The Stages

It’s one of those cold evenings today. The kind where the wind hits your face and makes your cheeks and nose go pink, the kind of coldness that is borderline you-can-see-your-own-breath-in-the-air cold. I like nights like this, where it’s cold enough that being next to someone warm is more comfortable than normal.

Her hand, still clasped around mine, tugs me through a crowd. I hunch my shoulders a little to avoid bumping into the seemingly busy people rushing by, but one or two people do end up accidentally bumping me. Still, her warm hand leads me through it, her fingers squeezing mine.

As we break from the crowd, I see her smile. “God, you’re slow. I could do a whole lap of the city and you’d still be here, trailing your sluggish ass along the path.”

“Oh, shut up.” I say, letting go of her hand as if she greatly offended me. We can both tell it didn’t since I can’t exactly contain the smile on my face.

With another laugh, she just links her arm with mine, leaning her head on my shoulder briefly.

This is Angelina Willow Reid, my absolute best friend. I love her, I love her I love her—platonically of course. Just to make it clear, one, I’m gay. Two, we made an oath—yes, spat on our hands and shook on it—to not like each other romantically after we became “boyfriend-girlfriend” and broke up after three weeks in our last year of middle school.

Angel is literally my angel, in a way. We met when some kid was making fun of me in gym class in 6th grade because I was a weak thrower. I was. I couldn’t throw for the life of me even if it was just a tennis ball. Angel had swept in and tackled that guy, turned around, picked me up in her arms (she’s freakishly strong) and ran out of class. We got in trouble after that, yes, but I earned a friend.

She’s helped me and stood by my side through thick and thin, and I have done the same. Although she doesn’t exactly have the rockiest life. Youngest child in a slightly wealthy family, her brother a year older than me and already a reciever of a scholarship to a sports school down south. She helped me come out to my parents half a year ago, sitting next to me in my living room and holding my hand while I splutter-sobbed the words nervously to my parents.

Probably confused my parents why a pretty girl my age was holding my hand and squeezing my knee while I told them I was gay. But eventually I think they pushed that confusion aside when they saw me repeatedly watching an edit of Andrew Garfield when he was in The Amazing Spiderman, all the while giggling and rolling around on my bed. Oh, and kicking my feet too. There was a lot of feet-kicking.

My foot slips on a wet spot on the pavement, making me almost trip and jolting me out of my reminiscing. Maybe I shouldn’t get distracted while walking around New York at night after there was a storm yesterday and heavy rain earlier today.

Angel keeps a firm grip on my arm, snickering as I stumble. I stand straight again and we both giggle to each other while we keep walking, trying to keep quiet. Although, I did see a guy earlier—who I’m guessing was on something—yelling out and spitting at people, and no one really bat an eye. So I don’t think anyone om the crowd here will care if we’re laughing.

“So, where are we going again?” I ask, patting Angel’s arm. She shrugs. “Any tall building where we can see the stars as close as we can. You know my dad banned us from being on the roof.” She adds, rolling her eyes a little.

I sigh. “Well, I don’t entirely blame him. I mean, your dad has every right to be suspicious; I could just be pretending to be gay to get in your pants.” I run a hand through my hair, trying to imitate some guys at our school.

“Although, if I was, it would’ve happened a long time ago.” I nudge her with my hip, and she laughs again.

“Mmmhm. Yeah, becuase your charm is just so amazing.”

“I know, I know. Don’t need to remind me, my dear Angelina.” I reply with one of those dramatic sighs, patting her arm once more. She shakes her head, hiding a smile that isn’t well hidden.

I can see the looks. I mean, we both do. The kind of looks from mostly adults, who watch us and kinda smile like “oh, they’re a cute couple”, or the kinda look that’s like “dear lord they’re awfully serious for some teenagers.” Sometimes I do want to walk up to them and explain very carefully that when I say ‘I love you’ to Angel, I mean it in a you’re-my-very-best-friend or you’re-the-platonic-love-of-my-life way.

But by now, we’ve kind of blocked it out. Faked it even. Sometimes there’s the occasional old lady that walks up and says we’re a cute couple and we just nod and say thanks and then hightail it out of there. I don’t know why, but Angel is afraid of old people. And I, quite frankly, just don’t like talking to random strangers that approach you.

She swerves me and we walk right into a building. I don’t know if it’s allowed, but she just confidently walks right past the reception desk and further into the building. We get in an elevator and she presses the top floor, her hand linked with mine.

I take a glance at her, and she seems calm as usual. I shuffle closer, squeezing her hand.

