none but the lonely heart

chapter four

It's 4:32 AM and Brett is a little bit in love.

He has been for a long time, really: with the plain difference between their lives, the faint crease between living and surviving—with his Last Friend. It's like he's chased all the everythings and the nothings of these things since forever, since never. Hell, he doesn't know. There's a lot of things he doesn't know.

Eddy drops both their empty coffee cups in the bin. "Where are we headed next?"

"It's still really early—maybe we can stop by the cemetery first?" Brett says, and Eddy nods, holding the café door open for him. They step out of the warmth of the coffee shop, and the chilly dawn air embraces them as they set off down the sidewalk.

Brett's got roughly twenty-two hours left in the hourglass, and he's got everything and nothing to lose.

It's always been that way with death: everything and nothing, everything and nothing.

"I saw something about this exhibit called Around the World in 80 Minutes—it's supposed to be some VR experience sorta thing? I was thinking we could check it out later if you're up for it."

"I'm game. I've always wanted to travel the world with someone, actually."

"Might as well spend your End Day doing all the things you never got to do, yeah?"

A silence. "Yeah."

They turn a corner and the cemetery comes into view. In Brett's mind, it's not darkness or heights or lightning, it's not the unsettling place from his childhood—where he lived when tomorrow was certain.

Maybe that's because it'll be his home eventually—maybe because home, wherever it is, always returns for you, heart and bones and soul.

He looks to Eddy, and for a moment, he sees the light dimming in his eyes at the sight of the graveyard. Brett's heart, laden with blossoms of unwelcome feeling and the weight of the world as it already is, twists just so in turn.

He opens his mouth to ask if he's okay, to ask about the thoughts spiraling so obviously in his brain—but Eddy's eyes light up again before the words can leave him.

"If you don't mind, can I—" he gestures with a thumb towards the old street piano further on the sidewalk.

"Yeah, go right ahead."

Eddy takes a seat at the piano almost hesitantly, carefully sliding the cover off the keys, brushing dust away before playing a simple scale. "It's slightly out of tune," he remarks, face scrunched up.

Brett can't help but laugh, then, "you know how to play?"

"Somewhat," Eddy replies. "I had lessons when I was little, before I started with violin." He turns back to the piano. He breathes, lowers his hands to the keys again.

This time, music spills from his fingertips into the dawn with a sort of weight and meaning Brett's never heard before. He recognizes the piece instantly: Ravel's Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte—Pavane for a Dead Princess.

It's something about the way Eddy plays that takes Brett's breath away: how he makes the keys dance so heavily but still so gently, a restrained melancholy that echoes in the cool air. It sounds like a simple piece, maybe, but the emotion Eddy plays with is far more than just simple.

Eddy plays the piano like his heart's helpless beneath a cold blade: eighty-eight fragments for all the keys before him. He plays like he's giving all of his soul to everyone and everything around him, like it's something he's been doing since day one.

The ending notes of the piece roll into silence, and Brett stands there like the air's been knocked out of his chest.

"Well...yeah. What d'you think?"