Love You Forever (Serendipitous Love Book 5)

by Christina C Jones

  “Consider it forgotten, darlin’.”

  “What are you smiling at so hard?” Astrid asked as I rushed into class five minutes before it was due to start. There was a good turnout as usual, and the only spot available was next to Quinn, right up front. I shook my head, fighting a grin as I tucked my phone into my bag and hurried to lay out my mat.

  Astrid and Quinn both gave me knowing smiles, and then Astrid began her intro for the class. I pushed the thought of the text Harlan had just sent me – “Damn I wish I could have stayed home today and kept you in bed all morning – Harlan” – from my mind, trying to focus on the class. Earlier, at 5:34, he’d texted me a picture of himself, sweaty and smiling after he’d literally ran to get to Stacks by five-thirty to open up. That little impromptu shower session had really made him behind.

  I was able to make it through the class, and after that, plus the morning I’d had with Harlan, I really did feel more centered. I made my way out with Astrid and Quinn, feeling a flash of déjà vu as I looped my arms through theirs to head down the street. It was amazing how differently I felt about Harlan from the last time I’d walked with them like this. I shook my head. That was actually the day my friends had challenged my anger, making me really face it for the first time.

  “So you and Harlan,” Astrid said, glancing in my direction with a grin. “I felt it from the first time you called me at school about the “ridiculously fine” new boy your dad had hired.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh whatever. If you knew it, why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “Because you guys swear I’m crazy when I start talking about feeling your spirit energy, so I keep it to myself and let it play out. I stayed cool with you, just like I’m going to stay cool with Quinn and Cason.”

  “Mmmhmmm. And when are you gonna lock down a “spirit energy”, huh? You’ve still had your roster in full effect since I’ve been back, and it’s been almost six weeks.”

  As long as I’d known her, ever since high school, Astrid had always kept a rotation of people around her, men and women, who were vying for her attention, and she let them. There’d only been one time that she’d settled and been serious with one person, as far as I knew.

  She shrugged. “My partner isn’t quite ready to settle down yet, and I don’t even know how long it will last. But until he’s ready, I’ll have my fun.”

  “So, a guy this time?”

  Astrid smiled. “Yes. A very interesting, dynamic one, who enjoys pretending not to be attracted to me. It’s super fun.”

  I shook my head. Of course Astrid would think that was fun.

  We parted ways at her place, and then Quinn and I continued on to ours. In the apartment, Quinn went to go shower and I headed into my room to do the same. We ran our errands, and had lunch, and then she left to go do some administrative stuff for her certifications. By the time Harlan knocked on my door that evening after the restaurant was closed, I was bored, and beyond ready to see him.

  “Hey beautiful,” he said, sighing heavily as he pulled me into his arms.

  I hugged him back and then urged him inside, closing the door behind him. “Hey. Everything okay?”

  “Just tired.” He dropped down onto the couch, letting his head fall back onto the cushions. “These twelve hour shifts are no joke. All I wanna do is take a shower, climb into bed, and go to sleep. Preferably with you pressed up against me.”

  I giggled, grabbing his hand to try to pull him up. “Well, come on. Let’s do it.”

  “Can’t.” He opened his eyes and tugged back on my hand, pulling me into his lap. “Your mom wants us to come and have dinner. She said she tried to call you, and didn’t get an answer? I texted you a couple of times too.”

  I frowned. “Really? I haven’t heard it do anything.” I glanced around the room for my phone, and when I didn’t see it, I realized I hadn’t looked at it almost all day. After my outing with Quinn, I’d curled up with my tablet to read and waste time on social media, but my actual phone was… “Probably still in my bag from yoga,” I said out loud.

  I climbed out of Harlan’s lap and went into my bedroom, where sure enough, my phone was still in my bag. I had several missed calls and texts, plus two voicemails. “Jeez,” I mumbled under my breath. The first person I called back was my mother, who scolded me for being unavailable all day, then asked if we were coming to dinner. After a heavy deep breath, I reluctantly said yes, then went back in the living room to tell Harlan… who was fast asleep.

