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What They Each Wanted

What Lore wanted was this:

She just wanted it to be cool again. To be fun . For this to not be a celebration of Nick’s life and some proactive memorial just before he died, but instead just to be like any other time they had hung out years ago. She wanted to tell stupid stories and dumb jokes. She wanted to get high with Hamish, to drink beer with Nick—and she wanted Owen to just be normal, for god’s sake. Just regular Owen, sweet Owen, don’t-rock-the-boat Owen, stop-looking-at-me-like-that Owen. And she wanted Matty to be here. Matty would just show up, walking out of the airport like it was nothing at all, like he’d just taken a trip and they’d missed him for a while. But none of that would happen. Nick was still dying. Hamish looked like a douchebag now. Owen was gonna be weird because Owen was Owen. And Matty wasn’t ever coming back. So, realistically, beyond the fantasy, what Lore wanted was simply this:

She wanted to survive this experience, to make it through to the other side, and to get back home and get back to work.

—

What Owen wanted was this:

He wanted it to feel like they had never been away from one another. That the time that had passed since they had actually seen one another in person—what, eleven years now?—would be no gap at all, just a crack in the sidewalk easily stepped over. They would come together and it would be like magnets snapping together, click. They’d fall into patterns. They’d have their inside jokes. They’d tell one another about their lives, but they’d remember the times they had together, too. He’d get a famous Hamish hug. Lore would say sorry to him, and together they’d rebuild the bridges they burned. Nick would be funny Nick, not shitty Nick. And they’d all raise a glass to Matty, Matty who was the best of them, Matty who’d left them. They’d crash together, and maybe it would be weird and maybe it would be messy, but they’d sort through it all, the good and the bad. But that wasn’t possible. Because the bad was so bad, it made the good seem impossible, as if it had never been present in the first place. The good was a guttering candle against the cold wind of a deep dark moonless winter night.

It never had a chance.