Mateo stood there, numb, aside from the throbbing pain in his broken and casted left arm. He didn’t know what to do, what to feel, what to think. Beverly was dead.

And it was all his fault.

It had been a fun night. They’d gotten a little drunk, and were goofing off as Teo climbed onto his motorcycle, Beverly hurrying on behind him, giggling drunkenly in his ear.

“Come on, babe,” she’d purred in his ear, her fingers caressing his waist, “The faster we get there, the faster we can have some real fun.”

They had never reached her house that night.

He still recalls it so clearly: the blaring headlights of a car he was too slow to avoid, the shrill scream of Beverly—the last sound she’d ever make—and his own terror.

And maybe the universe was bored. Maybe it wanted to watch him suffer, like the sadist it was. But whatever the reason, it had left Teo staring at the coffin of his ex-girlfriend a week later as her older brother, {{user}}, spoke about her liveliness, her life on Earth.

Nothing was right anymore. Especially not his heart, which had been beating weirdly around {{user}} since he met him for the first time three years ago.