“I love you.”

“What new?”

I laughed softly as I pressed a kiss on the tip of his nose. His arms pulled me in closer and I rested my head on his shoulder. I could feel the string of the necklace I had given him about a year ago pressed against my temple. This is what happiness felt like, better than smooth chocolate and more thrilling than a roller coaster. We swayed slowly back in forth with the rest of the crowd, but it felt like only we existed. He pulled my face to his and pressed his forehead to mine. I opened my eyes to look at him, smiling when I saw he did the same.

The last slow dance of the night ended too soon, and our peers started laughing and dancing wildly like feral animals when the DJ put on the next song. A lump formed in my chest when we pulled away. It was like a magnet trying to get back to him. When the night was over, we walked hand and hand to the car in the furthest corner of the large irregular-shaped school parking lot. I saw my reflection in my window and noticed the strands of dark hair that had fallen apart from the jumping and ecstatic dancing. He opened the door for me, and I slid into the driver’s seat like I had hundreds of times. He leaned in and stole a quick peck on the lips before pulling me into an embrace.

“I love you, Evelyn. Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?”

I watched him as he gave me a heartwarming smile with his imperfect teeth, but they were ideal in my book.

“I love you more, weirdo.”

With that, he shut my car door and started walking over to his car. I began my drive home to my foster family. Finley and I had been together for about two years now, and I had only been with this family for about a month. I change homes often, but I usually stay in the same general area. Finley was the only one I felt comfortable with, and he was the only constant thing in my life. He was perfect for me in every way, he was handsome, weird, had a sense of humor, and he never cared about what others thought. He had been bullied in the past for being with me since I was an outsider. But he never cared. He held my hand with pride, and he kept my worst pictures as his screensavers, telling me they were, in fact, adorable, and not revolting as I had insisted.

My head was clouded with happy thoughts of the dance we had just been to. I glanced at my green corsage on my wrist as I drove, it was gorgeous. Finley’s grandmother made it for me, I remember watching her weathered hands stitching the velvety petals together. When I looked up, still smiling, I was shocked to see headlights traveling towards me. My head screamed in alarm, I tried to swerve out of the way, but I felt the impact of the huge semi-truck that had hit my car. My head drooped over; I couldn’t lift it. I saw a pool of red liquid forming. I felt eerily calm as I couldn’t stay awake any longer. The sound of urgent voices and police sirens lulled me softly to sleep.

• • •

I woke up to snow falling around me. Where am I? I slowly rose and looked at my surroundings. I was on a mountain covered in a quilt of snow with patches of leafless trees in random spots. I allowed confusion to cloud my rational thoughts. I tried to remember what had happened, but I could recall nothing. I didn’t know my name, where I lived, or who I knew. It was like a hole had been ripped in my memory, I hated the feeling. For several hours I tried to remember how I had gotten here, but as soon as a recollection had surfaced, it was washed away by an ocean of loss. I was drawn from my struggle when I noticed a movement from a small animal in the distance, and it came quickly towards me. It appeared to be a miniature pearl-colored leopard with powerful black paws and a button nose. I heard a voice that was not my own echo in my mind.

“Touch my fur, and you will regain all the memories and hardships that you have been through. Leave me be, and you will discover powers beyond your imagination and create a new life for yourself.”

I stared unblinking at the lovely powerful creature. I felt the need to refill the awful hole in my soul, and I gingerly reached my hand out, almost desperately. As soon as I felt the cloud-soft fur on my fingertips, everything came rushing back to me like someone had sucked up the ocean of loss in a giant vacuum cleaner. I stared into the cats’ soft purple eyes and became choked up with emotion.

I saw my families, all six of them that I had lived with, I saw myself holding lizards and feeling joy when they flicked their tongues out, I saw my excitement on my face when I got accepted into an animal care internship. And then I remembered him. Finley. My love, and my life companion. I saw the dance, and I saw my car as a drunk driver rammed straight into the blue hood. I gasped in horror as I realized that no one could survive a crash like that.

I had died.

Suddenly I became hyper-aware of everything around me, and I realized I wasn’t cold from the snow, and I realized that I was still me. I had figured that when you die, you become some being of ultimate wisdom and intelligence. I was not the being I had imagined. I was still… me. I was still trying to figure out what was going on when the leopard spoke through my mind.

“Very few people have chosen to have their memories back. Life is often too painful for remembrance in this life.”

I stared at him, but I felt strangely calmed by his presents. It felt completely normal to be with a purple-eyed snow leopard that could speak to me. Suddenly, I couldn’t stop my mind from going over the normal speed limit. I didn’t have unlimited knowledge like I thought I would, but I soon realized that I could answer any query with a simple thought. I worked out in my mind the likelihood of a space rock hitting the earth, the answer to fairly difficult math equations, and even what my situation was.

I had died. I closed my eyes and learned how to teleport as if it were some mere task. Suddenly the snow disappeared, and I was with Finley. He was crying, hard. I had seen him cry countless times, but this was on a different level. His sobs were louder than I thought his voice was capable of. They turned to wicked cough attacks and then to dry heaving. My chest tightened and ached when I watched him like that, he must’ve just heard of my death. I sat next to him on his couch and put my arm around him. I pulled him into my lap, and to my surprise, I could feel him. He obviously had no idea he was in my lap, he thought he was just lying on his couch, but I knew. I softly twisted his lightly-colored hair around my fingers, singing him songs to comfort him. After a few minutes, he seemed relaxed enough. I watched his face as he stared aimlessly into the distance.

How could we continue our love story like this? He has no idea that I’m here, holding him. I sighed, feeling frustrated that he couldn’t hear me, and I fell asleep. I continued the next few months this way.

