When he was certain that he wouldn't be disturbed, Eli grabbed a blanket and crept back downstairs, tiptoeing through the family room so he wouldn't wake Adam. Pushing open the screen door to the back porch lightly, he closed it as noiselessly as possible, holding his breath for a bit when it squeaked on its rusted hinges. Thankfully, he couldn't hear any feet padding towards him, so he released the breath he had been holding and pulled up one of the metal chairs from around the little table and wrapped the blanket tighter around his shoulders.

It was a cold night, but not windy, which meant that the smell probably wouldn't carry. Perfect. The less questions he got about it, the better.

Reaching deep into his pocket, Eli pulled out something he hadn't seen or used in nearly eight months- a pack of Camel 100s and a black lighter with a skull carved into the handle. Striking the pad of his thumb against the hilt of the lighter, he lit the cigarette and breathed deeply, inhaling the smell that was so comfortably and terribly familiar all at once.

Eli hadn't admitted this to anyone- not even Adam knew he did this, as far as he knew.

It wasn't as if he was ashamed of it- and truly, he wasn't. People had their vices, and some habits you just couldn't kick, no matter how hard you tried. Eli knew enough about addictions to know that smoking wasn't something he had a serious problem with. It was just something that, every now and then, he needed to do in order to burn out some thoughts, or relieve some tension from somewhere deep inside his body that nothing- not his therapist's suggestions that he had made progress, not Adam's constant, unwavering friendship, not Clare's devotion- could seem to loosen the way a few puffs of a cigarette could.

Honestly, it wasn't even habitual. Okay, maybe for awhile, right after Julia's death, when his whole life had completely fallen apart and he'd gone off the rails and started pushing people away left and right, he'd been a pack-a-day smoker; two packs, sometimes, even. But even that had gotten old after some time, not to mention expensive.

And anyways, after his…suicide attempt

(God, it was still so hard to say that. It sounded like such a cliché, something straight out of YA novel or a poorly written teen melodrama. But that's what it was, and there was no other way to get it out there)

his parents had combed through his stuff- or as much of it as they could, although this was in the days before his hoarding had spun completely out of control- and gotten rid of anything that they thought might be a way for Eli to harm himself. They'd found his lighter and confiscated it, and even though Eli could have easily bought another, the whole smoking thing had pretty much lost its edge for him by then.

Nowadays, Eli hardly ever thought of smoking anymore. He'd stopped when he started dating Clare, though a couple of times he'd snuck a few contraband puffs when he'd really needed it. It had been almost a year, though, and he hadn't smoked a single cigarette since.

Until now.

He'd had a feeling this would happen.

If Clare had known that he'd brought these- if she knew that he did it at all- she would have called it a "self-fulfilling prophecy". But it was more than that. He just knew he would need these, because he knew what this weekend meant to everyone.

Christ, if anyone understood it, he did, better than anyone. He understood just how impossible grief could be.

Again, Sav's face- and Julia's- zinged across his mind like a flashing neon advertisement.

Eli leaned his head back and stared up at the stars overhead. It looked as if they began and ended right over the lake house, as if they were just coming out specifically for them on this night. A blanket of stars to wish them goodnight, covering the sky above their heads like netting.

But is it holding the sky together, Eli wondered, or pulling it apart?

As much as he hated clichés, he had to admit, staring at the stars did make him feel pretty small. Like all the petty shit he spent so much time getting worked up over and everything that drove him crazy or mattered to him at all was really nothing at all.

Their lives really were so insignificant.

Sav had only been 18 years old, Julia 15. Both of them, dead and buried, gone forever before they'd ever really gotten a chance to live. They would never be able to grow up and experience anything. No sense to it, no point.

What good had their lives been, if all they had done was end in grief?

As much as he loved Clare, a part of him knew he would probably love Julia forever. She had been his first love, and as crazy as he knew it sounded now, he had honestly believed they would be together forever, and that he'd found the love of his life at 14 years old.

