Three years earlier

One year.

Josh and baby AJ had died exactly a year earlier on that day. So had my soul. They say time helps with grief. So far, time hadn't done shit. I was just as miserable as when I'd woken up in the hospital after the accident.

I had missed my finals because of my hospitalization, so I'd had to drop out of Caltech, move in with my parents, who had moved south to San Diego when I'd started college, and I had never graduated. I had been told that Josh's name would be mentioned at the graduation ceremony of our class, but I hadn't had the strength to attend the event. From what I had heard, the President's speech had been outrageously banal and impersonal, his name barely mentioned, mine even less so, and our beautiful relationship not even acknowledged. "Josh's special friend, Abby," was how the President had referred to me. I had made the right call not attending.

What the President did do, however, is dedicate a bench to my fiancé. He had contacted me at the start of the new academic year to ask where I wanted the bench to be located. There is this huge tree in one of Caltech gardens. There's nothing special about it, except that it is so wide and conveniently located that it can hide people from passers-by. On a dare, and also because we were totally drunk and high, Josh had once fucked me against that tree. I wore a tiny skirt and skimpy underwear so, in one swift movement, he had been inside me, and a couple minutes later we were both loudly climaxing. Swift and easy. He had given me the bandana he was wearing in his hair for a pirate costume to clean myself up, like the true gentleman that he was. This man had literally just ravaged me in Caltech garden, and the next minute he'd been making sure I wasn't dripping from his baby juice. The perfect man, I'm telling you. After doing our deed, we had come back to the party where we'd been dared to have sex on college public grounds. Needless to say, we had been welcomed back like heroes.

To the exterior eye, that might sound either gross, stupid, reckless, or a mix of the three. To me, this act was just the perfect representation of our couple. Josh and I were the two halves of the same person. Do you know a lot of people who would say yes to fucking you in one of the college gardens just because a drunken friend dared you to do it? Not only had he said yes, but he had also carefully picked the location and taken a picture of us during the act to show as evidence of a successful dare. He did not just follow my crazy, he matched it, and he often fed it.

After that night, having sex under that tree had become our thing. Each time we had the opportunity, we would do it. Don't ask why, we were just young, stupid, and horny, I guess. We would carve a notch in the bark each time we did it. This tree was sporting five notches at least, by now. For all I knew, maybe baby AJ had been conceived underneath those branches.

All that to say, when the President had asked me where to put the bench dedicated to my dead fiancé, I had chosen to have it under this very tree. Josh would have loved the humor in that. Is there anything more ironic than having a dead person's memorial under a fuck-tree?

I was lying on that bench on the anniversary of Josh's death, looking at the sky, like we had done so many times together. Except the sky was bright blue, this time, not black and full of stars. I had brought black roses and tied the bouquet to the backrest of the bench, after tossing the old ones I had put there the day the bench had been inaugurated. Roses were Josh's favorite flowers, and black his favorite color. It also happened to be the color of my soul for the past year, so it was fitting.

Josh's grave was in the UK, in his lovely hometown of Royal Tunbridge Wells. Neither I nor my parents had the kind of money to send me to Europe to pay his grave a visit, so that bench was the next best thing I had to pay my respects to the love of my life. On the golden plate that sported his name, birth year, and death year, I had carved Aaron Jo Paxton with a key, along with their death year. Does an unborn baby have a birth year?

A lot of people at the hospital had advised against giving my dead child a name, saying that it would make the loss even harder to overcome, and that they had died too early to be legally considered a human being anyway. I obviously didn't give a crap about all that. My baby was called Aaron Jo Paxton. Baby AJ. Aaron, because that's the boy's name we had agreed on in that fucking car. Jo, because that's the only syllable of the girl's name Josh had been able to pronounce before dying. Joanna? Joelle? I would never know. My baby was also genderless.

