11Author's Note: Um, well I guess technically this can be read as slash or het, whichever you prefer, since no names are even mentioned. It makes it more personal somehow, to the reader at least. Sorry it's kind of short.
Fuck, I cried so hard while I was writing this.
Yellow Roses.
I met him at a cemetery. It was 9:05 on a Sunday morning. The sky was gray, and the thorns on the stems of my yellow roses sunk into my fingertips. I pried my fist open and they fell neatly to the earth, one-two-three roses at the head of Dad's gravestone.
He was propped against the big oak tree that shed its autumn leaves all over the cemetery, sitting cross-legged amongst a rippling sea of rich auburn and burnt-orange. He was picking at the loose threads on his sweater, and there was a math book lying by his thigh, a notebook in his lap, and an open bag of M&M's curled in the crook of his arm.
"What are you doing?"
He looked up, the sunlight captured in his eyes. He looked so strange with his crooked glasses and their red frames and his button nose and grass blades embedded in his palms and knees. Small, neat teeth sunk into his bottom lip and he stared up at me until his cheeks went red. "Math homework," he whispered.
I sat beside him and my eyes followed his pencil as he scribbled lyrics in the margins of his math homework. We talked and talked until my throat ached and my lips ran dry. His voice was too soft and an octave too deep for his fragile appearance, but I liked it.
Someone plays guitar in the background as we picnic on M&M's and my half-full Dr. Pepper, on a blanket of weedy grass and yellow rose petals. His hair was soft and his skin seemed perpetually sheathed in goose bumps, even when I curled my heavy fleece jacket around his shoulders and kissed his forehead. He said he didn't want to go home.
We lay on the cemetery ground until my fingers went numb - he was holding my hand so very tight - and his math homework sat abandoned. The stars glittered above us, and he sat up with crinkly brown leaves tangled in his hair, and a yellow rose tucked behind his ear.
"I have to go now, but – you can call me on Sundays. If you want." His phone number was etch-a-sketched into my memory and we exchanged hugs one last time.
It was hard to forget a face that pretty. It swam in the dreamscape behind my closed eyelids until I finally sprang up from the bed sheets at two in the morning and climbed down the ivy crawling down the length of my house. The moon was so bright that Tuesday night, and my feet took me to the cemetery. And there he was, waiting for me. He had two blueberry muffins and a thermos of stale, black coffee that I sipped and sipped until I couldn't taste anything but him.
I kept my promise. I called him every Sunday morning at 9:05. He never answered until the third ring and his voice was always muffled from the tears in his throat, his choked sobs and shadowed sighs carrying over the static of the phone.
I never asked him why he cried.
On wet, starry nights I'd buy him coffee amidst freezing rain and cherry kisses. His head would sit in the crook of my neck until the clock struck midnight, and he would flee, Cinderella in colored-on red converse and my old fleece jacket that I let him keep it smelled like yellow roses and M&M's and autumn leaves, still.
He flinched sometimes if you came at him too fast or if you told him he was beautiful. He told me lips are too pretty to lie.
On dry, gray afternoons we'd sit in the cinema until the sad man with the mop stumbled in and told us we had to leave. The magic of a film reel remained in his sparkling eyes, and I promised him nothing was imaginary, just to keep that sparkle alive.
He only laughed when we were alone and he only smiled when no one was home.
On weekdays at school, he would sit in our grassy knoll alone at lunch, with his homemade cookies and granny smith apples, and he'd smile that secret smile when I sat down to join him.
He had bruises sometimes.
On Valentine's Day, he left a yellow rose on my doorstep. On my birthday, he made a heart out of Hershey kisses on my driveway. I built him a fire in my living room on Christmas Eve while he dotted icing on our Gingerbread house.
He wrote an epic poem in place of "H.A.G.S." in my yearbook and kissed the page instead of signing his name.
On Sunday mornings, his parents left him alone and he crawled from his window seat to the roof and met me at "our" cemetery, under "our" oak tree, where I would always be waiting.
He told me he loved me every day.
On one morbid Thursday evening, he showed up at my doorstep with a thin trail of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and a dark, broken shine in those eyes I loved so much. He asked me if he could stay, the lone tear crawling down his cheek in tune with the cracks in his voice.
He lied every single time he whispered "fine" when I asked if he was alright.
We reminisced on a Saturday evening over cold sandwiches and pink lemonade. "Remember that picnic we had? Will your half-empty Dr. Pepper and that bag of M&M's? I fell in love right then, you know," he smiled and I tucked a stray lock back into his mop of disheveled hair, and echoed the sentiment.
He remained silent for a long moment, eyelashes stifling the insecurities stirring in his eyes. "Do you still love me?" The choked note in his whisper spawned a new ache inside me. He really had no idea.
If I could fix the stars to spell out "I love you," I would. If I could give him the world on a silver platter, I would. I tell him this and he stares down his shoes and his cheeks dust pink and he whispers "goodbye", and that he'll see me tomorrow.
At 9:05 the next Sunday, it was a cool September morning and the sky was silver and smelt of death. I called him as always, and he answered on the third ring. He breathed heavy and a chilling sob broke the silence. Then a severe snap and a bang.
It rains every Sunday at 9:05 but I visit the cemetery anyway. I shrieked and stomped and kicked until they dug the hole where I wanted it, beneath our oak tree. The yellow roses in my fist drooped like my broken smile, and we fell to the ground.
The rain is dry and burns my cheeks. God, if you're there, please tell him I miss him.