Summertime (Frerard)

19: Kiss Like This; It's Now Or Never

I have never liked graveyards. From the age of about two, the things have always creeped me out. It was just kind of weird that to think that wherever you walk, wherever you stand there are corpses; dead people lie underneath you. When I'm in graveyards, I don't feel fully alive, and in fact I feel out of place and almost guilty for my still beating heart.

Her grave wasn't elaborate; just a grey tombstone hidden amongst others to the point of insignificance, and I don't like that - she was special, she is special. I want her to still be special, but we never had the money for anything particularly ornate.

And to the rest of the world, she was nothing more than another body littering our ground; six feet deep and taking a long, permanent sleep. I hated that more than anything else there inevitably was to hate in this goddamn world.

I thought of the woods as her grave as opposed to this mess, but I think seeing the inscription; her name upon stone calms me a little. It reminds me of when she was there to hold my hand and everything was alright, but it's not now, it's really not now.

I hate being alone.

I hate that my little baby fingers aren't hooked onto hers anymore.

I hate that I don't even have little baby fingers anymore.

I hate that I have fingers that are too big to hold a mother's hand.

I hate this all.

I hate being without her.

And I hate how within seconds my eyes are too clouded with tears for the inscription to be readable any longer.

"Eva Iero." A voice read my mother's name off the tombstone, breath brushing against my ear as his words came from behind me. "It's a pretty name."

I nodded into the silence, not at all panicked, because the voice was familiar and some could even say far too familiar for my liking. Maybe this is for the best, because even though this guy isn't anywhere close to her, at least I'm not alone.

"Hello Gerard." I sighed into nothingness, letting my words drift away amidst the white nicotine circles that flew past with the wind.

"Hey Frankie." He mumbled in response, his voice muffled as he squeezed the cigarette between his lips, leaning into me a little. The air felt empty without the lulling sensation of the smoke passing past me, but before long, everything was back to normal and he was blowing his cigarette smoke past my ear.

Annoyingly close to my ear actually - it kind of tickled and I wanted to squirm, but this was Gerard's cigarette smoke and as soon as i reminded myself of that fact, I didn't even care how close his smoke went to me, and in fact I wanted him to blow out little wispy nicotine breaths right down my throat.

"She's dead, Gee." The words tumbled out, the tears coming shortly after. "She's fucking dead-" My words were cut off by him spinning me around to face him and pulling me into his side. My skin didn't even tingle when he pressed against it, because I was entirely far too preoccupied with the streams of tears down my burning cheeks and the soul shattering matter at hand.

"I know, Frankie. I know." He mumbled into my shoulder, running his fingers down my back in an effort to soothe me, but it wasn't all that successful, because this was more than a caress me into relaxation kind of issue. This was an 'I don't give a damn what you do about it, because despite who you think you are, nothing you can say or do will make this better at all' kind of issue.

"I feel guilty for not going to see her grave; she's my mother- I... I deserve this don't I? For being a shitty son? I'm a disappointment I know-" I hated graveyards, but I hated feeling like a shitty excuse for a son even more.