After Elliot

Sometimes, I missed high school.

Yes, the classes were boring, and they enforced way too many rules about what we wanted to wear, but it's where we fell in and out of love, where we tried way too many bad drink combinations, and experimented a little too much.

In truth, we were all kind of a disaster back then. But it was before adult life caught up to us. Before things started to become real. It's where I met the love of my life.

We were being teenagers, taking each day and making it into an adventure. Me, Elliot, Marina, Cara, and Milo.

That was before Cara and Milo got together.

Before Marina came out to us on graduation day.

Before I left to go to school in another country.

Before we lost Elliot.

We all felt guilty for some reason.

Milo felt blame, because he and Elliot grew apart after he started college.

Cara felt guilty, because she bailed on dinner that night, which is why Elliot ended up at the party.

All of us felt something, which made us human, but all of us couldn't be the reason.

None of us were. We couldn't have known that someone would do something so horrible and drive away.

We didn't know that we would lose some of ourselves, yet find out more about ourselves than we ever knew.

We didn't know that the next time we would all be together would be because of this.

However, now we had to live with our decisions up until that moment. Live with the last moments we had. And that was the hardest part.

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