This I Can Do For You

[smellyia]

Title: This I Can Do For You
Category: Original Fiction, Short
Written For: The Twilighted Original Fiction Contest: Girl Power, Ghosts & Gorgeous Guys
AN: This Original Piece is owned by Smellyia. It may not be reproduced or copied without her permission.



This I Can Do For You, an Original Short by Smellyia

I didn't know how many times I had walked this road. I had done so repeatedly and lost count a few years back. I came here less now. Less since he had married five years ago. But I still knew the way. I made a left onto Vine Street.

As I stayed the course leading to his colonial, I noted my crimson scarf trailing behind me, being pulled tighter around my neck by the blowing wind. There were dead leaves in piles, in orange pumpkin face bags, dancing down the road. Fall. It was fall. I hadn't realized. I should have known. Funny, how things go by without notice when you didn't register the way the cold seeped through the remnants of summer humidity. Funny, how when time is no longer an issue, you let go of it completely. Grudgingly.

After I turned right onto Manchester, I started the six blocks to that final destination. I kept my pace slow, no rush to spread the bad word. No rush to tell him that she wasn't coming back. That she wasn't like me, not that he really knew what I was anymore. Nine years, eleven months and twenty eight days could change a lot about a person, or spook of sorts, as it was in my case. I wasn't planning on getting into all that with him. He would only want one thing from me and it was the one thing I couldn't give him, her. I didn't have that kind of power.

Actually, I didn't have any power. I was both existing and nothing at the same time. I rambled through the days and nights, waiting for my opportunity to take back what was prematurely taken away. Waiting for my turn. I tried to keep the proper perspective on the situation at hand. I tried to remind myself that this act of kindness I was embarking upon was for nostalgia's sake. That what I was doing had nothing to do with collecting on a debt owed to me. I had always been a poor liar, especially when it was to myself. I knew what I saw tonight as. Tonight was my time.

Tonight was special.

Tonight was the night that he would want to see me. Tonight he wouldn't turn away. He would want my hello instead of goodbye. Tonight he would need me, and I was still stupid enough to believe that. I was still stupid enough to make my way four houses down on the left to 9963 Nicklaus Avenue.

I was rooted to the spot across the street from a two story colonial under an old birch tree. In perfecting my lurking craft, I had found out years ago that this was the position from which I would have the best view of the occupant in said colonial. The pavement between me and the front door was an inky ocean, crashing right into his driveway. I noticed the shutters on the windows were painted black, curtains drawn on the inside. The only light indicating human presence was coming from what I knew to be his study.

I couldn't make myself take the steps. I tried so hard to forget our last meeting. I tried so hard to forget how he didn't look me in the eye. How he walked away. It overshadowed the lazy mornings in bed, how he'd get up to make my coffee and I would roll over into the divot he left, if only to bask in the remaining warmth while I inhaled his lingering scent. It demeaned the brushes of his hand against mine, the stolen smile he sent me while we were amongst people, secret unspoken words telling me that his head was still swimming with our earlier lovemaking. And no matter how many times I recalled how he used to cup my face, how he used to tuck my hair behind my ear so he could see my eyes or how he pulled me to him for just that brief moment as I walked by, I couldn't forget. I just couldn't.

Adam came to my grave the night after my funeral. Looking for me. Of course, I was there. I had nowhere else to go. I knew if he couldn't, wouldn't, handle my new situation, no one else would. I didn't want anyone else to.

My hysteria from realizing I was dead and not being in love with it, had not completely ceased. I was just a transparent wisp of nothing sitting on a gravestone with my name and years of life. Grey hair where there used to be brown. Colorless blue eyes that saw the same as before. A blurry outline of once respectable curves. I was walking analog in black and white.

I saw him before Adam realized what the haze hovering over my grave was. He was walking toward me, his shoulders hunched, hands shoved in his pockets and head darting back and forth. No doubt thinking there was a predator in his midst awaiting the perfect opportunity to pounce. I guess I really did a number on his fear meter. Or maybe he was just searching me out, hoping I'd be there. I bet he wanted to make amends. Wanted me to follow him home. I perked up at that.

