forever you

[four years and six months]

The face on the other side of the door was an unexpected sight.

Unfamiliar in ways only time and distance could make two friends feel like strangers. Yet there was nothing foreign in the line of his clenched jaw, the straight pointed nose and bushy brows furrowed over brown eyes that turned hazel when the sun hit just right. Siobhan knew. She knew because she'd glanced at them enough over the years. Quick glances turned curious looks that became comfortable open stares. Had spent one entire summer watching his eyes light up under the Caribbean sun each time he laughed, after all.

There really was nothing about Noah Alvarez that could be foreign to her.

No even him standing in her doorway, six months of poorly hidden silence and hurtful distance brushed aside as soon as her gaze collided with his grief-filled one.

She knew why has was there. His family hadn't known they were estranged. And they still considered her a close friend of his, the type they could call when he wouldn't pick up the phone, or when they needed news of him when he gave none. Noah's mother call had been for both. If the news of his grandpa's passing had felt like an iron pole piercing Siobhan's chest, the burn of every inch it burrowed deeper excruciating, she could only imagine how Noah had received them.

It was only natural to let him in. Grief was an old friend of hers. Though a tiny, vindicative voice in her heart wanted revenge for his abrupt distance after being drafted, it could not ignore another soul in distress. So Siobhan stepped aside, after opening her door all the way, in a welcoming gesture that couldn't be mistaken.

He blinked, once, as if surprised she opened her door for him. But soon, the pain took over. One step, two. And he was in her arms. Broken. Shattered. His long body shuddering, every limb shaken by a tremor that grew more violent by each passing minute.

Siobhan tightened her hold. It's alright. I'm never letting you go. As if sensing the silent words, Noah's shoulders stiffened. Was it guilt? Was it shame? Of relying on a friend he discarded as soon as he rose to fame? She didn't really care. This was an argument they could have when he'd be in the right state of mind. Be it a few months or a few years. Noah Alvarez had a tendency to cross her path she hadn't been able to thwart, despite her best efforts.

With one last hiccup, he finally let go. Sobs echoed against her concrete walls. Tears flowed, straining the skin of her neck. Hands fisted her shirt a bit too hard, clenching knuckles pressing against her ribs. Still, Siobhan kept stroking his head gently. When his knees gave out and they sunk to the floor, she followed him. Took his tears and his pain, let the grief flood her entire body while he cried his love for his gone grandpa on her wooden appartement floor.

Sweet murmurs of reassurance entwined with the muffled wailings, her I know unable to measure up to he's gone, shiv, abuelo's gone. When his body leaned into hers more heavily, she took it. Embraced him like they used to. In comfort and friendship and everything a safe place could be. Embraced him while the loud shudders became quiet shivers, no tear came to slide down her neck, and his breathing evened out.

"Shiv."

The familiar nickname croaked out of his dry lips. Noah lifted his face to look at her properly, red-swollen eyes against calm, pained ones. They stared at each other for a second, before he spoke again.

"I – it's not fair. He shouldn't be gone. Not so soon," he finished on a whisper that blended into the heavy air.

"It's not," she agreed softly.

"What do I do now? How can I live on without him?" He kept whispering through the silence. She remembered he told her once, how saying his fears out too loud made him feel like they became real. Tangible. "I don't know what to do."

"It's fine. You don't have to know." She wanted to tell him he probably couldn't live without his grandpa, because how were you supposed to move forward like before when a loved one was gone, one pillar of your life removed? She didn't know. Didn't know either, how to tell him without shooting it like another bullet to his bleeding heart. But the one thing she did know, she said out loud, quiet and confident. "We'll figure it out."

Silence fell over them, a cold blanket over fresh scars that couldn't be mend. Night chill stroked her neck in a damp kiss, her skin long gone cold. Noah had never looked more innocent, disheveled curls and dull eyes of a child taught how cruel life could be for the first time.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have barged in like that–"

"Noah, stop." Lips pressed flat at her sharp words, he added nothing. Though they both knew what he was about to say. After we stopped talking.

Not now. People might say she had a knack for direct talks and a disregard for subtlety, Siobhan's sense of timing was still immaculate. Now was not the time to be having this conversation. Not when it was pointless.

"It's fine. I'm glad you knew you could come find me," she told him in earnest.

He wanted to protest. The grooves etched on his forehead told her so. A part of her heart that hadn't frozen felt relieved at this sign of remorse, that his decision to cut their ties had weight on his mind. That he knew she should be welcoming him with fury and scalding retorts. Her pride pushed her to react exactly this way. But the seventeen-year-old girl who still lived in her, who would've given everything to have a shoulder to cry on after her brother's death, this part of her understood that reacting with her ego wouldn't bring redemption nor forgiveness. Mostly, this part agreed with her adult self, who had come to know and befriend and catch other elusive feelings for Noah Alvarez during the past four years, that for all his fault, he was still the sun and she in his orbit.

"Everything will be okay," she insisted once more to chase the uncertainty off his eyes, the awkwardness that took hold of the arms wrapped around her. Only when his brows softened, his head resting on her shoulders, her face away from his eyes, did her lips slowly let loose from pretending.

The night froze for a moment. Only the deepening sound of his breath reached her ears, his arms slowly falling down as sleep took over him. After ensuring Noah was fast asleep on her sofa, his face free of the pain that clung to his eyes, settled in his forehead, Siobhan slipped out of his grip and took a seat by one of the large windows in her living room.

Silence wrapped around her shoulders. No sign of life in the empty streets under her eyes. Just the stars trying to be seen, tiny bulbs shining hard but forever left in the dark of their big sister, the November moon staring wordlessly back at her. With no answer for the lack of pounding in her chest. She should've been glad. Elated, even. After all these nights wondering what she did wrong, all these hours agonizing over whether to contact him first then giving up, he had come to her. Even in these dire circumstances.

Because it was them again, forever two halves of two broken hearts that didn't match. They were Noah and Siobhan, the star who was afraid to shine and the girl hiding her love in the dark. It was them even if all the pieces felt jagged and cracked. It would be fine, so long as she could have him in her life, she told herself. It would be fine, she repeated, while she threw a blanket on Noah's hunched figure, while she got into bed. Ignoring how the sheets had never felt so cold, so lonely.