“Shut up,” I laugh. “I am,” I say to her just to get the smack she lays into my arm.
“Ouch.” I rub my bicep with way more gusto than necessary, and she rolls her eyes.
“Don’t be a sissy.”
“A sissy? That’s not what you said last night.”
Her glacial eyes grow to their full size as snickers scatter throughout the van.
“Jesse Everett!”
But she’s not too mad. “I love seeing you like this,” she whispers.
“Like what?”
“Like—”
“Fuck!”
The last thing I remember is screeching breaks and the darkest basement in Hell.
27: VOIDS
“We did everything we could.”
No! Bullshit! What’s everything? What the fuck is everything?!
I stagger to a chair, shrug off the useless hands reaching for my shoulders. Numb fingers comb through my hair as I process nothing. Everything! I don’t fucking know. How can you know?!
Whispers scratch the air around me, and I clamp my eyes shut. Try to control my breathing.
Don’t they know?
Someone fix this. Tell them it’s supposed to be me. Tell them how they got it wrong.
No, no, no. My head is shaking, the numbness in my limbs sparks into tingles and shallow breaths.
You bastards took the wrong brother! How can you not understand that? Fix it! God, please fix it! Please!
I can’t breathe.
I’m going to be sick.
I clutch my stomach and barely make it to the trash can before my gasps become retches. Suddenly, I’m the center of attention. Stealing from my brother even in death.
Selfish bastard. But oh god, there’s no air in here.
My eyes search for him. My rock, my sanity for twenty-three years. Parker, I need you! Please please please. Oh god! I can’t. It can’t—
Arms guide me to a gurney. I hear words like anxiety attack and other phrases that make it sound like keeping me alive is important. Why didn’t they care this much about saving the worthy brother? The necessary one? The strong one who dreamed and believed and fought enough to pull us through hell and back?
Why are they wasting resources on me?!
I throw up again.
“Jesse, you have to breathe. Deep breaths, hon.”
Sobs wrack my body, sucking the little air that’s left from my lungs.
Everyone leaves!
You promised! You fucking promised me!
I hate you!
My fists pound my eyes.
“He promised! He promised he wouldn’t leave!” That voice can’t be mine. The pain in those words draw echoing tears from other eyes. I feel them burn my skin as more arms fold around me.
“Jesse.” This voice is familiar, laced with pain too. Trembles with loss and fear.
“I did everything he wanted. I followed the rules. The list. I did everything…”
“I know, love. I know.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t do this without him,” I plead, turning into her embrace.
“You can. I promise.”
“No promises. Don’t make promises.”
Life tried to break us and we kicked its ass.
Fuck life. Fuck promises. A cry explodes from me as I rip myself away from Mila and bolt for the exit.
∞∞∞
One smile you could hold onto.
I run. Legs stumbling along a blind path.
One embrace that made things okay.
One heart that forgave.
Believed.
Sacrificed and fought to give you a future you didn’t deserve.
A ragged hiss of air burns through the hole in my chest. Another. In-through-out. In-through-out. Never lingering long enough to soothe the swell of panic.
One giant void that will…
Ache.
Shake.
Break you into the nothing that you are.
You’re the traitor, faker, promise-breaker and you’re not enough!
Not enough.
Never enough against fate’s prank to take
The one person not afraid to hope.
Nope, you’re the joke, Jesse Everett. The tragic hoax no one wants to touch without the protection of Parker’s connection. Because he’s the sun and you’re the one
Afraid of light.
Scars reopen.
Fester and bleed!
I cry out against the voices and fall to a bench.
“It’s all right. It’s all right.” But there’s no candle here. No, it’s too dark in this basement. The van. Coffins, everything—everywhere. No flicker. No oxygen to feed a flame.
Just blame!
Plenty of that.
“Stop!”
Bright lights flash. A horn blares. Eyes flare wide as they turn to me for a final plea.
“I’m sorry,” they cry. “I’m sorry for breaking my promise.”
“Goodbye.”
Five souls walk away without a scratch.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Five souls steal from one.
“I love you, brother. You’re going to be okay,” vacant eyes say. They lie as he dies and sucks away everything left in me.
My body shakes from the details crashing in. A steel monster smashing through the front passenger door. The van spinning, flying. Screams. Such a chorus of broken glass and terror. We’re all going to die. No one will die. Only one.
Oh god. Only one.
“Parker!” I reach through the shattered van. Sobs, the wet stench of tragedy. It’s so thick around me as I flail blindly for my anchor. My brother.
“I need you. Please, please.” I’m sobbing again. “I need you, Parker! Where are you? I can’t see! I can’t…”
Suddenly, warmth. Relief.
Parker. It was all a nightmare. Thank you, God!
Trembling, I fall against the steady rise and fall of another’s breath. He breathes for me. In. Out. In. Out.