I straightened my back. Crossed my ankles. Smoothed my skirt. Patted my hair. Pretty as a picture. No aberration here. Just the girl you've always known, the one you love.

I practiced the inevitable conversation in my head. 'Yes, of course I forgive you. I know being flesh-compromised is a tad bit disconcerting. I have full confidence that we'll manage. I thought you'd never ask me to come home. No, no, I won't hold it against you. It was a natural reaction. Our love is forever.' The perfect reunion.

As Adam made it to my resting place, he squinted at me. He looked peeked. Scared. Always such a Nervous Nelly. Always so timid after an argument. Always so worried I wouldn't forgive him. Silliness.

I plastered my most brilliant smile on to ease him. His brow furrowed. He needed to hear the words. Adam had never been of the intuitive class. No need to make him suffer. This turn of events had been difficult on us to say the least.

“Adam, I m so glad you came to-”

“I'm not staying.” He came to a stop many arm lengths in front of me. If he could have shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, he would have. Well, I couldn't blame him. Graveyards at night were creepy.

“That's fine. We can talk on the way home.” I stood up, faltering. Trying to pretend gravity was still a part of my reality. I was going to have to work on that. Adam was going to need as much normalcy as I could provide.

“You can't come to my home.”

My. No, ours. “Is something wrong? Why can't I go home? I mean, I live there too. Last time I checked, my name was also on the lease.”

Adam's shoulders tightened and he looked everywhere but in my eyes. “Yes, you lived there. Lived being past tense on more than one level. And with your death certificate, your name will be taken off the lease to my home.”

I felt the conversation going into a dark and dank place I never wanted to visit. Redirection has always been a dear companion of mine. “That's understandable. It wouldn't do to have me legally tied to things I can't provide for any longer.”

I tried to get Adam to look at me, floating into his gaze. Thwarted constantly by the mere turn of his head. “Stop, Audrey. Just stop.” And I did. As much as I couldn't get my mind and mouth to agree on what was happening. My body understood and stopped. “You can't come to my home. I don't believe you're real. I think this is post traumatic stress. If it's not, I don't care. I don't want you to be here. I want you to be in the ground. Away from me, like you should be.”

I felt a chill that wasn't really there. But my mouth still wasn't on board, although my grasping brain was finally getting the picture. “But this is all just a technicality! It'll take some adjustment but-”

“Audrey. No.” His tone was low. Final. Stern and pleading. Guilt already laying a foundation in his mind. “I can't. You're dead. I'm not. Please stay that way.”

I went over to the man I thought I'd be with forever. The one I thought I would marry and fill a white picket fenced home with two point five kids and a dog. The one who I was going to grow old and retire with. The one I thought I'd slip away quietly into the night next to many moons later. I guess I beat him to the punch on that last one.

Adam remained stock still, fear, guilt and disgust rooting him to the spot. The air between us was palpable with all of it. As I reached up to comfort him, to put my hand upon his shoulder as I had done so many times before, I realized the fear for what it truly was. Fear of me. Fear for himself. He jerked away before I could make contact.

“I don't know if you can touch me, but I don't want you to.” He looked at my gravestone and pointed to it. “I love you. I do with all my heart, but you need to be this for me now.” He turned from the slab of rock. He turned from me. He left.

I didn't follow. I didn't yell after him. I didn't do anything but lay down in my fresh dirt. I imagined the clumps of moist earth dirtying up my clothes and infusing my hair with it's damp smell. I cried tears I didn't have and sobbed with air I couldn't breathe. I wanted to make Adam's wishes true. I wanted to go under the mound of earth and be dead. I couldn't, so I just stayed.

I felt like it had been so long that the hurt should be gone. That I should be taking steps toward the place where red scarves and other arms waited on me. Every time I thought of Adam's words I knew I made the same mistake every day by putting my faith in a life I no longer had.

