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Rufus pats the edge of the bed. “Get over here.” I sit down beside him and we get comfortable, linking our arms and legs together. We talk more about our histories, like how whenever he was acting out his parents would force him to sit in the middle of the room with them, kind of like how my dad would tell me to go take a shower and calm down. He tells me about Olivia and I tell him about Lidia.
Until it stops being about the past.
“This is our safe space, our little island.” Rufus traces an invisible circle around us. “We aren’t moving from here. We can’t die if we don’t move. You got me?”
“Maybe we’ll smother each other to death,” I say.
“Better that than whatever the hell is off our island.”
I take a deep breath. “But if for some reason this plan doesn’t work, we need to promise to find each other in the afterlife. There has to be an afterlife, Roof, because it’s the only thing that makes dying this young fair.”
Rufus nods. “I will make it so easy for you to find me. Neon signs. Marching bands.”
“Good, because I might not have my glasses,” I say. “Not sure if they’ll ascend with me.”
“You’re positive about a movie theater in the afterlife but not if you’ll have your glasses? Seems like an oversight in your heavenly blueprint.” Rufus removes my glasses and puts them on. “Wow. Your eyes suck.”
“You taking my glasses isn’t helping my case here.” My vision is hazy and I can only make out his skin tone, but none of his features. “I bet you look stupid.”
“Let me take a photo. Actually, lean in with me.”
I can’t see anything, but I look straight, squinting, and smile. He puts the glasses back on my face and I check out the photo. I look like I’ve just woken up. Rufus wearing my glasses is a welcome intimacy, like we’ve known each other for so long that this kind of silliness comes easily to us. I wasn’t ever counting on this.
“I would’ve loved you if we had more time.” I spit it out because it’s what I’m feeling in this moment and was feeling the many moments, minutes, and hours before. “Maybe I already do. I hope you don’t hate me for saying that, but I know I’m happy.
“People have their time stamps on how long you should know someone before earning the right to say it, but I wouldn’t lie to you no matter how little time we have. People waste time and wait for the right moment and we don’t have that luxury. If we had our entire lives ahead of us I bet you’d get tired of me telling you how much I love you because I’m positive that’s the path we were heading on. But because we’re about to die, I want to say it as many times as I want—I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.”
RUFUS
7:54 p.m.
“Yo. You know damn well I love you too.” Man, it actually hurts how much I mean this. “I don’t talk out of my dick, you know that’s not me.” I wanna kiss him again because he resurrected me, but I’m tight. If I didn’t have common sense, if I hadn’t fought so hard to be who I am, I would do some dumb shit again and punch something because I’m so pissed. “The world is mad cruel. I started my End Day beating up someone because he’s dating my ex-girlfriend and now I’m in bed with an awesome dude I haven’t known for twenty-four hours. . . . This sucks. Do you think . . . ?”
“Do I think what?” Twelve hours ago Mateo would’ve been nervous asking me a question; he would’ve done it, but he would’ve looked away. N
ow he doesn’t break eye contact.
I hate to ask it, but it might be on his mind too. “Did finding each other kill us?”
“We were going to die before we knew each other,” Mateo says.
“I know. But maybe this is how it was always written in stone or the stars or whatever: Two dudes meet. They fall for each other. They die.” If this is really our truth, I get to punch whatever wall I want. Don’t try and stop me.
“That’s not our story.” Mateo squeezes my hands. “We’re not dying because of love. We were going to die today, no matter what. You didn’t just keep me alive, you made me live.” He climbs into my lap, bringing us closer. He hugs me so hard his heart is beating against my chest. I bet he feels mine. “Two dudes met. They fell in love. They lived. That’s our story.”
“That’s a better story. Ending still needs some work.”
“Forget about the ending,” Mateo says in my ear. He pushes his chest away from mine so he can look me in the eye. “I doubt the world is in the mood for a miracle, so we know not to expect a happily-ever-after. I only care about the endings we lived through today. Like how I stopped being someone afraid of the world and the people in it.”
“And I stopped being someone I don’t like,” I say. “You wouldn’t have liked me.”
He’s tearing up and smiling. “And you wouldn’t have waited for me to be brave. Maybe it’s better to have gotten it right and been happy for one day instead of living a lifetime of wrongs.”
He’s right about everything.
We rest our heads on his pillows. I’m hoping we die in our sleep; that seems like the best way to go.
I kiss my Last Friend because the world can’t be against us if it brought us together.