As I looked at the cloud-free sky, remembering the six years of unadulterated happiness I had experienced with my soulmate, I heard some students here and there call my name and say hi. Some brave ones even asked how I was feeling. The campus was still full of people who knew me. When Josh died, we were seniors and in what could be considered the 'cool kids' clique – we and our friends were basically campus royalty. With now a tragic accident to my record, nobody at Caltech could not know who I was. If I had loved the attention before, now all I wanted was to be anonymous. I didn't bother to reply to the people addressing me, and just kept focusing on the sky.

When the sun started to set and the first few stars started to appear in the sky, I braced myself. Stargazing without Josh was one of the most painful things, and I tried to avoid it as much as possible. But on that day, I just had to suck it up. For him.

I focused and spotted constellations by force of habit. When the night went darker, I finally saw it in all its glory. Aquarius. My hand instinctively went to my left hip, where Josh had permanently tattooed the constellation of the day of our first kiss. God, I missed that man.

I felt one tear escape my eye and snake down to my ear. Then a second one. Next thing I knew, I was sobbing. I sat up on the bench and brought my knees to my chest, hoping that it would stop me from falling apart. This time, I slipped my fingers under my pants, just so I could feel the slight relief of my tattoo and trace it over and over again. This had become my coping mechanism. It didn't work well, but it was better than nothing.

As I obsessively followed the lines of the constellation carved on my skin in hopes of calming my sobs, I decided there was another place I ought to pay a visit.

***

I was standing on the sidewalk of a dodgy street in an even dodgier part of LA, holding my bag tightly against my body. I looked through the window of the shop in search of that one person who might be able to give me a bit of solace on that tragic day. Without success. I couldn't see much of the shop from where I was.

I took a deep breath and entered the premises. A big, bearded man with a red bandana was sitting at a desk, drawing on a piece of paper. He had tiny spectacles perched on the tip of his nose and a bright light was directed at the piece of art he was making. He welcomed me with a warm voice, which contrasted a lot with his severe appearance, and asked if he could help. I was just about to say who I was looking for when I saw her and her ridiculously long hair, now dyed silver, come from the back of the shop, her customer following her. She stopped in her steps when she saw me.

"Abby?" She said in her bird-like voice.

That's all it took for the waterworks to start again. When she saw my tears, she almost ran the few steps that separated us and threw her tiny frame at me, crushing me into a warm hug that almost felt like it could hold my broken pieces of soul together.

"I'm so happy to see you, Abs," she said with tears in her voice.

"Me too, Sash. Me too. And I'm so sorry. I tried, I swear, but I couldn't."

"I know, hun, I know," she said soothingly while patting my hair.

We were both crying. The two other men in the parlor, Sash's boss and Sash's customer, did not say a thing, but it was clear that we were making everyone uncomfortable.

Too early for my taste, Sash pulled out of the hug and told me to wait five minutes for her to see her customer out. Her boss said he would do it for her.

"Of course, Sash," the boss said after she asked if he was sure. "Just take the rest of the night off, you should have never come here today anyway."

"I disagree. I needed the distraction. But thank you, Teddy Bear."

"Teddy Bear?" I asked quietly as she led me to the back of the parlor, into what seemed to be a tiny break room. I sat on one of the Formica chairs and Sash sat opposite me, a small table between us.

"That's his artist name. He looks all big and scary but he's such a softie. And he's a very gentle tattooist. The name fits him well."

"Do you have a pseudonym?" I enquired, curious.

"Not yet. I need to earn my stripes in the profession, first."

I nodded mindlessly and did not say anything more. She did not try to keep the chitchat going either. What could we possibly say to each other? No word would bring back her brother, my boyfriend.

So we sat there in silence, the quietness only briefly interrupted by the sound of our sniffles and the echo of our tears falling on the cheap table.

Sasha took my hand and squeezed it hard. She had tattoos all over her arms and hands now, only her fingers and palms were blank. She was gorgeous.

"Oh, that's pretty," she said, pointing at the ring on my left hand that she was still holding.

I jerked out of her clasp and instinctively tried to hide my ring. For what reason, I don't know.

"Is that . . ." She started to ask but decided against it when she saw the panic and the pain in my eyes. "You know what? We're too sober for this shit. Let's hit the bar next door. It's a bit grim but it's cheap and the owner lets everyone smoke inside."

