Sigrid: Thinking of you today. Call me if you need anything, I'm here for you. Love you.

Cedric: You're the strongest person I know. Courage. Love you.

Mom: Quisiéramos estar allí contigo. Mamá y Papá te aman mucho mucho. Besos.

It was raining. We were in the middle of spring in Southern California, and it was raining. Great.

I zipped up my rain jacket, stuffed my phone, keys, and wallet in my pockets, and I braved the outside world.

I arrived at my destination a good two hours later, after a detour by the florist. A bouquet of twenty-two black roses, as always.

The tree was the same as it always was. The bench was more worn than the year before, but in better condition than the year to come. It would keep getting more and more decrepit, year after year, until they decided it was time to retire it.

I tied the bouquet to the back of the bench, and I touched the golden plaque which bore his name and the name I had added under it with my key, years ago. Aaron Jo Paxton. I crossed myself. I considered myself an atheist but I was born and raised Catholic. That small gesture gave me a bit of solace, not because I believed in what it represented, but because it was a tradition I had grown into, it was my culture. And there's no better moment to go back to your roots than when you are in pain.

I sat on the bench, the wetness of its slats seeping into my clothes almost immediately. I should have brought a longer jacket, but none of my longer jackets would have held off the rain quite like that one.

I looked up at the sky. It was dark, gray, and cloudy, not one bit of blue sky peeking through. That awful weather was there to stay. It was still a long time before sunset, at least three hours, but I could tell the sky would not clear up by then, meaning I wouldn't be able to see the stars. As if I needed another reason to cry . . . I blinked and the tears started flowing. To the exterior eye, they might have looked like it was just the rain dripping down my cheeks. There was no mistaking the throbbing ache in my chest for anything else, though.

After a minute or two, I couldn't hold the sobs any longer. I gathered my knees to my chest, and I rested my forehead on them. Exactly four years before on that day, Josh had died, along with our unborn baby. There were days where grief was easier, just a dark shadow in a distant corner of my mind. But whatever I did, regardless of whom I asked to fuck me into oblivion, grief never disappeared. There had not been a single day since the accident when I had not thought of their deaths, and there never would be.

With the increasing amount of time I spent with Arthur, however, the moments where I felt debilitatingly bad had gotten rarer. It sometimes felt like Josh's memory was slowly fading away, only for him to eventually become an afterthought.

"No!" I cried out, and the few students that had braved the rain looked at me as if I were deranged. I gave them the finger and they looked away.

"Is that why it's raining today?" I asked the sky. "Are you punishing me for being with another man? Are you afraid I'll forget you?"

Just as I was saying that, a loud crack of thunder resonated. I had my answer.

"You've always been quite the odd one but speaking to the sky and expecting an answer is next-level crazy," a shrill, almost squeaky voice said from behind me.

That voice belonged to Sasha. Shorter than average, skinny, long silver hair, more piercings than you could count, and tattoos all over her body. She was wearing a tight black dress underneath a transparent rain jacket, and had foregone the heavy eye makeup for once, but she wore her signature dark lipstick. Usually burgundy or deep purple, that day it was jet black.

I jumped to my feet and wrapped my arms around her in a tight embrace. I let myself go completely and wept freely on her shoulder. I felt her do the same thing.

That's how it always went. I cried, she cried, usually me more than her, and we stayed by each other until we'd let it all out. Then we'd go get drunk at the bar next to her tattoo parlor.

When we sat, I leaned my head on her shoulder while both her hands held one of mine on her lap.

"So, about what you said when I arrived," she started hesitantly. "Are you seeing someone?"

"No," I answered too quickly. "I mean, it's not serious, it's nothing," I corrected.

She frowned. "Is it, really?"

"Yes. That guy doesn't mean much to me, I love Josh."

"Josh is dead, Abby."

"And here I thought we were playing the world-longest game of hide and seek," I snarked.

"Abby . . ."

"I know he's dead, Sash! Don't talk to me as if I didn't know. I think about it every. Single. Day."

"You're allowed to move on, hun."

I shook my head. "I don't want to."

"Why not?" She asked.

"Because I love him," I repeated, fighting – and losing – against my tears.

"You can love more than one person. Loving Josh shouldn't stop you from loving that other man."

I shuddered and shook my head. "No, no. I don't love Arthur, it's not serious at all between us."

She looked at me with the most 'who do you think you're kidding?' kind of face.

"Do you often talk to Josh's ghost about people you're not serious about?"

I felt a knot building in my throat.

