#davexjade

(They met in college.He was studying film and she was studying physics and when he heard her playingher bass in the park he put a hundred dollars in her tip jar at the end of herperformance and asked her out to dinner. She found out that his name was DaveStrider and he liked sick beats and shitty comics, and he made her laugh morethan anyone ever had)

After three weeks, she files a missing person report. A partof her goes cold wondering if she’s waited too long and another part tells herthat she’s overreacting, that of course he’ll be back, he’s fine. But he hasn’tpicked up his phone in twenty-two days. It’s an extravagantly craptastic flipphone that’s at least a decade old; he has it because this shit is ironic as hell harley cmon look at it its fuckin glorious.It is never off his person for long. Shewonders if there’s even enough space left on it to store all the messages she’sleft.

(After a year theymove in together. With their combined incomes, they’re able to rent a crampedone-bedroom apartment near downtown. The kitchen is outdated and the furnitureis probably older than they are, but the view is amazing and it’s theirs. Every morning they’d walk together to thesubway station and go to school and every evening Jade would sit on the benchand wait the extra twenty minutes for Dave and together they’d walk home,clasped hands swinging between them)

Dave Strider was always precisely on time. To him, beingearly was uncool and being late was straight up disrespectful. That firstnight, when the subway doors opened and he didn’t come out, she’d called him.It had gone straight to voicemail. Frowning, she’d waited another fifteenminutes for the next train before walking home alone, figuring that maybe he’dhad to stay late studying and his phone had died. Or something. But Jade couldn’tshake the oily disquiet from the back of her mind and it only grew when he didn’tcome back the next night, or the next night, or the next. Disquiet turned toworry turned to a dark and hopeless sort of grief. Every night, she waited forhim, and every night that he didn’t come out of the train took a little moreout of her. She saw his face on the news and wanted to weep. She didn’t knowwhat else to do but drive around the city at night, searching for him, puttingup posters on telephone poles and internet forums. More than anything in theworld, she missed him.

They find the body three months after he disappeared.

Dave had missed his train and decided to walk home instead.His old flip phone had given up at last and so he couldn’t call for help whenthe car appeared out of nowhere and slammed into him, sending him flying.Instead of calling an ambulance, the driver dumped his body in the tall weedsunder the overpass. He died cold and alone and in pain. They still don’t know whodid it. When they told Jade all this she’d sat there numbly. When she arrivedback at the apartment, she’d curled up into a ball and wept.

(In her dreams hecomes home in the late afternoon, when thick golden sunlight pours through thewindows of the apartment and lights the city up so bright it’s almost blinding.She’s studying, or cooking dinner, or tinkering on some fantastic, impossiblemachine and she looks up and he’s walking through the doorway, plonking hisgear down on the table as if he was never gone. The joy she feels at the sightof him is indescribable, brighter than the sunlight pooling on the floor,lighter than the dust motes dancing in the beams. When she flings herself intohis waiting arms it’s like coming home. sup harley, he’ll murmur in her ear, wow hey stop crying im here im home now. His mouth is warm and soft and tastes sortof like apples and mostly like salt and she always wakes with the taste of himbright on her tongue)