I Fell in Love with Hope(56)

“You sure?” C asks. “You look like you’re gonna fall.”

“Sony! Hand me those scissors so I can stab him with it,” Neo yells, just as she walks into the room with so many random objects in her arms she has to open the door with her elbow.

“I got everything!” Sony says, dropping her stolen merchandise on Neo’s bed. Her cat wobbles in behind her.

I quit my pacing and take inventory of the spoils. If you remember our first meeting, Hikari, you took me on a blindsighting adventure to gather a measly pencil sharpener. Back then, I didn’t realize the morbidity in that. Even if the ends were wrong, the means were a spark to our fire. It was the first time we stole together. The first time we shared our humanity with a bit of sin.

“Thank you,” I say as Sony organizes the arts and crafts supplies she took from the library. A pair of scissors, markers, a little paintbox, and colorful paper.

Eric lends us the Christmas lights. With them, we create our own finite constellations that cannot be overshadowed by clouds and the city’s pollution. He even gets me a cardboard box, one identical to Neo’s from one of the maintenance closets.

“Will this work?” he asks. We exchange a knowing look, one with history behind it that holds a thank you in the air like a light on a string. Then, he gives me a light smack on the head. “Don’t set anything on fire.”

“Eric!” Sony jumps and wraps her arms around his neck. Eric groans, his chin settling on her shoulder.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He tucked her hair behind her ears. “No racing. You hear me?”

“Mhm,” Sony hums and Eric holds her close for some time. Then, he says his goodnights to Neo and C, leaving me with a few parting words.

“Sam.” I swear Hikari, I’m not lying when I say he actually smirks, tapping the doorknob a few times as he says, “Good luck to you and Hamlet.”

Then, he leaves us to our grand gesture.

“So what are you going to say to her?” Sony asks me.

“I’m not sure yet.”

The box grows with memorabilia. It’s lined with a yellow blanket. It carries a succulent I could never bear to leave alone, the Hit List with its spiral spine coming off at the end, copies of Wuthering Heights and Hamlet, drawing supplies, and of course, a watch only we know how to read.

“Urgh,” Neo sounds, still on his ladder, using a screwdriver to mount the last of the string lights. “I can’t stand romantics.”

The step ladder shifts a bit beneath his feet when he turns.

“Be careful please,” C begs, holding onto it.

“Touch it again and I’ll stick this in your eye.” Neo thins his eyes and points the screwdriver at him.

“I’m not sure what to say,” I tell Sony. “I want her to know I’m sorry. I pushed her away because I was afraid, but…” I graze my wrist.

“Sammy, you overthinking oaf!” Sony yells.

My head tilts. “Oaf?”

“A stupid, uncultured, clumsy person,” Neo says waving his screwdriver around like a teacher with a ruler.

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, that does seem accurate.”

“You’re making this so much harder than it needs to be,” Sony flicks my forehead. “What is Hikari to you?”

“She’s my Hamlet.”

“Your what?”

“They read Hamlet together,” Neo says. “Weirdos ruined the spine of my only copy.”

“I want to tell her all the things I ever thought but lacked the courage to say. If I’m a stupid, uncultured, and clumsy person, then I want to be her stupid, uncultured, clumsy person because–”

I’ve never truly written. I’m like a cook who’s never held a knife. A tailor who’s never seen thread. So how am I meant to tell you, Hikari, that it’s because “–she made me dream again.”

The room buzzing with anticipating workers goes quiet. We’re creating a safe haven. A place with beauty in the physical and metaphorical, but it seems even the furniture and memorabilia mull over what I have to say.

The hospital keeps on working just outside the checkered windows, and through the blinds. The white noise and the oncoming night try to creep into it with their uncertainty wearing silence.

Neo breaks it. “You both care, Sam,” he says. “You just have to show it.”

An idea comes to mind then and just as my pen begins its dance across the page, Hee limps over to the infamously sensitive step ladder. She nudges it with her paw, meowing for attention. It folds, collapsing instantly. Neo falls backward, arms flailing. C catches him, both of them stumbling onto the floor.

Sony and I laugh as smoke rises from Neo’s head.

“Not one word,” he grumbles, pink shading his face as C hugs him tight and chuckles into his neck.

Neo recovers quick, proud of his work with the string lights. C plugs them into the extension cord and the ceiling comes alive. All I can think of, Hikari, is about the smile that’ll light your lips when you see them.

“Is it okay?” I ask. Neo reads over the letter I wrote you. He hums every few lines, mumbling critiques to himself.

“You suck at structuring,” he finally says, tossing it onto the box.

“I don’t know what that means.”