"Can we—can we not talk about people I'm involved with while we're honoring Josh's memory? Please?"

"No."

I almost gave myself whiplash when I turned to face Sasha.

"No?" I asked.

"You heard me. I want to hear everything about that other man, and I want to hear it now."

The knot in my throat tightened.

"I can't," I choked. "I swear to God, Sash, I can't. It's like I'm betraying him."

She rubbed my shoulder in a soothing gesture. "Yes, you can. And you must. You can't put your life on hold forever. He wouldn't want that."

"He might not want that, but I'm sure he wouldn't want me to frolic happily with another man. He loved me just as much as I love him, it would have broken him to see me with someone else."

"He would want you to be happy, that I am positive about."

"How can I be happy without him?" I cried out.

More sobs stirred my body.

"You have to try, babe. For yourself, for Josh, for whoever that man is. You deserve it. And just because you're happy with someone else doesn't mean that you'll forget about Josh. There's space for both of them in your heart. I am sure of it."

I knew, deep down, that she was speaking the truth. But the guilt, the feeling of betraying him, of forgetting about him, were gnawing me inside out.

"You won't be able to have his blessing, but you have mine. And I'm his sister, so if that's not enough, what ever will be? I'm sure my parents would also give you their blessing."

"Don't you think it's an insult to his memory?"

She took a sharp inhale. "Abby, I'm not judging you, but don't you think that, should one have something to say about your romantic history, they'd find your sleeping around much more insulting than having one steady partner?"

Both Cedric and Sigrid had thrown that argument my way multiple times. And my reply was always the same: the absence of emotional attachment made sex an animalistic, instinct-led action. Yes, I did feel guilty – towards Josh, not society – for all the sex I was having, but I could justify it to myself on the account that those were basic needs. And also, sex was incredibly mind-numbing. For the few minutes before each orgasm, I wasn't a grieving girlfriend―fiancé. For a few minutes, all that mattered was reaching the coveted climax. Forgetting about my misery, even for such a short instant, was the most freeing thing. But then the grief and the guilt came back. They always did.

With emotional attachment, though, that was different. There was no escaping the grief, the guilt, the feeling that you're the worst human being on this planet. As you witness yourself falling for someone else, you can feel in the deepest part of your being that your last bond to your deceased loved one is getting frayed, strand by strand.

So no, I didn't find my sexual habits more disrespectful towards Josh than falling in love with someone else. The irony was that Josh was the one person who would have gotten it. We were alike in that way, very few people get to be in love like Josh and I were.

In fewer words, that's the answer I gave to Sasha. She nodded, accepted my reply, and didn't try to convince me otherwise.

"Abril!"

Sash and I turned around as one person towards the person that had called out my name. I recognized the voice immediately, although it wasn't any less surprising to find him there.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I hollered at him, both out of shock and to cover the sound of the pouring rain and occasional thunder.

Arthur was walking fast towards us, wearing a navy suit and dress shoes, carrying a black umbrella over his head.

He ignored my question and kept walking towards us. He kissed the crown of my head as a greeting and stood close to me so both Sash and I were partially covered by his umbrella.

"Hello, I'm Arthur. Abril's boyfriend." He extended his hand to Sasha.

I was too dumbstruck to introduce them myself. How could he be here? He couldn't have guessed that himself, could he? I mean, a Google search with my name and Caltech probably would have given him Josh's name and the details of the accident, and then Josh's name would have given him the location of the bench we were sitting on, so it's not like it was too hard. But Theo had said that he would never look me up on the Internet, and he had forbidden his friends from doing so. Maybe he'd changed his mind?

Sasha discreetly elbowed to shake me out of my stupor, and she shot me a glance before putting her focus back on Arthur. She thankfully didn't comment on the B-word.

"Hi, I'm Sasha. I'm an old friend of Abby's." She shook his extended hand.

It was an interesting way of introducing herself. She was my friend, so it wasn't really a lie. But she was so much more than that. She was my almost-sister-in-law, she was the last link to my soulmate, she was, in more ways than one, my savior. Funnily enough, she also was my tattoo artist and my piercer.

"Oh yes," he improvised. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Don't lie, car—Arthur. I've never talked to you about her."

He blushed as brightly as a lighthouse in the dark.

"I apologize," he addressed Sasha. "Abril and I disagree when it comes to lying for the sake of sparing people's feelings."

Sasha let out a small laugh. "That's okay. I'm British, telling white lies to preserve political correctness is our national sport."

