"Oh my little pet... What on earth happened here?" Lucy loudly exclaimed as I opened the door.
I just shook my head. There was no way I was telling Lucy what had happened. There was no way that I would want to relive the last few hours in any case.
"I thought you were doing better. I haven't seen that cross slapped across your face in years. It is sooo unattractive you know," Lucy said as she tossed her bleached blonde hair backward. "I mean really, how do you expect people to take you seriously? And how will you do your job?"
Lucy knew me too well. I had to give her that. She was annoying and she talked way too much, but at least on some certain level she has learned to understand me in a way that Sam van Leer never could. Maybe it was because she was from my generation. Maybe it was because she also knew what true loss felt like. She had to learn it the hard way in the last years just like I had to.
"Look Lucy... I just don't want to talk," I mumble.
"It speaks!!!" Lucy yelled and faked a jump onto my coffee table that made a crackling groan under her weight.
"Stop the bullshit. Did you pack a bag?" I asked her. It didn't look like she had anything with her apart from the very skimpy pink dress she was wearing, along with a handbag that could probably fit a Great Dane.
"What do you think of me honey? You said road trip – so you can believe me that I packed. I took seven different credit cards," Lucy said with fake shock written all across her face. "I mean, like mommy-dearest always used to say. If you pack too much there will only be space to shop a little bit. And we don't want that now, do we? You know how I get when I can't treat my little gay pets to some awesomeness every now and again."
"You haven't bought me anything for years Lucy," I muttered, rolling my eyes to the ceiling.
"But who is to fault in that?" Lucy asked as she stepped off the table and fell down spread eagle on the couch. "I wanted to buy you that cute guy just last week."
"He was a hooker," I sighed. There was just no way on earth to get her to shut up.
"Which you are in desperate need of. Just imagine what your who-ha is looking like at the moment. Probably covered in dust from all the years of it not being used."
"It's none of your business." In my opinion that should be the end of the situation. My sex life, or lack of one had nothing to do with anybody in the world apart from me.
"Are you sure? I mean, just tell me where to go. We could organize something," Lucy said with a smile now playing over her face.
"I want you to take me to Llaluna."
"Oh honey! That pruned-up old bitch? I highly doubt that she would be up to getting rid of all your dust with all the dust she has accumulated. I mean seriously, nobody wants to do the nasty with her!" Lucy was sitting up this time and I could not help but laugh. Sometimes I think that the bleach from her hair seeps into her brain, contaminating it with more stupid thoughts than what would be considered healthy for any normal person.
"You are one very sick person," I told Lucy, trying to pull my face straight again.
"Well what else would you want with her? Seriously! Look at her. She's what my father would call 'fugly'. Ugly but still fuckable. I have dealt with her, and she is no regular bitch. She's in a class of her own," Lucy said in all honesty. I could see in the way that her eye was twitching that she was even more confused with me wanting to just see Llaluna than what she was when I turned down the cute rent boy she offered to buy me.
"I just need to talk to her. I need to put everything behind me. It's time for me to move on with my life," I said as I sat down next to Lucy on the couch. "You need to understand... Blake was a part of her. She still carries him in the way that I carry him in my heart. If there's one person on this planet that could maybe understand the way I am currently feeling, it is her. Not just that, but there's so many things I don't know about him. Memories that she has of him, about who he used to be before I met him. I want to meet that Blake. I want to be a part of that Blake. Maybe then... Maybe if I can stop wondering about the Blake's that I never knew. Maybe I can put him behind me and move on with my life. I need to do this. Not just for me, but also for Sam. He doesn't want to ever see me again if I don't deal with this."
"Say what!?" Lucy yelled. "Oh no!!! Say that again? What did Sam say?!"
"Not so much him as... well..."
I didn't get to finish my sentence, because Lucy, just being Lucy interrupted me again.
"Wait! This has Michael written all over it!?"
She waited for a reply, but all I could do was nod. I didn't really want to tell her exactly what had happened. Maybe Michael was right. And if he was, then maybe I was to blame for a lot more than just Blake's death at the end of the day.
"I'll talk to him. There is no way he's going to get away with this. Sam loves you. He can't go a day without hearing the voice of his 'precious little Eli'." Lucy said the last part of the sentence in the voice of Sméagol from The Lord of the Rings. I could not help but smile at how badly she was doing it.
