Luke Snyder was sitting at the table in his mother's house – where he still lived – eating a bowl of cereal and reading the Oakdale Times. As he went to flip the paper open, Luke paused and noticed the date: May 7. He stared at the tiny letters and number. Was it May already? Had eight months really passed since Reid had died?
Luke sighed. It didn't feel like that long. He still missed Reid terribly every day, though the pain had lessened over the months. Every once in a while, Luke still felt stabs of anger and jealousy whenever he saw Chris Hughes with Katie, but those had mostly grown to feelings of longing and wishing that Reid was still here with him.
No longer hungry, not to mention late for work at WorldWide, Luke grabbed his keys and got into his car; it was raining, so he didn't want to walk across town.
As soon as he was on the road, Luke turned on the radio, not liking to drive in silence. Just as was pulling onto the roadway that would take him to the other side of town, a song started blasting through the radio that made Luke skid his car to a halt on the side of the road:
I wish I could tell you
The things I never got the chance to
I wish I was with you now
To see you smile again
I wish we had more time
But time goes by so fast
A moment comes, and then the moment passes by
In the blink of an eye
And if I had one wish
Luke had no idea what song it was or who the singer was, but he sat staring at the radio wondering if somehow he had written it and forgotten about it. There was so much he wanted to tell Reid. He wanted so much to see Reid smile, to see that smile that Reid had so rarely shown, to see that smile Reid had reserved specifically for him. Oh how he wished Reid hadn't tried to outrun that train!
I wouldn't ask for money
I wouldn't ask for fame
I wouldn't ask for the power to make this world change
If I could have one thing
That one thing that I would choose
Is one more ordinary day with you
With you
Oh how he wished he had had one more ordinary day with Reid. Just one. Well, a whole lifetime, if he was going to be honest with himself. But one more day with Reid would have been nice. They had had so little time to say goodbye, so little time for Luke to assure Reid that he loved him.
I wish I could see you
And be there where my arms could reach you
I wish I could let you know how much you touched my life
Maybe a little time
Is all that's how we get
The words we long to say are words that go unsaid
You can't go back again
But if I had one wish
The first thing he would do would be to hug him really tight. Luke still couldn't believe that they had never shared a hug. How had that happened? Aside from holding hands, it was the simplest gesture of affection and they had never done it.
After that, he would most definitely make love to Reid. How could he have been so stupid and take for granted that there would be time for that? Even after eight months, Luke was still so angry at himself for not giving himself completely to Reid. It was just such a foolish thing to do. Never being able to go to sleep in Reid's arm and wake up next to him was absolutely his biggest regret in life, and he knew it would continue to be no matter what else happened in his future.
Luke wanted so badly to tell Reid how grateful he was for their time together. He wanted to show him just how much he had needed Reid and how much Reid had saved him from himself. There was so much he wanted to say to Reid, so much that was left unsaid.
I wouldn't ask for money
I wouldn't ask for fame
I wouldn't ask for the power to make this world change
If I could have one thing
That one thing that I would choose
Is one more ordinary day
With you
I wish we had more time
Time goes by so fast
The moment comes
And the moment passes by in the blink of an eye
And if I had one wish
Why had they gotten so little time together? He was so angry about that. Not sad. Angry. It wasn't fair. They had been happy for literally two seconds before Reid was taken so cruelly from him. He wanted more time with Reid.
Luke banged his hands against the steering wheel in frustration.
I wouldn't ask for money
I wouldn't ask for fame
I wouldn't ask for the power to make this world change, no
If I could have one thing
That one thing that I would choose
Is one more ordinary day
Just one more ordinary day with you
With you
As he listened to the words of the song fade out, Luke felt tears streaming thick and fast down his face. They were the first tears he had shed over Reid since Valentine's Day.
Still thinking about the song and Reid, Luke sat in the driver's seat of his car and sobbed silently for a good ten minutes. He had never cried so hard about losing Reid. Not even when it happened. He was too much in shock that day. But now that eight months had passed and he had been living life without Reid, and this song – whatever it was – had expressed so clearly everything he had pent up inside of him, Luke truly felt the pain of his broken heart.
Even after the tears had stopped flowing and his breathing had begun to return to normal, Luke remained sitting on the side of the road for a while, until his phone buzzed with a text message from his grandmother wanting to know where he was.
Gathering whatever strength he had left, Luke decided to do what Reid had always done: bury himself in his work. Taking a deep breath, Luke steered his car back onto the road and made his slowly to WorldWide, trying his hardest to keep his mind away from Reid.