He didn’t realize who was his other half until she was six feet under.

***

James slumped against Ivy’s grave, the cold slab of stone pressing against his damp cheek. The cemetery had long closed its gates, but he managed to get in through a hole in the fence Ivy cut a few years back as a shortcut between their homes.

Since the day they met at a comic store and fought over the last copy of DC's Infinite Crisis, he knew she was the kind of girl willing to break all rules to get what she wanted. Too bad the final thing she broke was herself.

James’s face was sticky from dried snot and tears, his eyes bordering wild desperation and weariness. Ivy was always the one to wipe the tears off his face and tell him to grow a pair, never the one to cause them (except ninth grade, but they swore in the names of their consoles never to mention the incident.)

“Ivy” he croaked, tracing her name on the stone with one hand and holding a beer with the other. “It’s pretty shitty to leave me alone on my birthday.”

Had she been present, he'd have anticipated her retort, perhaps a wry remark like, "Blaming a departed girl is even shittier," or the classic, "It's my birthday to, loser," because Ivy’s birthday was every day except her own. But she was not there, and the cacophony of birds were the only sound besides his shallow breathing.

With a heavy swig, James guzzled down half the can of beer, the droplets cascading down his oversized shirt and dribbling onto his chin. If anyone from school saw him, beaten by life and crying over Ivy Winn’s grave, they would have started a whole new wave of gossip. But he almost wanted them to come. To see what they did to her. Then again, he was a selfish boy. He wanted to keep all remains of his best friend to himself. Not for her grave to be decorated by flowers and notes by people who didn’t give two shits about her when she lived.

Taking one more sip, James drained the dregs of the beer onto the patch of grass beside him, letting it soak into the earth.

“For the soda I owe you” he whispered, his voice strained and low. Though he owed her a soda, he knew she would drag his ass to hell with her if he got her Pepsi instead of Corona.

The night stretched on, until eventually James drifted off to sleep on a patch of wilting sunflowers and grass near the grave. He dreamt of her, but when he woke up he could not recall what the dream was about. Only her face, and then nothing at all.