✾ Edelweiss ✾

I was crying again. I wanted to stop it, but couldn't. I had tried to. I'd squeezed my eyes shut so tightly that it felt like they were going to pop out of my skull, but to no avail. As soon as I opened them, I started crying again. Sometimes I got like this. It had happened even before mom had died. I would get to thinking about something sad and then a waterfall of emotion poured out, emotion that I normally kept somewhat bottled up and hidden under the excuse that I was an introvert and 'just don't talk much.'

This time was different, though. I wasn't thinking about what it must be like for a dog when they're left alone in a house for too long. I was thinking about mom, who I felt like I was always thinking about now. She was just everywhere, in everything. It felt oppressively heavy.

I sunk into myself, pressing a hand to my chest where it hurt the most. It was a long, deep, pervasive ache. I just wanted it to go away. I looked back at my room, painted blue in the moonlight, and listened to the honking of horns from down below. My room. Except it wasn't, was it? I had been here for two months, explored the city, started school, met Ren. Met Ren! But none of it felt real. A piece of me felt like I would wake up in my room and see my mom yanking the curtains open, blinding me with sunlight and mumbling something about early birds and croissants.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch something. It was so unfair. What part of this was fair? What did I do wrong? Horribly, I felt guilty for leaving what was left of my old life. When I'd stepped out of my childhood home for the last time, I hadn't thought much of it. I thought I was walking to my death, after all. Probably. I don't know what I was thinking, but it wasn't about the life I was leaving behind, the life I would miss so freakishly much.

I thought of the little house we'd had, of the kitchen which had barely fit two people in it. But it had been enough for me, with tall windows that let in generous light, making it feel bigger than it was. The marble counters were often covered in flour. My mom loved to bake. If I walked into the kitchen while she was at it, lured by the smell of apple turnovers or chocolate chip cookies, she'd touch a floury finger to my nose and wink at me.

I missed her. I missed her, I missed her. I cried harder, my eyes aching, burning, swelling up. I didn't know how long it had been since I had first stepped out onto my balcony, but I'd been crying the entire time. I wiped my gross nose and decided to step inside, shutting the squeaky door behind me. I sat on my bed briefly, feeling particularly restless. Maybe I could go for a walk or something. But no, Ren wouldn't want that; it was late, and he said that he didn't want me to go out walking alone at night.

I curled my legs to my chest, trying to breathe deeply but feeling like my lungs were being squeezed. There was only so much room in my rib cage, and the grief that had taken up residence there left little room for my organs.

And then something happened. Suddenly, completely beyond the realm of my self control, my legs were carrying me out of the room. My heartbeat thundered as I watched my feet take step after step, watched my hand spin the doorknob, watched my knuckled rap delicately, shyly against the peeling wood.

Minutes passed that were really seconds. The door creaked open. I inhaled sharply. "Sorry," I squeaked. Ren was shirtless. His tattoos spiraled up his arms, spilling fabulously onto his chest. My hands itched to move. I felt the desire to touch him burn all the way from my fingertips to my shoulders.

Ren rubbed his left eye with his palm, and I glared at my feet so that I wouldn't stare at him. "Sorry," I said again, quietly. "I didn't mean to-"

"What's wrong?" The genuine concern in Ren's voice made me look up. He donned an expression so agonized that I thought for a moment that my grief had somehow leapt from my heart to his. "You've been crying again," he said quietly, his eyebrows knit. His voice was deeper than usual, burdened by drowsiness as though it had sunk deeper down into his chest as he'd slept.

Ren looked like he was going to cry now, too. "Is it your mom?" he asked, reaching for me. Ren's hand touched my hair the way it usually did, with such tenderness and delicacy that I almost believed that the world could contain genuine happiness again.

I nodded, a curl falling into my eyes. I was grateful for it, because it let me hide my swollen, gross face from Ren. But Ren's hand moved from the top of my head, guiding my hair from my aching eyes with the back of his fingers. His fingertips dragged across my forehead, making my skin tingle and giving me a hint of goosebumps. My brain tried to ignore that, but my heart devoured it like it had been starved my entire life and was only now getting a sample of the possibilities.

Ren sighed deeply, a sound that seemed to hold all of the pain in the world. It was the sound I imagine willow trees should make in the wind. He raised his other hand and held my face. I wanted to exhale and exhale and exhale until there was nothing left of me and I was just stardust. It felt wrong that Ren made me feel such a way, like I shouldn't feel so at peace in a world where my mother wasn't.

"I'm glad you came," Ren whispered. "Come here."

