Head Over Heels ✓

37 / at last

december, age 26

The sun was shining for the first time in days. It wasn't painfully cold after two weeks of miserably chilly days, the temperature lingering above zero as the weak sun sat low in a pale sky: it was all set to be a mild Christmas, just a week away. The bare trees swayed in the gentle breeze, bony branches scratching the mist that hung in the air like a held breath.

Everything had changed. The past eight months had verged on impossible at times, trawling through each day minute by minute, taking the hours as they came. There had been times that Lucas had put everything on hold to be with Mika, to hold her as she wept and to listen to her as she unloaded everything that crowded her mind until she snapped. Sometimes all she needed was for him to get her out of the house, forcing her to let go of the shackles she had tied herself up in.

The graveyard was silent, empty of life except for the birds that swooped over the pond at the bottom of the slope, the ducks that rippled the calm water when they paddled towards the only person in the cemetery.

Lucas headed towards her too. A scarf wound around his neck, he tucked his chilly hands into his pockets and crunched down the gravel path past the old, crumbling gravestones that surrounded the church. The further he walked, the fresher the graves. Some didn't have headstones yet; some had only just been dug. The flowers were brighter down there, marking the lost lives of people whose families remembered them like a painful wound that wouldn't heal.

Mika was standing by the water. She stood as still as the stones, her hat pulled down low and her scarf worn high, her elbows tucked close to her body as though she was trying to take up as little space as possible. She turned a moment before Lucas spoke when she heard a pebble skitter across the path behind her, and his face fell to see the tear tracks down her cheeks that betrayed her smile.

"Hi, Mika," he said.

"Hi." She rested her head against his chest when he hugged her, closing her eyes and breathing in his embrace. Over the past eight months, he had been her rock even when she hadn't asked him to be there for her. She let out a long sigh, holding onto him for a moment longer before she dropped her gloved hands to her sides.

"How's it going?" Lucas asked. He stood beside her, the two of them watching the ducks that quacked in the water.

"It's ok." She slowly nodded and gave him a smile as soft as her gaze. "I'm ok. Just ... thinking." She lowered her head, trying to surreptitiously dry her cheeks. "Sorry. I don't want to ruin today. I'm happy, really," she said quietly, letting out a heavy sigh. Her words hardly matched her eyes.

"But?" Lucas rested his hand on her shoulder. The past year had been a crash course in learning how to deal with Mika, figuring out how to help her process her grief and her guilt. Sometimes a single word was all it took to help her untangle her feelings.

"I can't help but think that maybe the life I planned out just isn't meant to be." She clasped her hands in front of herself, watching a solitary bird as it swooped down to the water. "Next Saturday should have been my due date. Now it'll just be another weekend." She took a deep breath, the air fogging when she let it out. "Sorry. I know I need to pull myself together."

"No you don't," Lucas said. "You're allowed to grieve, Mika. Of course you don't need to pull yourself together. But if you ask me, you're already the most put-together person I know. And you're the strongest. I admire you so much." He smiled down at her, pulling her into a one-armed hug. "You're a fighter, Mika. You've fought so hard. But you don't need to fight anymore."

Her sob was muffled by Lucas's coat, her shoulders shaking beneath his arms for almost a full minute before she pulled away and dropped her hands from her face, shaking off her emotion. "Thanks, Lucas," she said. "I really couldn't ask for a better friend than you, you know. You're incredible."