Slowly, the air starts to circulate in my lungs.
In. Out.
Parker.
My rock.
My protector.
“Just breathe,” my father says.
∞∞∞
Just breathe.
Impossible when your rock is gone and your phone blows up with validation of fate’s mistake.
“Parker will be missed.”
“One-of-a-kind, that guy.”
“So sorry for your loss.”
“It wasn’t his time.”
“The good die young, right?”
Right.
I toss my phone on the pile of clothes in the corner of my room. Mila’s cooking something that makes my stomach lurch like everything else they’ve tried to force down my throat since we returned home. Two days and I’ve managed to swallow a bowl of cereal. My stomach is too bloated with pain.
Dad, Derrick, and Reece? I don’t know. At the funeral home probably, pinch-hitting for the train-wreck brother of the deceased.
“You’re gonna hate your funeral, dude,” I mutter to him. “It’s your own fault for leaving us in charge.”
You’re the micromanager, so who the hell is supposed to coordinate the fallout of your death?
“Didn’t think about that did you, genius?”
A sharp wave of agony fires through me, and I roll to my side to absorb it. Body folded over itself, I have nothing left to fight this attack.
It’s just forever, right? Just one crushing cosmic hole that siphons oxygen and nails you to a mattress in a shitty Mt. Airy townhouse.
How long is forever?
How long for this crushing ache to fester?
You promised me!
No joke.
No hope.
No… dope.
Li.
Li can fix this. Only Li.
You promised him.
Fuck promises. No one else keeps them.
“I’m proud of you, man. Proud of us. We did this. Jesse and P
arker. Life tried to break us and we kicked its ass.”
Nausea climbs in my throat.
You promised.
He promised! He fucking promised so where does that leave us?
Huh, Parker? Us! Parker and Jesse. “We” had dreams. “We” kicked the world’s ass. We, we, we. You know I can’t handle “me.” That’s your job! Didn’t think about that either, did you?
I clench my eyes shut, cutting off the hot sting of tears.
A rhythmic buzz climbs out of the pile of clothes. Another call I can’t handle.
Li can fix this.
I roll off the bed and drag myself across the room.
Peace.
Oblivion.
I need to fix this.
YOU PROMISED!
The voice screams so loud in my head, I almost trip over my guitar. I catch the neck just before it crashes off the stand.
You promised.
I stare at the instrument in my hand.
Promises…
Parker deserved a promise not me. Parker deserves the music. He deserves everything, and he got stuck with me instead.
He—
Rewind back to the start
And your heart would still be too big for me
Love is a game
For some a lie
For you an epic tie that bound you
To the one who cries
When the lights go out
When the chill seeps down
Through cracks you always mended
My guitar starts to sing with the words. My body inches back to the edge of the bed.
Arms that braved the fiercest storms
Swarmed, warmed a broken boy
Who never had a chance
To dance with fate
Who lived afraid of himself
That’s love in a city of demons
A pity they never saw you coming
Rewind back to the day
A superhero roared,
“It’s okay
To fly, to dream, to spread broken wings
To scale a mountain in spite of it all.”
“Brother,” he said.
“I’ll catch you when you fall.”
∞∞∞
Bloodshot, glistening orbs: Mila’s eyes as she places a tray of food on the dresser. I lower the guitar to the floor and wipe my sleeve across my face.
“That’s beautiful, Jess. What’s it called?”
“‘Philadelphia.’”
Silence.
Glassy orbs widen, brighten with a spark of understanding. A sob escapes her as she rushes over. Her arms wrap tight; muscles tremble in sync with mine.
“Oh god, Jess,” she whispers, burrowing her face in my chest. “City of Brotherly Love.”
I close my eyes. “‘Philadelphia.’”
28: PHILADELPHIA
What do you do in the City of Brotherly Love without your brother? Can’t seem to figure that out.
So I play. The Song is a constant loop over the next three days. Perfection, that’s my goal. Make this last link to Parker the one thing that’s good enough for him. Somewhere in the house people whisper and clank dishes. They worry, they knock, they act like life goes on when it stops for one.
And maybe that’s true for them. But my present is too painful without the music. When it goes, the ache returns in an unbearable weight, so I play for him. Sing to him. Honor him with the only good thing I am. I give him everything until the song becomes a lullaby to rock me to unconsciousness. Then it’s awake, water, and more music. More knocks. More pleas. More whispers.
More music. Just the music until it’s ingrained in my soul beside my brother. For three days I play, cry, and escape.
On the fourth I wake up and realize I faced the mother of all demons without substances. And won.
∞∞∞
And how do others cope with grief? Erect a giant plaster minotaur, apparently.
“What the hell is that?” I mumble to Mila as I walk past the living room on the morning of the funeral.
“Jesse.” She throws her arms around my neck, and I close my eyes to absorb her warmth. Just like the music, maybe there’s room for her beside Parker in my heart.
