A/N: Er. Sorry this took so long. I was just kind of scared to edit this. It feels so... final.
Slowly, I open my eyes and it's as though I am surrounded by a soft white light—no, wait. I am inside the light. In my mind, I sigh, because I know that's not quite right either.
It feels as though I am sitting, but everything around me is made of this light. It seems to fade away a little—perhaps my eyes are just adjusting to it—before it is no longer noticeable to me, and I can see clearly where I am.
I am in an airport, but it is unlike an airport I have ever been in in my life. For starters, there is no one here besides me, and, when I look out the windows, there is nothing but the same golden white light I saw just a minute ago. It's like the sun, almost, but not so strong; it's almost soothing.
How did I even get here? It's as though I can't remember anything before this point—in my mind, there is nothing but this strange airport.
I know there are only two directions for me—I can walk down the terminal, where I have the distinct feeling that nothing will ever hurt again, or I can walk back down the hall, back the direction that I would have taken here—although I am uncertain as to how I know this. Maybe it is instinctive. Maybe I just know.
The sound of footsteps echoing behind me catches my attention as I'm staring down the endless hallway and I turn back around.
It is Jeff, like the last time I saw him—the last time I can remember him being alive—but better.
He is happy—smiling, even—and he reaches out a hand to me. It seems to glow softly—like that white light is somehow embedded within his skin—and I look at it curiously.
His smile widens encouragingly. "Go ahead," he tells me. "Take it. Take my hand."
"But why?" I find myself saying . The words have slipped out of my mouth before I can even think clearly, before I can process this—before I can process Jeff's sudden presence.
It is not like the times before, in the weeks that followed his funeral, when he continually showed up and found me in my dreams or while I was in my room studying. He is different. He is… I don't know how to put it, honestly, other than that he is whole again.
"Don't you trust me?" he asks, the grin playing across his features.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, looking away from him.
"I know."
"Please, Jeff," I plead with him, "what's going on?"
His hand drops to his side and his smile falters for a split second. "Well, the way I see it," he replies, looking me right in the eye, "is that you have two options: you can come with me, or you can go back to where you came from. You know, wherever it was that you were before you got here."
"But I don't remember how I got here."
"You don't?"
I shake my head. "No."
"Not at all?"
I shrug. "I just know that thinking about it hurts, like I hit my head," I tell him. Jeff frowns but says nothing. "Wait, did I die? Am I dead, Jeff?"
He laughs. "No one who comes here is really dead," he says with a smile. "You've got a choice."
"What?"
"Don't you remember? The only people who ever come to the airport are the ones whose lives are hanging by a thread back in the real world. Don't you see? You get the choice between going back, getting to live, and letting go, and, well, passing on."
And, suddenly, it comes flooding back—the accident and when I hit my head on the steering wheel, my feelings for him, how I kept seeing him after his death, his funeral… that last night at the Winter Formal. That last memory hits me like a blow to the chest, and I find that I am unable to breathe for a moment.
"But why would I go back?" I ask, confused, looking up and meeting his eyes.
"I'm sure that the pain will fade with time," is his reply. He looks away from me, but I can still see emotion coloring his features. He is, unsurprisingly, still an open book to me, even now.
"No," I say with a frown. "I mean, why would I go back to all of that when I have you here now? Won't we be together if I go with you?"
"Yes." He looks at me sadly. "But I don't want you to give everything up for me, Nicky."
The coroner's report reads that Nicholas Duval, 17 years and 8 months old, died from head trauma—bleeding within his brain, actually—after flipping his car into a ditch. The blood on the steering wheel and the shape of the head wound indicate that the death was accidental.
The coroner is perplexed, however, during the autopsy. Despite all things, the head wound should not have been enough to kill the teenager before the ambulance arrived—the car behind him had seen it happen and had called 911 immediately. They were only minutes out from the hospital, and he ought to have lived beyond the few minutes it took to arrive and remove his body from his wreck of a car.
There were no other life-threatening injuries—although he had a broken arm and leg—and no other explanation for his death other than he just seemed to have lost the will to hang onto life.
It feels as though my heart leaps into my throat—now is the moment of truth—when he calls me by my nickname, the one I would only ever let him call me. "I don't have anything without you," I tell him. "Jeff, I love you, too."
He lets out a sigh, like he's been holding his breath this whole time, breaking into a smile that literally lights up his face. "I love you, too, Nicky."
I grab his hand, pulling him towards me. "I'm sorry it took me so long."
Jeff laughs. "Don't worry. We have forever."
As he pulls me further into the airport terminal, the floor begins to fade away and the light around me warms. This is all I want. Jeff, I think, is all I have ever wanted.
A/N: The end. The actual end. Let me know what you think!