But then I remembered my dreams back then and how I could still make justifications for Adam's actions. I couldn't, shouldn't, hold it against him. What if it were me? If it were me, things would have been different. I knew it in my heart of hearts. My only comfort was that it was long ago and I liked to think of myself as the forgiving type. Vengeance from the great beyond was just so cliché. Regardless, I still had to do this and despite my better self, the anger was still there. So I walked forward.

I made my way across the street and up the path to that red door. I let myself through rather than knocking. I knew he'd be waiting, wondering. There was nothing intrusive about my actions.

The inside of his home looked inviting. The antique carpet runner in reds and golds used to be his mother's. Lovely that it was placed here after she died. It had continued it's function to ease the passing from the outside in. I let myself become corporeal for just a moment, just to feel the rug under my feet. Like a safety net.

Pictures dotted the hall, covering the mahogany antiques. The former lady of the house had exquisite taste. There were pictures of Adam as a young boy, of his parents as they got older, of his wedding day. But none of me. He wouldn't have wanted to parade me in front of her. It was a shame that the only one remaining in this house from those snaps of the past was him.

I passed through the hall quickly, unwilling to be reminded of the last decade I was robbed of. Unwilling to have it staring at me so brazenly through snap shots of a dead woman with her too alive husband. I came upon the kitchen, just on the other side would be his study. Where he waited. The only light on in the house. I pushed myself through. Past the casseroles that were half eaten on the counter and not preserved in the fridge. Aluminum foil barely covering most of them. What would the hearse chasers think? They would be aghast that their generous offerings, in more ways than one, were cast aside so carelessly. If I had sympathy for those women who loved their widows, I would put their gently crafted machinations away. I hadn't the slightest urge. I was once the reason for those casseroles and call me vindictive, but I didn't care for their innuendo. I continued on to Adam.

The door to his study was closed. Again, I didn't want to announce myself yet, so I passed through it. I made it over to a rustic brown leather chair, not looking directly at his form leaning up against the fireplace. I made myself comfortable and averted my eyes as I became solid.

“You should have knocked first.” I finally looked up to his face as he spoke in a voice that wasn't his own. He was intent on the snifter of brown gold in his hand. Whiskey. He always had a taste for that burn. His clothing was mussed. A half tucked in white button down shirt straining on his arms. Wrinkled black slacks clinging to his corded thighs. Tie hanging limply. Disarrayed sandy brown hair. Flat dirt after rain eyes. Shadows engulfing them. Scrapes on his knuckles. Still haven't learned to control your temper, have you? Or is that all you have left? It's all I had. For years. But even in this state, he was beautiful.

“I have never knocked.”

“I know, Audrey. I've been waiting.”

“It's why I'm here, Adam.” I hadn't said his name out loud since that last day. Since I waited so hopefully. Since he turned from me.

“Where is she?” There it was. The thing to bring me back to now. My hurt was old while his was fresh. It shouldn't of mattered, but it did. It had always been about him.

“I don't know where your wife is. She died and went...elsewhere.”

Adam looked up, anger invading the flatness. “How is that fair? You stayed.”

“It's my lot. She is like everyone else. Died then went on to wherever they go.” I picked up a photo on the side table next to me. The wife, Lena, was pretty in a passable way. She had long blonde hair and blue eyes. A sparkling smile and a golden face. Like an angel. I set the frame down slightly disgusted. He used to like the dark. Dark like me.

“Did you just pick that up? Since when can you do that?” Adam left his spot holding the mantle up and came to stand right in front of me. “And you're solid. How did you-”

I hardened my voice as much as I could. “I didn't come here to give you my story. I came because I knew you'd want answers. I've given you the only one I have. I think it would be best if I left now.”

“No, you can't just go. Don't leave me again.” He sank to his knees, so close to me. I could brush his hair out of his eyes. I could take his chin in my hands. I could lay my lips on his forehead. I wasn't going to do any of that.

