Every You, Every Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

me.”
    “Tell you what?”
    “The story. You and Ariel. The first kiss. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
    He sighed. I was sure there were moments when he hated me. “It seems like a really long time ago, right?”
    I nodded.
    “But I remember it. I don’t know if that matters now.”
    “Tell me.”
    Why was I being so insistent? Mostly because it was making him so uncomfortable. Mostly because I’d never been sure if he’d registered any of it. I always felt it was unfair that even though both of us did what we did, I was the one who took on the suffering afterwards. Do you blame us equally?
    “There’s not much to tell you,” he said now, leading me to the gravestone in the picture. “She was having one of her up nights—she was all energy, bouncing around and telling me how happy she was. It felt good, you know? To be the guy making her happy. We’d gone to the movies, and then she said she’d walk me home. When we got to my house, she said she didn’t want it to be over yet. She asked me what was around, and when I told her the cemetery, she said that was perfect. We got in here—just hopped over the wall; it’s not that high. And she started running around, reading all of the inscriptions to me. Beloved wife and mother, that kind of thing. I tried to catch up with her, but when she was in one of those moods, it was impossible to catch up with her. Right? I’d chime in every now and then, but mostly it was her show. Then we got to this one, and she got quiet.”
    We were in front of the gravestone from the photo now. I tried to read it, but I couldn’t. Time had worn away all of the words. Some light green moss grew on it instead.
    “You can’t read it anymore,” I said. “That’s what upset her.”
    Jack nodded. “She kept saying, ‘What’s the point? All this, and what’s the point?’ And I don’t know—I just wanted to kiss her so much then. I wanted it, and she needed it. So I held her, and I kissed her, and we just started making out in the middle of a graveyard.”
    “That’s so romantic,” I said.
    “What do you know about romance, Ev? I mean, really.”
    It took me by surprise, his anger. I hadn’t realized he cared enough to be angry with me.
    He took out a cigarette, looked at me for my permission, then lit it.
    “Runner like you shouldn’t dabble in cancer,” I said, pressing my luck.
    “You sound like her,” he said, then let it hang there, like the smoke.
    I looked around the gravestone for another envelope, but didn’t find anything.
    “Are you watching us?” I called out. “Anyone there?”
    “This time of night,” Jack said between drags, “they’d need a flash.”
    “He’d need a flash,” I said. “Or she’d.”
    “Who is it, Evan? If it’s not you and not me, who is it?”
    “Do you think there was someone else? Do you think she was cheating on you? ”
    “No. Did she have any other friends she would’ve told? Do you think she was cheating on you ? ”
    Between us, we were supposed to know you. Between us, we were supposed to know everything.
    “You have to help me,” I said to him. “We have to help her.”
    “We would joke about it,” he continued. “That first kiss. How weird it was. I was going to find out whose grave it was. I was going to find out, and then on our anniversary, I was going to write the name back on. I thought she’d like that.”
    I looked down at the anonymous stone. I couldn’t meet his eye.
    “She needed help,” I told him.
    “Shame we couldn’t give it to her.”
    I lifted my head to stare at him in the darkness, over the gravestone.
    “Do you really believe that?” I asked.
    “Some days I do. Some days I don’t.”
    “She was breaking,” I told him. “We had to.”
    “I’m not convinced we didn’t break her more,” he replied.
    “You can’t break someone by caring.”
    “Are you really sure about that?”
    “I don’t need your help!” you screamed.
    “Yes, you do,” he told