slide away {lorenzo berkshire}

85. die on this hill

"If i could have done it all again, i would have love you better. But i could not have loved you more."
- Sue Zhao

~~~~~

Cassie Avery

I'm not sure what changed that day in particular.

Maybe it was because I could smell him in the sheets, faint now, like the world was slowly stealing even that. His jumper was folded over the back of the chair where he'd left it weeks ago. Nothing had moved. Nothing was allowed to.

Theo lay beside me like he always did, his fingers moving slowly through my hair in the same absent pattern he'd used for weeks now.

I watched the ceiling.

I'd memorised it by now. The faint crack near the corner. The way the light shifted across it in the afternoons. Sometimes I wondered if this was how my life was going to be from now on. Lying very still while time happened somewhere else.

There was a thought that had followed me everywhere since the courtyard. Since the moment the world split open. It sat at the back of my mind when people spoke to me, when they tried to make me eat, when I woke up in the middle of the night screaming for someone who wasn't there.

I hadn't let myself say it. Not out loud. Not even in a whisper.

I kept my eyes fixed on the ceiling and tried to keep the thought where it belonged, buried somewhere deep enough that I didn't have to look at it.

It didn't stay there. It kept pushing forward anyway. It always did.

My throat felt tight, dry from weeks of not using it. I swallowed, once, then again, hoping the words would disappear back down with it.

But the question had been sitting inside me since the day he died, and for some reason right now it felt heavier than the fear of hearing my own voice.

I didn't turn my head towards Theo. I wasn't even sure the words were for him.

"Do you think he knew?".

His hand stilled. Then he sat up so fast the bed shifted beneath us.

I realised that it was the first sound I'd made in weeks.

He just looked at me. His eyes were red-rimmed, pale blue and glassy in the dim light, like ice that had started to melt.

He knew exactly who I meant. What I meant.

We stayed like that for a long time. Me staring at the ceiling. Him watching me like I might disappear if he blinked.

Then he swallowed.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Yeah. Of course he did."

His voice cracked on the last word.

Lorenzo had always known things before anyone else said them out loud. He knew when I was lying, even when I didn't admit it. He knew when I was about to leave a room before I moved. He knew when something was wrong just by the way I breathed.

So I hoped Theo was right. I hoped he would have known that I loved him too.

That thought didn't comfort me. It didn't undo anything. It didn't erase the sickening weight of all the time we'd wasted pretending we had more of it. It  definitely didn't bring him back.

But it shifted something.

"You okay?", Theo whispered quietly, like he felt stupid even asking that question.

I didn't answer. I wasn't sure I could.

The room suddenly felt too close, the air too thick, as if staying in that bed one second longer might pin me there forever.