XIV. Side by side [End]

When I got out of the bathroom, after drying myself up and putting on new clothes to sleep with, Hermione was already in her pajamas, lying next to Eda on the bed. Her eyes swayed in my direction, inviting me to rest too. But I remembered about my guitar, so I quickly told her that I'll be out for a bit, and I exited the room. Sparing the details, I was back again and I laid the case next to the door before sinking in the mattress. The little girl was already drowned in slumber as she was between the two of us.

My hand moved itself to gently pat her little head; Hermione put hers above mine. She smiled at me as she carried on the idle movement and I smiled back; her grin grew happier. The distance between our heads gradually got smaller, and soon enough, our foreheads collided very softly, almost lovingly. She didn't move a single bit, and me either. It definitely wasn't the warmth of the cheap lamps overheating as serving as night lamps; it was Eda's and Hermione's being close to me. The yellowish glow escaping in the depth of the bad-lit room illuminated Hermione's sleepy face; seeing her in such a state brought forth drowsiness into me.

As gradually, we fell asleep.

I had forgotten to draw the darker curtains because the next morning, the sunlit was horridly shining upon my face. When I got up, Hermione and our daughter were still snoozing; then, my stomach growled while remembering we only ate a bunch of sweets the day before. I decided to go buy a proper breakfast before they'd wake up. Fortunately, even being in the middle of nowhere, the motel was selling some bakeries along with tea, coffee, or milk. Doughnuts were the first thing to come into my mind, and I ended up carrying another box of the latter even if, not even two days ago, I was disgusted by its mere sight, as well as three medium cardboard cups of tea.

I made sure to very silently close the door as I was going in; though, Hermione was sitting straight on the bed, awfully awake. Her eyes seemed to quiver and her hand was stroking the pendant in a frantic rhythm. I felt like she was trying to stab me when she stared at me with that face.

"I thought you left me," her mouth escaped in a frightened tone.

"I'll be with you until I die, I promise," I replied as placing the breakfast on a small table opposite the bed.

Her strokes lazed as time passed, before stopping once and for all. Hermione woke up the little girl then, and we took a rapid breakfast as wondering what to do for the day. But she wanted to be egoistic for once; she asked me if we could ride to town (our hometown) and leave Eda with her parents for the day, at least until… well, I'd leave this world. I turned to Eda while trying to tell if the little girl would like that, but it didn't really matter at this point. So after tidying up our luggage, I drove to our hometown.

During that small trip, which nonetheless took about an hour, Hermione and I tried to "explain" why we had her grandparents take care of her. We stuck with "they should see you more often, y'know?" as an excuse. On that, Eda played her playlist again, and rushing on the old asphalt, pushing our way through the Midwest's air, we all happily sang, very loud, to a point where we couldn't hear other cars horning at us. We carried on our antics until reaching Hermione's old place.

When we got there, Eda dashed out to the doorstep in mere seconds as Hermione readied herself to walk across what was once her lawn. But when she noticed that I didn't intend to get out on my own, she opened my side before clenching my hand and pushing me around to the porch.

"That's the first time I'm properly introducing you to my parents, you know," she teased before ringing the bell.

Slight anxiousness rose in my being after hearing her phrase it that way, or maybe it was that I didn't want another punch from her dad. And the latter indeed opened, first surprised, then rejoiced and finally disdainful as noticing my presence.

"Hermione, what're you doing here?" he asked.

"Hi, Dad. Hmm… We were passing through, and, like, Eddie and I wanted to have some time alone. Just the two of us," she replied as making sure that Eda couldn't hear. "Could you take care of Eda for the day?"

M. McCartney threw distrustful glances at me before bringing his attention to the little girl.

"Huh, well yeah, I guess. You don't want to stay a little bit? Your mom will be happy to see her daughter and her granddaughter," he continued.

"Sorry, Dad. Maybe later, but we're in a hurry. I'm gonna say hi to mom a bit and I also have something to take back from my room. You didn't clean it up, I hope?"

