But I never did learn to forget him, to stop missing him. To erase the impression of his hands touching me and his lips covering mine.
Him. Just him.
And every night, when I got in bed and the silence overtook the room, I’d fall asleep thinking of his eyes, his smile, of all we’d had. And it hurt. It hurt bad.
May started, the weather changed, and the temperatures rose in southern Quebec. I traded my desk for the damp grass and the shadows of the trees. Lying back in the park, I’d squint and stare at the bits of sky visible between the leaves.
I was trying to decide how to end my novel, and I wound up thinking about the differences between real life and fiction. But also about how similar they were. How they both have a beginning, they both descend into confusion, they both have conflicts, trials and errors, harmony, resolution. How both can have a happy ending, how all love stories deserve one, whether they’re imagined or whether they really happen.
Except for mine, of course. My own love story had just broken off in the middle.
Forever.
Forever: a word that could describe the greatest happiness or the vilest sorrow.
Out of the blue, a guy walked over, a few years older than me, interrupting my thoughts and getting in the way of my sunlight. I moved to the side. I was like a lizard, trying to soak up every ray. Shielding my eyes, I saw it was my brother.
“You know you’re sitting on an anthill, right?” he said.
“No, I’m not.”
“You’ll see when all the ants crawl in your ears and start eating you from the inside out.”
I smirked.
“Those kinds of jokes only worked when we were little,” I replied.
“You say that like you ever grew up, shorty.”
“Yeah, yeah…” I sat up. “What are you doing here?”
“Megan’s away on a trip and I didn’t feel like eating alone.”
“Well, I guess I’m proud to come in second.”
He sat down next to me, apparently unworried about the grass staining his costly tailored suit. He opened a paper bag, took out a couple of sandwiches, and offered me one.
“Thanks. I’m starving, actually.” I took a bite of pastrami. “And this is delicious.”
We smiled at each other and talked with our mouths full. I guess we’d never really learned our manners, or else acting like children brought us back to the old days, and we were trying to relive them.
“How’s it going?” he asked, pointing at my laptop.
“I’m almost done, but I don’t know how to tie it all together. You know me—always indecisive.”
“I’ve got an idea. Just kill everyone. A giant massacre, no mercy.”
“I can’t kill them! It’s a story of love and love lost.”
“So isRomeo and Juliet, and everyone dies in it.”
I rolled my eyes, tore off a little scrap of bread, and threw it at him, hitting his cheek.
“Why are you so weird?” he asked.
“Why areyou?”
“I guess it’s in the genes. Thank God I got the good ones.”
