I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
There is no mirth in the laughter, but it’s the first she’s ever heard it from him.
And so she treasures it all the same.
Even if the edges are sharp and tear at the meat of her heart.
She watches him, studies the way he studies the water. There is something different, she thinks, and wonders if the differences have anything to do with the cryptic things he’d murmured. But he apologizes and it sinks like a stone in the pit of her gut. Pulses at the very center of her. She finds the body wants to reject it as she feels some great urge to move away from it, remove herself from beneath the unbearable weight of it. She’s not sorry. Because it had been the first thing that had meant anything at all to her in so very long. She says nothing, though, just shakes her head.
Were she someone else, she might have laughed merrily. She might have reached out and touched him and assured him that he need not ever apologize to her. But she merely stands there, just as useless as she’s always been, staring hard at his profile.
He’d died. This much is quite suddenly very clear. Her vision strobes as the furrow in her brow deepens. Now, more than ever, she wants to reach for him. Wants to touch his shoulder to test it for warmth, just in case. She wonders, in some vague way, if this is merely a fever dream. But he turns to look at her and she does not loo away, just goes on looking at him with those wide, vulnerable eyes. She doesn’t register the quirk in his mouth, the stirrings of some rueful smile, because she cannot tear her gaze away from those eyes.
Not the worst thing, he says and her pulse spikes with hope. Hope that there is peace somewhere. Hope that maybe someday things won’t feel so heavy.
“What happened?” she asks, quiet.
lilian