"Everything's the same as you left it."

Before he could even finish his sentence, Eda and Hermione were already invading the old couple's house; she disappeared from my sight as going up the stairs. I was alone with the old McCartney. There was an unpleasant, and not even awkward, atmosphere hanging around. I thought I was hearing the grandpa clenching his fist, and his teeth too. I tried to distract myself by looking around.

"M. McCartney, just to let you know, I'm already getting along well with Hermione, as you might've guessed. I'm also trying to be a good father for Eda," I blurted out. Maybe I was trying to act cool for some reason.

"What does she like in an asshole like you?" he replied.

"Who cares. I love her, she loves me, and everybody's happy, right? Plus Eda."

"You don't deserve her love, or to love her after all the shit you've done."

"All the shit I've done was fixed by the time I started to love her, I'll let you know. That's the only error I made."

M. McCartney kept quiet on that and went further in his house, away from me, as I stayed waiting by the stairs. Soon enough, Hermione was rushing down as tucking a notebook under her arm; in her inertia, she took my hand and we hustled through the door as it slammed with our motion. She tugged me over the car before setting herself in her front seat. Inside, the notebook was laying on her thighs as she gleefully rummaged through it; I realized it was the same notebook I haven't seen for so long, the same notebook she was always carrying around back when we were younger, the same notebook where there was a scenery of the place we first met.

"Eddie, Eddie!" she called out to me even though we were no farther than a foot away. "You remember this?"

Speaking of the devil, she showed me a watercolor of the bus stop.

"How couldn't I. I remember it all, y'know; during the last ten days, that's mostly what I've been doing."

"That's mostly what I've been doing since the last time we saw each other," she replied. I couldn't distinguish an ounce of resentment in her pure tone. "Hey, what about going there again?"

"Wanna find the hearts you drew all over town while we walk there?" I suggested back.

We snickered before leaving the car by Hermione's former place. Everything was eternally recurring, once more; our way was exactly the same as the one we went by that night, only breaking the cycle for finding the remaining hearts. The world broke beautifully before my eyes as my memories amalgamated themselves with the present; that night blended with the current day as the blue of the sky became extremely dark, not quite black, but like the abyss of the ocean. I wasn't scared at all; it seemed so beautiful to have that chasm hanging above our heads.

Perhaps I was going mad, but if it were so, that I became mad! My hallucinations carried on until we reached the bus stop; it all stopped there, very suddenly, as though I turned off some switch in my mind. And yet, the memories were more lucid than ever. Hermione took a breath whereupon she sat on the bench like in that summer; as always, she patted next to her to prompt me to sit as well. Once that was done, she compulsively leaned her head on my shoulder. I did the same. She closed her eyes and similar to the last ten years, she remembered it all; well, I could tell at least, that was what I was about to do myself.

We stood motionless for a while, gnawing on memories and regrets. At some point or another, Hermione suggested that we went to see the school; we began walking again. This time, all the recollections of the mornings we passed together as going to school overlaid as one chaotic scene where thousands and thousands of Hermione seemed to move in disarray. But there was grace in that immense bedlam, as though all her separate movements converged to a mystic goal that my mind could barely grasp. Or rather, it was the happiness that was so alien to me; I always felt weird when happy, like it wasn't my normal condition, but I was possessed by that idea.

I kept rehashing that my suffering could only last, unlike happiness. But these two really cannot last forever; I only forgot that I was once happy. That forgetting was soon replaced with misery.

Hermione happily made echo her footsteps in the now empty halls of our school. As though vacillating through fields, she strolled her hand on the lockers, sometimes hitting them to make resonate a metallic sound. We hurried into the art club room. She settled two chairs opposite to one another and sat down on the first one. I installed myself, facing her, and she took out her notebook and her watercolor pen. I asked her why making another portrait of me if we could use her phone. She replied that it wouldn't capture what she was seeing right now; it wouldn't capture all the love, and sorrow she felt deep down in her heart. She was trying to capture an everlasting image from her heart.

