I didn’t stop, unwilling to compromise and unwilling to believe Nik wouldn’t be waiting on the other end of my call.

Pushing send as I shoved out the main door into the parking lot, I brought the phone to my ear and listened to it ring in time with a series of full body shudders.

Four rings and a click left nothing but disappointment to greet me on the other end.

From the top of my head to the bottom of my soles, every inch of my body felt alone and cold in a way it never had.

Because now I knew what it was like to have it.

And you never truly missed something until it was—

Gone.

As fast as my two wheels would take me, I flew down the road headed for nowhere.

Nowhere to go and nowhere to be, the loss of my parents weighed its heaviest since the day it happened.

I drove toward their old house without thinking, without considering that it wouldn’t do me any good, and with no regard for the laws of the road.

It was the only place that made sense in my heartbroken chest and rationale rattled mind, and I couldn’t think of a better idea than the three hours it took on my bike to get there.

Wind whipped and welcome rain stabbed me with its force.

Storms raged around me and within, the inability to make sense of going from feeling like I had everything to nothing in an instant, churning in my gut and mind like a Category Five hurricane.

My mind a mess of loss, I sat and watched the new family in my old house for a couple of hours like a creeper, pretending the lights going on and off from one room to another were the doing of my parents. I could picture Callie there, meeting them, laughing with them, and largely benefiting from their unconditional love.

But I didn’t have them, and I didn’t have her, and the vision of their meeting would never happen anywhere outside of my fantasies.

Numb from the overexposure, I didn’t even feel the rain as it beat into my already soaked clothes and my eyes stayed open in the world’s slowest blink.

I could see my father dancing around my mom with the technical skills of a professional dancer and the smile that would light up her face as a result.

But mostly I saw the freedom with which they lived their lives, so openly affectionate and obviously in love and unwilling to let anyone tell them they couldn’t have it.

They’d known what it was like to give up everything and start anew only to find they’d really had nothing to begin with.

What they had with each other—that was everything.

Frustrated with my delusions and ghost stalking, I finally gave it up, heading for the only place I knew I could.

With a few knocks on the deep burgundy door, feet padded and plunked their way down the hall to answer it and the barrier swung open to my friend Connor.

He hadn’t seen me in three months.

The disappearing act I’d pulled after selling my parent’s house had been a necessity at the time, and because of everything I’d had with Callie, I’d never regret it.

But I wasn’t proud of the way I’d skipped out on Connor.

“Nik—”

“Hey, Con,” I said, knowing I looked like hell and I sounded worse, and knowing that the simplicity with which I greeted him was far shy of what he deserved.

“Nik, man, it’s good to see you,” he told me with heart, his voice both of steel and affection at once. He turned the other direction so his voice would carry further.

“Carli!” he yelled to his wife. “Nik’s here!”

I heard a pot drop in the kitchen just before the sight of her rounded the corner.

Her violet blue eyes lit up and she barreled down the hall, slamming into me with the full weight of her body and making her long black hair swing out and around my shoulders like a curtain. She ignored the wet of my body and hugged tight, squeezing me like she meant it.

“I think she’s excited,” Con joked, smiling at me like I hadn’t been one of the shittiest friends on the planet. It felt good in a way I hadn’t even known I needed, lost in the lows of heartbreak, to know even when I felt like I had nothing, I still had people willing to give me their all.

“Listen, Con,” I said, setting Carli gingerly aside with a smile. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t even finish that sentence, man!”

“Yeah,” Carli agreed, stepping away from me and into Connor’s side like I hadn’t just soaked the entire front of her body. “We saw you on TV at the Olympic Trials! I just about flipped my shit!”

She looked to Con and asked for confirmation. “Did I not just about flip my shit?”

“She flipped her shit,” he repeated by command rather than by opinion, smiling and fighting his hand on her shoulder as he did. She slapped him on his.

Memories blazed as if surged by an influx of gasoline.

Just that one move made me happy and sad at the same time, and I’m not too ashamed to say I almost cried right then.

“What are you doing here?” Carli asked with disquiet, finally connecting the dots between seeing me on TV and the fact that standing there with them was exactly where I shouldn’t be.

“It’s a long story,” I admitted, scrubbing a hand down my face and feeling bad for barging in on them.

Connor was the first to jump in to help me change my mind. “Well, come in! We’ve got chicken quesadillas and cake and a whole hell of a lot of time.”

Part of me didn’t want to stay, but the smarter part knew it’d do me good.

So in I went with a muttered ‘thanks’ and a smile, following them down the hall and into the kitchen like I did it every day.

I wished Callie were with me right then, her hand in mine as she trailed behind me.

Her laugh. Her smile. Her goddamn eyes.

All of it poked at me and pushed, and within a few minutes, I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do than tell Con and Carli everything.

There was so much to tell, so much to feel, and so much to miss.

But every step of it was worth it, every memory a reward for the burn, and I healed a little bit with each word I spoke.

Because I didn’t just remember the way I felt.

I remembered the way she did too.

There was a validation in that and a hope. A possibility that if I wanted it badly enough and fought for it, I still had a chance.

I wasn’t telling our story as me, and I wasn’t telling it as though there were an end.

I was telling it—

As us.

Each skill, each event—I lived all of it as an us.

It’d taken me the full week since he’d left to get here emotionally, but I’d finally done it. I’d gone through all of the stages of a meltdown; heartbreak and rage and giving everyone I encountered at any point in the day the finger.

It took the realization that I could still connect with Nik because I held a piece of him on the inside, trapped tight in the center of that big beating organ in my chest, to realize that I did absolutely no one any favors by not getting my shit together.

Not me.

Not him.

And most certainly not us.

Hands painted with New Skin glitter, I carried Nik everywhere with me and listened to him yell for me in my head as if he were there.

I told myself what I wanted to hear, that it wasn’t the end, but instead a hiatus, the reality that he wouldn’t have been able to come to Brazil with me anyway only helping a little.

Bodies bounded and flipped, skills being practiced and run-through all around me. Lights flashed off of cameras in the stands, and fans waved hand-made signs back and forth.