For Better or Hearse

by Ava Hunter

Despite what feels like an entire continent between them, the lock and key of their friendship has stayed strong. They still have their rhythm.

“Because how can I leave this earthly plane without doing everything I can to protect them?” The words are said with such a sad caress of longing that it makes her heart ache.

“Like I said, it’s a rental. If you’re going to eat in the car, can you please try not to fuck up the upholstery with your crumbs?” “Apologies for the inconvenience of being a type-one diabetic,” Ash says calmly but sharply. “I can drop dead if you prefer.”

It’s not trauma; it’s spicy sadness.”

“Everyone’s an expert in grief.” The gray flecks in her green eyes catch the soft overhead lighting. “We just don’t know it until it fucking hits us.”

It’s in the wild blue moonlight of the witching hour that Ash’s thoughts take over. When her anxious brain catches up to her mouth. When she wakes in bed and panics about-slash-ponders life and death and everything in between.

She’s an acquired taste, like fernet or oysters. Never fits in. Too weird. She was never all the fishes in the sea. She was the junky thing found in the bottom of a drawer.

Even now, years later, the memory lingers. Stings.

She refuses to give her heart to a man ever again. To be anything but herself for anyone else.

her heart has been wrapped in thorns. Stopping it from blooming. Though she wouldn’t get rid of them if she could. She likes those thorns. They cut. They protect.

Because isn’t that what past relationships are? Ghost after ghost after ghost? And what do ghosts do? They haunt. They linger. They freak the fuck out of people when they least expect it.

“Why do people over six feet always walk so fucking fast? Do you have something to prove?” “Only that I’m the master of the universe.”

“Sometimes I think it’s all you need in the world. If you have that one right person in your life, you can survive anything.”

Her brain forever chemically altered with one hit of him.

“I like danger. It’s—” She gasps. A mischievous smile curls her lips. “It’s your middle name, isn’t it?”

Why? Because she’s always been too much to so many people. Or not enough.

If only he still wanted to push Ash into a volcano. Or a crevasse. Or a crack. It would be so much easier.

“You always talk about the universe, Ash. But never yours. Maybe you need to let it in for once.”

“I wanted to walk,” Nathaniel says, “but really, I wanted to see you.” “I’d never imagine such a heinous thing,” she teases, lighting up on the inside.

He laughs, and it feels like her favorite sweater wrapped around her hips. Comfortable. Livable. Home.

“My morbid little beauty.”

“I’m truly split between adoration and complete violence.”

She’s never seen anything so beautiful. Never felt so lucky and happy and free. It’s a moment. The universe is saying right here, right now. It overwhelms her. How big, how mind-blowing, how beautiful this little life can be.

How can she ask anyone to love her, when all she does is ache to push them away?

“You know,” Ash muses. “Love and death are so similar. The beginning. The end. It’s all a mystery. An unknown. Both are always on our minds. We don’t control the ride, the ride controls us. And no matter how hard we prepare, no matter how much we think we’ve got this, we can’t escape. Love. Or death.” She fiddles with the edge of a napkin, swallows back the emotion bubbling up inside her. “But finding the grace to get back to one another, to understand, to forgive, is another kind of love on its own. It’s not death.”

Despite how hard she’s worked to outrun them, move past them, the ghosts from her past have found her. And boo! is the whisper in her ear.

In life, everything ends. Especially love. It’s foolish trying to keep it. Foolish trying to hold on to something she’ll only lose. Because that’s what happens to her. She loses.

“Sometimes I think death is easier than love. With death, all you have to do is survive it. And in the end, it doesn’t hurt. Love…you have to chase it. Tend to it. Work for it. Give it back. And sometimes it’s so, so hard. To love someone.”

“Concussed by a coconut,” she rasps. “I’ll never live it down. It’ll forever be on my medical record.”

“You gave up your job, Nathaniel.” He grasps her chin, forcing her to look at him. “I used that job to run. I don’t want to run anymore.” His heart pangs. A muscle flexes in his jaw. “You have made me brave enough to live the life I want. And it’s with you. You are what I want, Ash.”

“Yes, yes. I want you, Nathaniel.” She laughs, the joy on her face making his chest tighten. “I love you. Until this world ends and our sun is nothing but a shriveled, dead star, I will love you.”

Her anxiety has claws. The thorns in her chest ready to regrow, ready to rehome her heart, somewhere far away and dark.

She used to believe it cost too much to love. But it doesn’t. It costs too much not to take risks.

“Grief and love coexist,” he says, resting his massive hand on Tessie’s belly. His rugged face creases with pain. “You can’t have one without the other. You have to take the good with the bad. And when you do, you’ll find the bad doesn’t matter as much as the good.”

“I choose you, Nathaniel. In every universe, in every afterlife, I will always choose you.

Love isn’t about fixing yourself so that someone loves you. It’s about finding the right person to love you as you are.

“I’m in this no matter what it takes. The long run.” “For better or hearse?” she teases. “For better or hearse.” The corner of his mouth curves. “We’re going to do this, do us, and we’re going to do this good, okay?” She’s nodding, nodding yes, nodding her happy.

The ebb and flow of life. Death. Love. That’s the joy and the beauty of it. The unknown in a world of certainties. It’s all kinds of fucking perfect. And it’s all theirs.