Come Back to Me by Coleen Patrick

to hang out with, hold
my hand, and kiss.  I wanted someone to love.
    I knew now love
was overrated.
    That first
day outside of chem lab, I didn’t think Kyle knew what was coming.  Maybe he
was a little naïve, or maybe it was because he went into anything and
everything with his signature slow and easy style.  He underestimated Katie’s
gravitational pull, too.
    I looked
again at the blank screen on my phone, undeterred.  Kyle was the one who
anchored my past in happiness instead of only regret, guilt, and grief.  I
wanted those happy memories now.
    The bus
stopped at the train station, and I made the switch.  It was a fifteen-minute
ride, then only a half mile outside of the Bloom Hills gate.  Kyle’s house was
right inside the entrance.  I walked, holding my shoes in my hand.  Heat
radiated from the sidewalk and through my bare feet, holding in what was still
left of my newfound warmth.
    Once I got
to Kyle’s, I made my way to his basement.  Walking down the stairs, I almost
expected to see steam rise from my steps.  It was dark and cold, like a cave.
    I moved
quickly though, because I couldn’t wait to see him.  He was the only one who
could possibly understand the insanity of what it was like to lose Katie
twice.  Maybe we didn’t ride through the madness together, but we started it
together and both ended up at the same bottom.
    Once in the
media room, I squinted at the large screen TV on the back wall.  It beamed
bright light over the room, and my eyes focused, taking in the wet bar and the three
couches set up in rows to look like a movie theater.  Everything was so
familiar—achingly familiar, from the drop in temperature, to the rush of
memories—only this time, they felt like old friends.  This was where we—Katie,
Kyle, and I—spent a lot of time, second only to school.
    My gaze
swept over the darkened corners, searching.  No Katie, only shadows
masquerading as reality.  My skin tingled underneath my jacket sleeves, and I
folded my arms.
    Kyle was in
his usual spot, centered in the middle of the couch in the front row, the glow
from the TV screen a spotlight on him.  Throughout our senior year, he always
bragged that he planned to spend every spare minute of his summer on that
couch, right up until the day he would leave for college.  I thought of how
Kyle’s dad had very little tolerance for Slacker Partying Kyle.  I figured that,
with the added grief, Kyle wasn’t exactly insurance internship material.  But
he was living out his summer couch plans.
    I stood next
to Kyle.  He was sleeping.  Possibly drunk, or stoned—maybe both.  A drop of
drool hung at the edge of his bottom lip.  I sat on the couch near his feet.  He
grunted, rolling himself toward the back of the couch.  He was warm, and when
the cold leather touched the back of my legs, I moved closer to him.
    He’d balled
a forest green sweater under his head like a pillow—the cardigan Katie wore to
her MIT interview.  My heart contracted, and I pulled in a shaky stream of
air-conditioned air.  Did the sweater still smell like Katie’s favorite
cologne, the one in a pink glass bottle that was so sweet she might as well
have been dabbing her pulse points with cotton candy?  Probably not, more than
likely her sweater now smelled like damp air, beer, and Doritos.
    Katie would’ve
hated that.  She was against sloppy partying, or sloppy anything.  Katie had
always been all about mission control (literally, seeing as she once imagined
working for NASA).  She orchestrated everything down to the smallest detail. 
No hangovers or puking, and definitely no balled up sweaters or rank smells.
    I looked
away from Kyle to scan the shadows again.  I thought of the time Katie had
rented half a dozen movies based on Pride and Prejudice because Kyle was
supposed to read it and write a paper.  She was worried about him and his
slipping grades.  Near the end of their relationship, they argued openly about
college and Kyle