Shoelaces

More Iced Coffees

As soon as my body forms in the white EarthVisit room and I can open my eyes, I collapse on the floor. What was I trying to do? What the fuck was I trying to do? I pull my body into a fetal position of the floor and rock back and forth, crying into my knees. What the fuck was I trying to do?

I miss Santi. And I miss Jazmine. And I miss my sister and my mom and dad. I miss all of them so much. Every time I think of any of them, I feel like I'm being peeled apart. Peeled and peeled until there's nothing left of me, except for a rotten core and scraps on the ground.

Rotten, because just when Santi was starting to miss me a little less, I tried to make him miss me more.

Truly rotten.

I cry on the floor until a hear three knocks on the door.

"May I come in?" the familiar voice asks, and I cry out something that must sound like a yes, because Alex is soon opening the door and walking inside. As soon as he sees me, he runs over, kneeling on the ground next to me and pulling me into a hug. "Darrion, oh, Darrion," he soothes. "I should have never let you do your third visit," he whispers onto my head. I sob into his embrace until I there's nothing left inside of me to cry. But even without the tears coming out of my eyes, I still feel like I'm crying. Once Alex can see that I'm trying to get up, he stands up beside me and offers his hand to me. I accept, gratefully, and step onto weak feet.

"Do you want to talk about anything, Darrion?" he asks, but I just stare at him blankly. "It can be about anything. Maybe we can get some coffee?" he continues, but my body aches for the confines of my room. I ache to put myself in a room all by myself, because that means I chose to be alone. Not that it was forced upon me. Because it was my choice.

But, sometimes, life doesn't offer you a choice. Alex, on the other hand, is offering me one.

This time, I won't refuse.

Haley wasn't able to come with us because she needs to actually help the other limbs that are in the afterlife right now, so now it's just Alex and me, sitting in the coffee shop we went of the first day he showed me The Hub. When even was that? A year and half? Year and a quarter ago? I don't know, but I do know is at that point, I hadn't remembered anything yet. I was just adjusting into the afterlife, not adjusting into a life without everybody I loved. I was more or less at peace then, not at war within myself. It was blissful ignorance, not intelligent grief.

"If this isn't hell, then I should probably head down there," I confide to Alex before taking a sip of my coffee. We sat in silence for a while, actually probably even longer than a while, before I finally decided to speak.

"Darrion, you didn't actually do anything, and hell doesn't exist," he says in response. "And even if you did and it did, you wouldn't be going anywhere near there. Sure, it wasn't necessarily the most selfless thing to do, but what limb can be truly selfless even after they die. Really, what you did was an act of love-"

"That wasn't an act of love. That was," I struggle to find the words. "That was an act of possession. An act of greed."

"It was an act of grief, over the one you loved. That's not so bad, is it?" Alex convinces. "Besides, your plan didn't even come to fruition. Why worry about it?"

"Because, yes, it would have been worse if Santi was in his dorm room and he saw me as a fucking ghost and I fucking traumatized him for the rest of his life right when he was getting better, but I still thought about doing that."

"You thought about telling Santi you love him. You didn't want to do what you said."

"Same difference."