How to Forget

street patrol

My head pounds to the rhythm of my bike tires throbbing on the asphalt, carrying me away from the vehicle in which I could endanger myself even more. I'm searching for an escape wherever I can locate one. Tears freeze on my cheeks. Goosebumps perk up to witness the journey towards my downfall. My legs ache. I pedal onwards.

Perhaps on instinct, I wind up in Nat's neighborhood. I scan the houses whose features I've only seen in the daylight, and realize that life is much sadder here. Maybe it's just me.

Nat is sat on the curb where his driveway dips into the street, a bottle of alcohol slung in his fingers, which he takes the occasional messy swig out of. He, too, is lachrymose.

"You know me now," he says with a throat full of tear-induced phlegm that muddles and cracks his words. His eyes are directed towards the ground. "That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

I scuff my shoe into the pavement and twist my grip on the handlebars of my bike. "Show me where I crashed."

Nat looks up at me, and this is when I take in how disheveled he is – rings of cerise lining his eyes, the works; I can only imagine my own current appearance. "Why are you even here? Go home, Link."

"Please," I murmur, and that's what it takes for him to rise shakily from the curb a few moments later and start walking, the bottle of alcohol dangling from his fingertips haphazardly. He could destroy himself tonight.

I follow a couple feet behind him.

"Fuck!" Nat yells into the night sky about nothing in particular. He just wants the entire neighborhood to hear his cry for help. He's always had this thing about shouting curse words in neighborhoods with children in them.

I recall the day when he brought me to the party. He was so full of hope then, and now he is but a shell of a man. He is reduced to the scantiness yet consuming mass of melancholy. I think back to the good days we shared, the days in which we were not out on the streets at eleven o'clock at night with weight in our shoes and our shoulders. I wish we could be happy together.

After around three minutes of walking – at least, I think it's been three minutes, although my mind is foggy, and I have no clue if what I'm perceiving has any shred of reality to it – we reach what Nat points out as the place where I crashed back in September of last year.

The pole I slammed into has been replaced since then, but I have no doubt that Nat would remember this without the pole, too. When we are traumatized by something, it is either suppressed or brought back up constantly. I am the former, and Nat is the latter.

Nat surveys the area, relives the memories that I cannot. "I was on a bike ride to get out of the house and away from my dad, then in an instant I glimpsed bright headlights colliding with a stationary object not too many yards away from me." He sniffles, though the tears are gone for now. "I was the one who called 911. And I knew it was you in the car without even peering through the window." His vision fixes on the pole, as I am standing as still as the structure itself, and I'm the more painful choice. "I experienced something, the likes of which I cannot describe, but I felt a switch. I hate that it took violence to bring out my compassion, but suddenly I was trembling and bawling my eyes out, and the person I lured to death was the person I loved the most...is the person I love the most." His eyes flick to mine. "I didn't lie to you so I could clear my slate. I lied to you so I could protect you."

With my hand covering my mouth, I tumble into Nat's embrace. One of his arms clutches the back of my head; the other clutches my back. And we are warm.

"Are we ever going to be okay?" he whispers.

"No," I say, with a periphery that transfers from the pavement to the boy I adore. "But we're going to be together."

I am in love with him, and he is in love with me, and the rest is just an obstacle.

~~~~~

A/N: I had to hold back tears bc i'm with my family

~Darkootoe