Don't Go [Muke Clemmings]

Chapter Twenty Nine

Jamie

Luke and Michael arrived at the hospital to see me crying over my dad. Luke came up to me and rubbed my back to comfort me. Michael was being so quiet it was like he wasn't there, but I could feel his gaze. I turned to look at him. His eyebrows were furrowed, and I couldn't tell if he was just confused or trying not to cry. Maybe both.

"Michael..."

He looked me in the eye but before he could say anything, he started crying. Luke gave him a hug. "It's all right babe. It's all right."

"I never knew him. I didn't speak to him face to face. I only knew of him as a character in Jamie's stories, and... he wasn't my favourite character. He hurt Jamie. He made her feel worthless, when clearly she's worth 10 of him. I don't care that he's dead, I really don't."

"Then why are you crying?" I asked. I knew it wasn't the best question to ask at the moment, but I didn't have to be perfect right now. My dad just died. I had an excuse.

"Because I'm mad." What? As if he read my mind, he explained: "He was a terrible person, and after all he did to you, here you are crying over him. He doesn't deserve that. You should be happy, Jamie, but no. You're too good of a person. He didn't deserve a daughter like you." At that he started sobbing. Before he simply had tears streaming out of his eyes, now he was shaking and choking out words. "I used to think that no one would care when I died. I knew my mom loved me, but I was still scared, deep inside, that she didn't really care, that she was only taking care of me because she felt like she needed to, like she was supposed to. Now I know that no matter how bad I fûck up, if I make my mom hate me, if Luke and I break up and he doesn't care about me anymore, even if I hurt you so much you wish I was dead, there'll still be one person crying at my funeral. One person who has so much love in her that she can still love someone when she hates them. And I'm proud to call that person my sister."

I smiled a little through my tears. It took me a few seconds to get up off of the floor, but I swear no time passed between me standing up and Michael wrapping his arms around me after I attacked him with a hug. "I love you Michael."

"I love you Jamie."

Luke joined the hug and we all just stood there for a while hugging until we got hungry and decided to go down to the hospital's food court to get some dinner. Michael put one hand in Luke's and the other in mine; I wanted to tell him that was weird at our age, but he grew up without siblings, so now that he had one, I would let him travel back in time and be a little kid again. Hell, I would probably be doing the same sometime soon.

However, if he asked to take a bath with me it would be a totally different situation. That's just weird.

Luke

I felt so bad for being the one out of the three of us who wasn't in this situation. I tried my best to comfort them, but I still didn't know what they felt like, and probably never would.

As the three of us headed back to Michael's house, there was silence throughout the car. Michael was curled up to me in the backseat with tears drying on his cheeks as Jamie drove with a blank expression.

I rubbed Michael's back and heard him sigh gently. I didn't like seeing him this way, but I didn't know what I could do to fix it.

We arrived, got out of the car, and went inside, passing Michael's mum awkwardly as we made our way to Michael's room.

"What can I do to cheer you guys up?" I asked finally as we sat on the bed. "I hate seeing the two people I love most so upset."

"I'm fine," Michael replied. "It's Jamie we need to worry about."

"Alright, James, what do you want to do? I have my computer with me, do you want to watch something? Do you want to play cards?"

Jamie looked up at me, silent for a while. When she finally spoke, she uttered softly only a word. "Food."

"Okay, I can do that." I went out into the kitchen and found everything needed to make French Toast, since I knew she loved it. I would pay the Cliffords back for ingredients later.

As I was dipping the bread, Michael came out and wrapped his arms around my waist, nuzzling my back. "What's up?" I asked.

"She wanted to be alone."

"Well, when I'm done with these, do you wanna deliver them and see if that's still the case?"

"Yeah, sure." I could feel his head turn to the left, and of course mine did the same. His mum was on the couch staring at a photo. She looked numb. "I feel really sorry for both of them. Am I supposed to miss him too? I never even met him."

"No, you're not. You don't have to miss him if you don't."

"I don't. The thing is, this scares me. It just reminds me that death is another part of life, it happens every day."

"Yeah," I said, pretending the pain of knowledge wasn't ripping at my heart. Michael was almost 17. There was just over a year left. He was going to die.

"I'm not even scared for me. I'm scared for her. Everyone she knows is going to die before she's 50."

"I'm sorry Mikey."

"And I'm scared for you. And for Jamie. I'm going to die any day now."

"No you're not. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not a month from now. Not a year from now."

"How the fûck would you know?"

"I know, Michael. I know the date. It's not very soon. Too soon, but not today."

His eyes widened. "What?"

"Your diary. You stopped in the middle of a word and there are no entries after that."

"When is it?" he demanded. "Tell me."

"I can't do that. It would be very irresponsible, we don't know what would happen. And please promise me you won't go looking through the diary. You can't know your own future."

"Oh, but you can?"

"I've stopped looking at future entries, except the one."

"Could you stop looking at present entries too? I'd like to have some privacy." I nodded. "Really? I didn't think you'd agree to that."

"You deserve it. I'm not giving it back though. And I'm still gonna check the last one, to see if it changes."

"Okay." He hugged me from behind as I took the first piece off of the griddle.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

(A/N) Yeah so sorry that took so long, I'll try to update more often now, but I can't make any promises. I'm on fall break so I have more free time than usual.

Well, bye.

<3 morgan <3

P.s. yeah it's Morgan now. same person, different name, different pronouns.