Snowflakes & Fire Escapes by J. M. Darhower

tightly in my palm. Emotions swirled through me, heavy and tumultuous, like a brewing storm. I felt the tears building in my eyes, felt the lump in my throat. It was the greatest gift anyone had ever given me before.
    I met his eyes, smiling. “Thank you.”
    He nodded as if to say ‘you’re welcome’, but he didn’t say the words. Instead, he looked away from me, tilting his head up toward the sky. It was drizzling a bit, had been all day, the light rain hitting his long lashes. He blinked it away as he lowered his head again, once more meeting my gaze.
    His expression of relief faded away. Reaching through the window, he cupped my chin with his cold hand, tilting my face toward him. Carefully, he leaned forward, kissing my mouth. It was barely a peck, but I was shaking, shivering, breathing in his warmth when he whispered against my lips, “I won’t see you for a while after this, Gracie.”
    The coldness from his hand, the chilling tone of is voice, seeped through my skin, freezing my insides when I absorbed those words. I opened my eyes. “What?”
    “It’s for the best,” he said, “that we don’t see each other for a while.”
    He pulled back, dropping his hand. I gaped at him, my mind trying to process those words, but my heart beat too loudly for it to understand.
    “For the best?” I asked. “I don’t understand. How can it be for the best that we don’t see each other?”
    “Because it is,” he said, as if those words made any sense, as if they offered anything in the way of an explanation of how he could actually think him being absent from my world made anything better . He was my pulse. He was the air I breathed. He was the sun that shined on this shit show of a life I’d been given.
    “That’s stupid. That’s just … that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Because it is? Because it is ? There’s nothing for the best about this, Cody. I don’t want to be without you. I love you.”
    “I know.”
    “You know? So why? Why would you say it’s for the best?”
    “Because it is,” he said again, running his hands through his damp hair, making the locks stick straight up. He eyed me, his expression earnest, as if he was trying to get me to understand something with just a look.
    But I couldn’t.
    I didn’t understand.
    He let out a deep sigh of exasperation that broke something inside of me, thawing the ice that gripped me so I could no longer stop the flood. Tears broke free from my eyes, streaming down my cheeks, as my breath caught in my throat.
    This couldn’t be happening.
    “You’re leaving me,” I gasped, trying to make my voice sound calm like his is, but my panic was too much. “On my birthday?”
    “Tomorrow’s your birthday,” he whispered.
    His response hit me like a ton of bricks, snapping something. I didn’t think. I reacted. My chest was heavy and my heart hurt, the pain seizing my muscles and controlling them. My hands thrust out, and I shoved him, hard, knocking him backward on the fire escape. He slips on the slick metal, dropping right on his ass, the fire escape rattling loudly.
    He got traction again and climbed to his feet. Part of me wished this were just some sick, sick prank, the worst joke ever told. I wanted him to climb through the window and pull me into his arms and tell me he wouldn’t dream of ever leaving me alone. But ten seconds passed … I counted them in my head … and he didn’t make a move.
    He didn’t say anything.
    My shoulders slumped. My heart was broken and he just stood there, so whole, his hands slipping into his pocket like he was waiting for something.
    If he were waiting for me to tell him this was okay, it wasn’t going to happen.
    Because it wasn’t okay.
    It wasn’t .
    “I love you, Gracie,” he said quietly. “I love you with everything in me. I always will, you know.”
    I closed my eyes. “Yet you’re walking away. You’re leaving me. You’re just going to go down that fire escape and what …