Then Arthur let out a small laugh in turn.

"Maybe it's a generational thing," I joked. "You are both thirty, you've probably been raised similarly."

"Hey!" Sasha chastised me. "I haven't turned yet. I'm still twenty-nine for a little while."

"And I'm thirty-one already."

I turned to Arthur. "How do I not know that?" I asked.

"I had my birthday when we were . . ."

Broken up, I added mentally. Then it dawned on me that I had known the man for eight months and I still didn't know when his birthday was. I really was negligent and selfish.

"When's your birthday?"

"Fourteenth of February."

Several things happened at the same time. Sasha's hand froze around my shoulder, my body stiffened, and I blurted out, "Shut the fuck up!" while more tears pooled at the corners of my eyes.

"I'm going to leave you two alone," Sash said.

"Please don't," Arthur objected, and I couldn't say I didn't agree with him. "I'm clearly intruding on your conversation. I'll go wait in my car until Abril is ready to go home."

"Nonsense. You two have a lot to talk about, and I need to go anyway."

That was a lie. Like me, she had taken the day off.

She kissed me on the cheek, reminded me that I was welcome to come see her anytime and, right before she left, she murmured a soft "Be happy, Abby," in my ear.

When she was out of sight, Arthur sat next to me, a good foot away from me. His eyes snagged on the gold plaque that bore Josh's name and his face changed as comprehension hit him.

He put a tentative hand between my shoulder blades and rubbed me softly. The fabric of my rain jacket made a satisfying crinkling noise.

"I am very sorry for your loss, Abril."

I was already barely holding it together, but hearing those words that I had heard so many times, in his mouth, completely undid me. I dissolved into tears, sobs, and frankly a disgusting amount of snot.

"Can I—Can I hold you?" Arthur asked. "I have no idea what to do, I—Please let me hold you."

I cried even harder, but this time not just for Josh. I was bawling my eyes out for another man, and yet Arthur was there, ruining his expensive suit on the wet bench, trying to make me feel better although I hadn't even deigned to tell him what I was sad about, what this whole story was about. My gratefulness towards Arthur made me cry some more, and then another wave of guilt towards Josh hit me. There was no escaping a downward spiral.

As the crying became very intense, to the point that even breathing was difficult, Arthur stopped waiting for my answer and, with the one arm that wasn't holding the umbrella, he leaned over to grab my waist and he pulled me onto his lap. He lowered my hood and tucked my head underneath his chin while his arm held me so close, and so tight, it was almost painful.

I didn't have the strength to object. It was wrong to be sitting on his lap, on the bench that was dedicated to Josh. I knew it. But I couldn't bring myself to pull away.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him again when the sobs had calmed down enough.

"I had a meeting with Sigrid today and she strongly advised me to come here. She didn't say why, she just said to do it 'if I knew what was best for me'."

"You just listened to her and left without asking for more information?"

"Well, I guessed that it had something to do with you. So I came."

"You ditched work for me?"

"Of course."

He took my left hand and tangled our fingers together while I kept crying in his neck.

"I can't believe you were born on Valentine's Day." I squeezed his hand.

"What's so unbelievable about it?"

"It was his birthday too." I tilted my head towards the plaque.

"Oh. That's an uncanny coincidence. I'm . . . sorry?" He brought our joined hands to his mouth and kissed the top of my knuckles.

"Don't be silly. If anything, I should take it as a fucking huge sign from the universe."

"I'm tempted to agree, but I'm not going to use your current emotional state to lure you to me."

I thanked him for that. My cheek on his chest, I nestled deeper into him and I tried not to dwell on the similarities between Josh and Arthur. Both in appearance and behavior, they couldn't be more different. Josh was a laid-back, take-it-easy kind of dude with a rebellious streak and a goth-meet-gym-bro-meet-alt aesthetic, while Arthur was . . . Arthur. A preppy, neurotic man with daddy issues who hated physical touch and who had spent his college life waking up before dawn to go rowing while Josh and I had spent ours going to bed after dawn.

Yet, they both loved me similarly. Deeply and protectively. Passion had never been the goal, but rather safety, stability, and comfort.

Yeah, so much for not dwelling on comparing them.

"You know," Arthur eventually broke the silence, "my birthday is the reason I became friends with Valentine." I chuckled. "When he saw my birthdate on my registration sheet during Orientation Week, he made a comment that I was born on his name day. I told him I had no idea which saint was celebrated on that day, and he looked at me like I was the stupidest person he had ever met. Then he clarified and we laughed, both at my cluelessness and at his peculiar name."