"Be it ugly or not, I'd rather something emanating from my being than something taken in a glimpse by a cold mechanism for a dear thing to me."

I kept quiet and tried to smile a little bit at her painting. She laughed too. I carried on watching her for another hour while she didn't even notice. Then, she showed it to me; if I were able to paint on my own, my portrait of Hermione would be like that. It was exactly like how I used to see her under the filtered light of the art club's room. We wandered around for another while before searching for other things to do. Again, she remembered another place where we used to hang out: my backyard.

Truth to be told, I wasn't very keen on that idea; even knowing that my father wouldn't be home, I didn't want to deal with him for the slightest. But my life was counted in hours, so seeing Hermione disappointed surely wasn't going to be one of my last sights. We headed over to my old place and fortunately, my father would still leave the key under the fourth vase at the left of our porch, the one in the corner. Trailing before me, Hermione watched me unlocking the door with a secrete fear in the back of my mind.

Nothing escaped the depth of my old house; he wasn't home. He might come back tomorrow then, I thought, too bad I was about to die. The idea of making cookies came to Hermione, and soon enough, she started rumbling through drawers to find all the ingredients needed. I went to check my room meanwhile. As soon as I opened my door, the reminiscences livened up like a distant ghost; the 15 y.o Hermione was reading one of my comics, lying on the bed on her belly while wavering her feet in the air. I sat next to that phantom while wandering my eyes on my ceiling; I remembered these long nights during which it was the sole scenery I could peer at.

She called out to me after who knows how many minutes, saying that the cookies were ready. As I went down the stairs, Hermione was carrying a plate filled with her cookies; she held my hand and led us to the backyard. No hallucination came; only the realization that the sky was awfully blue struck me. Not as earlier, but the sky was so vibrant it inspired me some sort of unknown dear despite which I found beautiful. No clouds to be seen too; it was clearer than in any dream, in any reality. Ruling over his desolated domain, the sun seemed like an infinite white delimited by the rim of its rift.

We just fell together on the afternoon's grass before gazing at that absurdly vast scenery. The plate was close between us as we ate from it; the chirping sound of her cookies in our mouths scattered across the world. And it seemed like a lonely place where we were drifting away, senselessly; yet, it wasn't unpleasant, just the two of us. When we reached for more cookies, the plate was already empty. We just grabbed each other's hands and stayed like that. Existence shrunk down into two elements; the awfully blue sky, and her. As for me, I was neither existing nor being nothing. I could feel death in my whole being; not quite alive, not quite dead.

"Eddie, don't leave me, please," she whispered.

"Everything has to end someday," I replied. "That I die now or in sixty years after living a blissful life with you, it almost reduces to the same thing, to this same moment. Our roles might change, but the other would be begging either way."

"Dummy, I want those sixty years living a blissful life with you," she carried on as silently.

"We all know it's impossible. A losing dog doesn't need an encore, I know that too well. Let alone a third chance."

She kept quiet.

"Hermione, there's something I'd like to hear as the last words I'd hear before dying."

"…I love you."

"Clichéd, right?" I laughed a little bit. "But I love you too. No, that's not quite it. I wanna hear from you how would've been those sixty years living a blissful life."

Hermione mournfully dived in my eyes. My senses started to leave my body by the time she uttered something. Even not knowing what she was saying, it made me very miserable. She never once looked at my eyes after that; she stared at the grass while I was seeing her mouth moving. She carried on, and carried on, and carried on… as gradually as I was dying, her eyes were closing too, invaded by the fatigue caused by her growing anxiety. I tried to hold her tight for one last time, but her warmth felt as distant as that summer.

Under the rays of twilight, her face was drenched in the sun's blood which glimmered as brilliantly as the world around me.

Blinded by this last radiance of daylight, my eyes shut once and for all.