Chapter 22 – “would’ve been you” - Sombr
AUGUST
“WOULD’VE BEEN YOU” - SOMbr
THREE MONTHS AFTER
I almost don’t get up to answer the door. It’s not worth the effort. It’s not my parents. They’ve taken up permanent residence in Palm Springs—not that they’d come by even if they were still here.
It’s not Leo. He’s already off competing again, burying himself in work, I assume. The same way Everett has been pouring himself into two businesses, which makes him the unlikely visitor at this hour, too.
I wouldn’t answer it—except I continue to hold out hope for the one person it could be, the person I should’ve given up on weeks ago. By all appearances, I have. I stopped showing up at Everett’s apartment. I stopped calling her. I stopped asking her mother how she’s doing.
When she didn’t show her face at the funeral, that was my final straw.
All the pain I imagined her enduring…she had to know I was feeling it too. The same intensity, the same guilt, the same isolation. I needed her this time. We needed each other.
And she disappeared.
Maybe it’s because I’m a glutton for punishment, or because I’m a hopeless romantic, but either way, I peel myself off the couch.
Unending reruns of The Office play on my television behind me as I pad to the living room of my new house.
I toss the front door open—and I’m startled by caramel-colored eyes.
Eyes once full of mischief, wonder, and affection are instead lifeless and empty. All hollowed cheeks and pale skin, she’s thinner than I’ve ever seen her, almost like a walking corpse.
“Elena.” The gasp that leaves my lips is raw with shock and fear.
Her face crumbles at the sound, heavy tears spilling from her eyes as she cups her face, shoulders heaving with sobs. It’s an innate instinct to reach out and grab her, to pull her inside and crush her against my chest.
I run my hand down the back of her head, smoothing out her hair. “It’s okay, baby. You’re all right.”
“Nothing…will…ever…” she heaves between sobs, “be…okay again.”
“I know,” I whisper.
She only cries harder, but I have nothing else to give her.
The world I built my life inside, the only reality I’ve ever known, is gone.
I don’t know where to go from here—where any of us go from here.
It doesn’t feel right to live without him, to move forward beyond the guilt and pain and emptiness.
I think about his lack of existence, and I spiral. It’s something that, after three months, I still don’t know how to comprehend. It’s the absence of someone you never prepared yourself to live without, someone who had goals and aspirations, feelings and plans and an entire fucking life to live.
No. Things will never be okay again.
And maybe I don’t deserve it, but I let myself sink into the sea of her embrace.
I allow the scent of her, warm and spiced, the pressure of her body, to hold me in place.
She’s still my gravity. Maybe I’m wrong to hope, and maybe I don’t deserve to crave any other outcome than the one I’m residing in now, but when Elena’s in my arms, it feels like one of the universe’s many wrongs has been righted.
I bracket her hips, lifting her. She wraps her legs around my waist, clinging to me like a lifeline as I carry her up the stairs into my bedroom.
I set her down on the edge of the bed, and she pulls back to look at me.
Her face is so broken, but a flicker of light glitters in her gaze as she cups my face, running a thumb across my cheek.
“August…” she whispers.
I wait for her to continue, to say the words her soul begs to speak. I can see them behind the veil in her eyes.
But she never does, so I slowly peel her leggings down, leaving her in only underwear. I slide my hand up her back beneath the oversized tee she’s wearing, unclasping her bra. I drag the straps down her arms and through the sleeves before she pulls it free and tosses it to the floor.
Reaching for the hem of my shirt, she lifts it, and I help her take it off before I strip down to my underwear.
I move to crawl into bed, but Elena puts a hand on my chest, pausing to run her eyes over my body.
She brushes the constellation on my wrist. Her sign.
Her name on my thigh. Violets inked across my collarbone, my entire body stamped with relics of her.
She moves her fingers to the space just below my elbow, to the basic wave inked into my skin. My brother has the same one—I know she remembers by the way she swallows, attempting to hold in the tears I know will fall anyway.
The soft touch has my eyes welling too, my chest constricting and my heart seizing.
There’s no escaping this pain tonight, but we don’t have to bear it alone.
I flip back the comforter, helping her crawl inside.
I slip in beside her, bringing her head to my bare chest as her tears drip onto my skin.
I cry with her, rubbing her back, kissing her head.
We’re quiet, outside my occasional reminders that she’s not alone, that I’m here. They only make her weep harder.
I hold her until she falls asleep. I lie awake until the sky turns from black to blue to purple like the bruises across our souls, ensuring she gets the rest I know she needs. It’s daylight when sleep finally claims me, Elena’s heavy breathing like a lullaby.
She’s my reprieve. My lifeline. My reminder there is light at the end of this tunnel.
For all that has been lost, for all the pain and all the guilt, for the conversations we haven’t had yet, and the destruction they may cause, she’s still here, still in my arms.
Nothing may ever be okay again, but we’re still holding on to each other.