Absent

Chapter 18: Not-so-hopeless solutions

Heather's POV.

I feel my own heart crack broken when our fingers, for a second intertwined with the might of my will, separate, and I watch Alex dissappear into a room that encloses his life. I feel arms holding me tight as I fight the tears where they belong; inside me.

"He'll be alright, Heather." Jimmy whispers, stroking my hair.

"Heather, you'll see that there's nothing to be afraid of. He'll be just fine!" Vicky adds.

"Heather, you're not alone in this." Chester says.

"He hasn't lasted this long to be defeated by a stupid heart disease." Galileo repeats.

But none of it touches my heart; it's in a lock down. I'm in a lock down. Alex... Alex is so close, and so far away. I shake my friends off, offer a vague and trembling smile, refuse to go with Javier back home. Home? Home is next to Alex, but I can't be with him for now, I murmur. I turn off every system inside my head, my heart, my soul, and the only thing that's operating are my feet. They take me through streets, stores, people living their lives and not caring if some Alexander Magalski might be already dead. I walk and walk, percepting lights and faces that wear no resemblence to reality; the world around me is a fantasy that exists inside my nightmares.

When I recover conscience of myself, I'm sitting on a familiar store. Someone is speaking to me... I raise my head and see Tyler Shields smiling with a cup on his hand. "What?" I say, with an edgy and craspy voice. His smile retrieves ever so slightly, but somehow encouraged by my state of melancholy, he sits down next to me and prepares my coffee like the last time I ordered here. He hands it over without waiting for an answer, so I take it and drink gratefully for the warmth it provoques in me.

"I say you enter the store like a zombie, and thought that you were acutally one, and that I should kill you before you spread the sickness, but then I thought again. I led you to the table because you really didn't seem to notice you were walking, and asked for your order, but you didn't even acknowledge me. So I brought a balck coffee, and put sugar on it because that's what you ordered last time. As I waited for you to give any signs of life, I had time to ponder on the reasons for your depression. Was it my sister? Did she do something to you? Or to Alex? She came home bleeding from her nose, but she didn't want to tell me. Can you tell me?" Tyler says without stopping to recover his breath. I, surprisingly, understood every word scrambled in his long talk.

"Yeah, I punched her. But she doesn't have anything to do with-"

"Then what is it?" Tyler interrupts. I sigh.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Then why did you come here?"

"For a cup of coffee, I guess..."

"But you knew I work here. And you know I'm chatty. So why did you come here?"

"Because I'm... I usually have to talk to realize what I'm feeling."

"Talk, then."

"Fine. I'm sad."

"Why?"

"Because a friend of mine is in the hospital."

"Why do you care?"

"Because he's very special in my life."

"How special?"

"Very. He's... I met him recently, and I have never felt so alive, so loved, so motivated to live. His presence is enough to knock down the barriers I've worked on for so long to protect myself from everyone, to pretend I'm just another adorable girl that's always happy. And he showed up in the worst part of my life, but he's enough to keep me here, right in this moment. He's keeping my alive. And I love him."