And I did. I leaned into him, my strength to resist leaving me instantaneously. He was like a magnet, and I was hurtling toward him with no means of stopping. For now, it was ok. I was here because of my pain, not because of whatever the compelling, addicting feeling I felt for Ren was. My conscious mind diligently resisted my attraction to Ren, but my body wasn't so obedient. Every one of my muscles relaxed into his embrace, my eyes sagging closed and my heart beating deeply, steadily. Beating for Ren.

His hand rubbed my back between my shoulder blades in small circles. His skin was just as cold as it always was. I pressed my face into his shoulder and felt my burning eyes cool slightly. The very tip of my ear touched Ren's jaw. I realized how much that little point of contact meant to me, like the tiny, gentle touches of his were very much so more important than the expanse of his chest I was pressed against. The small, repetitive circular motion. The fingertips resting on the edge of my shirt, right on the border where the fabric became skin. The tickling feeling of Ren's breath on my hair.

I tilted my head slightly. I wish I could say that I didn't realize I was doing it, but I knew what was happening. I was giving in to my weakness. My forehead rested in the crook of his neck and my lips hovered millimeters from his skin. I kept my hand tightly in a fist but touched the back of my hand to his chest where my arm was squished between our bodies. 

Slowly, slowly, I unfurled my fingers until the back of my whole hand was touching him. It felt like I wasn't doing anything bad, like I was tiptoeing up to the line but not quite crossing it. I wanted to press my hands against him, trace his tattoos freely. But this feeling was good, too...like holding a firefly in my hands.

But then my breath changed. I had no idea what was happening, really, or when it started happening. But I was...I pushed away from Ren and left the room, the air whooshing from my lungs. My face was burning and my pulse hammering. Had he noticed? Had his breath hitched or had that been mine? I tried to stifle it, think of that unhappy, lonely puppy or the gross food-bit soup that gathers at the bottom of the sink. No one had ever had that effect on me before. Sure, it had happened. I'd gone through puberty, after all, and I'd already had that dream. Oh no, don't think about the dream. Puppies and soup. Puppies and soup.

But no one, no one had made that happen before. My head was going to explode.

"It's ok," Ren said. He was leaning in the doorway all James Dean, his hands crossed over his chest. "Don't be embarrassed, Beau."

Then again, no one had ever really held me like that before. It was so...intimate. I felt somehow safe and endangered simultaneously, like Ren would always protect me from the world but no one could protect me from him.

"I'm sorry, I-" I still couldn't look at him and instead threw myself onto the couch, trying to hide what evidence might be left. "I didn't-"

"Don't apologize, Copper," Ren said. He walked towards me, and his hand was in my hair again. I closed my eyes. "You're mourning the most important person in your life. You don't have to be embarrassed about that with me. You don't have to worry."

Mourning...oh god. I'd basically used the excuse of my mom's death to touch Ren. Who was I? Who was this person I was turning into? I felt nauseous, sick with guilt. I looked at the moon out the window and apologized to my mom. But if he wasn't talking about my rebellious lower half, did that mean he hadn't noticed?

"I woke you up," I said, the best I could do in terms of apology while my heart was still beating a mile a minute.

"Not gonna lie, waking up to your crying face was not the best experience. But there are worse ones, I'm sure," he said, sitting beside me. He leaned his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together so that his snake hissed at the flower on the back of his other hand.

"I just wanted to see you," I half-whispered. I was mostly calmed down now, thank god. I shouldn't have gone to his room, but I'd stopped crying, at least. That, if nothing else that had just happened, was good.

I tentatively looked at Ren, trying to gauge his reaction. He wasn't looking at me. I stared at his back. I was examining his tattoos initially, but caught sight of his cigarette scars, angry reminders of Ren's pain. Had he had someone to go to when he felt lost, hurt, and alone? When his dad...

"What was her middle name?"

I stirred from my stupor. "Huh?"

"Your mom's. I don't know it," Ren said, leaning back so he could look at me.

I smiled. "Love. Vanessa Love Bryant was her name. She debated keeping her maiden name when she married my dad. She liked 'Love.' But she decided that she wasn't really changing it all that much, in the end."

"What do you mean?"

"She used to say that my dad, the Bryant in question, was the love of her life, so if she changed it, she would just have two loves in her name instead of one. The more love the merrier." I smiled. "Thanks for asking."

"She sounds like the kind of person that makes life easier. Better."

I nodded. "She was. Whenever I didn't know what to do or was worried about something, I went to her. It was like she had a magical solution to everything, and things that seemed impossible for me to do or figure out, she could conquer with a wink and a snap of her fingers." I felt an ache behind my eyes again and stamped down on it. "She liked to bake."

Silence hung around us for a moment. "Do you?"

"Do I what?" I asked.

"Like to bake," Ren said. I smiled slightly and nodded. "We should bake sometime." I nodded again. Ren leaned his head back. "I've never baked before."

