Rekindle

10

I blinked hard.

Everything was white. It was all blurry and soft white.

White thoughts.

I was somewhere very cozy too. Wait, it wasn't all blurry white now. There were black squiggles on the wall in front of me. A black mass of hair was in my field of vision. Someone sat cross-legged, staring at the squiggle wall. I looked at the wall too as it sharpened, my vision clearing. It had a pretty cool tree on it. Ah, my tree. I was still on planet Earth.

Mustering up the strength to roll over on my side, the forgotten cut stung uncomfortably and I immediately flopped onto my back again. I felt sore and heavy everywhere, like the space between my skin and bone was cement instead of muscle and tissue.

"It's really good," Asher said, still fixated on my tree. "I didn't know you could draw."

I blinked a few more times and stared at him. "Thanks. You've never seen it before?"

"No. Why?"

"I worked on that for four months," I said. "You never stepped foot in my room while I was gone?"

"No."

He let the conversation drop there. I stared at who was before me, at what was before me. Did I even know Asher? Four months of trouble and he had the decency to leave my room untouched? What for?

He stood and stretched before sitting down on the edge of my bed, staring down his reflection in the mirror. "Thanks for the privacy," I muttered.

The corner of Asher's mouth flickered up before he dropped his head, messing with his hands. "You're welcome."

We fell into silence again. I reread the list of rules, penned in his skinny, slanted scrawl, and smiled a little. It felt like home again. And the ten rules were so outdated and irrelevant that it was strangely amusing to read them, despite the fact I was demobilized for the moment and couldn't break some of them if I tried.

"How do you feel this morning?" Asher asked, turning his head the slightest to make eye contact.

"Sore," I replied. "Really sore."

He nodded and averted his gaze to his hands again. "You shouldn't move today."

"Didn't plan on it, Ash."

Thankfully that earned a small laugh. I couldn't help smiling at his futile attempt to be the same guy he was a month earlier.

More silence settled in, but I was okay with the rare opportunity to admire him again, aesthetically speaking. I wouldn't have to rely on memory. He was actually sitting in front of me; I could smell the faint cigarette smoke and pine needles lingering on his skin.

"Well, we can be twins now," Asher said, breaking the silence. He turned enough to look at me, awkward half-smile on his face.

I smiled back at first, and then frowned. "What do you mean?"

He turned around again and pulled his gray shirt over his head, revealing a long, raised scar extending from underneath his right shoulder blade to across his lower back. My eyes widened a little at the sight, as it looked rather recent. "Maybe not the same place, but we'll both have scars."

He slipped his shirt back on, but I pushed it back up and gingerly touched the elongated scar. "Does it still hurt?"

"No, you can touch it."

Very gently I traced the line, hand trembling as a thought occurred to me. "Did Bridget do this to you?"

"No, someone else." Lightly, a hand rested on the bandages over my cut. "She did this to you?"