What I was going to do was end this little visit to a broken man kneeling in front of me. The man who I used to mean something to once upon a time. The man I thought meant everything to me. I was going back to the one who stayed, who came to me when I needed it. “I can just go. Don't try to assume the role of someone who gives a shit.” The tiny bits I couldn't forget, the disgust at his dead wife's picture, the casseroles, the ten years, all of it. It was wearing thin. “I remember being there and the words you said.” Adam flinched as I hoped he would.

“I didn't know. I didn't know you could be this way. I was scared and I regretted it so much over the last few years.”

“So much so that instead of coming to find me and apologize, you found a wife and bought a home. You built a life that should have been mine. The only reason you are tolerating seeing me now is because you think I can give you back Lena.”

“I know you can't do that. I thought you would have moved on after I let you go. After you let me go. You would of gone to where you were suppose to be. But you understand how it feels, don't you?” Of course I did. I knew it acutely. I knew it as it festers. I knew it as I turned from the one who I should be with, even as Laz begged me not to come here. Laz who came to me and took me as his. How different he was in his love for what I had become, for wanting to be there for me, for wanting me to just be. He was my salvation as Adam had been my destroyer.

Lazarus found me eventually. He found me hovering around my grave like a proverbial lost soul in more ways than the obvious one. Wishing for a solution to my mess. I knew what he was immediately. He was like me, but different. He looked full and was smoking a cheroot. He walked, his feet pressing the grass flat under his feet. He had texture and rustled as he moved. He was colorless, but more.

“Hello.” Pliable gravel, so soft was his voice in it's harshness. Warmth came close to touching me.

He was so beautiful in his way of being. Not so very tall, but he had to angle his head downwards slightly to look me in the eye. He came that close to me. No fear. I saw the dark pools that were his eyes, the definition of his corneas and pupils discernible only by slightly different shades of grey. If I was able to touch, I would have wanted to run my hand through the black waves on his head. Would his hair be coarse or fine? As I stared, this became the burning question, demanding the answer from my fingertips. His nose was straight and formed to the angles of his face, aristocratic without a hint of feminine. His lips were the color of heather and just as soft in their perfected fullness. I raised my hand to touch, knowing I couldn’t. So I hovered, just a cobweb away from him.

And then I felt it.

Goosebumps traveling from my toes up. A welling in my stomach. A pounding from a heart that didn’t beat. A trembling of my hands. My chest taking all these feelings in and hugging them, protecting them. The closest I had ever gotten to this was the first time Adam held my hand, when he ever so slyly entwined his fingers with mine as we walked the promenade. But that barely compared to this.

I let my hand drop to my side. The man before me closed his eyes and smiled. “Who are you?” I had to know.

“Lazarus, but you can call me Laz.” Odd name for someone who didn’t look like he’d been around that long.

“Laz.” Rolled off my tongue like saliva.

“And you would be?”

“Audrey. Sorry. I'm just a little off kilter, I guess.” Mauled by whatever the fuck you are.

“I can understand how being dead and not finding that great beyond would do that for you.”

“You seem to be well versed on this matter.” Maybe I could be like him. And if I was, maybe one day...

“I know a thing or two.”

“And your feelings on sharing are?”

“I am amenable to anything that involves groveling flattery, preferably when it centers around my person.” Laz took a final pull off his cheroot before flicking it onto a neighboring grave. So much for respecting the dead and why was that kind of sexy?

I stared dumbstruck. I wasn't sure if it was suppose to be in the vein of sarcasm, but I decided the offensive was the best route. Not so needy dead girl. “As much as I'd like to oblige in your need for WD-40 with that ego you got going on, I think I'll abstain for the moment. I just want to figure out how this spook gig works so I can get my life back.”

Laz barked a laugh at me before putting his hand to mine. When our forms made contact, I felt the weight of space being filled. I saw the translucent fill with flesh, or something like it. I could feel the sensation of Laz, and that pulse of him earlier was intensified. I threw myself into him. More.

