Page 43 of Meet Me in the Blue

Are you awake?

He’d kept his distance this week, but it wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. Ron said I should be mad, but it was hard to muster the ire. Luka and I were good at being us. We’d perfected our dance over the years. He’d run, and I’d pretend like it didn’t hurt getting dropped into the dust storm he’d left behind. It started the day he’d told me he’d chosen to go to Portland for college. The simplicity of our relationship had become burdened with some unspoken weight I hadn’t ever been able to fully bear. We had changed. He’d promised me every summer, but in the end, he’d given them to someone else. He had changed. He loved me, and it was more than friends. We were two people connected by old and intricate branches, and that weight, that secret he’d held, it had reshaped every memory of him I’d ever collected. I couldn’t be angry at him, not when the burden I’d thought I’d carried had been the anchor keeping him at sea.

Resting my back against my pillows, I thought about the kiss, about the boundaries I’d needed to keep in place, and hesitantly swiped my thumb across the screen of my phone.

Me: I can be. Everything alright?

Luka: I’m outside.

“Outside?” I sat up and tossed the sheets off my legs. My feet hit floor with a loud thud, and Maribelle’s head popped up from where she slept in her dog bed by the dresser. “It’s okay, girl. Go back to sleep.”

I gave her a quick scratch behind her ear and peeked through the blinds of my bedroom window. Luka’s VW sat in my driveway, steam rising from his exhaust pipe, idling with the headlights off. A rolling sensation rocked inside my stomach, a mixture of worry and something else, something I had no name for.

Me: I’ll be right there.

I grabbed a t-shirt from the top drawer of my dresser and tugged it over my head as I headed down the stairs with Maribelle on my heels. A soft knock had me hurrying to unlatch the lock, my pulse building, rising like a surging tide ready to drown me. I knew before I saw his face. I could feel it, that drum, that thread pulsing between us stripped and bare.

“Rook.” Luka’s lips trembled, ashen like the alabaster of his wet cheeks. Dull blue, almost gray eyes stared through me, unseeing as Maribelle whined. She nudged his hand with her snout, but he was unmoved. “Rook… he… he’s gone. God, I can’t go home.” His head fell forward, and he swayed on his feet.

“Shit… Come here.” The words scratched their way up and out of my throat as I pulled him into my arms. His entire body thundered and quaked against me, and I fell apart with him. We stood in the doorway, huddled together, my hand on his neck, his fingers twisted into the fabric of my shirt. “I’ve got you, I’m right here.” His broken sobs stole my whispered consolations, but I repeated them anyway.

I said the words over and over into the chilled night air, into the crook of his neck until he believed me, until time seemed to stop and there was nothing else but this loss and the cracks in our veneers, exposed and sharp.

“I can’t go back there,” he said, his hot breath on my shoulder. “I can’t go back…”

“Then stay here. Stay with me, Luka.”

He didn’t say yes or no but took my hand and I led him into the house, closing the door behind us. Maribelle nipped at our linked fingers, and Luka laughed, this wild and unsure, sad sound. For a second, he took a breath, rubbing his bloodshot eyes with the heel of his free hand. But then a fresh wave of tears brimmed over his lashes and his shoulders shook. “I’m so fucking lost. I knew it was coming, I knew, but I… I thought I’d have more time.”

“Luka…”

“I-I don’t know what to do,” he whispered, brittle and scared, like a young boy waking up from a nightmare. “What do I do now?”

I was lost, too, and this time I had no idea how to fix this. And it hurt, God, it hurt too much to look at him, to watch him break.

“I don’t know,” I said, and Luka sank into me again. I held his weight, held him together, all his pieces crumbling through my fingers. I told myself to stop crying, to hold him steady, but I only managed the latter. “I wish I did.”

“He’s gone.”

He tipped his chin and muffled a scream into my collarbone, grasping fistfuls of my t-shirt. I let him scratch at my skin and soak my chest with his tears. The sour scent of mourning hovered between us, and I buried my nose in his hair, desperate for the familiar smell of his shampoo. I needed something to remember, something tangible, something to stop my own seams from tearing open one by one. I needed to be his roots, his refuge. His pain had always been my pain. Every breaking sob, every heaving breath belonged to me, belonged to us. I kissed his forehead and wiped his cheeks with my thumbs. I held him close and told him he never had to let go. I told him I was here, right here, and I wasn’t going anywhere. I told him how much I loved him, how much I loved his father, his family, how much he meant to me. I rambled and cried with him, our wet cheeks pressed together, until there were no more words, only our fingers clutching fabric, pulling tight, sealing off any space until we were one person, one heartbeat aching, tied up in grief and silence.

“I feel bad… leaving Mom and Nora there, but I’m so fucking tired. And I can’t… Everyone is too quiet… it’s unbearable,” he said, and I rubbed the goose bumps from his arms as he pulled away. “All I want to do is sleep, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to.”

“You need to try.” His exhaustion had carved itself into the dark circles under his swollen eyes, his gait unsteady as he tried to take a step toward the couch. “Come on, let’s go upstairs. You should lie down.”

“Yeah.”

We made our way up the stairs, and as I opened the guest bedroom door, Maribelle pushed her way inside. “There’s an extra blanket in the closet if you want it. I know how cold you get at night.”

His lips parted in a quiet smile, softening the sorrow around his eyes. “Thanks.” Luka sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off his shoes. Belle snuffled her nose against his socked feet and his smile widened. He leaned down and scratched the top of her head as I hovered in the doorway. When he raised his gaze again, his humor faded. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“Do you want me to sit with you for a while?”

“Until I fall asleep?”

“If that’s what you need.”

“I’m afraid to fall asleep. What if I forget he’s gone, and I have to remember all over again when I wake up? I feel like if I stay awake eventually it won’t hurt as much.”

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