"Just leave it. Don't stir," I mumbled in her general direction as I stood up, wanting so badly for her to follow me out the door.
"Oh no baby! Nobody messes with my pink petunia," Lucy said as she stood up from the couch, clearly getting the message that I really wanted to leave.
"Your pink petunia?" I asked. I could not help my eyebrow raising high enough to disappear in my unfortunately short hair. I felt like giggling, but I don't think that would have improved my situation with Lucy.
"Yeah... I'm kinda trying out new pet names. It's not like I can call you my gay pet forever."
"Well, keep on trying," I said as I picked up the duffle bag I threw together and left the apartment, waiting for Lucy to follow.
"You really need to cheer up, emo kid," she said as she walked past me and out of the door.
"Hopefully this time I will be able to," I whispered as soon as she was out of hearing shot. "Maybe this time I will be able to finally leave him behind me.
***
"No, n-no, no, you and I, I, I! We ain't gonna sleep tonigh-igh-ight! Oh baby, no, n-no, no, you and I, I, I! We ain't gonna sleep tonight!" Lucy sang at the top of her lungs with the icy wind blowing through our hair since she decided that all the windows needed to be down as we drove off on our road trip.
I would have told her to shut up, but since I decided not to speak with her any further until she stopped calling me a pink petunia, I did not I would be opening my mouth again anytime soon. Which on the up side at least gave me enough time to think, if that was even possible with Lucy singing Britney Spears anthems at the top of her extremely false lungs.
I decided to rather keep myself busy, and within a few seconds I had located what I was looking for in Lucy's purse. After touching here endless supply of condoms, a tampon (luckily unused), and crumbled picture of her and her ex-boyfriend, Nate, I finally found the black eye-liner I was looking for.
I opened visor and used the mirror to carefully apply my cross back over my lips. The one I did with the sharpie didn't seem to last as nicely, so it needed to be redone. On the other hand it made quite a nice outline for me to work on. It wasn't that the cross ever stopped me from talking. That isn't why I drew it on me that very first time so many years ago. It has always been more of a symbol. Something that I believed in. That one should listen before you speak. That every word should be thought through time and time again before you decide to break the silence. I have learned the hard way, over and over again, that nothing good ever happens when you speak more than you should. It is sometimes better to just stay in silence. That way the truth will never come out, and nobody will ever be hurt.
"Why are you doing that again?" Lucy asked as she turned down the radio.
For a while I just felt like ignoring her, enjoying rather looking out the window at the motionless night sky, wishing that some of them actually made out Blake's body so that he can be watching over us as we were driving.
"I don't know. Maybe I just needed a reminder of how things used to be," I answered, still looking at the skies. I was scared to look her in the eyes. She might have seen that there was more to my truth than what I was telling her.
"I can get that," she answered in a very unlike-Lucy way. To serious for her little pink dress.
"Do you still think about it?" I asked her. I needed to be sure.
"What do you think?" she answered my question with another question.
"I think that you think about what happened all the time. The same way I do." I looked down at my hands. I should not have started this conversation.
"It's not the same way as you. You never felt Blake the way I felt..." Lucy stopped talking and pursed her lips together. "You know what, let's not talk about it."
Before I could answer her, Lucy's hand went back to the radio, turning up the volume. Within another second she was singing along with yet another Britney Spears track while I was being left to look out of the window.
I wish I had brought my journal. Somehow I had forgotten to pack it before we left. I could have written a letter to Blake. To tell him I was still missing him. That I was in my way on my way to him.
I glanced down at my watch.
00:02
My birthday had ended only two minutes ago. It had been only eight hours since I had been to your grave.
I grasped the locket around my neck, the one holding Blake's hair.
"You need to let me go Blake. I need to move on. This is the last trip that I am taking for you. The last time I am doing anything for you. This is my parting gift. I am taking you back where you belong. All I ask from you is that you give me my freedom, because it feels like I will never be free of my love for you."
I knew that the wind would carry away my every word along with the musical enhancements gifted by the music playing in the car. I didn't mind. I knew he would get the message, but I also hoped he wouldn't. I already felt guilty. Like I would be betraying him. Like I would be abandoning him in the past, never to think about him again.
"I will always hold a pieceof you in my heart," I added just so that I didn't have to feel too guilty.