Today is the last day. I seem to have a habit of getting close to those I cannot keep, always those who have to go. This time is no different.
The prospect of losing you hurts. I don't think it has settled in yet for either of us, but I feel it first. The last day is too good for it to be the end. I want more of it. I want more last days, over and over, if they can all be so nice.
Maybe it is my fault. I don't realize that we are on a timer until the last sand falls and you're gone forever. Maybe if I had found you sooner. Maybe if you had found me.
***
It starts with head pats.
You are a stranger to me, simply someone I accidentally run into while under tedious wait. You and him both, you two who are to be gone in three months. You ask if I am to be joining. I say no, that I'm only there for that day only, that I'm just helping out because I have time to spare. It is what it is, and yet I could not have been more wrong.
One day. Two days. A week passes, then another, then a month. Somehow, I end up back there again and again. It is my last class of the day for that semester, and I always have time after class ends. I stay with the two of you, learning, slowly being drawn in. You come by occasionally and ask how I'm doing. I'm rarely ever with you.
I'm never with you.
I do it first. Your hair is soft and you look surprised, but you do it back and smile. We never talk. But it becomes a habit, just in the passing, whenever we meet.
***
The semester ends, but I still come to the room every day. It is the gathering place, and it becomes a second home to us. Head pats become hugs, but we still have few words. You show me what to put together. I ask twice, maybe a third time, just to confirm how to do it. Is it really that hard? It seems so easy in your hands.
You say I can be the prodigy of you two. You, who stand on tall pillars far above anybody else. I can't compete, but I nod and smile and promise that I will.
When do we start to talk? You always felt so distant until suddenly I am by your side constantly, laughing and joking and smiling. I really did smile a lot. I think you did too.
***
Three days left. You start counting down but I don't think we realize what it truly means. In the hallways, in between classes, the three of us start looking for each other. We start leaving early and dropping by when the teachers are looking sideways. Somehow we manage to get closer when we are about to be torn apart.
The head pats come naturally, a greeting that speaks more than words can say. What does it mean? It has no meaning, and yet it could not be expressed more clear.
We find ways to talk outside of school. We say more than we did face to face when it first started, as if those couple days held all the lost conversations we never got to have. You keep telling me that you won't really be gone. I say I know, for what else can I say? It still doesn't feel real.
***
The last day is started laughing in a small, cramped room. None of the teachers care about us so we do whatever, basking in the moment.
We eat lunch in the second home. The show had just been recently recommended to me and I drag it back to watch it from the start with you. At a point in the middle, you bring up the topic of head pats. I ask if you like them. You say yes, and I realize that I've been doing it wrong this entire time.
The second episode is lost in the comfort of our heads together, my fingers running through your hair. At some point the rest of us leave and the room falls all but silent if it weren't for the screen positioned between us. The final minutes dwindle away until they are gone forever, never again retrievable from the recesses of time.
You're so different from all the others, but maybe that's when I first realized.
***
It ends with hugs. I get years with others, ample time to forge memory after memory and hold them close, and yet when I am faced with little under a quarter of a year with you, I am the first to pull away. Why can't I hold onto you for just a little bit longer?
You promise to come back. You promise never to forget.
The next time we meet, I promise not to let go.
YOU ARE READING
Inky's Collection of Shorts
Short StoryMaybe shorts as in pants. It would've been cool if I had a collection of pants and every chapter is just a picture of a pair. I mean, when you think about it, we collect clothes throughout our lives like those people that hoard all the good washroom...
