I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“What if this fear means something? What if the transplant doesn’t
work?”
C’s trembling travels down his body. He puts his hands over Neo’s,
staring into his eyes as if he never quite got a chance to look at him
long enough before now.
“I want to be with you,” he says. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted. What if I
don’t get the chance?”
Neo, like the stone he is, isn’t shaken by such words. He would’ve
said in the past, that choosing between what-ifs is not a luxury for
people like them.
He would say that the world is fundamentally unfair and chances are
illusions of choices time takes for itself.
But Neo is not imprisoned by the past. He is the strongest out of all
of us, but he is also the most willing to be weak. He doesn’t put up a
fight, not for himself. The only people he will fight for are the ones
with him now.
Neo wipes C’s tears with his thumbs and cups his face. “Then I’ll
spread your ashes in the sea and walk into the waves.”
C blinks, his hands falling on Neo’s.
“You really are a writer,” he whispers. “You’ll read to me tonight?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll stay with me after I fall asleep?”
As he tidies up Neo’s collar and wipes his shirt of any sand, Neo
hugs C
around the neck and presses his nose into his hair.