Didn't your mother tell you it's rude to stare?

of ferris wheels and chances

I couldn't stop myself anymore, tears were running all over my face and I didn't care.

Matt turned around to face me again and I could see he was trying hard not to cry. His actions only tore at my chest even more. I wanted to run to him and enfold him in my arms.

"Brandon and I, we spent every imaginable time with her. Then she got too sick, she had to stay in the hospital. We took turns keeping her company. One day, she was feeling so much better and happier, she begged me to take her outside. She had been cooped up inside the hospital for so long and I would do anything for her."

"So, I snuck her out that afternoon. I told the nurse I was just taking her out for some air out in the quadrangle."

My hand flew to my mouth to cover my shock. "Oh Matt.." I cried.

He gave me a small smile. "She wanted to ride the ferris wheel, wanted to watch the sun set..." His tears spilling freely over his eyes.

"I took her on that ride. I payed the man to let us just ride around the ferris wheel until we were ready to go. She told me how proud she was of me for turning my life around. She made me promise that I will continue to make her proud even after she was gone. I didn't tell her that she shouldn't say things like that. She knew her time was coming and we owed it to her not to bullshit her. She doesn't like it when we walked on eggshells around her." He smiled at that distant memory. "Meanwhile, the whole hospital, her parents and even Brandon had gone crazy trying to locate us."

He hung back his head, hands shoved into his pockets.

"She even said sorry that she couldn't love me the way I love her. I kept reminding her that it didn't matter because I loved her enough for us. Finally, she asked me to promise her one thing, and it was the one thing I still haven't done."

I looked at him, my brows knitting in question.

He walked back to me and took the frame from my hands. He deflty opened the back of the frame, and a white letter envelope popped out. I stared at it in shock.

"What is it?" I asked.

Matt turned his head towards me, his eyes full of pain and regret. "The real reason, you see, that she couldn't love me, was simply because she was in love with someone else."

Brandon.

As if he were reading my mind, he nodded at me.

My heart fell into my stomach and I swear I even stopped breathing. I cannot begin to imagine how that would feel to a 17 year old boy madly in love with his first love.

" She asked me to give this to him." He raised the letter in his hand. " And to tell him that she loved him with all her heart. She didn't want him to remember her as the sick, dying Sarah that was why she asked Me to take her out of the hospital."

"She died in my arms that night. She just closed her eyes as the sun dipped over the horizon and she was gone. I was broken, angry and inconsolable. They had to pull me away from her when they found us. I never gave Brandon the letter. I never told him that she loved him. I didn't want to share her because she will always be mine."

Matt fell back on the bed and started sobbing uncontrollably into his hands, the letter fisted in them. There is absolutely nothing as devastating as seeing the man you love cry and being powerless about it. I drew him into my arms and held him until his shoulders stopped shaking. My own tears falling unto his neck were I nestled my head against him. How my heart bled for that angry boy of so many summers ago, who found love and lost it too soon. I wanted to take the pain of this broken man and soothe it all away, if he would let me.