  Shaking my head, I went back to my room to get quickly dressed while he napped. Twenty minutes later we were on our way, with me driving since Harlan could barely stay up. On the ten-minute drive outside of the city to my parents’ home in the suburbs, an ambulance shot past me on the road. As soon as I saw it, a sick, uneasy feeling swept over me, but I didn’t say anything to Harlan, just kept driving, telling myself it wasn’t going to my parents’ house.

  I lied.

  We pulled up at the same at the same time a second ambulance did, and I’d barely pushed the gearshift into “park” before I was out of my seatbelt and out of the car, surrounded by the surreal swarm of flashing blue lights. The paramedics were right in front of me as I rushed into the house, and my heart dropped to the floor when I saw my mother.

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, on her knees, praying while the paramedics surrounded my father in front of the stairs. His eyes were fluttering, going wide for a moment when they settled on me, and then closed. Then, he wasn’t moving at all, but they were working, one doing compressions on his chest, one working to put something over his face to help him breathe. The other paramedics, the ones who’d just arrived, were setting up a portable defibrillator, to… to… restart his heart?

  “Mama!” I screamed, dropped to the floor beside her to grab her shoulders. “Mama! What is going on?!”

  She looked at me and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she wailed. “He was coming down the stairs for dinner, and he just collapsed, and I called 911. I think it’s his heart.”

  Beside me, Harlan cursed, and when I turned to look at him, he had one hand clamped over his mouth, his eyes glossy as he watched the scene in front of him.

  “Why aren’t you getting him to the hospital?!” I asked the one medic who wasn’t actively engaged with my father, and was instead gathering things from a bag.

  She glanced in my direction, then went back to collecting vials as she answered. “That’s the goal ma’am, but we have to try to stabilize him first.” She flipped her bag closed, then went to my father, injecting whatever she was preparing into his arm as the CPR continued.

  Why aren’t they using the paddles? On TV they use the paddles! I thought, then turned my back to the scene. I just need a second, a moment to breathe, a moment to convince myself that this was fine, it would be fine. We would go to the hospital, he’d get some medicine, we’d double down on the exercise, but no matter what, it would be fine. He would be fine.

  It was my daddy. He’d be fine.

  He had to be.

  Behind me, the commotion of the paramedics was completely surreal. Like it was happening somewhere else, another place, another time, because this couldn’t be happening to Daddy. Not again. I turned, in what felt like slow motion, to see them looking somber. I heard one say something about a stretcher, and one of them left, presumably to get one, while the others continued chest compressions. And then one of them was standing in front of us, saying something in what I was sure was meant to be a calming, soothing tone, but my attention was elsewhere. On my father, who still wasn’t moving or showing any signs of life, on the paramedics who’d slowed what they were doing to get him on the stretcher.

  Why the hell weren’t they working harder?!

  “Hey!” I screamed, rising to my feet and pushing past the other paramedic. “What the hell are you doing?!” I asked, charging toward the others as they strapped my father down. “Why aren’t you trying to save him, why—?”

  “Syd!” Harla
n caught me around the waist, pulling down my arm to keep me from jabbing my finger into the face of the medic I’d reached first.

  I struggled, twisting and writhing to try to get out of his arms. “No, let me go! They aren’t even trying to help him, they’re just—”

  Harlan turned me around to face him, keeping my wrists tight in his grip. “Sydnee, they’ve already… it’s….” He let out a long, defeated sigh, and that’s when I noticed the unshed tears brimming in his eyes. I glanced over at my mother, collapsed on her knees, being comforted by the paramedic as she let out uncontrollable sobs.

