Spring Won't Come

Twelve: Blake

Dead leaves rattled past Blake, caught by a gust of wind on this chilly morning. Yesterday had been warm, inexplicably warm, so warm that the weather man on the news hadn't had a good explanation for it. "It's as if a pocket of heat has swept through the city," he had said.

Yesterday, Blake had sweat through his black suit inside the stuffy church on First Ave, and the product in his hair had begun to fail. What was a guy without some good looking hair?

That wasn't an issue today. Today, it felt like winter was threatening to push fall aside and unleash a flurry of snow and gale winds. It wasn't that cold, Blake told himself, shivering uncontrollably. This was fall weather. And it wasn't the cold that made him shiver, it was the bus stop up ahead.

Blake had avoided Kayla since their fight, the funeral being the only exception, and they had hardly spoken there. Ever since that night, the night with his dad, the night his knee felt better, Blake had done a lot of walking around town.

He had walked to the store for some milk, walked to the post office to get his mom some stamps, and had even walked to school. He wanted to test the limits of his newly healed kneed, and he also wanted to avoid another confrontation with Kayla.

Blake knew he couldn't avoid her forever, she was his girlfriend after all. Plus, he told himself, he needed to man up and straighten things out with her. His parents fought and never talked it out, and Blake sure as hell wasn't going to end up like them.

Kayla stood at the bus stop, rocking back and forth with her arms hugged to her body. She was wearing a white turtleneck and one of Blake's football hoodies, which he took as a good sign. Her hair, still wet from a shower, was tossed around by the wind and was curlier than usual. He liked it when she wore it like that, big and curly, rather than when she straightened it.

"A man's gotta know what he likes in a woman," his father had once said. Too bad his old man hadn't taken his own advice before plunging into a dysfunctional marriage that torremented his only son.

Blake took his hands out of his pockets as he approached, wanting to project an air of confidence before talking to Kayla. After storming off the other night, he feared that she saw him as weak and unsure of himself.

"Hey, Kayla," Blake said.

Kayla looked up at him, her eyes ringed in shadows, the whites tinged red. Her hair and makeup were immaculately done, completely overshadowed by the fear and misery in her eyes. Blake tried his best to hide his dismay so as not to offend Kayla. It would do him no good if his attempt at reconciliation began with an aversion to her appearance.

Blake was attempting to think of what to say, and to avoid staring at Kayla's sleep-deprived face, when she surprised him by wrapping her arms around him in a furious hug. She squeezed tight and showed no signs of letting go. This is a good start, he thought, holding Kayla and running a hand through her damp hair.

"Are you okay?" Blake asked. Kayla was still desperately holding onto him and hadn't said a word. "Did something happen?" Besides one of your friends dying in a freak accident?

"Mhmm," was all Kayla said.

The bus stop was empty, save for the two of them, and Blake was glad for this fact. He didn't know what to do, what to say. Whenever he had cried as a child his parents would tell him to suck it up. His father would tell him to act like a man and his mother would tell him not to be such a little girl.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Blake almost choked on the words. Feelings weren't meant to be discussed, but Kayla thought so and that meant he thought so too.