“Angel, your hand’s cold.” I mutter, rubbing her hand between mine. “That’s my thing. Where’d my heater go?” I tease. She grins. “Hey, I can’t be your heater forever. Be your own!” And just like I had before, she dramatically takes her hand away from mine, shoving them in the pockets of her flared pants.

I just put my arm over her shoulder, and she leans into me. I lean my face into her hair, closing my eyes as the elevator keeps going. “I love you, dude. You know that, right?”

She nods, just leaning her head on my shoulder. “Mmhm. Love you too.” She whispers, but her face isn’t doing the thing. When either of us say we love each other, she does this sort of half-smile and it shows her dimples and a sparkle in her eyes.

She hasn’t been doing that lately. More just…staring off into the distance and saying it back quietly. I lean my face off her, worrying if I’m making her uncomfortable. She’s reassured me many times she doesn’t get uncomfortable around me, but I still have to make sure.

I start to move my arm off her as the elevator stops, the door opening to the top floor. But she just grabs my hand and puts my arm back over her shoulders, walking out with me. I feel a little better now that I know she doesn’t mind it.

She makes a beeline for a younger-than-middle-aged looking man (again, she’ll avoid old people at any cost) and politely asks where the stairs to the roof is, flashing him with that charming innocent smile of hers. I’m 200% sure she could break every law in every single state and get out of prison with that smile.

He gives us directions and we thank him, and she leads me to where he vaguely gestured to. We step up a few stairs, shove open a door, and I’m reminded just how cold it is tonight.

She slowly steps out onto the roof, her arms crossed as I linger behind her. I close the door behind us, realising it’s actually colder than it was just a few minutes ago when we were walking down the street. We can faintly see our breath swirling in the air, and even in the dimness of the night I can see a reddish tint on her nose.

She turns around, smiling at me. My best friend is so beautiful. She’s got long wavy black hair cut to the middle of her back, although it was originally cut to her shoulderblades just a few months ago and grew really fast. Her skin is slightly tanned from all the holidays to beaches and wherever she goes to, her eyes a pretty shade of deep blue. Not the soul-stealing scary blue. The deep, dark blue as if she can warm you with icy eyes.

I take a step forward. “You are so pretty, Angelina.” I say softly, and I mean it. We compliment each other like this all the time. And now I sort of realise why people think we’re dating.

She smiles, her actual smile I’ve been missing. Half-smile dimple thing.

“Thanks. You’re pretty too.” She says in the same tone, nudging me a little. I just laugh and roll my eyes, mumbling a ‘yeah, sure’ and walk past her to the edge of the building. She follows, laughing too.

“Seriously,” she says quietly, looking at the sparce amount of stars in the sky. The city doesn’t exactly offer much for Angel, but she’s grateful just to see half of a constellation. “I think you will find a guy. You are pretty attractive.” She nudges me with her elbow again and I just smile. She links her arm with mine again, holding my hand. “I’m being serious. Someone out there probably has a big fat crush on you and won’t admit it.” She grins and I just divert my eyes to the two or three stars in the black sky. We’ve talked about this a lot. She’s my wingman, and I’d say I’m hers but she doesn’t need a wingman.

“Well by any means, he should come forward and tell me himself.” I grumble, exhaling in a sigh that blows a chilly little cloud out from my mouth, my lungs, into the world. I shake my head, standing straighter. “Why are we talking about this—this stupid romance stuff anyway? I don’t need that right now, it’s not necessary at all.”

Angel laughs, leaning her head on my shoulder. We drift into silence, just staring out into the darkness lit by the red and white streaks down below, the lightbulbs behind windows and the street lights showering spotlight onto pavement cracks. It all seems so small from here, so insignificant from such a looming building. Even I had shuddered at my own insignificance looking up at this place from the street. But Angel always tells me not to be too tied up in my own ‘unimportance’ because apparently I mention it a lot. But that’s not important.

I hear her sigh, and her hand gently runs up and down my forearm, over my hoodie sleeve. Her hand is gentle, warming my skin through the fabric of my clothes, reminding me that she’s my sun and my warmth, even though I’ll never need to be reminded because I will never forget. And I hope she doesn’t forget me, doesn’t forget how I want to be her warmth too. I want to be the best best friend I can be for her, even though I’ve been trying to figure out how to be perfect at doing that for the past few years.

“Angel?”

“Mhm?”

“…What’s going on?”

Her hand stops moving for a few seconds. I flick my eyes down, to asses her for a moment. Only her eyes seem to move, her eyelids blinking and her eyelashes highlighted by a small light on the roof we’re on. Her hand starts to move softly again, slower.

“What do you mean?” She says in a quiet voice, a small chuckle seeming to float like a ghost among each word. She’s lying and I haven’t even given her something to lie about.