  “Wha-? I… no,” I said, firmly. I turned around, to where my father was strapped to that stretcher, eyes closed, chest perfectly, terribly still. “No!” I repeated, in a higher pitch as I successfully snatched out of Harlan’s arms and raced to him. “Do something!” I screamed, shoving at the medic standing uselessly at my father’s side. I put my own hands to his chest and began to pump, but then there Harlan was, grabbing me again. “Let me go!” I fought as hard as I could, trying to get to him, even as it sank in that it was pointless. Harlan hugged me tight against his chest, and I could feel his heart racing, damn near hear it pounding as I scratched, punched, and kicked because… because… “Daddy!” I screamed, as the medics wheeled him out of the house. “Harlan, do something!”

  “I’m so sorry, darlin’.” His voice was choked as he spoke, and he looked just about as helpless as I felt. “They’ve done everything. It’s been almost forty minutes with… nothing. They can’t do anything else.” He took a heavy breath as he raised his hand to my face to wipe away tears, then turned to where my mother was. He kept a hand on me as he and the paramedic helped her up, and then he pulled both of us into his arms.

  Harlan buried his face in my hair, and I wrapped one arm around my mother, pulling us closer together as she sobbed. This is really happening. This was really happening, and when it finally really clicked in my head, something in me broke. Hot, fat tears slid down my cheeks and I buried my head between Harlan and my mother and did the only thing I felt like I had enough strength to – cry.

  We hadn’t even talked yet. Hadn’t made any type of amends, hadn’t agreed to disagree, nothing, and now he was gone.

  Just like that.

  Gone.

  Eleven.

  It was hardly ever this quiet.

  Never this quiet at this time of day, when the booths were usually packed with people, all wanting their fix of Stacks’ pancakes. “The key is to use real, fresh ingredients, son,” Stacks had said to me, when he first set out to show me the ropes. “Everything is done for convenience these days, soy this, artificial that, pre-mixed bullshit. People aren’t used to bacon slaughtered and cured at a local farm, milk and cream from a little family owned dairy. Blueberries right from the orchard. Give people something they aren’t used to, and they’ll be back every day.”

  And he was right. The food looked better, smelled better, tasted better, and because of that, this place was usually packed out every day. But today… the silence was eerie.

  I sat in a booth near the back, where I could still see out the front windows. A couple of clueless, would-be patrons approached the door, ready to pull it open before they noticed and read the sign affixed to the glass. Most people just walked past, casting a sad glance at the front of the diner, cause they already knew. Stacks wouldn’t open today, hadn’t opened the day before that, and wouldn’t open tomorrow either, because it was in mourning for its proprietor. And so was everybody else.

  The whole neighborhood was subdued in the loss of one of their own, and the grief was palpable. There was some level of comfort in that, that my feeling of loss, and the fact that I felt just… damned… lost… I was glad to know I wasn’t alone in that.

  Family aside, of course.

  I pulled myself up from the booth, suddenly feeling suffocated under the weight of being here alone, in the empty restaurant. I went out through the back, climbed in my car, and drove until I found myself at a place I’d carefully avoided for the last two days.

  Stacks’ house.

  That night that he died… that topped everything as the worst night of my life. Seeing these two women that I cared about so much, so hurt, and knowing there wasn’t anything I could do about it… it messed with me. I didn’t even sleep that night, but nightmares played behind my lids every time I closed my eyes. I kept seeing Stacks on the ground, those paramedics working hard to save his life for what seemed like the longest and shortest minutes ever, trying desperately to make his heart start beating again.

  The night had passed in a blur. Paramedics, and the hospital, and comforting Mrs. Natalie and Sydnee. Calling the other relatives, calling the Stacks employees, putting aside “man who just watched someone he loved die” to step into the role of taking care of those other aspects, because somebody had to do it, and I’d be damned if it was going to be his widow or his daughter. I owed the man more than that. By the time I made it to my own bed, I was barely keeping my eyes open, from exhaustion. And when I did close my eyes to sleep, my last thought was that I never wanted to step another foot into that house, for fear of the nasty memories it might bring about.

  But… It had been long enough – at least for me it had. I sat in the driveway for a long time, but I wanted to go inside, wanted to hug Mrs. Natalie, wanted to kiss and comfort Syd… so I unclipped my seatbelt.