He took me into his arms without fear, without judgment. He knew I needed it. He felt whatever it was too. He welcomed me, and it felt lovely to be held. It felt lovely to have my body be pulled by gravity onto the grass, the blades bending against my toes. But nothing was cold. Nothing was warm. It just was. The texture was there and that was enough.

Laz kept me in his arms as he threaded his hands up through my hair and whispered in my ear. “I cannot give you back your life. No one can. But this, this I can do for you.”

And here I was. A slight upturn of my mouth as I remembered the day Laz came to me. Frowning as I realized it was Adam I was comforting. Giving him what I didn't owe instead of collecting his comeuppance. Staying cause even now, I wished for this life. Adam and Lena's life.

I did the thing I wasn't going to do. I put my hand on Adam's hair and brushed, caressed. I let him lay his head in my lap. And it felt nice, not right, not like when Laz held me that day. It just felt old and reminiscent. The dangerous kind. The kind that made you forget what was waiting outside the room you had cloistered yourself in.

“Adam, I can't fix this, but I do understand. I wish I could fix this.”

“You came. At least you did that.” I kept silent, not being able to reconcile the real reason for why I came to the position I let myself be in now. I meant to tell him what he didn't want to hear before I left. I did not mean to comfort him. I didn't want to give him that. “Tell me, what's happened to you. After I left.” I was shocked at his demand. Surely he didn't truly care.

“I don't think you really want to know. It's not that interesting.”

“Just tell me.” His voice was so haggard, so pleading, that I was compelled to.

“Well, after you left, I was kind of at a loss. And I stayed where, how, I was until Laz found me.”

“Laz?”

I didn't want to share Laz with him. It felt wrong. It felt like I was putting him on display. “Um, yeah. Laz. He's like me. He helped me sort through the whole dead bit and now we kind of hang out.”

Adam pulled himself out of my lap and leaned back. “You mean you're with him?”

“Erm, no. Not exactly.” I was touched by the look of consternation on Adam's face, but also mildly offended. Disgusted at myself for feeling the need to explain my relationship, I tried to be as vague as possible. “He just is like a companion. A friend.” Bullshit Audrey. He is more and less than that and you know it. And you are breaking his heart by being here right now.

I fingered my red scarf, the reminder Laz gave me the day I thought I was lost completely. The day Adam was married. And in my utter desolation, he was there, with just a token I could hold on to.

Without the strength to keep me grounded, I hovered fetal and translucent outside of the church. The bride and groom were long gone. Adam and Lena, bonded for life. Till death do them part. I always felt the strongest of loves would follow into death. I had been proven wrong.

Laz, being what he had always been to me, came to my side. He knew this would be a day I couldn't do alone. He put a hand on my shoulder, and even though I didn't want it, I felt the ground. I felt myself forming into a shape of substance. I felt him cover me with himself and soothe my hurt.

“Thank You.” I uttered the words when I finally could.

“It's what I do, Audrey. I have nowhere else to be but with you.”

“Will you ever get sick of that?”

“Maybe, but I like to think not.” I turned my face to his, searching for the truth of that statement. That and more was there. Devotion, wistfulness, agony and something that could have been love but the word seemed too trite to assign it to the look in his eyes.

“I thought that maybe after some time, maybe Adam would see and come looking for me.”

Laz sighed, the sound of his resignation. I had learned him well in the last five years. “Have you ever thought that maybe you were wrong in the beginning?”

“What do you mean wrong?” I huddled deeper into his embrace, knowing the answer to my question was not going to be a welcome one. Knowing I would need his strength to endure it.

“Do you really want to know? Cause it will hurt.” I nodded yes. “What I meant was that maybe you were wrong about the quality of love you and Adam shared. That it wasn't the kind that transcends. I'm not saying it wasn't love, but maybe it wasn't that indescribable love that comes with indescribable moments of passion and pain.”

