Aira and Abel

prologue

There is no one like him.

That is the only thing I can think when they bury him. I am seventeen, blue and brown and I feel strangely childish in my ashy dress.

It's his funeral. It feels like my funeral.

I think I loved him. I love him, I think. I love him.

I think I've said it many times to him-I've said it against his skin and into his mouth and inside his chest. I guess I never said it right. It was not enough. His sister reads his eulogy and she does not cry. They call him Parker Lee. I used to call him mine.

Everyone looks at me from time to time. They don't think I can take it. They don't think I can sit here and watch as his father shakes and his mother screams and cries. His sister reads the eulogy off of a piece of paper that has been folded and folded till it's torn at the creases. I can't look up from the ground for more than a few seconds.

He was the sky. I looked to him for everything. Now, I sit in a church, feeling breathless and empty and out of place, staring at the wooden coffin that his body is in. It feels wrong to be here. He was not religious, the only times he said God were tucked in before his I love you's.

I have looked at his lifeless body, I looked the moment the police let me.

Don't look. You should remember him as he was alive.

But I looked.

I will love you, always. I used to say this to him. This counted as always.

So I loved him, bleeding with his head back against his headrest, his hands lying motionless on either side, his red lips parted. I loved him with his mother's screams in my ear and with the sound of my heart slowing inside my chest. I saw him. I saw him when he was beautiful, and I saw him when he was ugly. I loved him alive, and I love him dead.

That is how I love.

Everything is still, even when they bury him six feet deep. He is far from me, and I feel alone for the first time in a while. Truly, terribly alone. The kind that makes your throat close up and sets fire to your eyes.

Everything is still, even as days turn into weeks. His family never sees me now. I broke my promise to stay in touch. His sister looks too much like him. His father's eyes are the same as his.

There is no one like Parker.

Everything is still. Months pass, and I drown myself in alternative endings for us. I see through every person who speaks to me about college and I pack my bags as my mother watches from the doorway. I can feel her pity--she always tries to speak but changes her mind after the silence gets too heavy. I watch my days pass with glassy eyes and shaky fingers. My friends try to keep the conversations going. I can barely breathe.

Parker Lee is dead.

No one talks about him anymore--at least not to me. He is gone, but not from me. I keep him alive inside my bones, and he dies only when I do. I carry him with me. My mother tells me that's what she did with my father when he died. My mother tells me it killed her inside.

There are days where I believed nothing would change--I still see him in my head. And yet--nothing ever changes until it does. And when it does-nothing is ever the same again.

-

hi guys!

so, this is to just give you some preface and kind of an idea of the mood/voice i'm going with. it's incredibly short, and that's intentional. not to worry, the actual chapters will be as long as you're used to from my writing. I know I don't go into details about Parker, and that's completely intentional. Aira reveals more and more about him as we go through the story.

i'm really excited about this story and i've worked on the characters a lot to portray depth and stuff (lol). I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS??? THANK YOU AGAIN TO ALL OF YOU TMoL READERS WHO ARE CHECKING THIS OUT!! I hope you enjoy this as much as you did TMoL.