Without a word, I followed her to the bar that was literally next to her tattoo parlor. She was right, the place was terrible, and frankly a bit scary. The interior was okay, very dark, a bit run down, and no matching furniture, but not unsanitary. The crowd, however, gave me the creeps. Most of those people were heavily tattooed and pierced, and not in a sexy way like Sasha was, or like Josh had been.

A lot of people recognized Sash when we walked in, many of them whistled at her in appreciation of how hot she looked. I couldn't blame them. She was wearing a short burgundy dress that hit mid-thighs and knee-high black leather boots. The deep neckline of the dress showed off her impressive rack.

She smiled quietly at her admirers, and we sat at a table by the entrance, isolated from the rest of the patrons. She ordered us a double whisky each, which we both chugged before ordering another round. Then we both lit a cigarette.

"I'm really sorry, Sash," I eventually said after we had spent a long time in awkward silence. "I should have reached out after the accident. I received your texts and I saw your calls, and I wanted to reply to you. I just—it was too hard. I couldn't. That was so selfish of me, I'm so sorry."

And here were the tears again. There hadn't been a single day since the accident where I hadn't cried – except the ones where I was in a coma, I guess – but this day was worse than most others. Sash reached over the table and wrapped her arm around my neck, smoothing out my hair.

"It's okay, babe. I know. We know, my parents and I. We were in contact with your parents when you were unconscious, and we kept in touch after you woke up. They told us that you were too depressed to talk to anybody, and that we needed to give you time. We know, and we don't blame you."

"How can you be so understanding? I let you and your family down when you needed me the most!"

"Babe, you lost the love of your life that day. You are entitled to feeling sad and processing the news in whatever way hurts the least."

I let out an umpteenth sob. Sasha moved her chair to sit next to me and pulled my entire body into a hug. She let me ruin her dress for a while, quietly humming in my ear to calm me down. I knew she was crying too. I could feel her shoulders shake. She just did a better job than me at not making it about herself.

She eventually let go of me but kept my hand in hers. She mindlessly played with the ring that I had never taken off since it had been offered to me. I ordered a new round of whisky.

"It is exactly what you think it is," I said, pointing my chin at my ring.

"And what do I think it is?" She asked.

"It's an engagement ring. Josh proposed a few weeks before he . . ." I trailed off at the end of my sentence, not able to finish it. I decided to leave out the pregnancy for the time being. Maybe she already knew, who knew what my parents had told hers?

Sash's mouth gaped open, and she brought her hands to her face.

"I don't know what to say, love."

I cringed at the word, and she noticed my discomfort. She was just as intuitive as her brother used to be.

"Sorry, babe. I won't call you that ever again. I just—What can I say? My instinct is to say congratulations and celebrate the news, but obviously that would be so stupid. What does one say in this situation? It just fucking sucks."

"Yup. It just fucking sucks . . ."

As yet another wave of deep sadness threatened to take over me, I removed my hand from Sasha's and slipped my fingers in the waistband of my pants, so I could feel my tattoo.

"What are you doing?" Sash asked with a raised eyebrow.

On second thought, maybe randomly stuffing my hand in my pants in public looked weird.

"Sorry, it's just that touching my tattoo helps with the sadness. It kind of anchors me when I feel like I'm about to break down."

"Oh okay. Well, not gonna lie, it kinda looks hot!"

And for the first time in a long while, a genuine laugh came out of my mouth. The sound was so unfamiliar to me that I almost thought it came from somebody else. But no, it came from me. Sasha joined me and we both drifted into hysterical laughter.

"You know," she eventually said when we both recovered our right minds, "if you wanted to, I'd be happy to tattoo you. I know you love symbols, Josh did too. Would you like something to commemorate him? It's on the house, of course."

I looked at her with wide eyes. How had I never thought of that before?

"Sash, I would love that!"

"I knew you would. Do you want to go now? My equipment is literally next door."

"Now? But aren't there rules like you're not supposed to drink before getting a tattoo or something?"

