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Makes me realize I don’t really expect to find Kash. The guys are probably right. It can’t be him. But still, I don’t regret coming out of the apartment. I’d been suffocating, I was crushed and smothered, and I’m glad to be out despite the drizzle that’s just started, driven into my face by the wind.
Linking arms, we walk down the street, then another. We’re approaching the bus stop and although I’ve convinced myself it was all in my mind, I look at the spot where I thought I saw Kash sitting earlier.
The store entrance is empty, faintly illuminated by a nearby street lamp.
Of course it is.
We stop in front of it anyway. I stop, bringing all three of us to a halt. “It was here,” I whisper. “I was so sure…”
That flash of gray eyes. The silver in the nose and brows. But more than that—the shape of the face, of the shoulders, that feeling it was him.
Is this what mourning is like? Seeing the one you love everywhere long after you’ve accepted they’re gone? Ghosts, haunting your every step, faces in the mirror when you glance up, when you open a new door.
Nate and West press closer to my sides as if sensing my sorrow. Maybe their thoughts are following the same pathways, their emotions as tangled and messy as mine.
It feels as if we’re paying our last respects. Laying our hearts down on the concrete instead of flower wreaths, saying goodbye.
We finally turn to go, not speaking a word, the wind buffeting us, lashing strands of hair across my face, blinding me.
But we lurch to a stop and West says breathlessly, “There!”
“What?” I frown.
“West, what are you…?” Nate starts, and stops.
Then both of them are untangling themselves from me and taking off down the street, leaving me to stumble alone a few steps.
What in the world is going on?
I run after them, my much shorter legs pumping. “Wait!” Why did I wear boots with a heel today? I didn’t imagine I’d be running down a sidewalk in the middle of the night, the concrete slick and slippery under my steps. “Guys.”
They’ve cornered someone against the wall of a building, beside a dark entrance, though a lit-up store sign for a twenty-four-hour convenience store nearby provides just enough light for me to see as I stop, panting, and stare.
The guy is leaning against the wall, head bowed, hands raised in fists, ready to strike. But his fists are shaking, and his body is hunched over.
For some reason it makes me sad and worried.
And there it is again, that impression—that it’s Kash. But it can’t be, it can’t, there’s no way, my mind’s playing tricks on me once again.
Then Nate reaches up, pulls back the guy’s hood, and I gasp.
I start running again, faster and faster, to get to them, to him.
It’s Kash. I run toward the revealed glint of silver-blond hair, the piercings in his face, those wide pale eyes, that face I know so well.
There’s no doubt about it anymore.
“Kash? It’s us,” Nate is saying, catching one of the fists flying at him. “Stop, dude. You know us. Don’t you?” This last question delivered with a hint of doubt. “Stop swinging at me, man. We’re your friends.”
“Snap out of it, buddy.” West grabs Kash’s arm and twists it, immobilizing him. “Stop it.”
But Kash produces a low moan of pain and fear, and it crashes my heart into tiny shards.
“You’re hurting him!”
West starts, his hand on the arm he’s holding jerking. “Kash is stronger than me, Syd.”
“Not right now, not anymore. Can’t you see?”
