The Moon, The Sun, and Everything Else

Simply Memories

IDEA AND MOST OF THE CONTENT FROM @morningthunderstorms! I WAS GIVEN FULL PERMISSION TO USE THIS EXCERPT, SO THERE'S YOUR DISCLAIMER! ALSO, GO CHECK OUT HER PAGE, GIVE HER A FOLLOW AND A READ BECAUSE SHE IS AMAZING! 

Kirstie rolled over, surprised to see her husband wasn't there. "Avi?" She asked, stumbling down the stairs, still not completely awake yet. 

"Kirst?" Avi's voice filled the room around them as he looked up from his hands. 

"Why aren't you in bed, Love?" She sat beside him. 

"They're taking me." He sighed. 

"Excuse me?" 

"The Army...I have to go, it's some kind of urgent thing, I have like two hours! My God, I can't think straight...can they even do that? The Army can't do this! But maybe they can, but--" Avi seemed rather frazzled, not being able to wrap his head around the call he had just received fifteen minutes ago. 

"Okay, well, then you can go fight. It's what you signed up for, right? You said you've always wanted this." 

"I can't leave you--" 

"Avi, it'll be fine! You come back in what, six, seven months?"

He winced at her sugarcoated suggestion of his time away. "Three years."

"Three?! Years?! Are you sure the scary guy over the phone didn't say months?" Kirstie found herself getting rather caught off guard by this situation as well. 

"Three years." Avi nodded. "Three whole years!" He raised his voice out of pure frustration. I mean, he made the choice to enlist into training at like 19 years old, and that was only to pay for school, and he didn't really put two and two together that maybe the Army would need him one day, and...this whole thing was just a mess. 

"Hey, hey, We-We'll get through it." The stutter in her voice waived the conviction of the statement just enough for it to be concerning. 

"I don't even...what if...what if I--" 

"Don't say that." Kirstie said quietly, tears came to her eyes as this whole thing started feeling real. 

She didn't really want him to go. I mean, she couldn't guarantee that it would be all fine. She didn't want it to be real, but it was.  

This whole thing was sickeningly real.

~~~~~

It's forever stuck in her memory. So crystal clear, that day when two soldiers came to the door. 

"Ma'am--" The rest of whatever they had to say was soon tuned out because something deep inside of her was screaming that she knew what they had come for. 

She left them with a polite 'thank you', but soon found herself sobbing, her whole body shaking. The room was spinning, and unlike times in the past Avi wasn't there to catch her before she fell. 

And fell this time, she did. 

It was a day and a half later that the body was indeed Avi Kaplan,  that the body was indeed her husband. 

That's how she got here. Sitting front row of a funeral home with Scott and Mitch, two friends from her job as a record company agent, the three of them had even started a little a Capella thing, but that's not the point. The point was that these two were the only people left on this Earth that she could call family, and that she didn't care they weren't blood. She didn't care that the front row was only for family, because Scott and Mitch were the sweat and tears of a family, just without the DNA, but that's fine, they were her family. 

"He can't be dead. This isn't real." Kirstie whispered under her breath, tears leaving behind ghostly streaks of makeup under her eyes, a few of them beginning to crawl down her cheeks. 

"I know, I know." Scott whispered, pulling Kirstie closer to his side if that was even possible. He could feel the emotion coursing throughout her veins as her shaking arms snaked around his torso. 

"You can stay with us for a while, if you'd like." Mitch offered. 

"Yeah, you're always welcome at our place." Scott added to the offer.

Kirstie nodded at this, not being able to speak. It wasn't the tears, though, those did play a big part in her inability to talk, it was the feeling. The gut feeling that she was going to throw up and pass out all at the same time, the feeling that any sound that leaves her lips is laced with poison and she'll just meltdown once again. It was that feeling that had rendered the young woman mute. 

~~~~~

She did, in fact, stay with Scott and Mitch for the next little while. "Next little while" meaning the next month and a half. 

During her stay there, until she finally built up the courage to go back home, she spent the late nights with Scott, watching whatever movie they could find on Hallmark channel to lure her back to sleep when she would wake up with a nightmare. She'd spend the early mornings with Mitch, when she couldn't sleep any longer, and Mitch would find her curled up in the recliner chair downstairs. They would sit there for hours until Scott got up, talking about the odds and ends of everything that made Kirstie happy. 

She also remembers the night she went back home. It all came back in hazy flashes. The Christmases where they'd bake sugar cookies, the New Year's kisses at midnight, how he'd always play indie records on the record player, because Avi always felt like indie brands deserved more attention and credit than they got, the hugs and the 'I love you's', when they kissed for the first time, when they actually moved in here, when he proposed and bribed his pyrotechnician friend to set a couple of fireworks off when he did so. 

Now, those moments, they're simply memories.