Cowboy

I had a hard time dealing with the idea that he could be gone for so long, so often, for God only knows how or when. But why. Why was the answered question, the irritating, incessant, poison dripping from the pore of every thought, every action my mind chose to grant me.

But he knew that.

It was not so much out of comedy that he smiled at my tears of bitterness, nor was it out of romance that he stroked my chin, rested our heads together, and stared me straight in the eyes for the first time in our friendship. I had seemed to have met him only days ago and yet some how, some way, his contagious smile and constant jokes drew me in.

Now they were spitting me out.

Something filled up
My heart with nothing
Someone
Told me not to cry

"Why even try?" I choked, staring up at Stefan with eyes void of light. My eyebrows knit together in a way I had never quite felt, stuck as I once was in my bubble of books, of school, of knowledge. What I had once valued as a key to life was now my enemy. Because of this boy, I had strayed away from my studies.

Because of him, I felt for more than books, more than numbers or letters. I could truly, without restriction, feel.

But he was becoming, slowly, the venom in my veins, the weight on my shoulders. His lazy, confident eyes shone down on mine inquisitively. He questioned everything about my obsessive compulsive behavior, told me to slouch, told me to eat with my hands every once awhile, told me to curse, to run, to jump, to nap, to dream, to just get lost in the moment.

"Why even try what?" that smile of his twitched ever so hesitantly on his paled lips, chapped by the scrape of his teeth to the smooth skin there. The moment the slick little pink muscle jutted from between his lips, wetting the chapped skin and disappearing within a second, his smile faded just slightly; slightly enough to leave me knowing that it was all simply a charade.

That was Stefan for you, the joker, the prankster, the boy without a care in the world. Yet behind those dark eyes lay someone who firmly believed that human connections were composed of a joke and finite memorization. Humans to him were like books: You read them once, maybe twice, learn them to the point of boredom, even memorize a few lines.

But he was the reader who only read the surface context, never the underlying elements that make stories valuable in themselves. He could not explain what a locket means more than a pendant or a tiny picture frame. He couldn't even accurately place meaning to a shy nature or the implications of judgments as insecurities personified. No, no... Stefan could see not what lies under the surface, but he could tell you about your littlest habits, your tiniest quirks and gestures.

"Don't do that... Smile," I whispered now, trying so hard not to stutter that my throat burned with flexion's intensity.

That smile twitched once or twice, falling from his lips with a dull thud in the silence. The barren floor of his apartment hauntingly peered up at us in the artificial light, nothing more than a few boxes surrounding the two of us.

That was it.

He was leaving tomorrow.

But now that I'm older
My heart is colder
And I can
See that it's a lie

"Remember the first time I made you smile for me?" he whispered, "I meant what I said back then... When I told you you're pretty."

"Stefan, stop trying to make me fe--"

"No, no... I mean... I meant it," he stuttered freely, something I didn't have the strength to allow myself to do. In his cheesiness I found an endearing level of vulnerability I couldn't help but perk my ears to.

Had the tables turned? He was suddenly the one reading beneath the surface of the lines, sifting through past pages of text to find what he knew he had thought of before, subliminally transmitted through my every gesture.

"What are you getting at?" I questioned, looking away from him to run a hand over the surface of his white carpet. Probably for the last time.

Sitting up slightly on his knees, the boy leaned forward and reached into a box over my shoulder. I hardly moved, knowing damn well that he would explain the moment he was done fiddling around. It was the drop of weight on my head that caught me slightly off guard, slightly on edge.

My fingers inched upward to the weight at my scalp. Thin straw prickled my finger tips, familiar World Juniors hat, the very hat that gave him his nickname, sitting snugly on my head.

"I always knew it would fit on you better than me."

"Stef..."

"Keep it."

"What?"

"Keep it."

I scrambled to take his prized cowboy hat off of my head. His hand immediately sealed over mine, pressing the hat against my chest as he leaned forward. "Please, Kate, just keep it. It's a promise."

In my own confusion, I raised a brow, trying desperately not to cry. "You never said anything about a promise. Of what?"

"That I'm going to come back for it. Some day."

"You're playing hockey, Lege, not going to summer camp or something."

"Hey, that's my favorite hat. Give me some credit?" His eyes seemed to get a little wider and hopeful, that smile nowhere to be found. To my surprise, he moved into me more, moving my hand and his at off to my side in order to collapse on me without crushing his prized possession. His face burrowed in the crook of my neck, eyes shutting as he let out a long breath.

"And I'm going to miss you, y'know... I mean, I'm going to miss a lot of people from Columbus, but no one," he hesitated, "quite like you."

Children, wake up
Hold your mistake up
Before they
Turn the summer into dust

"Thanks," escaped my lips at a hardly audible level. Yet in my speechless silence fell a small tear, sliding down my cheek as a pathetic prelude to the waterfalls beginning to cascade down my skin. All at once, I let out a gasp of air. My chest heaved. Stefan jolted upward to stare down at me, shocked at what he was seeing and yet somehow relieved by the sight before him.

"I've never seen you cry before," he murmured, wiping a tear away with his thumb. The rest of his hand cupped my cheek as I tightly shut my eyes and refused to let go of his shirt. All at once his free hand replaced his shirt and I was being lifted. Airborne, he carried me out of the room and into the living room, home to only one thing: his old couch.

We sat for a long while in silence, terse as my jolting body that refused to stop shaking in my disturbed mourning. There was something about this boy that tore me apart inside. "You're such a bone head," I choked, staring at the tiny little Nike swoosh on his solid black shirt, "Y-You've always been a clown, the sl-slacker." Rubbing my back, his eyebrows nit together in concerned insult. "And you're n-never a good influence on me. Or my study habits. A-and I shouldn't feel like this."

"Feel like what?"

I punched him in the arm, but he didn't even flinch. "Cut the crap," he suddenly said, staring down at me with eyes insightful and knowing.

"You're the only guy who can take a hint, too," I replied slowly, staring up at him, "I'm going to miss the hell out of you, y'know."

"I like you too," he sighed.

And I knew things would never be the same. I knew seeing him would be so hard, so melancholy, so distant. But the way he watched me then, the way he held me so tightly as if the slightest break in grip would lose me to the shadows forever, said everything I needed to know. He used to be the slacker at the back of class who got by on a few cheap jokes and charm; the kind of guy that drove me to near insanity with frustration.

But he awakened a sense in me I had never before encountered. And for that, I could do nothing more than thank him in my silence, thank him with my tears, thank him with the heart pulsating rapidly in my chest. Because the moment he flicked his hat off my head and pressed his cool, chapped lips to my forehead, I knew that he was being honest.

"We'll see each other again," he whispered. "I promise you, this isn't the end of us. I like you way too much for that."

We're just a million little gods
Causing rain storms
Turning every good thing to rust

I guess we'll just have to adjust