15-05-2021-052358It-Ends-with-Us

He left today.
I’ve shuffled my deck of cards so many times, my hands hurt. I’m scared if I
don’t get out how I feel on paper, I’ll go crazy holding it all in.
Our last night didn’t go over so well. We kissed a lot at first, but we were
both too sad to really care about it. For the second time in two days, he told me
he changed his mind and that he wasn’t leaving. He didn’t want to leave me
alone in this house. But I’ve lived with these parents for almost sixteen years. It
was silly of him to turn down a home in favor of being homeless, just because
of me. We both knew that, but it still hurt.
I tried to not be so sad about it, so when we were lying there, I asked him to
tell me about Boston. I told him maybe one day when I got out of school, I
could go there.
He got this look in his eye when he started talking about it. A look I’d never
seen. Sort of like he was talking about heaven. He told me about how everyone
has the greatest accents there. Instead of car, they say cah. He must not realize
that he sometimes says his r’s like that, too. He said he lived there from the ages
of nine until he was fourteen, so I guess maybe he picked up a little bit of the
accent.
He told me about how his uncle lives in an apartment building with the
coolest rooftop deck.
“A lot of apartments have them,” he said. “Some even have pools.”
Plethora, Maine, probably didn’t even have a building that was tall enough
for a rooftop deck. I wondered what it would feel like to be that high up. I asked
him if he ever went up there and he said yes. That when he was younger,
sometimes he would go to the roof and just sit up there and think while he
looked out over the city.
He told me about the food. I already knew he liked to cook but I had no idea
how much passion he had for it. I guess because he doesn’t have a stove or a
kitchen, so other than the cookies he baked me, he’s never really talked about
cooking before.
He told me about the harbor and how, before his mother remarried, she used
to take him fishing out there. “I mean, Boston isn’t any different from any
other big city, I guess,” he said. “There’s not a lot that makes it stand out. It’s
just . . . I don’t know. There’s a vibe. A really good energy. When people say
they live in Boston, they’re proud of it. I miss that sometimes.”
I ran my fingers through his hair and said, “Well, you make it sound like
the best place in the world. Like everything is better in Boston.”