I had never thought of it that way. The thought unsettled me. The fact that I felt closest to that passion when Laz touched me disconcerted. In the life I lived, I had never once gotten close to the feelings Laz stirred within me. It made no sense. It made all kinds of sense. And even as it started to click, I couldn't take my mind completely from the wedding I'll never have and the children I would never bear.

Before I could form my thoughts into coherent words, Laz stood up and removed a red scarf from his jacket. It's deep color was brilliant in the setting sun and it drew me like a moth to a flame. He doubled it over and wrapped it around my neck loosely, looping it as I had seen Europeans do. He tugged on it before bringing the end of the material and his finger to my cheek. He let both trail down my jaw line.

“For you, my dear Audrey. To remind you of the life you hold so dear. A thing only the living who feel cold need. In a color of the passion you wish for. To remind you that with pain you can bleed whether the world sees it or not.” Laz turned and left me there.

I sat on the ground, again, wishing for it to swallow me up. Holding this scarf like it was a lifeline. Hating myself for needing it. Hating Adam for leaving. Hating Lena for bringing a casserole to my funeral and now marrying the man I left behind. Wishing Laz would come back so I could feel all of that indescribable mess.

The grip on my scarf was so tight that I had efficiently pulled it into a noose around my neck. I loosened my grip as Adam relaxed and left his place on the floor. He sat on the chair next to mine. He looked comfortable there. I wondered if his wife used to sit where I was. I wondered if he ever imagined it was me. I imagined Laz and I there, drinking tea in the evenings as we read our books. He always struck me as a tea man.

“Why do you wear that scarf? It looks odd on you. All the color.”

Why? I wasn't sure anymore. I used to think of it as my connection. The thing I could go to when I wanted my old life. As time went by, it became a pretty thing Laz gave me. Now, I wasn't so sure it was just either of those. Yes, it still reminded me of the living and the red I loved. I thought I deserved that. But somewhere down the road it became a comfort. It held me as Laz did during the times I needed it. It was the only thing he had ever given me that was material. I cherished it.

“Laz gave it to me.”

“I don't think you were honest with me about Laz.”

“I don't think I was honest with myself about him.” I wasn't honest about a lot of things.

“Maybe this was the way it was suppose to be. You go off to learn what you needed to from this Laz person while I waited.”

“But you didn't wait. You fell in love. You had a wife. Lena. The reason I'm even here.”

“Maybe that was all part of the plan. You came to me when I needed you.” Adam said this in the logical way he had always approached things. “Maybe now that things are the way they are, you could stay.”

Stay? Stay. I had been asked to stay twice this evening. More than I had ever been asked in my life. And both options were enticing.

“Don't go to him. He left you there. He didn't want you then.” Laz was sitting, his elbows on his knees with his hands clasped, on a park bench in the cemetery he first saw me in. I stood next to him as he gazed anywhere but where I stood, refusing to look at me.

“I owe it to him Laz. He just lost his wife. I know things didn't go as I planned back then, but maybe he's changed.” He snorted at this. He knew why I really wanted to go back. He knew I hadn't ever really let go.

“I can't keep doing this with you, Audrey.”

“What is it you are doing?” I knew, but wasn't going to admit it.

“Waiting. Always waiting. For you to see how I look at you. For you to hold me like you did that day I found you.”

I had no words for Laz. Yes, I saw him watch me. I saw how his eyes looked like storms when he didn't think I was watching. I saw him reach for me as I pulled away every time. I saw how the hurt I inflicted was taken, absorbed. I was no better than Adam. Actually, I was worse. I stayed and made my attacks fresh every day.

If I was a good ghost, I would leave Laz. But what I was, was selfish. Selfish in not wanting to let him go. Selfish in not being able to let the life I had go. So I would inflict this pain tonight and maybe, just maybe, I could let go of one of them.

“I know. I just can't yet. And I have to do this. Please understand. You knew it from the start, how I felt about our situation.”

“And I told you from the beginning that I couldn't give you your life back. Tell me what I have to offer you has no appeal.”

