Vincent Cooper - a short story

1

Vincent Cooper was my best friend. He was the yin to my yang, the push to my pull and the sun to my moon.
Vincent Cooper was gold. He was glee. He was like a cool ocean breeze on a summer day. The relief you never knew you needed.
Vincent Cooper was bold. He was bright. He was everything that I wasn't, yet everything that I was.
Vincent Cooper was never pretentious or gloating or self-important, yet he had me mesmerized like he was Zeus himself.
He never stopped. In a sky full of stars, he is still the one that catches my eye. The one that should still be here with me. My one.
Vincent Cooper was the love of my life. Long after his ended.

It happened when we were nineteen. I was there. I held him until the sirens rang, until someone forced me to let go of his slender, warm body. And I would have held him longer, but his limbs started shaking and I followed their lead.
I remember there wasn't any blood. I remember thinking that was weird. Actually, that wasn't the only thing I thought. I didn't just think about the blood, or the lack thereof. I thought about everything that happened, everything that was still to come. I thought that it hadn't happened. That it was a dream.

But one moment I had been walking alongside him and the next he would never walk again. And it would be a long long time until I could do it for him. Until the guilt didn't shackle me like a slew of strong, steadfast hands clasping at my ankles. Until I didn't feel like Atlas holding the weight of the world on my shoulders.
Because it should have been me. The car should have never touched him. It wouldn't have touched him. But he saw it before I did and instead of letting me take the hit, he pushed me out of the way and took my pain for himself. Like he had done many times before. Like he would never do again.

Through the shock, I never stopped looking at him, hoping he would look me right back in the eye and smile. I didn't stop when the sirens were replaced with shouting, or when big, bulky arms ripped my trembling body from his. Nothing could keep me from looking at him but that glossy layer of my fear, my anger, my sadness, my guilt. And even that layer fell, and I could see him once again.

Time was a phantom. It went by so agonazingly slow, as if it didn't exist, yet so dizzyingly fast. I was in a crashing ship, rocking hard and clumsily. I saw my life end when I thought his did. And I saw it in slow-motion. But before I knew it, we reached the shore. 
The fluorescent light blinded me more than I thought it would. A harsh reminder of the light he was seeing. Then the steady stream of white came in and with them came hope. A hope even more painfully blinding than the hospital lights. A hope that made the pain recede before it slammed into me like a tsunami consuming everything in its path. A hope that was misplaced, because despite their concern, despite their solid, seasoned struggle to keep him with us, he left.

I was there. In the room. Because for a moment it looked like he'd stay, like he'd wake up and say "hey, you can't get rid of me that easily". For a moment, he did. And I cried and cried and cried because I was so scared that he'd leave me again. But he looked at me and smiled. Like I'd wanted him to. And he reached for my hand and I kissed him and I laughed and I cried some more. I called his mom, she would be there any second. But before she could reach us, it all came crashing down again.

I remember yelling, then realizing that the agonizing sound came from my own throat. I had sounded like I was the one dying. In a way I suppose that I was. Without him, I would never be complete again. That realization made thousands of tiny, insignificant spots dance before my eyes as the light in his went out again.

The tide came in in the form of white coats and tubes and it washed me out of the room that I never wanted to leave. More hands on my body, tearing it away from its other half. Away from him. I kicked and screamed and nearly left the wall as shattered as my heart. But the hands wouldn't budge. I wanted nothing more than to escape, but the iron grasp mixed with the air seemed to make my joints rust. My body turned to mush, and my mind followed suit.

I thought my tears were spent, that I couldn't possibly cry more. But then there she was, in a button-up shirt she'd hurriedly put on. A hurry that wasn't hurried enough. She was too late. I knew it, the white army knew it and after taking one look at my tearstained face, she knew it too. She ran at me with a fear only a mother could have, so pure and all-consuming. And I had to tell her, I had to tell her that her only son had died. That he took my place and that he died.

I would forever be the face she saw when she thought of him. No longer the saintly sunshine that was her son. But the wicked, wretched wench that took him from her. I thought she'd hate me for it. That I would never be welcomed in her home again. I thought that that was only fair, because I hated me for taking him too.
But his mother did what a mother does best. She comforted me. At her absolute lowest, when she was torn with grief herself, she comforted me.

This wasn't fair, this couldn't happen, not to him. Not to them. But it did. It happened. And it happened so fast that I didn't know what to do with it. I'd told myself I'd be strong, that if something like this ever happened, I would be there for them. His mom, his dad, his sister. But there we were, a tangled mess of tears I didn't know I held inside me, a mess of anger and sadness and guilt. A guilt I could never explain to them. A guilt that belonged to me and me alone. A guilt I would have to carry, that I deserved to carry. A guilt so crushing, so inexplicably vast, that trying to voice it would not do it justice. A guilt so haunting, so gnawing, that trying to share it would knock out all the precious air I worked so hard to collect. I would fold, I would crumble, I would die.

And so I never did.

That first night we cried and cried and cried, his mother and I. Reminiscing on the person he was, the person we loved, the person I would burn this whole entire circling clump of clay for, the person I would never hold or see again.

Vincent Cooper was my best friend. He was the dusk to my dawn, the ocean to my flood and the calm to my storm.
Vincent Cooper was silver. He was sacred. He was smart and saint-like and sapient and sassy, God he was sassy.
Vincent Cooper was my hearth, my heart, my home. My person.
And he never stopped. In a room full of people I still look for him. For the person that told me to never give up, to never stop living. For the warmth and the laughs and the honesty he offered.
Vincent Cooper was all that I needed, both then and now. He was the sun I revolved around. And then he died. And I was thrown off my axis and my world turned upside down and I went hurling to destruction.
Vincent Cooper is dead. And that piece of me that died with him is something I will never get back.