When You're Gone

3

I remember the time we had hung out together a weekend before.

“Where are the tickets?” I asked her, as we stood in line to watch the long awaited movie.

“Oh my gosh!  The tickets!” she cried as she frantically searched in her bag.

“Where are the tickets?!” I asked her annoyed, anger setting in “You told me you had them when I asked you before.  If we miss this show I am gonna …” I stopped my tirade when I saw her wicked grin.

“Got’cha!” she snorted as she waved the tickets at me. 

“You always do that to me” I told her as I punched her in the arm, her laughter making me grin at my heated display of annoyance.

“And yet you fall for it every time!” she snickered, rubbing her arm.  I poked my tongue at her, and she put her arm around my shoulders.

“What would I do without you?  Who else is going to put up with my joking around?” she asked close to my ear.

I shrugged my shoulders and said, mock seriously “Yo Mama?!”  

“Ha! Ha!” she replied sarcastically as she then proceeded to tickle me mercilessly.  

We were always like that.  Me, the serious one, easily riled.  She, the jokester pulling pranks, knowing I was easily riled.  What was I supposed to do without her now?   Who was going to help me see the brighter side of things?

 I can’t believe that our moments together filled with so much happiness had led to this.  Is this what it was going to be like?  Every happy memory remembered with a shadow, an underlying sense of sadness because she was gone, and our good times together weren’t enough to keep her here?

I wanted to be safe and warm in the time of what was and what had been before this, where I was secure in the knowledge of who I was and my place in the world because our friendship had been what defined me.  But now that she was gone I felt a part of me missing.  I felt lost and I didn’t know how I was supposed to be without her.