I pull my arm out from hers, draping it over her shoulder and pulling it close. “You’re a bit different, lately.” I whisper, still staring out at the landscape of New York rooftops. “For a few months, you’ve just been…I dunno.” It’s hard to describe without sounding like I’m making assumptions. Which I mostly am, since Angel always seems to be okay.

“A little sadder.”

“I’m not sad, Gray.” She mutters, sighing a little. “I’ve just been a little tired. Y’know, with sophomore year ending. Tests, blah blah.” She waves a hand dismissively in the air, leaning against me.

“Sorry if I seem weird.” She adds, almost guiltily. “No, no, you don’t need to apologise for anything. You don’t seem weird, I just want to know if you ever want to talk about anything.”

Another silence floats between us.

“Hey, Angel?”

“Mmhm?” She hums again, placing the top of her head under the corner of my jaw.

“Why’d you bring me here?” I wonder aloud, gently rubbing her left shoudler with the hand on it. “I mean, it’s lovely. Being here with you, watching the stars and cars and staying warm-ish.” She laughs quietly at my observation of the temperature.

I feel her shrug. “I just like going places with you Gray.” She explains, tilting her head to look up at me. “It’s nice being next to you. And seeing things I’ve always wanted to see before.”

I grin a little. “Like New York at night after a rainy day?”

She smiles back, nodding. “Like New York at night after a rainy day.”

We laugh and chuckle for a bit, before turning back to the view in front of us. More minutes pass as I can almost feel the temperature dropping with each second, my nose feeling a little more stuffy and the hand that isn’t holding hers feeling number.

It isn’t until I stifle around two sneezes that I realise it’s probably ten times worse for Angel. She wore her favourite sweater—a cute fern green sweater with beige buttons that stop just under her collarbone, with a little strawberry patch on the shoulder— and what looks like a thin dark red shirt under it, since it peeks out where the sweater stops at her neck. While I’m wearing a hoodie with a thermal long-sleeve shirt underneath, as well as a singlet. And I’m still shivering. I squeeze her hand and force up a shudder to make a point, gritting my teeth.

“Man, it’s cold as hell out here. Wanna head back? I’ll ask my mom if you could sleep over; we can watch Tangled or something.” Tangled is her favourite movie. Her favourite scene is when Rapunzel is dancing around with her hair all braided and full of flowers, the little sun symbols everywhere. I can practically see her eyes light up like the lanterns when she watches it.

As I start to walk back to the door of the roof, holding her hand, she keeps her body turned to the view, letting her fingers slip away from mine. How isn’t she shivering right now? Girl must have better tolerance to the cold than I do.

“You can head back if you want,” She replies in a murmur, her voice sounding like she wasn’t talking to anyone in particular. “I’m going to watch the stars for a little bit longer.” She adds, glancing over her shoulder at me with a tiny smile, just briefly, before locking her eyes on a singular bright star ahead of her in the abyssal sky.

She can’t see it, but I nod. I’m not going to leave fully, obviously, I’ll just stand by the door under the light in hopes that it’ll warm me a little. Probably won’t do anything, but I don’t really care.

I shuffle my feet slowly toward the door, by head down. My shoes skim the concrete floor as if I was kicking a rock in front of me slowly, like I’d do if I’d walk alone without her. Barely happens, but it’s a habit when I’m alone.

As I approach the door to stand there, I see a small little thing on the ground, highlighted by the spotlight of the lightbulb above me. I crouch down to get a better look at it. It’s one of those cute roll-y bugs, all rolled up in a ball, doing it’s own thing in life. I don’t like bugs that much—hate most of them, actually—but for these little guys I’d make a whole enclosure for. They’re so cute and silly, and I don’t get how anyone could ever despise such a creature.

I stand again, still smiling to myself as my eyes stay locked om the little bug. I’ll research their scientific name when I get home and forget how to sleep at around 2am.

I turn back to where Angel stood. In her place, is a fern green sweater with a strawberry patch on the shoulder, and two white converses, size eight-and-a-half. Her shadow replaces where she stood, and I’m a little confused. So I turn my eyes to her to seek answers.

And there she is, in all her glory. Her back to me, the frigid air brushing against her hair like a whisper of a breeze. The moonlight—or maybe the light I’m standing under changes my perspective—seems to glow around her, illuminating the creases of her pants or folds of her shirt by her waist or underarms. Her stance is calm, carefree. Graceful, even. Her star decorated socks—her favourite socks, too—are slightly shadowed by her body as she stands on the edge like that, so perfect and indifferent. I see all this in about a second, my mind running slow like clouds on a calm day.

And then I watch as my best friend hurls herself off the building.