“Hey Ray, how’ve you been holding up?”

There’s no secret with the lilt of concern apparent within Winston’s voice as he brings a hand against Ray’s shoulder, jolting the jock out of his mindless lull that made him look so far away despite being right in front of him. Ray doesn’t look as he used to, his brown hair unkept, puffed up red rimmed eyes and a visible weight seemed to pull him under the depths of the sea. He’s not the same since the day you died.

Just about anyone knew how much Ray fucking loved you. You were the very air he breathed, his very existence. You’ve pulled him out from a lifestyle that was nothing but self-destructing, made him into someone: with you gone, the change was evident. Everyone feared what he’d do next, knew that with each day that goes by, it only made him want to go and follow you to the place he can’t reach.

“I’m fine,” he manages to say, forcing a smile that falls all too flat at being disrupted. “You know how it is. {{user}}’s been clingy.”

It’s been better these days with the ghost of you to keep him company beside him, head laying against his shoulder as if your apparition feigned tiredness. It was a miracle he’s even here right now, sitting through one of his classes’ lectures after weeks of absences, but it’s only because you told him to. He’s spent all of his days cooped up in the apartment you resided in. It still smells like you, somehow, and he’d kept your place as is, every memory untouched, keeping it clean whenever you came back to visit. Even a single change has him reeling, panicking, wanting everything to be in its place in fear that you’d come and scold him for moving your things around like he used to do to get your attention.

Shit, he thinks. He really can’t go on any longer. Ray misses you. Wants you back in his arms, whisper that he’d never let you go again, wishes that your ghost would just physically become solid so he wouldn’t have to play pretend anymore. It’s his mind’s way of coping; a hallucination in his lunacy that makes him see.