There’s a town a little north of mine that only exists on rainy days.
That’s an exaggeration, of course. It’s there all the time.
But it only truly comes alive when it rains.
You’d know which one, we used to drive there all the time. Stop at that one convenience store on the way, I’d get a bag of gummy sharks and a sprite, you’d get mini m&ms and a coke. We never got something different.
And I never questioned that.
Ritual is a hard thing to break.
I went back there, yesterday. It might’ve been last week. Time’s different now.
The cashier recognized me — you remember Geoff, right? He asked where you were. I guess he hadn’t heard. Which is strange, you would’ve thought that Awsten would’ve told him. They were good friends, remember?
I keep asking if you remember.
You don’t remember anything, now.
You don’t remember sitting on the dock, throwing rocks into the ocean and watching the ripples fade into the waves.
You don’t remember going into the fishing shop and generally making a nuisance of ourselves until someone told us to either calm down or get out.
And I’m sure you don’t remember sitting on the bridge, our legs dangling off the edge. One time when you were sharper than usual,(you were never sharp, always soft around the edges) you said you were gonna jump off the bridge onto the concrete far below and we laughed even though it wasn’t funny.
We laughed at a lot of things that weren’t funny.
That’s how we met Awsten, sitting up on that bridge. You didn’t like him at first, (too bright and loud and moving all the time), but you liked him even less when I kissed him.
That summer was the quietest of them all.
But you came to my house (on Monday, always on Monday) at the time of night when nothing was really real anymore, things were fuzzy around the edges and you cried. Cried and cried and then you kissed me. You knew I was dating Awsten.
Maybe you were drunk, I could taste the alcohol on your lips. You’d been to a party (you were always more popular than me, everyone liked you), and your cheeks were the same color as the raspberries we used to steal from my neighbor’s garden.
That was so long ago.
But I’ve been trying to store up all the memories into letters like this one, pack them up neat and tight and put them in a box so I don’t forget.
I’m so scared of forgetting you.
But that’s not what this letter is about, this letter is to remember you and me and Awsten, all the things that we did. That’s not here or there or anywhere, but I need to keep myself on track.
(I haven’t talked to Awsten since.)
I still remember what your eyes looked like in every kind of light. They were dark that night, the way they always get when you cry. It was a game we made up when we were younger, I’d try to guess what mood you were in by your eyes.
We stopped playing that game when you turned thirteen and I got too close to an exposed nerve.
(You didn’t talk to me for a week afterwards.)
Awsten knew about it, somehow. I was going to tell him, but he already knew.
Did you tell him?
You must’ve.
Then he told me how you’d kissed him. He never told me what day it was (not a Monday, even though everything happens on a Monday), but I know it wasn’t long after you kissed me. I don’t know how, but I convinced you to come to the bridge with me. That was the only time we didn’t stop at the convenience store on the way. We stopped going to the bridge soon after.
I went back to it, on the same day I saw Geoff.
You were the last of us to visit that bridge before I came back.
I thought that was the happiest I’d ever be, that day on the bridge. (Your parents didn’t approve, mine didn’t either, but we didn’t care.) No one else was happy, but we were.
We were always happiest when we were together, but that’ll never happen again.
I went to a coffee shop today. (The barista recognized me, everyone recognizes me now.) I brought my notebook, because I knew I needed to have something to do or I’d go crazy. But I accidentally grabbed the one you gave me, with your looping handwriting sprawled across the first page.
I almost cried in the coffee shop, salt stinging my eyes and dripping into my lungs.
There was hot chocolate in the mug the barista brought me, not coffee.
Coffee was for you, as bitter as you were sweet.
Feelings were too big to put into words, so I drew. I was never as good as you, but you taught me well. Seconds turned into minutes, and suddenly I’d been drawing for hours.
The half full hot chocolate was cold, and tasted stale. (You would’ve drank it, you hated wasting food.)
It was us against the world for so long. I don’t know what I’ll do without you, but at least I’m trying.
I left a comic sketch on the table. Maybe someone saw it, and smiled. If I made someone smile, then everything’s okay.
I found all the old mixtapes you made me. They were buried in a box under my bed, alongside memories that were too raw to keep out in the open.
If I was less numb, I think I would’ve cried.
I can’t feel much of anything anymore, but that’s okay. I’ve lost everything, so it’s nice to not hurt anymore.
If I could tell you just two things, the first one would be that you were loved. You were always loved, even though darkness can be heavier than you ever expected. Someone always cares, always wants to see you that morning that you don’t want to get up.
The second would be that I’m sorry.
The flowers died on Monday. I tried to keep them alive, but I suppose some things are just meant to leave you.
The flowers died on Monday, and so did you.
If you ever read this, Luke, I loved you.
Yours, forever and always, Michael.