So it’s been one month, give or take, since the day I died.
Have you gotten better, Gia?
Has your health improved?
Are you smiling the way I love?
Do you tell your parents everything your heart allows you to?
Have you talked to your friends lately?
Do you smile just because you can?
That’s the glory of time, Gia.
When you have time, you can heal.
Time heals wounds.
You have time.
You have enough time for the whole entire world.
Use it wisely, sweetheart.
Get out there and live for a while. Go out into the sun and smile. If it’s raining, dance for me, so I can look down and see you twirling and laughing and I can laugh too. Live for me, Gia.
It sounds horrible, but I want you to live for me.
After everything, is that so much for me to ask?
I don’t know.
Are you happy?
Do you have something worth smiling for?
Is something in your life that makes you laugh?
Are any of your friends, family, anyone watching you today and seeing you like they haven’t seen you for this last month?
If the answer to all of those questions is yes,
then I have a reason to smile, too.
~*~
“You’re full of shit,” Devon accused.
I raised an eyebrow.
He was still unconvinced. “You can’t be serious.”
“Shut your mouth, pretty boy,” I chided, tapping the underside of his chin. “Bugs might fly in.”
“Forget the damn bugs!” he cried. “Get your ass in the car; we’re going to Busch Gardens!”
My parents had thought that it would be a good idea to send Devon and me to a theme park to take our minds away from that it’s been a month. And damn if they didn’t know us like the back of their hands.
Devon was nearly peeing himself with excitement as he scrambled around his room, searching for his wallet.
“SheiKra is now floorless,” he informed me unnecessarily as he searched, a giant grin on his face. “I’m going to make that roller coaster my bitch. Mark my words, North.”
“They have been marked,” I noted monotonously, rolling my eyes. “You’re like a five year old.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not pumped,” he ordered me, ceasing his search to catch my gaze in his. I pursed my lips.
Satisfied, he nodded and continued to look.
I picked his wallet up from where it had been sitting next to me the entire time and flipped it open. “Cheetah Chase is now some real roller coaster called Cheetah Hunt, too. Really fast, apparently. And you don’t feel like you’re definitely going to die when you go around a bend.”
“After SheiKra,” he said, distracted.
I peeked inside of one of the pockets in his wallet and immediately regretted it. I grimaced. “Guys seriously carry around a rubber in their wallets? I thought that was just a joke or something.”
“Not a joke,” he muttered before his head shot up, spotting his wallet in my hands. His eyes flashed as he stalked over and ripped it from my hands, holding it to his chest protectively as he glared down at me. “Not cool.”
“What?” I asked innocently.
He opened his mouth as if to argue further—which would definitely have not surprised me—but instead he breathed out, shaking his head. He laughed once under his breath before he turned and started for his bedroom door, leaving me behind wondering what that look in his eyes was about.
“Coming, Gia?” he called behind him.
I frowned before I pushed myself up and skipped after him, taking my time. I wasn’t in a rush—I had the tickets.
And I had a lot to think about.
Because that look in his eye, the way he looked at me.
I had seen that look before.
But back then, it had been his brother looking at me.
And his brother would have really kissed me.
Devon just walked away.
~*~
“Damn,” Devon muttered, revenant. “Let’s go again.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” I barely managed to say, stumbling, feeling nauseous. I ricocheted off of Devon and hit the wall of the building we were walking by, seeing double. “You think that was fun? That was like Japanese torture. Drip, drip, whore.”
“You’re such a child,” he told me through his loud laughter.
I used the energy I had left to flip him the bird. Somehow, the laughter got louder.
Thankfully, he took pity on me and slowed to a stop, pulling me down at a free table. I put my head in my hands and leaned onto the table top, breathing deeply in and out. I was glaring at him but he couldn’t see me because I think my neck was broken.
“Floorless. Dangling. Ninety degree drop. Fast.”
I didn’t need to be looking to know that he was grinning.
“I hate you, Mueller.”
“Hate is a strong word, North.”
“It’s the beer of emotion. Irate? Now that is a fine Kraken, my friend.”
“Should I be concerned that you know alcohol?” he asked me, arching an eyebrow. I shrugged, my mouth going dry at the thought of admitting that his little brother was the one who taught me everything I needed to know about alcohol. Especially the strong kind.
I kept my face conveniently hidden for long enough to feel the blood return to my face. I raised my face, still not feeling alright.
“Better?” he demanded.
“Kind of,” I told him, rubbing my face. “How much ass kissing would it take for you to get me a soda?”
“I’m feeling generous today,” he said, getting to his feet immediately. “Pepsi?”
“A really large one.”
He smirked. “Coming right up, North.”
I watched him as he walked away, wondering if I even should. Wondering if even that was wrong.
It felt it.
When people are in mourning, they tend to seek out people who understand exactly what they are going through to get over the experience, to move on from it. They become attached to them because they are the ones that helped rebuild them emotionally, because over all that time they realized that they could trust them.
I didn’t know if I wanted to let in Devon Mueller.
I didn’t know how much it would hurt when he left after summer, leaving me alone with not only my memories but everything that his brother had left behind.
I hated that I was starting to rely on him.
I had told myself through my entire life that if there was anyone I could trust for the rest of my life, it would be me, myself, and I. But now I was letting in the brother of the boy I fell in love with, and I knew what the consequences of that would be.
Devon wasn’t the kind of person that stuck around for long. He hardly ever had steady relationships and he had so many friends that there was no way that he could know all of them well enough. The only thing constant about his life was his internship at the prosecutor’s office in Orlando and his nights of partying on Church Street when he wasn’t at graduate school at the University of Central Florida, located in the middle of his world so many miles away. Half the time that I had known his family, his mother hadn’t even known where Devon was.
I was still thinking about all of these things when Devon came back. He must have seen something on my face.
“What?” he demanded, placing the giant soda in front of me, a straw already stuck inside of it. I shrugged and thanked him, taking a long sick, but now that uneasy, shaky feeling running through me wasn’t because of the rush of the roller coaster, the adrenaline turned into horror. I looked at the older brother of the boy I had loved with all of my heart and I wondered when he would leave me.
They always left me.
“You’re looking at me weird,” Devon noticed. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I told him. He didn’t believe me—I could see it in his eyes.
He didn’t ask. He knew as well as I did that I wouldn’t answer.
~*~
You might not have moved on from me all the way, Gia, but I think you’re getting there. I think you’re starting to discover life without me and that’s a wonder in on its own. Can’t you see that, even when I’m gone, the sky is still blue? Grass is still green? The Earth continues to spin on its axis? Even without me, life goes on, and that is just the way that it will always be.
People die every day.
Even people like me.
I know that you still don’t understand why I did it, sweetheart, and I never really expect you to. It’s hard for me to put into words, to frame it right in my state of mind. Explaining it to you would be like reading one of my brother’s law books—it just isn’t comprehensible unless you know it firsthand. Unless you understand it the same way that it has to be understood.
I could give you my reasoning times a thousand, Gia, but I don’t think you would ever forgive me for it.
At least, not yet.
I’m sure you’re wondering what else I could possibly ask you, but this isn’t even halfway close to the end. I haven’t given up hope on you like I gave up on me so long ago. I know that you’re strong enough to make it through this, no matter how confusing.
No matter how much it hurt.
But I couldn’t.
I just hope you understand that.
You weren’t the reason. Neither was my mom or my dad or my brother or any of my friends. It wasn’t them that sent me over the edge of that bridge.
In fact, it was really just me.
It always has been.
Wait for my next letter, Gia. It might sound like it is, but it’s not over yet.
-Holden
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part five :)
x Riley