"How come?" I asked.

"Was never really into that sort of thing. Cooking, baking," he said. I thought that was the end of the explanation, but he went further. His answer changed and so did his voice. "I can cook, like, three meals well, two of which you've had already. My parents weren't like your mom."

"What...were they like?"

Ren didn't look at me. He just stared at the ceiling with his head resting on the back of the couch. "They never made my life easier. I was never at the center of the world for them, the way a kid is supposed to be. I was an accident, and I felt it every day."

"An accident?"

"They got married because of me. My dad was rich. He fucked my mom at a nightclub—because he was rich and he thought the whole universe was his, screw the consequences. When she got pregnant, he married her because his parents told him to do so. But he hated her for it, for tricking him into it. Which she actually had, intentionally. And then he hated me for existing because I ruined his life and stole his freedom...by being born. He blamed everyone but himself.

"So he took it out on me. And my mom didn't do anything. Never stood up to him once, was content just to survive on his money and act like a ghost in the hallways, avoid him whenever possible by going on expensive trips and pretending she didn't have a son. So I stayed at home alone, eventually escaped to boarding school—thank god—and went to college to get a business degree because my parents wanted me to take on responsibility at my dad's corrupt company. And all I wanted was to make them happy, despite hating them."

I knew I shouldn't have. I knew it. But here was Ren looking supremely hurt, lonely, and vulnerable, and I just couldn't stop myself. He needed someone to see him, to show him that he wasn't a discarded child. He needed to know that someone cared. I reached up and rested my hand in his hair the way he always did for me. "You must have been lonely," I said quietly, my voice wavering.

Ren looked at me. "The way you are now, I suppose."

His hair was so soft. "Maybe sometimes. But then I remember that I've got you now."

Ren smiled and closed his eyes. His eyelashes fluttered slightly and his poetry red lips softened into a slight smile. "Me, too, you."

"And now you're an artist," I said, sliding my hand from his hair. He opened his eyes again, and the moment slipped away. I missed it, but knew that I couldn't stretch it out too thin without danger of falling through and down and in. Just falling. "How did that happen?"

"I realized that I was tired of trying to earn the love of a woman who wanted me in order to get money and a man who never wanted me in the first place. Not sure which was worse. So I rejected them, decided to be honest about my hatred for business school, and quit it all. I wanted to do something I loved, that I had passion for. It's been two years. I haven't talked to either of my parents since I told them. Well, not until recently."

"You talked to them again?" I asked.

"Not them. My mom. She helped me get you into NYU."

My eyes bugged out of my head. "What!?"

"I wanted you to have the opportunity, so I sucked it up and spoke to her again. She cried when I called her. Apologized. Cried some more."

I was shocked. Ren had thrown away years of resentment and--quite honestly--parental harm to get me into a school. He'd done that when I'd barely known him, when I was just some random, depressed kid from the top of a building he'd taken under his wing. 

"Thank you," I said. I wanted to launch towards him and hug him but didn't. I wanted to cry but didn't. "Thanks."

Ren smiled brilliantly, heart-blindingly. "Would do it again. Besides, it wasn't bad to talk to my mom. She seemed honestly remorseful. Maybe two years of radio silence changed her. I don't know."

"I hope so."

"Yeah," he said. "Me, too." He stared at me for a second. "You should go to sleep, Copper."

I nodded, sighing and standing. "Thanks, Ren."

"Would do it again," he said with a wink. My heart grinned, but I hid my smile.

"Goodnight."

"Sleep well. Dream of edelweiss."

"Dream of what?" I asked, confused but amused.

"Edelweiss. It's a flower. Most people say it means courage."

I couldn't hide the smile this time. I half-scoffed, half-laughed. "You know flower meanings?"

Ren blushed. He blushed. And I did the only reasonable thing to do in that situation which was watch my soul leave my body. "Yeah. I don't usually tell people that because it makes me seem weird. But I think it's interesting. I didn't mean to tell you, either."

I laugh laughed this time, shaking my head. "No, I think it's-" Cute. Shit, I almost said that out loud. "-not weird. It's cool."

Cool? What the hell am I saying?

Ren smiled. "A plant that is of honorable qualities, the Edelweiss, which makes its seeker climb and its lover woo. Its nobility is found in its upbringing: rare and where only few can surely get to." Ren rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "It's a good plant. It...grows in the Alps."

I smiled. What a weirdo. I wondered if he had a tattoo of an edelweiss bloom somewhere.

"Sorry," he said. "Goodnight."

"Dream of edelweiss."

I shut my door behind me, happy that he hadn't recommended a flower that meant sadness or even happiness for my dreams but one that was more important, one that meant courage. I went to sleep feeling closer to Ren than I ever had.