Tye

TYE

I sat at the edge of her hospital bed. Holding my breath, while she took her last. The machines started to sing out that she was gone. The doctor reached over and flipped the switch to silence the alarms. Your hand no longer holding mine but mine holding yours. You were gone, and nothing I did could have saved you.

She wore a yellow sundress with red flower print and her long brown hair fell over her shoulders and down her back. She had the most beautiful green eyes I had ever seen. She turned around and look right through me. I wasn’t the kind of guy that got that kind of girl’s attention. I was invisible. I wasn’t rugged or athletic, for the sake of argument I was a nerd. Not the “Revenge of the Nerds”, nerd, but still a nerd none the less. I wall tall and thin, I had dark brown hair with red that showed in the sunlight. I got it from my mother who had the real red hair in our family. I had my dad’s everything else, except his wanted me to play sports. I was a gamer. I programed games for a living.

Her name was Kera Wise. I’m not a creep, she just wore a name tag. We worked in the same building, so we passed in the lobby, and rode the elevator together.

My office space was busy all the time, I would go to the roof at lunch to get air and enjoy the quiet. That was where I spoke to her for the first time. I was looking over the edge of the building watching the people below hurriedly walking like little ants on their way to lunch or meetings or wherever they went this time of day. I heard her voice first, it was raspy, not her normal perky happy, like when I would hear her on her phone in the elevator. She was talking low. I look up and she must not have seen me when she walked across the roof to the emergency ladder on the far side. Not that she ever noticed. I walked closer and as I got closer, I could hear her, breathy and sobbing. “Hello?” I said as I got closer. She sniffled and wiped her face as she turned away so that I couldn’t see her face. “Hey, are you okay?” I asked reaching out and touching her shoulder. She turned around, wide eyed, with mascara smeared down her pale cheeks. She looked embarrassed. I grabbed the extra napkin from my pocket from my lunch and extended it out to her. She smiled and took it from my hands brushing my thumb with her fingers. “Thank you” she said. “I am so embarrassed, I just got passed over for a job, a job that I had put everything into for the past two years and … and.. Oh my gawd, I’m so sorry, this is so embarrassing.” She said turning her face away while wiping her eyes. “Hey, it’s no problem, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to jump or something.” I said trying to make a joke, to lighten the mood. She looked at me and leaned on the edge of the roof with a half-smile and said “ It hadn’t crossed my mind”. The way she said it, made me shiver. “Um… Do you want to get a coffee or some lunch?” I said motioning towards the door.

Three hours later we were still at the café two blocks away from work. We had a lot in common. Much more than I could have ever dreamed. We went to the same college, but I graduated a year ahead of her. We were on opposite sides of campus and on completely different paths of education, so we never crossed paths. It was weird that I never noticed her. She like Sci-Fi and old black and whites, we liked a lot of the same old movies. “Wow, the time has really gone by fast” She said looking at her phone. “Yes, it has, would you like to do dinner some time this week?” I asked. Her eyes lit up something I didn’t expect. This was going way better than I could have ever dreamed. I never thought that I’d speak to her let alone ask her to lunch then dinner. “Yes, here, give me your phone and I’ll give you my number and we can make plans” She took my phone from where it sat on the table in front of me and entered her name and number into my contacts. I did the same. Typing out my name Tye the guy from the roof. We exchanged phones and she smiled. It took my breath away.

The next few weeks were a dream. We spent every evening together, watching old movies, talking about my work and her planning to get the job she wanted. Kera was amazing, she talked about the future with so much life in her words. It made you want to be a part of it. I did want to be a part of it.

I was working on the code for the game our team had been slaving over for the past week. The office was dark, I was the last one in the office for the night. I heard the elevator beep and heels clicking on the tile down the hallway. I looked up and Kera was walking through the office, her eyes dark and her makeup smeared. I stood up waiting for her to approach me, but she turned the corner towards the breakroom. She must not have seen me. I walked to the breakroom and she wasn’t there, but I knew I had seen her. I heard the door slam to the stairs. I walked to the door and opened looking into the stair well and seeing her heal as it went up the stair to the next floor. I followed. Calling her name. No response. I started to get nervous and increased my pace up the stairs. When I got to the roof, I could hear her raspy breath and her sobs. Similar to the first day we had met. I turned to the escape ladder to see her standing on the edge of the roof, her hair blowing in the light wind. I was afraid to say her name and startle her. So, I walked quietly up to the edge, close enough to grab her but not be seen. She was whispering to herself, something unintelligible. I grabbed her wrist and she swayed, looking down at me. Her eyes big with fear.