"I'm also not supposed to tattoo anybody after drinking, but I won't tell if you don't."

I accepted. I trusted her enough to know what she was doing.

We finished our drinks, she paid for the three rounds, and we came back to the parlor.

"You're back?" Teddy Bear asked my friend.

"I have some emergency tattooing to do on this lovely lady here."

"I see. Well, have fun, and give me a shout if you find yourself unable to finish the tattoo. I'll do it for you."

"Thanks, hun."

We went to the back of the shop, into one of the private rooms used for customers who needed privacy. She sat behind the desk and instructed me to sit in the tattooing chair.

"Do you have any idea what you might want and where?"

Years earlier, when Josh and I had chosen where to tattoo me, I wanted a placement that only he and I could see. It was our little secret, his private declaration of love to me. Now that he was no more, I wanted to scream about our love from the highest tower. I wanted everyone to know about it. I wanted this tattoo to be in a very visible place, and to represent our commitment to each other. I looked at my engagement ring.

"My finger, I want it on my finger."

She pursed her lips. "Babe, you don't have any visible tattoo, are you sure you want to do your finger? That's something people usually get tattooed after they've tattooed the rest of their body. Even I have bare fingers."

"I'm sure. I want it on my ring finger. On the inside, it'll be easy to hide, if that's what you're worried about."

"Mmh," she hesitated, not convinced. "Finger tattoos are the worst, they heal badly because of all the friction, and they often tend to wear off after a few years."

"Sash, I really don't care. It's about the message, I couldn't care less if it's not going to be perfectly crisp ten years from now."

"Okay," she conceded, "it's a tiny area, what were you speaking of getting?"

"Just a small sentence in Spanish. And his initials."

She handed me a piece of paper and a pen. I wrote Espérame, corazón. JIP on it.

"What does it mean?" She asked.

"It means 'Wait for me, sweetheart'."

Her face dropped.

"Are you sure that's what you want? It sounds very sad, and maybe even suicidal? That's a grim message to get inked on your body forever."

"I'm sure. I don't want to die, but when I do, I really hope I'll find him. And I hope he'll be waiting for me."

"But what if you find someone else to love? Isn't it going to be intimidating to them that you have a love declaration to somebody else on your body? What if they become the person you wish to meet again once you die?"

I cringed at the idea of loving somebody else. I couldn't in a million years. Josh was my one shot at love, we had had a great run, and unfortunately it was over.

"I won't. But even if I did, I wouldn't want to be with someone who would feel intimidated by my past. I'll always love Josh, if they can't deal with it, they can't be part of my life."

"Okay . . ."

She didn't seem convinced, but she didn't argue any longer. She made me pick the font of my tattoo from her portfolio. I couldn't find one that felt right so I ended up asking her to reproduce my own handwriting.

I removed my ring, which felt awfully weird, and I sat on the tattooing chair. It took her less than half an hour to tattoo me. The result was impeccable, as I expected it to be. She put cream on my new inking and wrapped it in cling film while telling me all the aftercare instructions.

I barely listened to her because my mind was toying with the idea of getting something else. I needed another keepsake.

"Sash, I wouldn't want to abuse your generosity, but do you think you'd be able to give me another tattoo? Something very small."

"Of course. Whatever you want, it's on me."

"Could you do something with the letters AJ? Something discreet, not too 'in your face'. I was thinking of getting it on my sternum, as close to my heart as possible."

"I can certainly draw something real quick, but I need more details. Who's AJ? Why are you getting a tattoo of them?"

I dropped dead silent. That answered the question on whether she knew about the pregnancy. It made sense that my parents hadn't told her parents and her about my miscarriage. It would have just given them one more person to mourn, and they didn't need that. I also suspected that my parents were not too proud of their young daughter being pregnant out of wedlock.

"Abby, who's AJ?" Sasha asked again, worry audible in her voice.

I could not speak the words. They were too painful to pronounce, and my throat felt like it was twisted into a knot. I felt the tears well up in my eyes, burning.

