Alex looked at the empty bedroom in front of him. It had been days since it happened, but as everyone kept telling him, time doesn't pass properly when something like this happened. Nothing worked in his brain since, and he kept reliving the days, months, years before; such happy times, so happy he couldn't believe they ended the way they did. He sat on the bed, scenes flowing through his mind, so painful and beautiful his temples pounded.
***
The sun shone brightly up high, blinded anyone who looked its way, casting a glistening glow over the people below it. Jack and Alex sat on a blanket in their park, the park they named theirs after their first kiss was shared there when they were sixteen. Kids jumped and ran under the rays, their parents wearing contented smiles as they watched. But the boys were shielded from view; hidden in the shadowy shade of their tree, the tree they sat on as school friends, nothing more.
They held hands: to anyone else they just looked like a gay couple sitting in the park mid-afternoon. But to them they were more. They were proof that years of heartache and yearning paid of in happiness. They took pleasure in the small things; feeding ducks at their park, starwatching in their park anything so long as they were together, but it was amplified in their park.
On the bedside table in the empty bedroom was a vase, badly made and lopsided, made full dirty-dancing style when they were seventeen. He remembers Jack making Baby jokes and them laughing together, having a clay fight. They painted it red and orange- Jack said it reminded him of the sunset the night they kissed. It was such a sweet gesture that they kissed in the midst of the clay room; the pottery wheel still turning, thrown clay moulding to the floor.
Or Jack's twenty-first when they drunk tequila shots and sung Blink-182 songs until the bars closed and they were thrown on the streets, where they still laughed, drunk and sung.
Or their first time, so sweet and slow that Alex nearly screamed at Jack that he wasn't a doll.
Or All Time Low's first international tour when Jack kissed him in front of their fans during the final song of their final show in their hometown, Baltimore.
Or the million other memories they'd made together during their mini-infinity.
Alex remembered their fifth anniversary as boyfriends clearest of all- Jack asked Alex to meet him at their park, under their tree, and when he got there, he was greeted with candlelight and chocolate strawberries. Jack also gave him a necklace- a small silver rose on a thin silver chain, the same one that sat around Alex's neck years later. Instinctively, his fingers found the chain and pulled it from under his tee, apart from now it meant so much more.
All ruined by a drink driver, hitting them head on at eighty miles per hour, on Jack side not Alex's. The only good news was Alex was told he was killed instantly; no pain or suffering. It wasn't much of a cancellation, but it helped Alex's grieving process a little bit.
Today was the funeral. In an hour Jack's body would be lowered into the ground, the funny guitarist he fell in love with one sunset night under a nicknamed tree in a park they claimed as their own, never to be seen again.
Alex smiled and wiped his tears, fond memories running through his head, and unclasped the necklace, kissing the rose and laying it down on Jack's pillow, before walking to the door, without turning to say goodbye. He'd say that in his own time, because he definitely wasn't ready to say goodbye to his first everything just yet. His first love wasn't gone, he was in the rose pendant, the sunset vase, the Blink-182 songs, and most of all, in Alex's heart, forever and always. His first love lost. Another first. He smiled and steeled his self for the funeral, which would be held near their tree, in their park, under their beautiful sunset.
