Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
I still just couldn’t believe it.
My favorite teenager didn’t bother trying to say anything though as he sat beside me. He just leaned over, put his arm over my shoulders, and gave me a side hug that seemed to last ages, still not saying a word. Just giving me his love and support, which made me want to tear up even more.
Eventually, after a few minutes, he got up and headed over to the garage apartment, leaving me there by myself, in my tangerine jacket on the deck, under a moon that had been around before my mom and would be there long after me.
And in a way, it made me feel better. Just a little as I gazed up. As I took in the same stars that she had to have seen too. I remembered being a kid and lying out on a blanket with her while she’d pointed out constellations that years later I’d learned were all wrong. And remembering that made me smile to myself just a little.
None of us were promised tomorrow, or even ten minutes from now, and I was pretty sure she’d known that better than anyone.
My head hurt. My soul hurt. And I wished for about the millionth time in my life, at least, that she was here.
I hoped she was proud of me.
It was then as I was sitting there with my head tipped back, that I heard the chords to a song I knew well.
Then Amos’s voice started carrying lyrics that I knew even better.
The cold air filled my body just as well as the words to the song did, with tears I didn’t know I was still capable of wetting my eyelashes as I listened. I took in the message I had a feeling he was trying to share with me, absorbing it into my very essence. A memory I myself had shared with all the people who had ever downloaded Yuki’s version of it.
A tribute to my mom, like every song and most of my actions had always tried to be.
Amos pleaded to not be forgotten. To be remembered for what he’d been, not for the pieces he’d become. And his beautiful voice belted out for the one he loved to be whole, and one day they’d be together again.
* * *
Almost a week after the news, when I was in my garage apartment going through my mom’s oldest journals, even though I had them memorized at this point, someone knocked on my door. Before I could say a word though, it opened and familiar heavy footsteps made their way up, and then Rhodes was there. His face even, hands on his hips. He looked somber and wonderful as he stood there, as steady as a mountain, and said, “We’re going snowshoeing, angel.”
I looked at him like he was fucking nuts because I was still in my pajamas and the last thing I wanted to do was leave the house, even though I knew that I should, that it would be good for me, that my mom would have loved—
My throat burned. I shrugged at him and said, “I don’t know if I’d be good company today. I’m sorry….”
It was the truth. I hadn’t exactly been good company lately. All the words that usually found their way so easily into my mouth had mostly evaporated over the last few days, and though our silences hadn’t been awkward, they’d been foreign.
It had been so long since I’d felt the way I had lately, that even though I knew I would get through it and was fully aware it wasn’t some overnight thing I’d randomly wake up from feeling fine, it was still like treading water against a changing tide.
I couldn’t find my way out of it.
It was grief, and some part of me recognized and remembered that there were stages of it. The one no one ever told you about was the final one when you felt everything at once. It was the hardest.
And I didn’t want to put that on Rhodes. I didn’t want to put it on anyone. They all knew me as being cheerful and happy for the most part. I knew I’d be happy again just as soon as the worst edge of this faded—because it would, I knew it and I’d been reminded of it—but I wasn’t there yet. Not with my mom’s loss feeling so fresh again.
I was exhausted on the inside, and that was probably the best way to describe it.
But this man who had slept beside me every night the last week, either on his couch when we’d pass out in silence, or who would coax me into his room, tilted his head to the side as he took me in. “That’s all right. You don’t need to talk if you don’t want to.”