"That's a cute story."

"It never fails to amuse the crowds."

More silence. His finger mindlessly rubbed along the tattoo on mine. I let him.

"Is JIP Josh?" He phrased it as a question, but it was obvious he knew the answer already. I simply nodded. Then I cried some more.

"I miss him so much," I wailed against his chest, my tears and snot ruining his suit jacket. "He was the love of my life, I love him more than anyone, and every day without him is pure agony!"

I can't imagine how hard it must have been for Arthur to hear me confess my love for another man while I hadn't been able to love him back. But he handled the blow gracefully. There was not an ounce of jealousy or hurt in his behavior.

"I'm lucky enough to have never experienced such a loss, so I can't possibly understand the depth of your pain, but I fully sympathize with it. I am truly sorry, Abril. I would tell you it gets better but I'm not sure it ever does."

He kissed the top of my head and rocked me from side to side. I closed my eyes and let the movement calm me.

He didn't once ask to go home. He stayed right there with me on his lap, in a silence that was only broken by my occasional sob or the occasional roar of thunder. The rain was pouring more and more heavily and had become an appeasing background noise. Even when there started to be lightning bolts and I could hear him in my head urging me to get away from a tree in such a situation, he did not move.

I made the call to go home. When the sun began to set and the storm was still raging, I eventually stopped hoping that I'd be able to see any stars that night. I told him I was ready to go back to my apartment so that's where he drove me.

He left the umbrella outside my flat to dry and came straight to me. He peeled off my rain jacket and put it on the hook behind my door. Then, one by one, he removed every single article of clothing I was wearing and placed it on the back of my chair. They were all soaked through, and so was I.

In a surprising fashion, he swept me off my feet and carried me to the bathroom.

"If we were at mine, I'd run you a hot bath, but a hot shower will have to do."

With one hand, he turned on the water and he only put me down in the shower after he'd made sure the water was hot enough. While I stood still to let the shower warm me up, he took off his own wet clothes and jumped right in with me.

He grabbed my bottle of shampoo and proceeded to wash my hair, then the rest of my body. It was very gentle and nurturing, there was nothing sexual in this act, even when he lathered soap on my breasts and between my legs. When he was done with me and my multiple rounds of shampoo and conditioner, he soaped himself up quickly and rinsed us both.

He got out first, only to get his hands on the fluffiest towel he could find and to wrap me in it. He wrapped my hair in another towel and used a third one for himself.

He carried me again and gently placed me on my bed. When he opened my underwear drawer, all the blood from his body rushed to his face. It took him a second to shake it off.

He picked pink cotton undies and slid them up my legs after removing my towel. He grabbed my body lotion from the bathroom and applied some on my whole body, more thoroughly than I had ever done myself. Then he opened my pajama drawer and dressed me with a bright red set that had Mulan's face on the top and tiny orange Mushus on the bottom.

Finally, and that was probably the best part, he untied the towel on my head and brushed my hair delicately, diligently, until there was not a single knot left.

"I would do your face, but I'm afraid I'll mess up your elaborate routine. Do you mind doing it yourself while I get dressed?"

Once again, I replied non-verbally and got started on applying my products that he had nicely brought to me. In the meantime, he put on one of the loose cotton shorts I wore on lazy Sundays.

"Where's my shirt?" He asked after a minute of thoroughly searching my shirt drawer.

"You don't keep any shirts here."

"I know. We need to change that, by the way. But I meant your feminist shirt. The yellow one. I always wear it when I'm here."

"Oh."

It was my turn to have my blood rush to my cheeks. Sheepishly, I lifted the pillow from my bed and let him take in the shirt that was underneath it.

"You—you wear this shirt to sleep?"

"No, I—" Dammit, I should have said yes, it was less humiliating. "I just hold it. It smells like you."

The softest smile to date appeared on Arthur's lips.

"You're so adorable right now," he said almost inaudibly while shaking his head. I'm not sure I was supposed to hear that. Then he raised his voice and addressed me. "Do you mind if I wear it now? Or would you rather hold on to it? You get to have it in your bed tonight either way."

"You don't want to wear that, I haven't washed it since last time." He shuddered almost imperceptibly. "Are you staying overnight?"

"Of course, I'm not leaving your side unless you want me to. And I don't mind wearing the shirt as it is."

He plucked it from where it lay on my bed and slid it on. He sat on the bed, just behind me, his back resting against the wall. He reached for me and dragged me onto his lap, where he wrapped me into a tight bubble of warmth and safety again.

