They Both Die at the End (Death-Cast #1)(70)

“Let me take a photo. Actually, lean in with me.”

I can’t see anything, but I look straight, squinting, and smile. He puts the glasses back on my face and I check out the photo. I look like I’ve just woken up. Rufus wearing my glasses is a welcome intimacy, like we’ve known each other for so long that this kind of silliness comes easily to us. I wasn’t ever counting on this.

“I would’ve loved you if we had more time.” I spit it out because it’s what I’m feeling in this moment and was feeling the many moments, minutes, and hours before. “Maybe I already do. I hope you don’t hate me for saying that, but I know I’m happy.

“People have their time stamps on how long you should know someone before earning the right to say it, but I wouldn’t lie to you no matter how little time we have. People waste time and wait for the right moment and we don’t have that luxury. If we had our entire lives ahead of us I bet you’d get tired of me telling you how much I love you because I’m positive that’s the path we were heading on. But because we’re about to die, I want to say it as many times as I want—I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.”





RUFUS


7:54 p.m.

“Yo. You know damn well I love you too.” Man, it actually hurts how much I mean this. “I don’t talk out of my dick, you know that’s not me.” I wanna kiss him again because he resurrected me, but I’m tight. If I didn’t have common sense, if I hadn’t fought so hard to be who I am, I would do some dumb shit again and punch something because I’m so pissed. “The world is mad cruel. I started my End Day beating up someone because he’s dating my ex-girlfriend and now I’m in bed with an awesome dude I haven’t known for twenty-four hours. . . . This sucks. Do you think . . . ?”

“Do I think what?” Twelve hours ago Mateo would’ve been nervous asking me a question; he would’ve done it, but he would’ve looked away. Now he doesn’t break eye contact.

I hate to ask it, but it might be on his mind too. “Did finding each other kill us?”

“We were going to die before we knew each other,” Mateo says.

“I know. But maybe this is how it was always written in stone or the stars or whatever: Two dudes meet. They fall for each other. They die.” If this is really our truth, I get to punch whatever wall I want. Don’t try and stop me.

“That’s not our story.” Mateo squeezes my hands. “We’re not dying because of love. We were going to die today, no matter what. You didn’t just keep me alive, you made me live.” He climbs into my lap, bringing us closer. He hugs me so hard his heart is beating against my chest. I bet he feels mine. “Two dudes met. They fell in love. They lived. That’s our story.”

“That’s a better story. Ending still needs some work.”

“Forget about the ending,” Mateo says in my ear. He pushes his chest away from mine so he can look me in the eye. “I doubt the world is in the mood for a miracle, so we know not to expect a happily-ever-after. I only care about the endings we lived through today. Like how I stopped being someone afraid of the world and the people in it.”

“And I stopped being someone I don’t like,” I say. “You wouldn’t have liked me.”

He’s tearing up and smiling. “And you wouldn’t have waited for me to be brave. Maybe it’s better to have gotten it right and been happy for one day instead of living a lifetime of wrongs.”

He’s right about everything.

We rest our heads on his pillows. I’m hoping we die in our sleep; that seems like the best way to go.

I kiss my Last Friend because the world can’t be against us if it brought us together.





MATEO


8:41 p.m.

I wake up feeling invincible. I don’t check the time because I don’t want anything to shatter my survivor spirit. In my head, I’m already in another day. I have beat Death-Cast’s prediction, the first person in history to do so. I put my glasses back on, kiss Rufus’s forehead, and watch him resting. Nervous, I reach for his heart, and I’m relieved it is still beating: he’s invincible too.

I climb over Rufus and I bet he would kill me himself if he caught me leaving our safe island, but I want to introduce him to Dad. I leave the room and go to the kitchen to prepare tea for us. I set the pot over the stove’s burner and check the cabinets for tea selections and decide on peppermint.

When I switch on the burner, my chest sinks with regret. Even when you know death is coming, the blaze of it all is still sudden.





RUFUS


8:47 p.m.

I wake up choking on smoke. This deafening fire alarm makes it mad hard to think. I don’t know what’s happening, but I know this is the moment. I reach over to wake up Mateo, but my hand finds no one in all this darkness, just my phone, which I pocket.

“MATEO!”

The fire alarm is drowning out my cries, and I’m choking, but I still call for him. Moonlight beams through the window, and that’s all the light I have to work with. I grab my fleece and wrap it around my face while crawling on the floor, reaching out for Mateo, who’s gotta be somewhere here on the floor and not anywhere near the source of the smoke. I shake off thoughts of Mateo burning because no, that’s not happening. Impossible.