We Didn't Make It After All

Chapter Twelve

When I went to visit Micah that morning, I found Sol on one of those dreadful chairs in the hospital corridor. She sat motionlessly on its faded synthetic surface, her eyes red from crying. "Micah's been moved to the ICU," she said hoarsely. He was there for the next seven days, into the New Year.

We spent New Year's Eve on Nana's roof, all of us. Our bodies hollow from mourning and our eyes damp with tears, we tried to pretend that death was not the end. But Micah's absence was a haunting reminder that life was not as stubborn as we had believed. It could have been any one of us in that emergency room—it could have been Bella.

I looked at Ezra, who had excused himself to the very edge of the roof. He was smoking a cigarette, its fumes pirouetting before him before vanishing into the thin December air. He looked so at peace with himself, sitting on that silver bed of concrete. He eventually finished the cigarette, his silence pacifying the violet night.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked, taking a seat next to him.

He crushed the butt of his cigarette on the floor. "Just thinking about Micah."

"What about Micah?"

"Well, you know," he began softly. "If he's going to be okay. What we're going to do if something happens to him. If he doesn't—you know—make it."

"Who said Micah isn't going to make it?"

"Micah did."

"Well, Micah's biased. He doesn't know any better."

He sighed, his eyes meeting mine. They found mine so wistfully, like they were looking at someone other than me, someone that he, by the radical abandonment of all caution and control, had developed a little more fondness than he had bargained for.

"Stop looking at me like that," I mustered through my racing heart.

He firmly shook his head, caressing my cheeks with his fingers. "Let me." I smoldered under his touch, my every rational thought withering away. As his fingertips grazed my lips, I closed my eyes, pretending this moment was as unending as the night felt, unraveling at her slow, sedating pace. "You're beautiful," he murmured.

I opened my eyes again to find his nose caressing mine. He planted a fleeting kiss there before pulling away. "Maybe you're right. Maybe we'll get a miracle."

"Maybe."

"On that thought," he digressed. He reached into his pocket, removing a piece of paper that was dilapidated on its edges, one that at first glance seemed to have been through a whirlwind of adversaries. "I have something for you." He motioned towards his lap, the corners of his lips moving ever so slightly, insinuating a smile. "Read it with me?"

I raised an eyebrow, sliding onto his lap—and once again I felt his warm skin pressed against my own, obstructed by just a layer of clothing. His dizzying touch penetrating my thin jacket, he snaked his arms around mine, positioning the paper before me. "I started it when I first saw you. Like really saw you, you know? That day in the field. You were reading Siddhartha."

I felt my sanity shredding into pieces.

"Let's see," he murmured, resting his chin on my shoulder. "Start there, at Don't."

My eyes fell to the paper. Did I know then that I was assembling the labyrinth of my own doom? We never do—not at seventeen.

"Don't look so exhausted, darling," I began softly. "As if you have been strung by a lifetime of hardship, as if your existence can be depicted as nothing more than the purplish bruise on a severed knuckle, as if you have only endured lovers who pulled away a little too quickly, those who did not savor every fiber of your being, your quirks and your inconsistencies, only to desire you again when there was no more to you..."

"As if there could be no more to you," he murmured, trailing his hands down my arms, leaving a pathway of goosebumps at their wake. "How can I capture your essence without being at a loss—without falling short of the words that feel futile in this attempt to express what you are beginning to mean to me?

"How dare I call myself a poet when I can spend a lifetime writing poetry and eternities thereafter, only to crumble at the realization that I had never done you justice—that I never could?

"Don't look so exhausted, darling. Just let me be, just this once, the voice to comfort your darkest days, the balm to remedy your wounds. It is the least I can do."

I was on the verge of tears when he finished, my heart fluttering like a madwoman who had found her home at last. I took his hand into my palm, soft despite their many adventures. "You know, declarations of love usually come before you tell the world I'm your girl."

"I guess I never quite had the chance to formally ask you."

"Ask me what?"

"You know what."

"Nope."

"Narnie, baby."

I felt my heart catapult again. Baby? Had he just called me baby? How could I even begin to tell him what that did to me? My restless mind. This weariness that I felt so viciously in my bones, torn between euphoria and terror. I could never tell him, not even if I wanted to. It was a mission of futility.

When I turned around, I found our faces so close in proximity that his breath dangerously caressed my lips: it was a whisper of a touch, the sensation so fickle that I wondered if he was there at all. "Yeah?" I whispered. His impenetrable body pressed into mine as our lips coalesced for a kiss, his fingers scavenging for my neck. In the distant skies, fireworks exploded. Reverberations followed in my heart.

He reached for a blanket and encased himself in it, blanketing me with him. Suspended in the ember of that moment, I was madly and irrevocably in love with Ezra Parker. And I wanted to shout it despite knowing that its depth would be lost in translation. And maybe that was the greatest condemnation of this existence. We were put in this world to reckon with love, but neglected as we feverishly scavenged for ways to prove it.

We woke up the next morning to the bluest skies. He was staring at them longingly from my windowsill. "Morning."

I extended my arms in a stretch, releasing a yawn. "Morning."

"Had to move down here on Maya's command. Everyone left a little after you fell asleep."

"Did Mama give you a hard time?"

"Not at all."

"Good."

"I wanted to wait until you woke up to go," he continued sheepishly. "I have a shift at Carl's."

I tried to hide my disappointment as he met my eye. "On New Year's day?"

He smiled, walking up to me. "No need to be so sad."

"Leave me then, Mr. Parker."

He placed a fleeting kiss on my forehead. "I'll call you."

"If you must."

He helped me make my bed before leaving through the front door. And I was surprised to find him on the other side of the door a few minutes later, the doorbell ringing to signal his presence. With cheeks crimson from the cold, he rubbed the back of his neck. "I think I left my wallet in your room," he said—and he had. He returned holding his wallet on one hand and his phone on the other.

He apologized before leaving—and the doorbell rang again. "What now, Ezra?"

He mischievously leaned into me, pressing his cold lips onto mine. "Forgot that."

I laughed as he pulled away. I watched him get on his motorbike, hoping that he would conjure another excuse to come back. But our vicinity sounded with the familiar cacophony of his Harley drifting away. I bashfully closed the door once again. When the doorbell rang again a few minutes later, I opened it quickly. "What did you forget this time?" I teased, my fingers toying with the surface of the doorknob. When I raised my head to discover a pair of frenzied blue eyes, I took a step backward. "Alex."

He took one step closer. "It's Ezra," he said, holding up an envelope. "We need to talk."

☂

Author's Note: I'm on an uploading binge, hehe.