Chapter 14
Jannis
“What’s wrong with you? You look so sad. I haven’t seen you like this in a while.”
A smile flits across my lips, even though I don’t really want it to. Not in this situation. Not today. Any other day, it’s bad enough, but today it’s just wrong. Maybe it’s wrong that I even agreed to meet Dayyan today, but the idea of spending the day without him was... scary.
What is he doing to me? I ask myself that question constantly, but haven’t been able to come up with an answer so far. To do so, I’d have to admit to myself that... no, stop, wrong. I can’t do that.
“Today is Danny’s birthday.” My head falls back, because I know that no matter how much my mind tries to refuse, when Dayyan asks me a question, I will answer it.
“Oh, I see. How old would he have been?” No awkward silence, no dull platitudes, just a sincere question.
“Nineteen.”
“Would you like to go to the cemetery?” No one has ever asked me that before. My heart feels a little lighter and beats a little faster.
“Are you coming with me?”
“If you want me to.”
The little magnolia tree has finally lost all its blossoms; the last dried-up remnants must have fallen off in the last few weeks.
“There are days when I still can’t believe that he’s really down there.
.. that he’s not just traveling the world without his phone, but really gone.
Forever.” My vision blurs and the worst part is, I don’t know if I’m still crying for him or because I don’t know what to do anymore.
I don’t know how to move on. We never talked about the future, always lived in the here and now.
In our little stolen moments together. When he didn’t have practice and his parents weren’t home.
Always at his place, never at mine, because someone would almost certainly have seen us there.
Luca, or one of my fathers. We weren’t ready for that.
“Tomorrow.” That one word haunts my mind.
A promise that could never be kept. The promise that would’ve turned a secret into reality, a reality I never missed when I was with him and that I now yearn for so incredibly much since Danny is gone.
If everyone had known about us, we would’ve been a memory for eternity, everyone would remember Danny as he really was.
Full of life, funny, lively, gay. But we never got that chance, and his truth will ever only live in me.
If I don’t hold on to him, that part of him will eventually disappear completely.
As if he had never existed, as if we had never existed.
I don’t want to let him go, but at the same time, I feel that the emptiness he left behind doesn’t feel so empty anymore and my heart doesn’t beat so heavy in my chest. Just a glance to the side and I see Dayyan.
I don’t know what I feel for him. Friendship, definitely.
More? No idea. I like it when he’s close to me, but I’m not attracted to him or anything.
But it was no different with Danny in the beginning, a voice whispers in my ear, and I don’t want to hear it.
I look up at the sky and there they are.
The big blue eyes. They shine as brightly as the sun, warm on my face and my bare arms. I can’t let him go.
“Do you have a photo of him?” Dayyan’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts, which are going round in circles but not coming to any conclusion.
“Yes, several.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and open my messenger. Two swipes down and there he is. My last message was a while ago.
I open the chat and search for the photo Danny sent me just two weeks before he died. The one of the two of us. With my heart pounding, I turn my phone toward Dayyan. What will he think of me now?
“He looks almost like you. Your hair is longer and you have different eye colors, but that aside. He was handsome.” Yes, he was, everyone knew that, especially the girls. “You were a beautiful couple.”
Two very contradictory feelings are spreading through my chest. On the one hand, it feels good to show someone a picture of us and receive a compliment.
On the other hand, something deep inside me is gnawing away at this good feeling.
I don’t want Dayyan to think I’m good with Danny.
And then I feel terribly shabby for having these thoughts at Danny’s grave, on his birthday, and for not having my mind focused exclusively on him.
I’m quiet on the way back, afraid to say anything, afraid of a response that feels too good. Too close. Too dangerous for my heart I have to take care of, because the person it belongs to can no longer hold on to it himself.
***
After dinner, I lie down in bed. It’s still early, but I’m drained.
The day was exhausting, not physically, but emotionally.
Slowly my eyes close and there he is, coming to visit me in my dream.
Danny sits in a magnificent magnolia tree smiling and reaching out his hand for me.
Without hesitation, I grab it firmly and he helps me up until I am sitting in front of him, one leg on each side of the fork in the branch.
I feel his chest against my back, strong and powerful.
My skin tingles under my T-shirt where we touch and I lean into him.
His heart beats strongly and steadily, calming me, taking away the nervousness that always takes hold of me when we see each other.
He gently wraps his arms around my waist and rests his chin on my shoulder, just as he had done countless times before.
I feel his breath on my ear, a warm breeze, and smell his scent, his cologne, his deodorant, and something else that belongs only to him, and I turn to face him.
Blue eyes look at me as if they have never seen anything more beautiful in their life.
Never in my life has anyone looked at me the way Danny does.
Slowly, he comes closer, closing the distance between us and, at the very last moment, closing his eyes until our lips touch.
Soft, familiar. I let myself fall. A whirlwind of delicate light pink leaves pulls us deeper and deeper. He is here.