• • •

I followed him around the school for months. He was strikingly different, he never smiled, and when his friends tried to talk to him, he would push them away. He was easily irritable and several times he had burst into tears and ran out of his classrooms. But each time he felt overwhelmed, I was there. I stroked his face and told him I was here. I knew that it helped him, my touch was calming even if he couldn’t feel it. Even when he reverted to sobbing hard enough that breath escaped him, it stopped a little faster, and he became a little less violent. Time was healing him like I hoped it would. I stayed with him every second of the day. When he started to quiver, I would hold his hand. When he teared up, I would hug him tight.

One night, I could tell he was feeling extra awful. He was reading a note I gave him during my short life. His tears dripped onto the loved paper one by one. I sat across from him on his bed, and I realized I had been tearing up too. Finley looked so lifeless, so depressed, so …gone. He slowly got to his feet, feeling nothing, and disappeared into the bathroom. He came back with an orange bottle of pills. I knew immediately what he was planning on doing. I swore I could feel my heart racing, but I knew my heart didn’t need to beat anymore. For a split second, I didn’t try to stop him. I thought it would be better this way, we could be together, and we would be happy again at last. But then I remembered his dreams, his reasons to live, his life. He wanted a daughter and a family. The pills touched his lips, and I quickly lowered his hand from his mouth with a gentle tug. He starred at the pills and chucked them across the room, he looked horrified at himself and his actions. They hit the wall and fell to the plush carpet. The decision he almost made would have ended it all. He knew he didn’t want to die, even if I wasn’t there with him anymore.

The rest of that night I held him close as he cried into my shirt. I wished he knew I was there, I wished he knew he wasn’t alone.

After a year had passed, he seemed back to his normal self. He had lost a small spark of life, and it was obvious. But he started hanging out with his friends and trying to succeed on tests again. I felt such relief that he was getting better, maybe he would even be capable of healing. I needed him to be happy, or I could never exist peacefully. However, I knew he hadn’t forgotten me, because every night before he closed his eyes, he would touch the necklace I gifted him, and say aloud to the empty room: “I love you, my sunshine.”

 He had become my mission, my only reason. I was like his guardian angel.

After about two years, he started enjoying the small things in life again. He baked his favorite treats and liked to work out. We watched YouTube together every day after school and I would rest my head in his chest, hearing the steady thump of his heart that I would never have again.

Everything seemed to change when he met a girl. Her name was Maylin, and she was a sweet smart teenager who would be good for Finley. But I couldn’t suppress my hatred for her. Soon they started eating lunch together, and he would walk her home every day. When I would lay on his chest to watch YouTube as we had done for months, he began using that time to FaceTime her. I would leave quickly and cry alone under the moonlight in his backyard. I felt defenseless and out of control. The man I loved was falling in love with another and all I could do was sit back and watch.

One day, after he walked her home, he kissed her. That was my last straw. I had to split this up, I couldn’t let her take him from me. I talked to Finley about all my concerns that night while he was brushing his teeth, of course, he couldn’t hear me, but it helped to get it out. He was smiling widely at himself in the mirror. He was no doubt giddy with thoughts of her as he fell asleep that night. It was the first night in two years he didn’t tell me he loved me before he closed his beautiful blue eyes.

Maylin fingered his necklace gently one night and asked him where it came from. The spherical silver pendant swung under her touch. He smiled, perhaps at an old memory of me, and held it tightly.

“Someone I’m very close to me gave it to me.”

That was the moment I realized I was thinking about this all wrong. Finley would always love me; his love was never fragile. But he needed to move on, or he couldn’t be happy. And if he couldn’t be happy, neither could I.

 I stayed with him every moment of his life. Multiple times Finley and Maylin argued, and I helped push them back together. I was there when they kissed, I was there for his graduation, for his marriage, his first son, and when he opened his business. I loved him so much, but the love had transformed and evolved. It became stronger. I no longer felt any jealously toward Maylin, and whenever he smiled, so did I. When he cried, I cried with him. When he was in pain, I held his hand and consoled him. My love for him was larger than anything I had ever felt, his happiness was my only goal.

 Sometimes I would play with his kids. I knew his six-year-old daughter, Ozzy, could see and hear me, but I had no clue how. Finley assumed his child had an imaginary friend when she talked to an empty space in the room. I started to wonder if every imaginary friend was just a soul of the dead that children could witness. One day, the small child had repeated my name aloud while we were talking about her favorite ABC blocks. Finley looked up from his book with wide eyes.

“Ozzy,” he started slowly, “Where did you hear that?

Then Finley began to weep at the memory of me. I held him close, reassuring him that everything was okay and that he’d see me again someday. His small child departed her block pile to toddle over to him and pat her father’s face.

“It’s okay dada, she misses you too.”

• • •

Finley and I were taking a stroll in the park. We had just finished a long day at school and were relishing the time spent together and away from my foster family. I was carrying a bag of white bread to feed the ducks, they surrounded us in hoards. I kept nibbling on the bread while we strolled, unable to resist. Finley smiled at me.

“Leave some for the ducks, love.”

I giggled and closed the bag. Moving the plastic bag to my other hand, I looped my arm through his. I had been experiencing harsh anxiety that whole day and I couldn’t stop thinking about losing my loved ones. The thoughts crashed in my mind like ruthless waves. Sighing to steady myself, I brought out a necklace from my pocket that I crafted myself and held it up to show him. It had a black cord and a silver pendant with the shape of a sun etched into the side. I knew he loved it from his bright smile as I tied the string around his neck. He beamed with happiness.

“It’s beautiful, I promise to never take It off.”

He squeezed my hand lovingly. “Finley,” I started tentatively, “What would happen if I were to lose you? You’re the only person who can keep me sane.”

He smiled and softly planted a lingering kiss on my forehead.

“Then I’d watch over you every second of the day. I would be your guardian angel, my sunshine.”