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Kit Kats and Iced Caps

Now

Time is precious and limited. 


After a full day of college courses and working part-time at the town sandwich shop, Reyna was finally able to unwind into the quiet of the evening. Sitting her current read on the end table and placing her freshly-steeped green tea on the coaster, she decided to catch up on her social notifications so she could dive into her reading time distraction-free. Instagram, done. Facebook…


She was scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling, when the most unexpected post popped up on her feed:


RIP.

Critical care.

Accident. 


No, she thought to herself. This can’t be right, not you. 


As tears blurred her vision, she wasn’t thinking about her current read begging for her attention—she wasn’t even thinking about the green tea that would offer at least an ounce of warmth, comfort. 


She was thinking: I never got to say good-bye. 


10 Years Ago

As Taylor Swift said, “when you’re 15, and someone tells you they love you, you’re going to believe them.”


Reyna did, and she deeply wished she hadn’t right about now, her covers wrapping her in knots, tossing and turning in bed, not being able to sleep from the aching, gaping hole in her chest that Max had left. 


Screw you, Max. 


She even texted it to her friend Jake, who’d been supporting her through it all. They met in their high school’s musical theatre extracurricular program and happened to live a few subdivisions away. Any time she couldn’t sleep at night, she knew she could enter his message thread and vent. 


And he listened. And told her all the things she needed and wanted to hear, to heal.


But tonight, restrained in her sheets, nothing could distract her from the feeling of being choked. She couldn’t breathe. The pain and loss were too much.


Make it stop.


Make it stop.


Make it stop.  


A ping vibrated her phone. 


Jake: Want me to come over?


It was late, the moon high in the sky, the stars its sparkling companions. But school was out.


Reyna: No, I’ll be okay. Tonight is just tough. 


It will go away, she thought. When I wake up in the morning I’ll feel better. 


Jake: Are you sure?





But he insisted, and Reyna found herself on her front step, waiting for him, not wanting her dad to overhear their conversation. There were just some things a dad of a teenage girl didn’t need to hear, and how heartbroken a boy had left her was one of them. 


She recognized Jake’s outline walking through the park, and realized, once illuminated under the streetlight, he wasn’t empty-handed. In one hand he held an iced cappuccino and in the other, a Kit Kat chocolate bar. 


“I thought you could use something extra,” he said, sitting down and sharing the step with her.


Such a small, $5-dollar gesture that lasted a lifetime. 


They talked for an hour, until the crickets started joining their conversation. 


5 Years Ago

Like most high school friendships, Jake’s and Reyna’s fizzled out once he graduated—he was two years older than her. 


Sure, he’d always hold importance in her heart and she’d wonder how he was doing, but with starting college, she never acted on it. 


Until one day, he texted her, wanting to catch up and meet. 


But living separate lives and writing different stories for themselves, the friends never met up.


Now

No. They never met up.


Now, Reyna was meeting him again as an obituary picture on the screen. 


Reyna was meeting him again as a prepared corpse in a casket, struggling with a shaking hand to write her name on the wood, as was asked by everyone who attended the funeral showing. 


She struggled to cap the marker and look at Jake’s face, behemoth sobs forcing her to gulp in air. 


She never got to say thank you.


She never got to tell him the weight that iced cap and Kit Kat chocolate bar had on her that night.


She never got to tell him that he was a buoy when she was lost at sea. 


She never got to tell him that he helped her get through a difficult time in her life, and that she’d never forget it. 


She should have responded differently to that text. She should have made an effort to rekindle in person. 


But shoulds and coulds can’t turn back time, and all that’s left is sending silent thank-yous to the stars. 




 

Ryan is a marketer, author support specialist, and writer who lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband and 4 rescue cats. Her love of the written worms stems from a healthy appetite in reading, with her favourite genres being thriller, romance, and fantasy. Her previous books include More Than Us and This Expanse of Eventually.

Ryan Jones-Symonds
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