365 // irwin

Chapter Five

DAY SIX

There wasn’t too much interesting about today. I walked down my street, passing a bus stop, kicking at the various leaves on the pavement, with my music in my ears, my eyes on my feet. It had been two days since I last saw Michael, usually I made it a priority to see him every second day but for some odd reason, after my last visit I couldn’t quite convince myself to push to go see him. 

After what happened? I wasn’t strong enough. It was easy enough to say that, I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to see him. It was the same,  like a smack in the face every time that I saw him. It was almost like the incident that made me lose the boy who become a had caused two deaths. His and Michael’s. There was such emptiness in the way that he looked at me and it stung, how it stung like a bitch.

I’d visited Luke’s house after what happened and just sat in his garage while he played around with the strings, humming along some tune that was quite good. A tune of which he’d definitely forget later, saying it wasn’t good enough, it wasn’t star material. I’d debate him on that, saying that he was talented, he’d palm me off saying not talented enough. But I just listened that time round, I just listened to him play and he let me. We sat on opposite ends of the couch, our legs a tangle of limbs, and he just played. It brought a smile to my face, but it didn’t fix anything.

Was I being over dramatic? Perhaps I was. It had almost been a year and I was still grieving. Did this make me feel pathetic? Perhaps.  There were all these people telling me to move on. But it was all just hitting me now. I lost him, I lost them, just before Senior year and thankfully I had my studies to hide behind, to distract me, to use as an excuse. When my friends would ask, Hey-- Emilia. Want to go out tonight? And I said no, they all looked at me with that pitiful look on their faces. They didn’t ask Is it because your boyfriend is dead? but I knew that they were thinking it, instead they asked Why? And I skillfully lied saying It’s because of my studies. They seemed to deem it a justifiable excuse because they followed that by going out without me. 

Luke, he knew though. Luke knew why and we would find each other in the exact same position. Was this the way that I wanted to be spending my summer before university? No. But it didn’t seem like I had too much of a choice. It was almost a tradition, whenever either of us were sad. But when he was sad we watched stupid cat videos and he got to sit through me laughing my head off, which seemed to amuse him. When the boy who had was here, us three did it together. I’d sit in between the boy who became a had’s legs and Luke would sit there.

We sometimes worried that Luke might consider him a third wheel, but Luke always shook his head saying, How could I be a third wheel? That would require three people here and I swear to god you guys are like one person. It’s really weird. This comment would be followed by bounts of laughter, where the boy who became a had would lean down and kiss me, this was the point where Luke would say, Alright, I feel like a bit of a third wheel now. And would follow that by pretending to make out with himself. By that point, the sadness was forgotten and I sat on the couch, while the two of them sat on the ground playing some video game that they were into at the time. 

Sometimes I’d be joined by whoever Luke was dating at the time. He was attractive, that was easy enough to say and he got quite a bit of female attention. But his relationships never lasted long, his longest one lasting one month. He was always the one to end them today and when I asked him why he simply said They’re not the one I’m looking for.  I just liked to call him a tad bit fussy. He’d not been out with anyone for awhile saying that his budding stardom would attract all the wrong sorts of attention.

It was easy enough to see how much of a lie it was. He was scared, and who would blame Luke? He’s one of the boys whom life has played out like a movie. He’s been through the sort of things which you only read about in books, those cliche characters that don’t believe in love anymore because of some awful thing that had happened to him in his early years. His parents got divorced when he was as young as six years old, he lived with his Mum now, but Liz was hardly home, was out working most of the time. But I suppose that’s the trade in for having three boys.