“Are you…?” Her gaze wanders through my head as she pulls back.
“Working on it.” I force a half twist of a smile.
“Good.” She hands me a mug, and I do my best to swallow something besides water.
“Now—that,” I say, staring into the living room.
She leans against the island beside me. “What? The new tablecloth? The other was quite faded.”
I toss her a look, and she smiles. “Oh! You mean the massive bull-man. Derrick’s tribute to your brother.”
I snort a laugh in spite of myself. It’s the least painful reaction I have in me.
“Wow. If Parker wasn’t haunting us before, he certainly will now,” I say.
“Nah, I think it’s cute. You could dress it up for each holiday. Parker would appreciate the thought.”
“He’d freak at the damage it did to the hardwood. I’m guessing Derrick doesn’t have plans to fix that?”
“Doubtful. But I saw him before he left this morning and he had trousers on and everything.”
Another laugh leaks out, and I throw my arm around her shoulders. “God, I love you.”
We still.
Time stops.
Three words echo and bang and shatter history as the present lies in ruins.
I feel her chest lift in a long inhale. Release in a longer exhale.
“Good,” she says finally. “Because I love you too.”
∞∞∞
I suck at funerals. Never understood them. Still don’t as I stare at the box supposedly containing my brother.
I’m here, dude. You’re still dead. Now what?
Closed casket. Too much damage for makeup to fix, and right now, I think I’m okay with that. Who needs to see my strong, take-charge brother all chalky and painted like one of those creepy wax figures?
An arm slips around my waist as a head rests on my shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Jess,” Mila whispers. It’s different coming from her; those words actually mean something. Maybe everything.
“He’d hate this, you know,” I say. “These flowers are ridiculous. And that photo Reece gave them?” We study the grinning man in a tux.
“He wore a tux?”
“Yeah, once. Last month for the Alton wedding. A real picture of Parker would have him at the kitchen table giving me the death stare.”
“You probably deserved it.”
“I always deserved it.”
We quiet, and I swallow the emptiness rising in my gut. Blink at the box that has no business holding my brother.
“It was nice of the boys to sort out a lot of the arrangements for you.”
“They’re amazing.”
“They are. Though I’m surprised by the lack of mythological beasts.”
This girl. I squeeze her tighter.
“My guess is the funeral home frowns on plaster bull-men.”
She chuckles softly and laces her fingers with mine. “You going to be okay to do your song?”
“No.”
“Good.” Her hand tugs mine to her lips.
∞∞∞
I learn a lot about my brother as the speeches rumble from the podium next to his coffin. I do a good job keeping my eye-rolls in check and pretending to be properly touched by the exaggerated stories of his brilliance. He was great, and also a smartass who would be snickering right along with me if he weren’t locked in that damn box.
Mila squeezes my hand when the officiant calls my name and says I'd like to say a few words. Very few, really, because speeches aren’t my thing.
Nervous rustling flutters through the room as I slide out of my chair. I don’t remember the walk to the front being so long, the air by the casket so cold. I reach for my guitar, pull the strap over my head, and adjust the instrument that suddenly
feels foreign in my hands.
A stab of pain cuts through me when I instinctively glance to my right for reassurance. No nod. No smile. No, you-got-this look from the face that’s always been there. Shiny boxes do a damn poor imitation of my brother.
The coldness seeps through my pores and lodges in my chest again. My fingers vibrate on the strings. The audience watches, waits for the train-wreck brother to embarrass the legacy of the better one. I swallow the mass in my throat.
“This is for Parker,” I say.
I close my eyes. The music starts, and suddenly he’s beside me again. I hear his clean guitar in my ears, his perfect backing vocal. Never too much, always the right build and release to match my lead because that’s what brothers can do. They read minds and interpret hearts. They make it okay not to be perfect because they fill gaps and…
Mend cracks.
“Rewind back to the start
And your heart would still be too big for me”
I dare a look at the audience, and a rush of warmth spreads through me. Not just at the quantity, but the quality of the people who love my brother.
“Love is a game
For some a lie
For you an epic tie that bound you”
There’s Luke, Casey, Callie, Holland, and even the other NSB guys looking on from a middle row. Can’t believe they all flew in.
“To the one who cries
When the lights go out
When the chill seeps down
Through cracks you always mended”
Mila, of course. A swell of love gusts into my chest at her reassuring smile and the glisten in her eyes. I know it’s for me as much as for Parker. Mila. Where would I be without her? Probably waiting for Parker in the ground.
“Arms that braved the fiercest storms
Swarmed, warmed a broken boy”
And there in the second row, my father—Parker’s father—with Chris and his fellow in-recovery army of supporters. His face… My voice falters, my throat closes around itself. The next words barely make it out.
“Who never had a chance
Limelight (NSB Book 4) Page 23
