"Goodbye to the dead"

I sat on the beach as the waves lapped at my feet, it felt good. This was so good, I almost didn’t want to leave it, but I had to. I couldn’t live in this place, not just because of college, but her memory would probably haunt me for life. 

And I couldn’t stay in the same place that I’d met her, where I’d spent those moments that I had so enjoyed.

I looked down. Someone clapped me on the shoulder, I didn’t need to look up to tell who it was. I had arranged the meeting after all. James plopped down beside me.

“What up, little sister?” He asked, I knew he was trying to keep it light for my sake but there was a slightly sad tone to his voice. 

I didn’t even correct him as I usually did. I normally would’ve chewed him out for calling me his little sister when he knew that I was his twin but today was no normal day. It was almost like the death occurred exactly when it couldn’t have affected me more. Death was cruel and ruthless that way.

I rested my chin on my knees. “When are Emily and Eric getting here. Assuming Eric is coming. He was the one who took it the hardest.”

“In a minute.”

I pulled my knees closer to my chest. “God. How did we get here? Life was perfectly fine before I knew her.” 

He said nothing. It was the last day of summer vacation, which meant that it was time to say goodbye, to be honest, I was kind of looking forward to it. 

Emily plopped down beside me in the sand. I looked up and saw that era was still standing. I was depressed but he’d taken the blow of May’s death way too hard, which made sense considering the fact that they were in love. 

Eric hadn’t come here to say goodbye, he’d went to college as soon as she died, he was just there for the purpose of being there.

“I guess this is goodbye,” Emily whispered. She leaned over and kissed James. “I’m gonna miss you guys.”

She held out her arms to invite us for a hug, we reluctantly agreed. There were some tears before Emily wiped them away and challenged us for a swim in the water. It was silly, but it felt nice.

Before going, I realised that there was one person that I needed to say goodbye to personally. So I visited May’s grave. 

I sat in the grass and put flowers on her grave.

“I’m going now. I know that we couldn’t say goodbye when we could, so I think that I owe you a goodbye.” I laughed. “Look. I even bought you flowers. So goodbye Maple Marianna Magos. Goodbye.”

The next day we all said our goodbye’s again. Eric had already gone to college in the night and James and Emily’s colleges were a two-hour drive away from each other. 

I loaded up my luggage as I headed to New York. I should’ve been pumped but it was sad and satisfactory to leave all my feelings in one place. Even god knows that what happened to May wasn’t fair. 

 My flight landed as just like that, another journey began. 

Typical college stuff, pulling all-nighters for stupid projects and deadlines, party’s, drinking and fun. The experience was magical and it made me move on, there was a time in which I completely forgot about my past and times where I cried myself to sleep every night.

Before I knew college had passed and I was back to that hell hole for a vacation before I decided where I wanted to get a job before I had to make the choice to cut all my ties or maintain them. 

“Hey!” James smiled as he put his arm around me and pulled me closer. 

“Emily’s going to be here, any time now,” I said as I pulled away and gave him a look. He and Emily had broken up, obviously, considering long-distance relationships never work. They had actually just recently broken up, they had remained in a relationship for at least three years, which was impressive. 

Eric came to our house for a short while being older he had graduated a year ahead and had already started working in this town. He was in the town for the same reason that I wanted to leave it. May. 

He was trying to cling on to her memories, while I was trying to let go. That lovesick bastard probably hadn’t slept with someone since May for all I knew. And he wasn’t bad-looking either, plus his and Emily’s dad probably had more money than god. 

He had already started to work at the company and I was sure that Emily was going to do the same. They had a legacy and they had to carry it forward. 

I studied James, he looked exactly the way that he did in high school, but now there was a kind of maturity that had come naturally, plus a lawyer’s gotta keep his reputation, right?

We met Emily for dinner, she and James shook hands, locking their eyes for a second too long, with the sexual tension in between them, I was sure that they were going to hook up tonight. After a day of dry greetings and hellos, we retired to our bedrooms with Emily in James’s room.

Me? I shut off the lights and turned on the table lamp, laying out all the company’s papers that had accepted me to be their employee. One was from New York, one in Paris and one close to home, just an hour away maybe. I had to make the decision by the end of the week. I had almost made up my mind where I wanted to go, but tonight’s dinner ruined everything, James, Emily and Eric were all staying here, which meant that all of my old friends were right where I could reach them and right where I could choose to live with them and to see them everybody, it was almost too good to give up, but anything that I’ve learned from going to college is that, sticking to old memories always has you making wrong decisions, so I was going to think it through, before jumping to any conclusions. Even if I wanted to go to New York, It would be hard giving everything up.

The door opened and I scrambled to cram all the papers in my desk drawer. Emily peeked in. She was wearing one of James’s shirts, she sat beside me and lay her head on my shoulder.

“What’re you doing?” She murmured.

“Trying to make a decision,” I replied.

“What decision?”

I consider lying to her, then decided against it. “I have a choice to either leave or embrace this place.”

“Not going to nudge you in any direction. Though, I gotta ask. Do you still think about May?”

I held back tears. “Yes. I wish it would’ve been me.”

“That bitch was way too nice for herself.”

I nodded. 

We sat in silence for a while, before I broke the silence to ask her how her life was going. We weren’t that far apart, we’d talked on the phone and during breaks, but it wasn’t the same as before. 

We woke up in the morning, sprawled over each other. 

The days ticked by, Emily and James were back together (surprise) and Eric was in depression. Not officially. But I could see the sadness in his eyes. We had fun, we went to the beach and we talked, laughed and caught up, which only made it harder to decide, I had already eliminated Paris. 

I met Emmie too. Emily’s sister. She was almost thirteen now, even she looked a bit sad about May. She was a big sister to her as well and she’d been too young to understand what happened at that time. She had cried her eyes out when we told her. May was like that, everybody that ever talked to her became her friend. There was no one who could actually hate her.

In the blink of an eye, the week passed and I was still confused, the phone made the decision for me. I was in Eric’s room and he was working and about to come in a few, so I was alone. I shouldn’t have poked around, but curiosity won me over. I ran my hand over his bed frame and my hand hit a button, it was concealed, hardly visible but it opened the bedside drawer. 

I smiled. Just like Eric to have something weird like this. I looked in the drawer and immediately wished that I hadn’t. It was full of May’s stuff. I don’t think that Eric was the kind of guy to take it out every day and stare at it creepily. I figured that he had kept it so that her stuff wouldn’t just simply be thrown away. 

I pulled out her phone and saw that it was charged, which meant that Eric had recently taken it out and looked in it. I tried the passcode that she had when she’d been alive. It was still the same. My fingers shook as I opened the photos. There she was, her smiling face staring back at me from the same beach that I had just returned from. I scrolled through them, I was in a lot of those photos. There were some pictures of her and Eric as well. The tears were almost being impossible to hold back. 

Then I opened the voice recordings and that’s when the tears made their way down my face. There was one dedicated to just Eric and I kept his privacy by not listening to it. 

I crammed the phone back in the drawer and wiped at my face. I closed the drawer and pulled out my phone and called the company in New York.

I couldn’t stay here every day. I could maybe visit the memory, every once in a while but I couldn’t live in it every day. 

It was time to move on.