36 of 50 Songs Dedicated to the Friend I Lost Too Soon

"Hey," I greet Jewee when he comes through the door. He looks so sleepy after filming that I'm shook up every time he takes another step forward rather than melt down in between the floorboards. Looking at him is a guilt-trigger, because while he was out busy, I was at home doing nothing.

Nobody expects me to do anything in my condition, but it's not a feeling I can shake. I've always been a person that, sure, can be lazy sometimes, but that doesn't like a person carrying the entire workload.

For this, it doesn't matter. I couldn't have helped if my condition was up to par. This is something that Jewee has to do on his own. I can't take on his scenes and get him through them in his place, and in a way, it's for the better. That's where he belongs -- in front of the camera. That's where so many fall in love with him.

"Hi," he greets me in return under a little nod, and right after finds the sudden burst of energy to zoom to the staircase. He gets about halfway up before he closes the conversation as fast as it opened. "Bye!" He says, in a hurry.

"Why are you in such a rush?" I shout. I don't get up from the couch. I sit and listen for him to yell back down to me, but nothing. Standing up, I head to the bottom of the stairs. "Hey!" I repeat, this time louder. "Why are you in such a rush?"

"I'm going home! I need to get my stuff together to catch the next flight." I can't see his face, but based on what he responded, he's packing up anything he left behind in my room.

My heart sinks. I want to pretend that that's not how I feel, but it is. I don't want him to leave. Moved by that emotion, I trudge myself up the stairs in search of him, and I find him right where I thought I would. I try to remain on the down low about caring about it, but I can't keep it in check.

"So soon? Why leave so soon? Filming is over already?" That shouldn't be the case. Zeke just finished his and he doesnt have near as many scenes as Jewee does. He's expected to be here for a couple more weeks at least.

"Yeah. I wrapped things up just today and I'll be leaving in a few hours. Besides, asking you to let me stay here was a lot. I don't want to bother you for that much longer. Thank you so much for putting up with me though, Jaiva Shyne."

No. This is it. This is the end, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

"Oh okay. Yeah, no -- it was great." I have the urge to pout, but I try to keep as neutral as possible. I have no idea if I succeeded or not. I'll have to go along with what he's saying. I'm powerless. "Do you need any help packing or whatever?"

"No, I think I'm alright," he claims. The atmosphere around me is gloomy, and painful, but he seems fine. He's keeping himself busy and focused, his clothes folded beautifully into his suitcase so well that he's gotten into a rhythm with it. It's being completed at a consistent pace. He doesn't get curious to glance up at me once. His head is buried into his chore.

"By the way," he speaks up, not breaking his rhythm. "Zeke's been a bit off all day at the set. He's already on his way back to Vegas. Whatever you said to him must've got to him. I think he really liked you."

I bit my lip. If he's bringing that up, I'm not sure how he's expecting me to answer him. I did what I had to do with Zeke, but it's not of Jewee's concern. I take a shot at a response anyway. "Ah. Does that mean he didn't take it very well?"

Jewee's nose crinkles. "Maybe. Maybe not. But he'll be okay. He'll get over it eventually. Don't worry too much about it."

"I hope so. I don't want to be the bad guy," I giggle under my breath, it coming out muffled and tainted. It couldn't be a real, heavy laugh. To be humane I had to have empathy for him, even if I didn't return his feelings, but in front of Jewee I hoped he saw that through my decency, I was also evidently moving on with my life. A life without Zeke. I wanted to prove I didn't need that blond boy to be happy.

"You're not. That's love for you. It doesn't always go according to plan but it does get sorted out at the right time." Jewee zips up his suitcase, bringing it upright after his mini-speech. A pause wavered over with his action that I didn't know how to interrupt and it got to me more than his words did. I purposely shielded that, but this I wasn't prepared for.

He cleared his throat. "I guess I'll be going."

I slap at both my cheeks -- gently, so he doesn't think I'm crazy, but hard enough to remind myself that this is real. Forced to accept it is, I led him out of the room. "Of course, yes. I'll walk you to the door."

"Thanks," he whispers. I can feel his presence behind me. I despise every step I take forward. If I stopped and never walked on, would it mean that he'd never slip away? Probably not, but in my dreams -- in my imagination, there were small ways that would keep him from taking a big journey I didn't want him to go on.

In real life, I brought him to the door like I said I would. "Safe travels, Gray," I tell him perkily, in attempts of finding my good spirit. He nods me off, taking step by step toward the curb. His taxi or Uber or whatever he requested is already racing down the street. I don't peek out the window to see what it is -- I just know it's for him. I just know someone is taking him away from me.

