I Fell in Love with Hope(98)

I shudder thinking of his bony body eating itself in more ways than one. He notices. “It doesn’t hurt, not here.”

As the air cools around us, his stare hardens upon his ocean. It becomes transfixed, so much that my side of the dream does not exist to him anymore.

Something akin to fear and affection tied to a stone works its way up my throat. It ruminates in the silence.

“Neo,” I say. “Are you going to die tonight?”

He lets the question flow past him like a loose gust of wind.

The clouds above us sink, like whales dipping below water and resurfacing for air. They draw patterns, submerging us before letting the light seep through again.

“Life is so full of shadows,” he sighs, removing a book from under the hoodie. The spine is damaged. The pages are thin and pale but overflowing with text. “It’s easy to forget that some people prefer the dark.”

The book mimics the sea in a sense, gray and blue and rather daunting. He flips through it, each word like a cell, each sentence a line of muscle.

“On the surface, this story’s about the value of affection over social class, but at its roots, like most things, it’s simpler,” he says. “It’s about guiltless affection that is unasked and expects nothing in return. It’s about not letting that sort of bond pass you by.”

Then, with a disdainful snort, he throws his legs out and lays down, holding the novel over his head. “I hate this book.”

I can’t help the smile. “Do you?”

“Yeah. Pip’s an idiot.” He puts a hand out like a mocking actor. “‘I love her against reason and against all discouragement that could be.’ He sounds like you.” He says it to make me laugh and though it works, the two of us retain quickly to where we are. The water and the wind serve as gentle reminders that our time here is limited. It will end and when it does–

“I think that part of Pip lives in all of us,” he says. “We’re similar in the end–people, I mean. We all want a little piece of extraordinary. Unfortunately, most lives go by without anything extraordinary happening, and even if it does, it’s the ordinary moments that we should’ve appreciated.”

There is no regret in his voice. No resentment of an unfair, uneventful existence. As if his life has just begun and he is declaring that he will not let it pass him by.

But I have learned enough to know it is the opposite.

“People have this delusion of inherent purpose as if fate is written in stone when really the pen has always been in our hands.” His fingers close around the pages, crinkling the edges. Then he lets it go, sitting up and letting the book sit with him. “We are all passive protagonists until we learn how to write.”

“Then what are we when we put the pen down?”

“Then we’ve reached the end of our story.”

“And is this what you always intended?” I raise my voice, my fists clenched. He glances my way as I glance his. “When you created a sea of inked pages and wrote till your fingers bled, did you want to never reach the end?”

“Sam–”

“You can still live, Neo,” I say and the words echo, but I don’t think he truly hears them. He hears his illnesses, the bevy of them, whispering like sirens in his ear.

You must’ve seen it.

From the very beginning, you must’ve known.

When Neo caressed his bandage on the rooftop when he turned the other cheek to treatments. The subtle frustration he held whenever someone pointed out that he was getting better. Every single thought that ran through his head, a narrative that twisted his disease into a fantasy.

Whatever it is in this world that hurts Neo, he lets it.

The great abuser of Neo’s life was not his father, but the sickness in his veins. It was a bond Neo forged, unasked, expectant of flesh and sanity, but for all the pain it caused him, it never came close to the pain of pretending to be someone else.

So, he fell in love with it.

“You were making yourself sick all these years, weren’t you?”

He doesn’t answer me, because I already know the answer. For every meal Neo left uneaten and every pill he faked swallowing, he counted the days it would add to his sentence. Every episode, every flare-up, every instance he came close to death was just a symptom of what he chose.

“What about your story?” I ask, trembling at the thought of him asleep with a tube taped to his mouth, at the thought that he is okay with dying in such a way. “What about all the stories you have to tell?”

“Only one matters,” he says, taking my hand, stilling it. “And I trust my narrator will finish it well.”

“Neo, please–”

“Life is made of so many goodbyes welded together.” He squeezes, his touch as tangible as the day I first felt it. “So dread the endings. Cry and rage and curse them.” A sad smile plays on his lips. “Just don’t forget to cherish the beginnings and all that comes in between.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ve always adored love stories, Sam, so go after yours,” he whispers. “Love her. Love her. Love her. And against all discouragement that could be, let her love you too.”

I choke on a cry wishing Hikari were here.

I hold his hands, the cold, thin, artful instruments that learned to be held rather grasped. I bring them my face, memorizing all the times they handed me books and held me close in fits of laughter, tears, and anything in between.