Song of the Fireflies Read Online Free PDF Page A

If he would have me. If he
could
have me…
    I just never imagined that my homecoming would be met with
more
than I had ever hoped for… and, well, a lot more that I never could have possibly anticipated.

Elias
    Two months ago…
    I hadn’t seen nor heard from Bray in four years. As anyone would do, I went on with my life. I met a girl, Aline, at community college. She was beautiful. Dark hair. Bright blue eyes. Peach-colored skin. I loved her. But I wasn’t
in love
with her, even though I tried really hard to be. I tried
so
hard that for a while I actually believed it. But after two years of dating, I realized it wasn’t the kind of love I felt for Bray. And it never would be.
    I heard from my friend Mitchell that Bray was engaged and in love with some guy in South Carolina. I felt like punching Mitchell for telling me this. I would have much rather gone on wondering about her, left clueless as to how she was carrying on with her life, instead of knowing the painful details.
    I saw Bray in everything and everyone. Even in Aline—it wasn’t until much later that I realized how they favored each other. Pathetic, I know, but love isn’t always roses and rainbows and butterflies in your stomach. It’s equally cruel and painful and the world’s worst villain.
    Aline dumped me. She knew I was in love with Bray. Not because I told her, but because women are smart like that. They have this weird fucking superpower that allows them to read a man’s emotions and see straight through his lies. I had told Aline about Bray, my “best friend” since childhood, and apparently that was all the backstory Aline needed to know more about me than I knew about myself. It wasn’t that I had tried to hide from Aline the fact that I was still in love with Bray, but that I had been trying to hide it from myself.
    Aline was a great girl. She just wasn’t
my
girl….
    It was one day in April nearly two months ago when the landscape of my life changed forever. The colors on that black-and-white painting were finally starting to fill in.
    I woke up Saturday morning to Mitchell rummaging through the cabinets in my kitchen. He had been my roommate since last year. A lot about both of us had changed since we were kids. Thankfully, his mullet was one thing. Somewhere along the years he traded that hairstyle for a short, stylish cut with longer bangs that framed his face.
    “What the hell are you doing, man?” I asked as I entered the kitchen wearing only my boxers. My current one-night stand, Jana, was still asleep in my bed, tangled in the sheets.
    I opened the fridge and drank down half a bottle of water.
    Mitchell was standing on a chair pushed against the front of the oven and reaching into the cabinet high above the stove light. “Looking for my weed.”
    “Mitchell, man, seriously, you need to come down off that shit. Why would your weed be in the cabinet?”
    “Come down off
what
shit?
Weed?
” His voice was muffled by the cabinet door.
    “The meth.”
    “Fucking A, bro, I’m not on meth. What the hell is your problem?”
    I sat down at the kitchen table, stretched my arms above me and yawned. “You haven’t slept in three days,” I said. “Last night I heard you going through boxes in your room. For three hours.” I looked around the kitchen. “I haven’t seen this place this clean since I moved in, and I sure as hell didn’t clean it.”
    Mitchell’s head finally came out of the cabinet, his bangs partially covering his dark brown eyes. He stepped down from the chair. His eyes were wide and feral and bloodshot, his pupils dilated. The corner of the left side of his mouth constantly twitched.
    “Don’t tell anyone,” he said. He started to sit down but began pacing instead.
    “I’m not going to tell anyone, but you’re starting to worry me. That’s some bad shit, bro. A month more and you’ll be sucking guys off for a fix. It’s no better than crack.”
    Mitchell’s face went slack. “Dude, that’s goin’