The details of the night before had gone blurry, like a dream getting farther and farther away. The bedroom was dark, the deepest blue I’d ever seen it. I wasn’t sure if it was early morning or late evening, not sure even what day of the week it was. My body still felt full of sand, and the thought of ripping the blankets away seemed an act that would leave me all too vulnerable. .

Sitting upright, still hunched under the warmth of the velvet blanket, I breathed in slowly, trying to fill up my lungs under a stiff chest. The shadows in the corner of the room illuminated; I saw my things stacked against the wall haphazardly. I scratched my fingers through my scalp, stared into the dim room to try and gather the pieces of the day. Or the night, whichever it was.

I wrapped the velvet blanket around my shoulders, hoisted myself out of the bed and stumbled through the bedroom door. Looking past the bay window in the living room, speckled with droplets of water, the grass had almost a glow to it. The blanket caught on the laundry baskets, I swore to myself and made a mental note to start cleaning up later. Or tomorrow.

Finally, I turned the corner into the kitchen. The stove-clock said 8:14pm. And I suddenly realized Aron was nowhere in the house.

I dropped the blanket, shoved my bare feet into the first pair of shoes I could find, pushed through the front door and ran to the end of the street. There was no thought to it, I didn’t have to. I knew exactly where he was.

My shoes were soaked, covered in shards of grass from the neighbor’s yards. Then caked in muddy sand as I’d crossed the street by the coastline. The gate was open and the light flickered on.

There he was, shivering, head leaned back against the stone in the usual space, where that mark on the back of his neck had been. I didn’t call out to wake him up, didn’t say a word. I was frozen, still as the concrete angels marking the deceased. Does he think he’s a ghost?

His eyes opened, found my form and flinched.

“I’m sorry!” his voice was a whisper, like he hadn’t found it yet.

I held onto the words before I handed them to him. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the image of that scared little boy, like a stray dog, all alone. Broken. “This isn’t okay, Aron. You need to go home. You need to sleep in your own bed. You don’t belong with the dead, Aron. Please, come home.” My voice had been a shaky thing, shaking like the bare tree-branches caught in ocean-front winds.

“I can’t just leave her, Esme. I can’t. Everyone else already has.”

I barely moved. “You really believe that, don’t you Aron?”

His chest heaving up and down, mouth agape. He didn’t dare move, struggled to maintain eye contact. He looked like a child. “What do you mean?”

“This isn’t about Emma, Aron. This is about you. Your sisters didn’t abandon you and your mom, Aron. They moved on. They could use some better phone manners but they didn’t go abroad to leave you behind. And Emma, she died a long time ago and it wasn’t your fault. Your mom is still alive and your piece of dad, okay? And you think sleeping here every night will make you closer to Emma, but it won’t. She’s not in there, Aron. Do you know where she is? Huh?”

I couldn’t tell if it’d been raining or if we’d started crying.

“She’s in your laugh, in your mother’s smile. She’s in the creaks of the floor in that house and every fond memory hanging on the wall. She’s not in that stone, why would she be here, Aron? Come back home, please. Stop sleeping with ghosts, Aron. Come home.”

My feet were freezing, our hair was soaked and the graveyard had become a mudhill slop. He was frozen, still leaning against the stone. Shaking. My knees buckled and I let myself fall into him, wrapped my arms around his shoulders, lips against his neck. “Come home, Aron.”

His arms clung to the folds in my shirt, sobs sounding with the booming of thunder. “Okay.”

《┄ ✝ ┄》

I fell asleep into his heartbeat every night and woke up with his fingers on my arms every morning. Our home smelled like salt water and hot apple cider, and the pictures were all aligned center with clear glass. He felt bad at first, but Aron stopped sleeping on Emma’s grave. He slept in my arms every night instead.

And together, we spent all our time at the beach because we were fish not ghosts. Our favorite drink is anything mixed with Malibu, because I told that idiot I was right all along; there is a drink called Malibu. He swears he was just flirting with me, but I know him better than that.

I got to meet Ren, Minhyun, JR and Baekho. Meeting them was like looking into old family photos of Aron’s past, like I was somehow that much closer to him. Like I’d known him all along. They four of them practically lived at the house with us. I didn’t mind, though. It wasn’t long before I thought of them as my very own brothers.

My parents still , and his family is still broken and far apart, but there’s healing properties in every saltwater wave that crashes over our bodies. And every time he smiles at me, I’m reminded that I finally have a home.

Author's Note: It kind of ends abruptly but I have many other projects to work on, ha ha! It was also never intended to get so long, but that's fine by me. I can see how much my own writing has improved just from writing this, and I hope to see it improve further in future writings! Thank you so much for reading! Constructive criticism is always welcome!