The Best of Us

thirty five

note
it's been months since I've written anything. I'm rusty and nervous! if this is a bad chapter, please do not hesitate to tell me!(I swear I won't be offended) And my deepest apologies. I can't even begin to tell you how sorry I am. Life does not allow for writing much anymore (currently away from home and work which is why I was able to get this done and get some of my creative flow back!)

I hope you enjoy.

DECEMBER 2014

WHEN I WOKE, soft, refreshed and pleasantly heavy with the weight that comes with waking from a deep sleep, white mid-afternoon sunlight was streaming into through the windows and everything was quiet. For a moment, still in the lull of rest, I expected to find my own room and then the smell of lavender flooded me, and I relaxed back against the mattress with a smile.

Bradley was not at my side. He was standing in the middle of the room, wearing dark pyjama pants and thick, dark socks, pulling an old sweater over his head. I watched the movements of his arms, the shift of the muscles in the back, and when he turned around and approached me, he, despite his flu, brought a freshness with him.

He sat on his side of the bed and, unsure if he was real, I reached out my hand, closed my fist and dug my knuckle gently into his cheekbone. Smiling, he half-turned his head away.

"Good morning," I said, my voice raspy with sleep.

"Good afternoon," he corrected, his voice raspy with cold.

There was a clarity to his features that made my heart ache. His eyes were bright, his face was still, and his lips were like rosebuds. He wrapped his hand tenderly around my wrist and pulled my fist away from his cheekbone, pressing a gentle kiss to my knuckles. I had been keeping the image of him in my head daily, closing my eyes to concentrate on the curves of his mouth and the shade of his irises, the bridge of his nose, the contours of his face and the lines of his throat, his smooth forehead and the sweet shape of his ears, his long, girlish lashes, his swift, familiar hands. To see him there in front of me again was like being shaken from a dream, like watching a mist dissipate before my eyes.

With intensity, I studied the sunlight and shadows on his face, as though I might never see him again; the shapes they created, the way his eyes glittered, the way gold caught on his lashes. All I could do was look at him and, with my heart full, consider how he had pressed the silk of his cheek to my closed fist.

"Are you my friend again?" I asked, half lost in admiration.

"I was always your friend," he murmured.

"No you weren't," I muttered, shaking my head. "We haven't been the way we were."

"I was always your friend," he insisted, his eyes locking with mine.

"I've hurt you," I said with a mortification that would never entirely leave me, that would always rise in me during a discussion like this. It was an emotion that was trapped within the story, the way mirth is trapped in old jokes and grief in old photos. Some things will always bring joy. Some things will always bring shame.

Smiling, teasing, his eyes crinkling and the shadows of a dimple forming in his cheek, he shrugged. "If you put a knife in me," he said, lifting his cheek and lowering my hand, holding it in his own, "I'd show it off like a new watch."

Daring to smile back, I shook my head, half in love and half wounded. "Don't say things like that."

"I can't help it, Tucker," he shrugged, still sort of smiling. He smoothed his thumb over where my palm met the base of my fingers. "I've never been able to help it."