  The driveway was already full of cars, as aunties and cousins and in-laws came from all over to check in with Mrs. Natalie and Syd. I was the only deadbeat who hadn’t been around yet, but shit. I’d watched two father figures die in the span of ten years, and I wasn’t even thirty yet. Not wanting to be in the house where Stacks died had to be understandable, right?

  And besides… I’d talked to Mrs. Natalie, and it was like she already knew what was happening in my head. She encouraged me to come by, but excused me if I didn’t, knowing that I’d at least be there for the funeral, and at some point we’d have to talk about the restaurant, but not now.

  Syd was a different story.

  As solitary as I’d made myself, people had at least seen my face over the last few days. Syd, on the other hand, had been locked in her room at her parents, barely eating, refusing to see her friends. She was – understandably – distraught, and even when I reached out to her, I barely got a reply beyond her expressing a desire to just be alone.

  And honestly? I wasn’t in any shape to argue the point. My head was fucked up, and if the way my friends and people in the neighborhood were looking at me for the past few days, it was obvious. It wasn’t a burden I wanted to put on Mrs. Natalie or Syd, distressing themselves about my state of mind, or trying to ease my grief. Not when they had enough of their own.

  At the door, I rang the bell, and one of Mrs. Natalie’s sisters answered, pulling me into a hug when she recognized me. “Come on in, baby,” Nora said, pulling the door shut behind me. “Natti is resting right now, and Sydnee is up in her room. You know she’s barely said two words to anybody? You should go try.”

  I shook my head. “If she doesn’t wanna be bothered—”

  “Aw, nawl, now.” Nora waved a finger in front of me. “Ain’t no secret that you and Sydnee are a little item now. That girl needs you, no matter what she’s saying to try and push you off. Now scoot,” she said, waving toward the stairs. “Go on now, get up there.” Before I could really respond, she was pushing me up the stairs, and another aunt and a cousin came from somewhere to help. I got shoved into Syd’s room, with the door closed behind me, and she didn’t even look up from where she was sprawled face down across her bed.

  It was the middle of the day, but the window coverings were thick, making the room dark. She had her old radio on the local Grown Folks Music station, but turned up just enough to kill the silence. I felt a little bit of déjà vu as I sat down on the edge of the bed, knowing now, just like last time, that Sydnee wasn’t asleep. Instead of saying anything, I reached out, rubbing my hand over her
back. At first, she didn’t respond, but then she turned over, and even in the dim light, I could see her eyes shining with tears.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” she whispered. “I asked you not to come because I didn’t want you worrying about me, when I know you’re hurting too.”

  I let out a dry laugh. “You know what’s funny?”

  She shook her head. “What?”

  “I called myself doing the same thing,” I explained, then shook my head. “I don’t know if it was a good idea, because… I’ve felt like shit for the last two days.”

  “Yeah.” She sniffled, then gave me a weak smile. “Me too. But…,” she turned onto her back, looking up at the ceiling as she wiped her face with her hands. “I feel like… I don’t know. Like maybe I’m using you or something, because just with you being in the same room… I feel a little less like shit.”

  I took a deep breath, then kicked off my shoes, and climbed onto the tiny twin bed beside her, pulling her against me. I pressed my lips to her forehead, then pulled back, using my thumb to wipe tears from her cheeks. “Maybe we should’ve been using each other then, darlin’. Cause I definitely feel less like shit too.”

  She buried her face against my shirt, and broke into deep, rending sobs that made my already stinging chest ache a little more. Long moments passed before she calmed, and when she did, she turned her face up toward me again.

  “I’m so mad at him,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I’m so, so mad that he left us. We had shit to talk about, and he just…”

  I swallowed hard, then pushed a hand over her hair. “I know.”

  “It’s not fucking fair,” she insisted.

  “I know.”

  “You don’t.” She shoved her way out of my arms, climbing across the bed to reach the nightstand. When she came back, she had her phone, and she pressed a few buttons and then laid it on the bed in front of us, with the speakerphone function on. I flinched, startled, when Stacks’ voice came from the phone.