Eighteen Candles (you will remember me)

19.

Billie

It's raining. My hair is wet. My clothes are wet. And my mind feels like someone ran it over with a fucking truck and then threw it down a hill.

Drops of water are running down my forehead, most of them ending up in my mouth. The grass underneath me is wet and dirty and probably ruining my pants completely. I play with the blades of grass next to me and stare at the engraving in front of me.

Olivia Adams.
Beloved friend, wife and mother.
May your soul find peace and find us in another time.

It's been two years. Two years without my mother sitting next to my father at the dinner table. Two years without her sitting behind the piano, playing songs the whole day. Two years without her humming songs whenever I am sad. Two years of me not even touching the door to the room, where our piano is standing.

"You would have kept going. You never stopped. I guess, I'm just a failure," I mumble. The candle I wanted to put on her grave is still in my bag, since it didn't stop raining yet. If I get it out right now, the rain will ruin it.

"I know, I don't have any right to be here but you have to get out of the rain, Billie," Blake's familiar voice says from behind me. I don't turn around. I already know it's him and he doesn't need to see me like that.

"Did you just call me by my real name?" I mumble, not moving my eyes from the engraving. My father, Simone and I created it together. Mostly Simone. When my mother died, my father fell into a huge sadness and I was just in a continuously shock. I didn't know how to talk anymore and the only thing I did after my mother got her own grave, was visiting it.

I placed a new candle on it every day until my father told me to visit less. He did this to protect me, I know that now, but back then I hated him for it. Every time I was about to the leave the house to visit her grave, he got me back inside. Now I place a new candle there every month. I still try to visit it every second day though. At least once in a week.

I expected Blake to chuckle or something but he just steps closer to me, now standing right next to me. "Why are you here, Blake?" I whisper ask him. My voice is even more raspier than usual and I already feel the cold coming. But today is the day a new, shiny candle will be placed here and no rain is going to stop me.

"I figured you'd be here and brought something," he tells me softly. In the corner of my eye I see his hand, holding something like a look through box with air holes. My eyes follow his hand, over his arm, straight to his face. He just looks back at me.

Another tear runs down my cheek and Blake sits down on the ground slowly. He moves his eyes to my bag carefully and back to mine. I nod, understanding what he's asking for. Blake takes the bag and takes out the candle. He places it inside the box and lightens it up. Closing the box, his eyes pierce into my soul.

I stare at the box in his reached out hands. I stare back into his eyes. And I stare back at the box. I take it and place it right in front of the gravestone, next to the red roses Simone brought here yesterday.

We don't say anything. I stare at my mother's grave and I can feel him staring at me. "Can you drive me home?" I ask him quietly, not moving my gaze away.

"Sure. Whenever you're ready," he responds just as quietly. I look at the grave one last time and get up from the ground. Blake does the same and we walk to his Pick Up quietly.

Inside, the black haired boy takes a sweatshirt from the backseats of his car and hands it to me. "You need to get out of this wet clothes. I don't have any dry pants though," he tells me, giving me a small smile.

"Thank you," I whisper, not entirely sure, if he even heard it. "For the box as well." Blake's smile widens for a split second and I think the tip of his ears start to get rosy. He turns his back to me and moves his hand in front of his eyes.

My lips twitch upwards for a split second and I remove the wet hoodie from my body. Not thinking about it long enough, I also remove my bra and put on the sweatshirt Blake gave me. It's huge, since this boy is like fifty heads taller than me. And those muscles of his are probably guilty as well.

"You can turn back around now, Blakey Boy," I tell him and he does so. And he looks at me. His eyes wide and his mouth slightly open. I put my wet hair into a bun, before this sweatshirt ends up as soaked as the other one.

Blake's eyes move from my face to my lap, where the other hoodie and my bra is laying. He clears his throat and starts the car.

We didn't talk about what happened the whole car ride. We didn't make any jokes about each other. We didn't fight. We didn't argue. And Blake never said anything about how I looked back at the cemetery. How lost I must have looked.

And I think this was the first time, I wasn't afraid of the silence. The first time I wasn't afraid of being alone. Because I knew he was there and for some reason, this didn't feel wrong.

But maybe this was what I should be afraid of.