He knew that he would never trade his time with her for anything in the world. But it also came at a price. Every happy memory came paradoxically with the irreversible, suffocating sadness that she was never coming home to him.

What meaning had their lives had, if the happy memories of both Sav and Julia would always be tagged with so much suffering?

"Oh."

A small sound made him jump, startled. He'd thought that everyone would be asleep by now. Whipping around, he saw Alli standing hesitantly in the doorway.

"Sorry," she mumbled. "I…I thought you were upstairs with Clare."

"I'm not," he said stupidly, wishing he could extinguish the cigarette and realizing he hadn't brought some kind of ash tray.

Alli eyed the cigarette with curiosity. "I didn't know you smoked."

Eli shrugged. "It's not really a habit. It's just a thing I do. Sometimes."

"Does Clare know?'

"Why, are you gonna tell?" he snapped, then felt bad for his tone as Alli raised her eyebrows at him.

"No," he said more gently. "And I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell her, okay? It's none of her business, and it's none of yours, either."

"Whatever," she said flippantly. "It isn't."

To his surprise, she pulled up the seat next to him and sat down.

Eli groaned inwardly. As much as he knew that he needed to be nice to Alli- especially this weekend- she wasn't exactly his favorite person in the world. Sometimes, he wondered why she and Clare were even friends; it seemed like they had absolutely nothing in common.

"It's so quiet out," she murmured, drawing her knees close to her chest.

Eli nodded and blew out another puff of smoke.

"Clare told me about your girlfriend," Alli said, apropos of nothing.

His hand holding the cigarette stilled in mid-air.

"Ex-girlfriend," Alli corrected. She looked at him with wide, glassy eyes, filled with tears that refused to fall. "I'm so, so sorry."

Eli had a response on the tip of his tongue, but the one that came out surprised him.

"So am I," he sighed.

"How do you deal with it?" she asked in a rush. "How did you deal with it?"

He shook his head sadly.

"I didn't, really," he confessed. "Sort of spun out. Got lost." He took another puff of his cigarette. "Not advertising it, believe me."

She considered his words. "How did you get out of it?"

The answer was simple. "Clare."

Alli's face softened. Tears slipped down her cheeks.

"That's so great," she whispered, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. "Really."

They were silent for a moment, both of them staring out over the lake.

"I know you don't really think much of me," Alli said softly. "But I want you to know that I'm happy for you guys." She looked up at him. "Really, I am. You make her so happy. So…I'm glad."

Eli nodded. "And I don't hate you," he replied.

Alli smiled. "Well, I don't hate you, either."

She then asked, in a much smaller, child-like voice, "Can I ask you something?"

"Kind of already are," he said.

"How," she said, then stopped, and seemed to be changing directions mid-thought. "Is it…always going to feel like this?"

He knew exactly what she meant.

"Depends," he said candidly. "Yeah, it will. Some days will be easier than others, but for the most part…it's always going to be hard. Especially days like today. They just don't get any easier."

"That's what I was afraid of," Alli said. "I'm sorry. This must be really awful for you to talk about."

"It is for you, too, now," Eli reminded gently.

Alli just snorted.

"I'm so pissed off at him," she said suddenly. "It's weird. I am just so fucking pissed off."

"I mean," she continued. "I mean, there is SO MUCH that he's still here for. There's me, there's my parents, his bedroom, his clothes- I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to do with all of his clothes? Give them away? Who would want them, anyway? They're all these dumbass rockstar tees and ugly vests and shit. I mean, somebody needs to tell me what I'm supposed to DO with all of it? How do I deal with it, with him? I'm just SO pissed. I want to kill him."

She wiped the tears she hadn't realized had begun to fall away, and rested her head on her knees, holding her entire body close to her chest.

"I wish I could bring him back," she told Eli, "and then kill him again, just so I can see how angry he's made me."