Ira let out a breath and a smile all at once. Just the thought of her sent a rush of warmth through him, easing away the raw emotion of Staas’ breakdown and the strange, rueful feeling that came from remembering his times with Damian. It was a good one, yes.
“Yeah. Lu.” Ira pronounced. Lu and Bo, those had been their nicknames for each other as children. “Luciana. The first love of my life, in more ways than one. And… man, I don’t even know where to start with her, she’s that great. Tough and sweet and there’s just no hate in her at all.” He grinned. “Lu’s weird, she is. But I love it. She’d do all these random beautiful things, wore all sorts of interesting clothes, and talked like… she was in theater, all the time she was so dramatic and vivid and perfect. Even in elementary school she was like that, and we had so much fun.” Ira didn’t gush this way about just anybody, but Lu was practically family.
“We grew up in the same apartment building as kids, see. Outside of school we were best friends. Her parents were having issues so she’d come to our place after school to play or study or whatever while Mama and Bubbe looked after us. Every day for a couple of years, almost.” She’d been like a sister to him, before Ori. In a different way, of course, but Bubbe always commented on how much like siblings they were, so comfortable and natural was their dynamic.
“Things came up. Ori was born and Mama and Bubbe died, Papa and I were busy trying to hold things together. Lu’s parents divorced and she moved out to live with her dad so she wasn’t around. Still the same neighborhood, but by that time we didn’t see each other much anymore. It sucked, but we had more important things to think about, we thought.”
“We hardly talked at all in junior high, but freshman year of high school we had almost all the same classes and became friends again. Real best friends this time. It was easy, we had a lot of history together and a lot more in common than we’d thought.”
He remembered how they’d go to class, sit quiet and distracted off to the sides, by any windows if possible, all the time writing notes to each other all the time on the blank backs of assignment sheets. Luciana was fairly popular in the theater department, which demanded a lot of her time and attention, but almost every lunch hour she spent exclusively with Ira. They would adventure somewhere new on campus, corners of the parking lot or under the bleachers or next to the back gate and a couple of memorable times on the roof. Lovely, private places where they could talk, write, sleep, smoke cigarettes, feel the weight and wonder of the world they lived in. Back and forth between class and such moments of harmony, until the last bell rang and they’d return home, to the families they both desperately loved and felt so much responsibility for. Ira thought those had been some of the best moments of his youth.
“Things just worked out when we were together. It was just us and taking care of our families and making the most of everything else. We loved each other so much, and by junior year we were dating seriously. Last two years of high school, we were happy, damn happy. Life wasn’t easy, but it was good.”
“Lu went to school at Sweetwater with me after graduating. But she was planning on transferring to New York, she wanted to work on Broadway with costumes and wardrobe and stuff. We made the best of our time together while she completed her GE credits, but after two years she moved.” Ira was quiet for a moment, rubbing the bitten ends of his nails against each other. “We promised each other that we’d visit and call and e-mail, stay together no matter what. It wasn’t the same, though, and we knew it. But wrong as it felt, we wanted to keep trying. For a while. But I’m too clingy and that didn’t improve with distance; she was busy as hell and wanted some space to breathe. After a while it just got so hard for us to talk to each other, started avoiding it, even. Eventually after more than a month of awkward or no contact she just told me straight that it wasn’t working.”