"You have work tomorrow morning," I said.

"I'll just go in the afternoon."

"Won't your father kill you?"

"I barely take any days off, he'll be fine. And to hell if he's not."

I chuckled. Arthur's swearing, though rare, never failed to amuse me.

"You don't have to stay," I continued. "My bed is too small, and you can't do your morning erg here."

"Do you not want me to stay?" He asked.

"No, of course I want you to stay. I just . . . I don't want you to—"

"Abril, I'm staying. I'm not leaving you."

I softened dramatically in his arms when he said that. I didn't get to feel safe often.

He grabbed both my hands in his and he just held them there, indefinitely and with only the sound of our respective breathings as background noise. Occasionally, he would let go of one hand just to push my hair behind my ear, kiss my cheek, and tell me he was here for me. I could tell that he was dying to tell me he loved me. But he understood that that was not the right time. I was mourning Josh, there was no space for Arthur's love.

"That's a lot of touching," I noted.

"I know. You need it."

"But you don't like it."

"What I don't like is seeing you hurt and not being able to take it away. If holding you can alleviate at least a fraction of your pain, there is no part of me that is uncomfortable doing so."

With every single fiber of my being, I hated that it happened on that day. But it did happen, and it happened on that specific day. On the day I was supposed to celebrate my dead soulmate and my unborn baby, I fell in love with Arthur Dullac, ladies and gentlemen.

"Cari?"

"Yes, darling?"

"I need to show you something."

I got off his lap and opened my closet. On the top shelf, hidden between piles of badly folded clothes, was a box I had not opened in four years. It contained all the mementos from my relationship with Josh, various objects as mundane as the condom wrapper from the first time we'd had sex or as meaningful as the first sonogram of our baby. Everything that was left of him, of us, was in that box. Some of the stuff in there was his, our parents had found the box when they had sorted his belongings after his death and had passed it on to me. I had only opened it once, when I was freshly out of coma, and that had been one of the most difficult things I'd ever done. I had added merged his box with my own, which contained, the stuffed animal he had won for me at the carnival, the notes he never failed to write me when he was going to be home late or when he was out before I woke up, the first onesie he'd ever bought for AJ, a cute little black think that looked too tiny to fit any kind of human being. Once I had put all of my stuff in that box, I had closed it tightly and never opened it again. Not because I didn't want to, but because it was too painful to even think about.

Until that day. Don't get me wrong, it was painful, like my chest was being split in two. But it was necessary. I opened the box and let Arthur peek at it. The first thing I picked was the sonogram. It brought a fresh set of tears to my eyes.

"You saw the plaque with Josh's name, right?" I asked. He nodded. "Did you see another name on it?"

"Yes. Aaron Jo Paxton. No date."

Hearing my baby's name in a mouth that wasn't mine felt strangely comforting, like it validated their existence as a human being.

"You didn't ask about it," I stated.

"It was obvious you didn't want me to."

I handed the sonogram to him. He took it carefully, his fingers shaking and his eyes growing slightly bigger when he saw the picture.

"They don't have a birthdate because they were never born," I said.

"'They'?"

"The baby is genderless. We never got to know the sex before . . ."

"I see."

He placed the sonogram back in the box, moved the box out of the way, and cupped my cheeks in his hands. With his thumbs, he wiped away my tears.

"Abril, again, I'm so sorry."

"Thank you. But you should stop saying that or you'll be repeating it every other minute. That's a sad story."

"You don't have to tell me the story now. I can wait."

"I want to."

So I told him. From the first time Josh and I met to our last moments together, all the firsts he had been for me, and the part of my soul he'd taken away from me when he passed. I told him everything, and he listened.

* * *

Both Arthur and I were a sobbing mess after I told him the story. We cried together for a while, after which he thanked me for finally telling him. He didn't tell me he loved me, for the same reason he hadn't told me earlier. He ordered food for us, which we ate quietly in front of the TV that none of us watched. We went to bed early as I was exhausted from all the crying. We got on our sides in an entanglement of limbs, facing each other. My face against his chest, I let his smell envelop me and I cried myself to sleep while he gently stroked my hair.

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

A/N: Unfortunately, not all chapters can be cute, worry-free fluff. Some have to be a bit more intense and serious, and that's the case for this one. Sorry if it was tough.

We're almost at the end of this book, only two more chapters to go plus an epilogue. Next chapter on Friday, please vote and comment.

Love,
Charlie.