LUCKY 8 ━ it 2017

epilogue.

THE SUN FELT UNUSUALLY brighter that September morning, like perhaps it was demanding Verity kept wary that very day. Her room, which she hadn't tended to in weeks, had embraced the warm kiss of the sun, setting every manageable crevice alight. When her eyes fluttered open, she groaned and threw her duvet over her head, digging her face into the mattress. A bristle from the trees against her window seemed to disapprove. So she trudged through the heaps of clothes cluttering her bedroom floors, and pushed through the white morning.

Before she headed out, Verity visited her cat. She often did. Most times, she spoke to Harley as she would sit against a tree beside the makeshift grave, reveling in the comfort it brought her. She knew what her family thought of it. To them, it was concerning that she'd grown such an attachment to an animal and could not seem to let the death go. But to Verity, it was anything but. That cat had been with her through every hardship she'd ever faced. When Verity felt like she'd truly never find a friend, when she felt so insignificant. Harley was the one who would crawl into her lap when she would weep until she couldn't breathe, when shadows and demons plagued her dreams.

And sure, Harley was only a cat. She couldn't speak, but she did not need to when she burrowed her tiny head into Verity's lap and eased her with her nuzzles.

She reached the small makeshift grave. A cross with a lilac ribbon wrapped around it protruded from the dirt. Verity stood before it, and for once, her chest did not constrict and she did not fall to her knees. Around her, the wind blew softly, fluttering with the warm-colored petals of flowers on trees as though it offered her comfort, as though it knew it was time for her grief to come to its close.

"You can rest easy now, Harley," she said softly, "My friends and I finished it. I did it for you, and I know you'll always be by my side."

Her voice carried itself into the whistle of the wind, weaving into stillness and the scent of lilies.

When she was trolling out the front door of her house, she cast a hand over her eyes, squinting at the silhouette walking on the street, forging into the transparent waves of the air.

It was Eddie, she realized as her eyes caught on the cast wrapped around his arm. Subconsciously, a smile maneuvered across her lips as she retrieved her bike from against her garage door.

When she approached him, she grinned-teeth and all. "Did you seriously just walk all the way from your house here?"

Eddie was smiling back as he replied, "Yeah. Didn't really feel like a long trip, though... I was preoccupied."

She hummed in curiosity, squinting an eye at him. "With what?"

"Thinking of what I was going to say to you when I knocked on your door and you opened it," he admitted, and perhaps he was blushing but she couldn't tell. His face was already red from the heat.