“I can't because it's not true. I wish I could turn off wanting to be alive. I wish I could turn away from Adam.” I wish you couldn't see it. And I could pretend for you.

“I can't say I'll still be here after. I'm done sharing you.” He coddled my hand and placed a kiss in the space between my thumb and forefinger. He would have had tears in his eyes. He stood up with his back to me. “Stay.”

“I can't. But I'll be back.”

“Not good enough, Audrey.” And Laz walked away, knowing I wouldn't follow because I was too attached to a life that wasn't mine.

“Stay with me Audrey.”

“When I came to you, right after I died, you didn't ask. Actually, if I remember correctly, you wielded a fireplace poker in my general direction hoping to stab the ghost. Not one of your brightest moments I might add.” Adam attempted to defend himself with words this time, but I waved him off. “It definitely was not the reception I was hoping for, but I understood. I made excuses. I waited for you. Then you came, not for what I expected, but to point to the ground and let me know you wished I was firmly eight feet under. Body and soul. And you got married. I watched. Did you think I wouldn't? And from that point on it got better for me. I started to at least pretend to let you and life go. Until Lena died, and I just knew you needed me. But I think it was more the reverse. I needed you. To show me why it's this way.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I know. And thank you, but no, Adam. I won't stay.”

His face fell, but there was resignation to it. “I didn't think you would. You didn't owe me this. You owed it to yourself. To leave me. One day I hope you'll be okay.”

“I think I'm okay today. I think you'll be okay too.”

“I know. I just miss her. I miss you. I'm always the odd one out, I guess.” I looked at this guy I didn't know, who I spent the last decade wishing for until I couldn't let it go. I should have been angry, but I just wasn't. I wanted to be able to scream at him and tell him what he did to me all those years ago caused me to be the way I was now. But that would have been a lie. I was what I was because I couldn't let go. I wasn't blind, just stubborn. That seemed so much worse to me. I said what I needed to and it was time to go, since I had let go.

I got up to leave and as I walked past the fire place a picture caught my eye. I stopped to inspect it. I stopped because I knew I was in it. Marlin and I. My dog. He kept it. Adam put it here, where he sat, on display.

“I had to have something of you, Audrey.”

“You have no idea what that means to me.”

“About Marlin. If it's any consolation, I kept her until she died.”

“I know. I saw. I've watched on occasion.” Adam chuckled at that. I always had a peeping Tom issue. “I was never worried about the little bitch. To this day, I still can't believe she made it out of the fire while I burned to a crisp. Rudest thing ever.”

“Well, it was kind of your fault.”

“Who knew a cigarette and a precariously placed bottle of nail polish remover could ignite such an inferno? They didn't teach us these things is college.”

“I told you to quit smoking.”

I laughed for the first time in a long time, so at ease with this farewell. “Goodbye Adam.” Without waiting to hear him respond, I disappeared and left. One person on my mind. Laz.

I went to the cemetery.

Please still be there. Please.

I looked everywhere. The park bench. His favorite statue. The chapel. Then it hit me. My grave. I went there as soon as the thought struck.

As I made my way up the little hill where my body laid, I saw Laz sitting indian style facing my headstone. I wondered if he was replaying our first meeting. I wondered if he was planning on staying there because he thought I'd be back or because he thought he had nowhere else to go.

I came up behind him silently and laid my hand at the base of his neck, his hair brushing against me. It felt like down feathers. That feeling. Every time. He closed his eyes and brought his hand up to mine, pulling me down next to him.

“Will you leave me again?”

“No, Laz, I won't. I can only stay with you.”

“Is that how you see us? Stuck. Like I'm the only one you can be with.”

“No. I see us as love. The kind I can't live without. The one of indescribable pain and passion. Because regardless if my heart beats or not, this is my life.” Laz took me into his arms and let me stay. His lips on my hair, his hands on my back. “This is what I can give you.” It was all I had.

“It's more than I'll ever need.”