Because I couldn't speak, I put my hands to my stomach instead, like pregnant women do, hoping that she would get it.

And she did. The look of absolute pity on her face when she realized what I was talking about tipped me over edge and I started sobbing. Again. She pulled me into one of the tightest hugs I'd ever had.

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Abs."

She didn't say anything else and just let me weep in her arms for a while. When I eventually calmed down, she released me.

"We never knew," she said, "otherwise, we would have asked for the baby to at least be mentioned at the funeral, if not have their name on the gravestone."

"Nobody knew," I explained. "I was only eighteen weeks in, we were planning to announce everything at our graduation. We were on our way to know the sex of the baby when . . . when the accident happened."

Sasha brought her hand to her mouth when she heard that. Anybody would have done the same. Life had played quite a cruel joke on us, the kind that is so tragic that it horrified everyone. Except that it wasn't a tragic story to me; it was my reality.

"Can I strongly recommend that you don't have it on your sternum? It's literally the center of your body, you'll be reminded of your loss every single time you look in the mirror. There's no hiding that."

"I don't want to hide it."

"Abby, please. I see a lot of people with a lot of tattoos in the wrong places. Trust me on that one, you do not want to see it every day."

And because I did trust her, I listened. "Where are you thinking, then?"

"Honestly, for a memorial piece that is that tragic, I'd pick somewhere properly hidden, for your own sake. Like the back of your neck, for example. I could even shave your hair a bit and tattoo you where your hair is implanted. That way you can either leave it shaved and expose the tattoo, or let your hair grow and hide it."

"Yeah, okay, I like that idea."

She took a piece of paper and started drawing a few options for a small tattoo with the letter AJ. After a few back-and-forths and a long deliberation, I opted for a simple, discreet design that still conveyed my message: the letters AJ with tiny angel wings on either side and a halo above them.

She shaved a one-inch strip off the hair in the nape of my neck. It was a disgusting shade of bleached blond, stained with previous dyes and with one year worth of dark brown regrowth. I had not dyed my hair since the accident. Sasha had always been the one doing it for me, and it's not like doing my hair had been on top of my priorities anyway.

The tattooing process was, once again, fast, and surprisingly painless.

"You're supposed to avoid water on the tattoo for at least twenty-four hours," she explained, "but if I'm careful, I can do your hair. If you want."

"Sash, stop it. You've already bought me drinks and tattooed me twice. You don't have to do all this for me."

"I don't have to but I want to. I didn't just lose a brother that day, I lost a sister. I've missed you so much, I just want to do something I used to do before. I want to get a sliver of normality back in my life. If you don't do it for you, please do it for me. I'd love to do your hair."

I could not say no to that. "Okay."

She wanted to drive us to her apartment but I insisted that we take the metro. Once there, she sat me on a chair, a towel wrapped around my shoulders. She did not put a mirror in front of me and started to work. Patiently, she applied bleach on all my regrowth, taking great care not to touch the fresh tattoo, and toned it until she achieved a spotless platinum blond. Then we chose what color I wanted to get. We went for lavender, with darker purple roots. When she was done, my hair all rinsed and dried, she curled it for me.

The whole process took four hours, after which she took me to her bathroom with her hands covering my eyes. Then she stopped, lowered her hands, and I finally got to see the result of her hard work.

I almost cried when I saw my reflection. Actually, scratch that. I definitely cried. My hair had been a ratty mess for a year. I had tried my best to keep it clean, despite the multiple days I had no energy, nor will, to get out of bed. But basic cleaning once a week was all I had managed. It had not been cut, or dyed, or styled, since the accident. Now it was a smooth, beautiful cascade of light purple reaching all the way down to my boobs.

"It looks so nice, Sash. Thank you so much."

I turned around and gave her a hug so tight it might have been painful, but she let me do it. I cried on her shoulder. Because I missed Josh, because I had missed her, because my hair was pretty for the first time in a year, because it was very late and I was exhausted both physically and mentally. She rubbed my back along my spine and let me let it all out. I felt her shake against me. She was crying too.

