I blinked, though there wasn’t really anything to look at. I could’ve closed my eyes and not seen anything different, but I didn’t. I stared into the shadows, willing something to appear. “I don’t know if I can, Cres. I hurt you so much.”
“God, you keep talking about hurting me. Yeah, dude, you fucking hurt me. Sure. But I hurt you a million timesover when we were friends. Stupid jokes, accidents while playing games together—I mean, the list goes on.” When he sighed, it blew my hair with it. His breath was warm, the conviction in his words coming out like a gentle, constant steam.
Mine were laced with poison, burning, and tainted with nothing but misfortune. “That’s different.”
His response was quick. So quick, it made me jump a little when he started talking. “How? How is it different?”
“I—”
“Don’t answer that. Just look at me.” Hands cradled each side of my face, pulling me back just enough to look up at him. We locked gazes, a pool of infinite memories connected by our souls. “When you left, I missed you too much to truly be angry with you. I may have been upset and, yes, hurt, but I was never actually mad. I may have thought or said some words harsher than usual, but it was all from fucking… I don’t know, despair? Yeah, despair. I just missed you, Sunshine.” The honey and freedom in his eyes backed away into unknown shadows as he closed them.
The tips of his eyelashes almost touched his cheeks, like the leaves of a weeping willow. When he opened them, I couldn’t name anything I saw in them anymore. “I may have hurt, but I wished you’d come back. Every second of every fucking day, I wished you’d come back. Ihopedyou’d come back. I thought of different ways to get you to, but I was afraid because what if you didn’t want that? What if I broke our chain even further? You were always the other part of my soul, Elio. Without you, I’ve just been half of one. But I never,evergave up on you. I never gave up on thinking about you.
“You’re on my fucking wall, for Christ’s sake. Does that seem like giving up?” He leaned down, pressing our noses together. We both closed our eyes, soaking it in; our soulsmelding together once more, like they were always meant to. “My heart ached for you every day that we were apart, and when I saw you on that bridge? After trying to fucking kill yourself? I knew it was my chance. My chance to hold on to you and never let you go again. My Sunshine.”
Viridian green split into gold where the wings on my back pushed through my skin. Jade bled from each wound, dripping down my back as I let myself be enveloped by Crescent’s heart. I felt the warmth radiating from him, the waft of each breath, and the slight tickle from his hair caressing me.
I felt his words, and I heard his heart. My soul reached for his, just as his did mine.
There came a point where I couldn’t deny it any further. To myself, to him, or to the daisy petals that’d been witness to it all. “How did you know I was going to jump?”
A short beat of nothing, and then a quiet voice that broke my heart in two. “Because I’ve tried the same thing on that same bridge.”
I gasped without even realizing it. My body took over, ignoring my brain entirely. A hundred thousand words ran through my mind, yet none of them made any sense. None of them would come out, one thing playing in my mind over and over.
I almost lost my crescent moon?
“Wh-what do you mean?” It was weak. A sorry excuse for speaking.
He shook his head, as if it didn’t matter. As if he hadn’t just shattered my entire worldview because what thefuck.“It doesn’t matter now, Sunshine. I’m fine, obviously. It isn’t something I want to really get into while I’m holding you like this.”
“No, no, you can’t just fly by that.”
“Oh, like you did?”
“That was?—”
“Don’t you dare say it was different. It wasn’t, and you know that. You have to know that.” Our foreheads came together, a simple comfort, but all I needed were answers. “Let’s just stop for a second. I don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty of that. The point is—or originally was—that I didn’t give up on you, but I didn’t do enough. I swear on my fucking life I won’t let that happen again.”
What was this feeling inside my body? It was heavy, yet light at the same time. Terrifying, yet liberating. I pulled my arms up, wrapping them around him the best I could. We were so close, practically lying on top of one another.
His breathing kept me sane. His warmth kept me grounded. I didn’t need to fly if Crescent was here. With him here, there was nothing in the sky I could ever find that would be better than him and us. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
We stayed that way, our noses and foreheads touching like we could telepathically wrap each other up in a bubble that was all our own. My new clothes sat somewhere off to the side, forgotten in the midst of it all. There was nothing else to be said. Nothing else to be done.
We simply existed, and let time do the rest.
The chicken friedrice had definitely survived the trip home. It was good reheated, and there wasn’t such a large portion for me to accidentally gorge myself on.
Crescent was in the living room with some show playing. I was staring at my reflection in the mirror, catalogingevery bruise that was slowly fading. The black crop top—I found out it was called—fit perfectly on me. My blue jeans sat right on my hips, leaving a good amount of skin showing between them and the edge of the shirt. I’d never seen myself like this, with so much exposed. In the beginning, I’d hidden a lot of bruises with long-sleeve shirts, hoodies, and jackets that zipped up to my chin.
After a while, I’d stopped leaving the house enough for it to matter. Nobody saw me anyway. What was the point? But the clothes were normal for me by then, becoming the only things in my wardrobe.
I liked how I looked, actually. If I ignored the bruising, I could appreciate how everything fit me. There was even a hint of a smile on my lips, struggling to curl up at the way Ifelt.
