A few beats of silence pass. “How is she doing?”
“Tonight was rough. She cried until she fell asleep. It’s like losing our parents all over again. We experienced it when we were younger. Her dad. My mom.”
“I’ll do everything I can to help you both. I’ll set up everything. I know some guys that own funeral homes.”
I’m not even going to ask how he knows that. “Thanks, man. Just let me know what the will says. Or give them my number.” The phone starts cutting in and out again, and I sigh. “I gotta go. I’m losing service, and I still need to call Blaire.”
“Blaire… is that Everly’s friend. She is her Gray?”
I chuckle, “Yeah, she is her Gray.”
“Lucky girl,” he says, trying to make me smile like he always does, but it doesn’t work. The weight in my chest is too heavy.
“Let me know.”
“Absolutely. I’m sorry, Rowan. I know how close you and your dad were. I’m here for you.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose when the tears threaten again, and my eyes start to burn. “Thanks, man. I gotta go, okay?”
“I know it’s weird to say because we are guys, and men don’t say this to each other because it’s considered taboo. But I love you, man. I just want you to know that.”
I sigh, nodding and forget he can’t see me. “I love you too, Gray. I’ll call you later.” I hurry to hang up and rush to the bathroom, turn on the shower, and step inside the stall.
I don’t wait until the water is warm. I don’t care. I just need a place where I can let my emotion fall without being seen. I lean my hands against the shower and bow my head, letting the cold water punish my skin and the back of my neck. And the tears fall with every memory I have of my father that runs through my mind.
He is gone.
He is really gone.
I lay my forehead against my arm and cry silently. I don’t care that I’m a grown man. I can cry for the death of my father, my mentor, my advocate, my idol. I’m so out of it; I don’t even hear the shower door open. Everly’s arms wrap around me, and she presses her cheek against my back, lacing her fingers together in the middle of my chest.
It’s just what I need.
I lay my hand over hers and sigh. “I can’t imagine feeling this with anyone else.”’
“Me either,” she whispers over the steady hiss of the shower. “I never thought last week would be the last time I talked to my mom. That’s all I keep thinking about. The last time. It’s scaring the shit out of me,” she says with a slight uptake in her voice.
I spin around and put my hands on her waist, letting the stream of water hit my back. “The last time?” I ask with confusion.
“Yeah, you know. The last time. She called me for the last time, not thinking it would be. She got up the day she broke her leg, thinking that day was going to be the same as all the others. She brushed her teeth for the last time, kissed your dad for the last time, got dressed for the last time,” her voice keeps getting higher and higher with emotion as she continues to speak. “She told me she loved me for the last time. I’ll never get to hear it again. She hung her coat for the last time, drove, smiled, hugged, ate. Oh, I hope she had her favorite food before she died. I hope she really lived and was happy before she took her last breath for the last time. It isn’t fair.”
The honey brown tendrils of her hair stick against her skin as the water falls down her body. Even though the shower is on, beating against her skin, I can still tell what is shower water and what is tears. Her lips turn red too, swollen, like she has bitten them while she cries, but she didn’t. “How do I live with the last time?”
“You live like every moment will be your last.” People don’t think about that. People get complacent. I’m guilty of it. I always think there will be a tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, but what if the next day doesn’t come? Am I truly going to be happy with myself if I know my heart beating for the last time, will honestly be its last time?
Everly nods and puts her ear against my chest again, listening. There is no way she can hear my heart right now. I kiss the ridge of her collarbone and sigh with a mixture of sadness and content. I shouldn’t be happy at all, but the woman I love is in my arms, helping me through another pain. “We can’t leave. The airports are closed. The snow is too bad.”
“We can’t even take them home and bury them? Or whatever they want?” her voice grows steadily with anger.
“Nope. We are stuck here. They will be at the local morgue until we can leave. In the meantime, that time will help me look over my father’s will and if your mother had one. I want to be able to give them the funeral they wanted. I don’t want to guess and them end up haunting us from the afterlife and all.”
“Here isn’t so bad,” she says. “I just wish the circumstances were different.”
“No, it isn’t.”
And for the first time in six years, I tell the truth when it came to Everly. I wish here was somewhere else and in another time. Maybe then she wouldn’t have left. Maybe then our parents would be alive. And maybe then, she would love me the way that I love her.
Hope can really be a fickle bitch because it makes me think I can