I pulled away just enough to look up at her. Her sorrow mirrored mine.

I don't know what went through me. Like moved by an external force, I cupped her face in my hands and I kissed her. She was startled at first, but she didn't stop me. And then she kissed me back. Her lips were soft, tender, protective. And wet, just like mine, from the tears.

Her hand palmed the back of my head, her fingers tangling in my brand-new hair while safely avoiding the freshly tattooed area. I felt safe, and warm, like I had never felt since . . .

Shit!

I pulled away abruptly. I took a few steps back and covered my face with my hands.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" Was I apologizing to Sash or to Josh? I had no idea. Probably both. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I cried out.

"Abby, it's okay. No harm done."

"How can you say that? You're—you're—you're Josh's sister and I've never kissed a girl before. I'm completely out of my mind, I'm so sorry."

She took the few steps between us and grabbed my arm with the gentleness of a close friend, and she made me sit on the couch. She sat next to me and turned so she could face me. I couldn't look her in the eye.

"Abby, look at me." I didn't look at her. "It's fine. It happens."

There were approximately a million questions in my head. Somehow, I picked the most stupid one to say out loud.

"Does that mean I'm gay?"

She laughed so hard she was crying. Happy crying, this time.

"Honey, kissing one girl once does not make you gay. It's not about what you do, it's about what you feel."

"I don't know what I feel."

"Of course you don't. You're grieving, lonely, and confused. It's not the best time to be figuring out your sexuality."

"How could I do that? I've literally just cheated on Josh. With his sister! I'm awful, he would be so heartbroken if he could see it."

"Babes, stop it. Josh is dead, you're cheating on no-one."

"But—"

"I'm serious, Abs. What's your plan? Staying celibate until you die? You love Josh with all your heart, there has never been anything more obvious in the history of humanity, but you can't just stop living because he's not here anymore. Go, live, experiment with boys, girls, anyone you want. Figure out your sexuality and fall in love with someone else."

"He is your brother. Do you really wish for his fiancée to go fuck around? To dishonor his memory?"

"He was my brother, Abs. He doesn't exist anymore. And I wish for his quasi-widow to be happy. Just like he would have wanted you to be happy."

"And you think having sex with other people will make me happy?"

"I'm not telling you to go have sex with any stranger that come your way. But if you find someone you like and happen to have some . . . inclination towards them, I'm saying that you should not let the memory of a dead person keep you from exploring your options."

"I could never imagine sleeping with anyone other than Josh."

"And yet you just kissed me."

It felt like a punch in my gut.

"I'm not saying that to guilt you, Abs," she added. "But lust is a powerful, complex emotion, and it often comes at the weirdest time. It's not uncommon to hear of people reacting to grief with lust. You shouldn't feel guilty about it."

I was not equipped to talk about lust for other people than my dead fiancé. Especially not to my fiancé's sister.

"I should go. Thank you for my hair, I'm truly grateful."

I got up and headed to her door. She walked with me but stopped before I reached for the handle.

"Don't be silly. Stay here and sleep on my couch, it's way too late."

"I—"

I wanted to refuse, but the idea of taking the metro to the train station, and then the train back to San Diego in the middle of the night was scary. I accepted her offer.

"If Josh had known he would die, he would have asked me to look after you after his death," she said after she had set up the couch for me and was about to let me go to bed. "That's what I'm doing right now. Please Abs, don't waste your twenties waiting on somebody who's never coming back. Have fun, make mistakes, just . . . live. He would want that for you."

I kissed her cheek. "Thank you for everything, Sasha. Goodnight."

The weekend after that, Sigrid got invited to a frat party at UCLA through one of her friends from grad school. For the first time, I said yes. We met Cedric and Spencer that evening.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A/N: Oops, sorry for the delay in posting. I'm currently super busy with another, way less fun kind of writing, ie my PhD thesis.

This chapter is the last one ever of the past timeline, so those of you who didn't like that timeline, rejoice! And as always, next chapter on Wednesday, please vote and comment.

Love,
Charlie.