I feel like a wilting flower. I have the urge to weep, but I know that I shouldn't. There was nothing to cry over. I wasn't losing him because I never had him in my safekeeping. He never belonged to me in any kind of way. We were people who met and who would go on with their lives after it was over. I was his passerby and that's the most either of us amounted to one another.

I've lived all of this life, and I still don't understand how to give my heart at ten percent. I get why my mom told me to follow that rule. It meant this kind of ache didn't exist, but how to follow it, I don't think I'll ever know. Honestly, I don't think it's possible. I won't live to find a situation that it is.

Love is all or nothing, and curled up in a ball of hopelessness, that was the only thing I was certain of. Love doesn't know ten percent. It's heart bursting. Explosions. Overflow. Galore. It can't be held inside. It's as external as it is internal. It's powerful.

Like that of our doorbell ringing. I haven't heard that in years. Guests don't come visit us often, and if they do they're with us when we walk in the door or they're close enough to let themselves inside. On the other side, I find Jewee is still here. He hasn't left.

I fumble with my speech. "What's going o--?"

"I don't have much time, Shyne, but I thought you deserved to know this. You deserve to know the truth, and you've known that ever since that day happened. That's why you were so hard on me to tell you. That's good. You should've been." He breathed deeply. Saying what he had in mind wasn't easy for him.

"On the day that we left the party at my house and we drove into that alley where the world could never find us -- where we kissed --." There was a lull, and as hard as I felt I was inhaling no oxygen came to my lungs. He felt the same, but he did his best to continue.

"I had just found out that to promote the project Talia's company and mine wanted us to show everyone we were dating in real life. Real or fake, they wanted it to happen. If it was fake, nobody was meant to know about it and I couldn't tell anyone. You know the project lasted a long time, and I was worried that I'd never get the chance to know what it's like to kiss you. To love you and to be loved by you.

"The time just didn't seem to line up and when I had the chance, even if I didn't really have the right to it, I couldn't help but to take it, Shyne. I wanted it so badly and it seemed I'd never--."

"Close your eyes and turn around," I demand, interrupting him.

He's terrified, and it shows through his stammers. He doesn't know what I'm going to do, but he's expecting a punch in the face. "Wh-why?"

"I'm not going to do anything to you."

"Then what is this about?"

"I'm gonna say something and I'm not ready to see how you're going to react. So just do it. Close your eyes and turn around."

"Why both? Isn't turning around good enough?"

"Just to be safe, alright? Why so many questions! Just do it!" I say it jokingly, but I mean every word.

"Okay. I will, I will," Jewee obeys. My foot is tapping at the ground as if impatient, but what it really is is a reflection of my shaky breath. Regardless of what he just told me, admitting this as the truth is difficult. I didn't think I'd be here, or in any situation like it.

"I'm in love with you." I blurt it out before I could let myself hold it in. If I'll regret it or be proud I got through it, I couldn't say yet. I carried the entire population's oxygen supply on my shoulders.

Jewee tries turning around. I don't allow him to, my hands on both his shoulders. "What?" He yells out, shocked, and he settles on that instead.

"I'm--."

"No, no. I heard you. Don't say it twice before I can say it once, as directly as you did." He combs ten fingers through his hair. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"Needing you was a scary thing. I've never needed someone like I need you, Jewee, and then when I'd finally tell myself this is what I need and I can't live in a world without it, there was always something in the way. Something that made it seem like the universe was saying it shouldn't be. Something that made it seem like the universe actually cared what people do on this earth when it cared about nothing else. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't tell you."

I've been depriving myself. Starving myself. Dehydrating myself of what I need the most. I've been wrapping myself in the blanket of longful fairy tales, assuming that everything was supposed to be perfect when it came to what the heart awed, but it made me overheat.

I missed the cold, where love isn't perfect. I wasn't the type to think that Prince Charming would come along to slide a glass slipper over my little toes and that we'd disappear together in a tall-castle-wonderland.

This is the way I want it. I want to live yelling at the man of my dreams because I'm angry at the world and I take it out on him, who makes it a competition in no time.

I want to live getting constantly confused over what the heck goes on inside my lover's head and why he does the stuff he does. I want to live in the pet peeves I didn't know I had until he showed up.

I want to live with that question in the back of my head everyday 'why did I even fall in love with you' every time our polar opposite pieces shine bright, all while being full aware I wouldn't want it any other way.

I want bad days, good days, fussy days, and lovely days and I want to get through all of them together, hand in hand.

Smiling, I found his gaze. I didn't allow him to turn around, but I circled him to the other side, both of us standing in the center of the house porch. He smiled back at me, fondly, and it gave me permission to make one specific request.

"But now that I can tell you, please stay. Don't leave so soon. Stay with me."