Grayscale

Chapter Eleven

        Reed and I were sitting in Joe's Cup about a month later, talking about life over a few cups of coffee. I was on my third macchiato for the day, as I hadn't slept much at all the night before due to some particularly terrifying nightmares of the battlefield. The gunfire that had kept me awake at night still reverberated in my head, an echo I could never get rid of. I tried to dull it as much as I could with Reed's conversation and the close to a hundred ounces of coffee I had dumped into my system, but the harder I tried to drown it out, the louder it seemed to become. It was maddening. I wanted to grab my head and just scream, because maybe if I was loud enough, I wouldn't be able to hear the gunfire anymore.

        I didn't, though. Sane people didn't sit in coffee shops and wail. While some people might have called me crazy - apparently hearing voices that aren't there and thinking shadow soldiers are going to slaughter you is reason enough to earn that title - I wasn't that type of crazy. I wasn't the crazy that had breakdowns in public places.

        "It's not as hard anymore, you know," Reed said after a few minutes of silence. "Just making it through the days, I mean. It's not a struggle like it used to be. I can get up in the mornings without reaching for her." His eyes were sad, as always, but at the same time, there was an emotion there I couldn't quite pin. It was different from what his eyes normally held - not an emotion I'd ever seen on him before. He ran a hand through his hair, the tick that alerted me to the fact that something was up. He didn't do that when he was calm. "I just . . . you've made it a lot better. Like, finding you after losing her was the best thing that could've happened to me. I'm okay. No - not okay. I'm better than okay. You make me happy." He laughed a shaky, almost nervous laugh.

        Coming from him, happy meant something. Happy was a word he very rarely used. These last few months had been hard for him. Losing your soulmate wasn't something that was supposed to be easy to cope with. But, I'd been there for him as much as I could. I let him lean on me whenever he needed to, and most of the time, he came out of his breakdowns okay. And as time progressed, those breakdowns were becoming less and less. There was a lot more laughter. I'd caught a few genuine smiles from him every now and again. Sometimes, I thought he would really be okay. But happy? That wasn't something I had been expecting. It made my heart hurt - in a good way - that I made him happy.

        "Reed," I began. "I . . . I don't know what to say."

        I wanted to tell him I loved him.

        I wasn't sure if this was the right moment, or if there would ever be a right moment, but since that day in the graveyard, I'd known - whether I had really wanted to admit it to myself or not, I'd known. Reed was such a sweet kid. He made me smile, and he was good to me, and even more than that, for the first time in a long time, I had stopped worrying about whether or not my soulmate was going to come. I didn't have to worry, because I had him. Yeah, he would never make the grey go away, but I didn't care anymore. I didn't need to see the color of the sky or know what purple looked like to know that I felt something for him, that I wouldn't mind spending forever with him.

        When I pictured my future, he was in it. He was always there.

        "You don't have to say anything," Reed say, his words jumbling together, he was talking so fast. "Just, Calypso, I wanted to tell you that I know I won't ever be your soulmate - I'm not the guy you're looking for, and I know that, but when I look at you, or I listen to you talking about art or the pictures you're taking, or when you make us stop to get the thirtieth "perfect shot" that day, all I can do is smile. I love being around you, and I love sitting down and having these coffee dates and just talking about life, and Calypso . . . I think . . . I mean . . ." Even without being able to see color, I knew his face had to be about as red as it could have been. The shade of grey of his cheeks had darkened quite a bit during that little spiel.