I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

Neo and I sit up, making room for her between us.
“Are you okay, Sony?” I ask. She looks at her shoes, tapping the
soles together.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice a distant thing. Concern crinkles Neo’s
forehead.
Sony sniffles, her jaw locking, unlocking. “I’m a little cold, I guess.”
“I can get you chocolate if you want,” I say. Sony scoffs, her hand
ruffling through my hair as she pulls me in, nuzzling against me. For
the lack of cuts, bruises, and wheezing in her breath, silence
ruminates around her like a fog.
“Was today not a good day?”
My quiet is a constant, a formulation of my curiosity’s wish to listen.
Neo’s quiet is verbal. On paper, he’s as loud as they come. Sony’s
quiet is made of sorrow. It aches in her chest beside her heart like
she could breathe from it.
Tonight, it brings her here. It steals from her fire and her full-bodied
movements. It tears her down, half of herself left to live.
“No,” Sony breathes. “It wasn’t a good day.”
“Sony.” Neo beckons her gaze. He crouches in front of her, reading
her pain like lines in his stories ready to be erased. “What
happened?”
Sony’s jaw quivers with her lips. A smile forged like a shield spreads
across her face, if only to convince her she isn’t trying not to cry. Her
eyes shut to the question. Then it comes from her, like a confession.
A sin. An irony.
“My mom died.”