I hated these parties. Everyone back for winter break, a flimsy reason to congregate. Everyone was legal so drinking wasn’t rebellious anymore. Everyone trying to pretend they ever gave a shit about each other before we all dispersed for college. 

“Come on,” said Cyrus as he watched the dark road ahead of us, navigating the ruts in the snow on the way to a former classmate’s house. “Just try to have fun, okay?” 

I sucked the last life out of a blunt and tossed it out the window. I was feeling nothing but also feeling everything. “Yeah, okay. I’ll try.” 

It was weird to go to a party in a house that was nice. Someone’s parents’ house, where the sofas weren’t spilling cushion and the carpet didn’t crunch beneath your feet and there were hand towels in the bathroom. Everything was so delicate and intentional. There was no urgency. 

The awkwardness was just as thick and palpable as I expected it would be. I could tell that everyone was trying to be happy, to let their hair down, put on the costume of normalcy, at least for my sake. The veil of their false ignorance did nothing but illuminate the callousness of their sympathy. 

Johnny would hate this shit too. He had been nothing if not perilously authentic, his sleeves heavy with the grime of heart. It was his cross to bear, I suppose. 

The conversations all followed the same formula, identical bell curves. 

How’s NYU? 

What are you majoring in again? 

Cool cool. 

You know, I heard about Johnny. I’m so sorry, man. 

It’s too bad you couldn’t have been there. 

What’s New York City like? 

Just fucking say it, I wanted to tell them. Quit beating around the bush and just say the words we are all thinking. Yes, things would have been different if I had stayed here. Yeah, maybe he wouldn’t have killed himself if I wouldn’t have left. Of course I feel like shit about it. No, I don’t want a shot of whiskey, thanks. 

The weed had been a bad idea because now I felt agitated and tactile. They were all thinking so loudly and speaking with their stares. I knew when they looked at me they saw Johnny. I knew they had all liked him more. He was sweet, soft-spoken, a little reserved but came out of his shell when the time was right. He was delicate and radiating, likeable in the way that a baby is likeable, without having to earn it. 

They didn’t know Johnny like I knew Johnny. They didn’t know the darkness that he harbored, its bottomless depth. They didn’t know how soft his lips felt when we kissed or the agonizing crunch of his voice when he cried, the sound I would have heard if I had picked up when he called. 

The concrete patch of patio was buried under a growing blanket of snow, stretching out across the vast backyard. I lit a cigarette and heard the sliding door squeak open behind me. 

“Can I join you?” 

“Yeah, course.” 

Talia was a year younger than us - her and Johnny, Irish twins. I thought she would probably be here. 

“You doing okay?” Her freckles illuminated in frames as she flicked the lighter. “As much as I can be.” 

She laughed. “Right?” 

“Everyone in there is like a caricature of themselves.” 

“I can’t stand it.” 

“Me either.” 

Talia was a kindred spirit, a conduit, a link to Johnny. All that was left of their generation. We have never been close friends, but in his loss we now had an unspoken bond. We didn’t have to acknowledge the hole in our souls, the absence that had its own frequency, like a phantom limb. I could be bold, and she would understand. 

“Did he call you too?” I asked, reaching out like a leafless limb. “Did you pick up the phone?” 

“Nope.” She shook her head slowly, dark curls bouncing on her cheeks as her exhalation floated away, a mix of smoke and breath. “I mean, yeah, he called. No, I didn’t pick up.” 

I laughed nervously for some reason. “That makes me feel a little better. Is that weird?” “It’s not weird.” 

“Okay, good.” 

“He loved you, you know.”

“I fucking love you, you know.” Screamed at me across the driveway the last time I saw him, the night before I left for New York. It had taken me all summer to work up the guts to break it to him, months of falling in love and hiding the festering knowledge that I would leave anyway. The image of the street lights reflecting off of his tears was the last I’d ever have of him. 

“I know.” 

She was wearing a hoodie but nothing more. She wrapped her arms around herself, accentuating her delicateness, her bones. “That’s why you left, isn’t it?” 

I wondered if Irish twins had that same telepathy thing that they say real twins do. If they could feel each others’ pain. If they could reach across the void and grip onto each other. If they were imbued with the other’s knowledge, osmoted through the spectral plane. 

But if that were true, she would have picked up the phone too. 

Maybe we were both to blame, in different ways. Eros versus agape love, both as fragile. Both as inadequate. 

The moon was enormous and pregnant and blindingly bright, a black hole in reverse. We watched it in silence until our cigarettes burned down to the filters, heating our numbed fingertips.