Then, I stand.
The bin looms beside me—old, rust-flaked, paint peeling like shed skin. This is it. The place they had discarded him–a different bin, but the location all the same. This had been the place he rose from, reborn from bitterness and longing.
And the place we had first truly seen each other.
I run my fingers over the side. The paint comes off on my hand like dust.
I want to scrape some into a jar, keep it like a memento.
But I don’t.
It feels wrong to disturb what might be the closest thing to a grave he’d ever have.
Instead, I place my hand on the lid.
Wait.
Lift it.
Empty.
Not just of trash. Of him.
“Eddy?” I whisper.
Silence.
“Guess you really did move on,” I murmur.
I close my eyes. Let myself see him again—smirking, shirtless, filthy, bold. Green tinged hair. Mouth full of bad ideas and good intentions. Beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with survival.
How is it that a man already dead had made me feel more alive than anyone in my entire living life?
How is it that love could crawl out of a bin and still be the purest thing I’d ever known?
I don’t cry. Not this time.
The ache in my chest is still there, but it doesn’t consume me. My heart feels stretched, like it's making room for both grief and gratitude.
“Eddy,” I say to the night, “if you can hear me—I just wanted to say… thank you.”
I don’t know what to thank him for specifically. For breaking my curse?
For the chaos of the last few weeks?
The love I never thought I’d be brave enough to feel again.
I stay a moment longer, letting the silence become part of me.
Then, I turn, zip up my hoodie and walk. I walk because running home at this hour would look strange. The walk home is quiet. Still wet from the midday storm, the streets shimmer under lamplight like spilled oil.
I pass various late-night animal shifters going for a walk, a group of vampire bodybuilders flexing in a gym with enchanted mirrors that show their reflections, a were-bear bakery open all night and always busy with an array of supernatural customers. The state of the current world’s normalcy, a world that would be unbothered by Bin-Spirits or janitors haunted by trashy romance.
At the corner near my apartment, I slow.
Two young men are sharing fries under a bus shelter. They are the first humans I’ve seen on this entire walk. One leans on the other’s shoulder. Their laughter is muffled by the plastic shield, but it still reaches me. It sounds easy. Joyful. Familiar in a way that hurts—but also heals.
I keep walking. It starts to spitting–not enough to make me want to run, but enough that it splashes on my glasses now and then, forcing me to clean it on the hem of my shirt.