Kera

I was standing at the edge of the roof dazing at the clouds in disbelief. I had been working for Conner and Stern for 5 years and my accounts were perfect, but they passed me over again. The tears rolled down my face, I wiped them fiercely from my cheeks and sniffled. I heard a voice say “hello” and felt someone touch my shoulder. I hadn’t even realized there was anyone up here other than me. I turned to find a man standing there outstretched arm holding a napkin, asking if I was okay. I dabbed my eyes and smiled. This was so embarrassing and awkward. He made some kind of weird joke about jumping off the building and asked me to coffee. I was pissed and there was no way I was going back into work looking like I’d been out here crying. So we went to the café across the street.

He introduced himself as Tye, he was plain, nothing special about him. Evidently, we worked in the same building, I’d never seen him before today. Our conversation was okay. We talked about college and found out we had gone to the same school. It was weird right, that we worked in the same building and went to school together and yet this was the first-time meeting. I gave him my number and we went our separate ways.

Over the next three weeks we talked on and off, he didn’t seem to get the hint that I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t seeing anyone, but work was important. I did not have time for this, codling some guy I didn’t know and wasn’t interested in. He texted all the time and found ways to bump into me in the building at work.

It was Friday and I was exhausted, so I didn’t notice him in the lobby on the way out. The street was crowded so he blended into the sea of people walking in every direction. Everyone heading to the subway or a bus stop or hailing a cab. I lived 10 blocks from work, I was tired, but I wasn’t going to make it to the gym tomorrow so this was it. Power through! I got to my apartment and could feel something not right. You know when the hair stands up on you arms and you get goose pimples. I felt like someone was watching me and someone was. I walked up the stairwell to my apartment door and unlocked it and went it. I was nervous, so I walked through to the living room turning on every light I could reach or find. In the rush to turn the lights on I didn’t realize I hadn’t locked the door, thinking about it now, I don’t think I had even heard the door click closed when I walked in.

When I woke up, I was sitting against a wall on the roof top near the edge. Tye was staring at me, and I couldn’t read his face. “Why am I here?” I asked, my voice was shaky. He smiled, but it was scary, there wasn’t any light behind his eyes. It was like he wasn’t there. “Tye? What’s going on? I said trying to get to my feet. He reached for me and brushed my hair away from my face. “This is where we met for the first time, right here.” He said stepping in to kiss me. He must have seen the confusion on my face because he pulled back before his lips touched me. “Tye? I… I don’t understand, we aren’t together, we barely know each other.” I said trying to step back away from him and hitting the ledge of the roof. He grabbed my arm hard and his eyes changed from empty to angry. “Why are you lying? Why would you say that after everything!” He said digging his fingers into my wrists. “You’re… you’re crazy!” It escaped my lips before I could stop it. His hands fell to his side, and he smiled like he hadn’t heard me. His hands flew up to my neck and he tightened his fingers as I gasped for breath. The force of his body and the fight in mine propelled me over the edge and I was free from his grasp. I could see the sky, dark with small lights getting smaller and smaller and then sudden darkness.

I stood there in the hospital staring at the back of Tye’s head. He was holding my had and my body was there on a hospital bed with so many machines connected to it. My face was swollen and bruised. I screamed at him and nothing. No one could here me and no one could see me. I was here and no one knew it and no one knew what he had done. I watched as my body became lifeless and the doctor turned off the machines that were yelling, “She’s gone”. He held my hand like we were lovers, and I was gone. A police man walked in "Sir, I understand this is hard, but I need you tell us what happened again" He said pulling his pad of paper from his front pocket. Tye looked at him with tears in his eyes and said "She jumped".