Page 85 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

I didn't answer. I took a heavy swallow of the bitter coffee, letting the heat burn my throat. The quiet that followed wasn't uncomfortable; it was the same heavy silence we used to share in the sandbox when the sun went down and the desert turned freezing. Derek shifted his weight, his boots crunching softly on the loose gravel. The playful smirk left his face, replaced by a quiet, measured focus.

"How are you holding up, Elias? Really."

I stared down into my cup, watching the steam rise and dissolve into the fog. The air felt thin.

"I know it was three months ago," I said, my voice barely louder than the hum of the station’s generator. Another silence fell over the tailgate. Heavy. Long.

"But fuck me, it still feels like yesterday," I whispered.

Mason didn't say anything. He didn't offer any useless words of sympathy. Instead, he simply reached over, picked up the steel thermos, and slid another two inches of hot coffee into my cup, the metal clinking softly against the plastic. The gesture was quiet, deliberate, and said more than any sentence he could have put together. I took a slow breath, the cold air stinging my lungs.

"Sometimes... I still reach for my phone. I’ll see a bad accident on the secondary road or find a file that makes no goddamn sense, and my thumb goes straight to the contact for Mom. Then I remember. Every fucking time."

Derek looked away, his jaw tightening as he stared at the rusted chain-link fence. Mason kept his eyes on the gravel, his chest rising in a slow, heavy breath. It was a clean hit, the kind of raw grief that leaves no mark on the outside but changes the way you carry your own weight. We were surrounded in silence after I spoke. No words can comfort something like that.

"So..." Derek said, his tone suddenly jumping an octave, that sharp, irritating glint returning to his blue eyes, trying to lighten the mood.

"Shut up, Derek," I said, not looking at him.

"So, have you met someone?"

"No."

"Don’t bullshit me, Elias. Your head is somewhere and it sure as shit not with the case."

"The fuck it isn’t." I scoff.

"Then where was your head at," Derek insisted, leaning closer, his grin widening.

"You forget I know you man. Fuck we’re brothers, I know that look when I see it. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, fucker."

"Fucking leave it, brother" I muttered.

Derek let out another bark of laughter, shaking his head.

"Right. Sure. Is she pretty?"

A long silence stretched. I looked out at the mountain ridge, but my brain didn't see the pines. It saw her. It saw the way she looked through the wire mesh of her screen door, her dark hair held back by that loose plastic clip, the soft, pale stretch of her neck.

"Pretty doesn’t even begin to describe her. She’s ethereal , like a mystical creature. I have never met someone like her but… fuck it’s never going to happen." I said softly.

"Why the fuck not, if you described her like that then that and don’t want something with her then that means…" Derek noted looking over to Mason with a worried expression.

"She has a problem," Mason noted from the side, his voice a flat rumble.

"She's different," I said, turning my cup in my hands, my jaw setting as I tried to explain the unexplainable. "She... she talks to the garden gnomes, Mase. She’s theatrical. She fills the room up with words because she says the quiet makes people nervous, but when she watches you... it’s like she’s looking at what’s underneath the skin."

Derek's grin turned triumphant.

"Oh, you're totally fucked. You're completely done for, Reed."

"I can't," I said, the words cutting through his laughter like a blade. The temperature in the lot seemed to drop five degrees instantly. Both looked up, their expressions flattening into rigid neutrality.

"Not again. I buried my parents three months ago. I'm not risking my heart to a person life can take from me. I'm just not fucking doing it. I can't survive burying another person."

Silence. It sat between the three of us like an old piece of shrapnel that had settled too deep to cut out. Derek closed his mouth, his shoulders dropping, while Mason gave a single, slow nod a silent acknowledgment of the rule we all lived by. He fucking gets it; he lost his first love…

"Alright," I said, tossing the dregs of my coffee into the mud.