Everything (27 page)

“I swear I won’t maul you this time,” I said, right before I pulled him into a sensual but brief kiss. “Better?” I asked, backing up.

“Um, I’m not sure. The effect is still the same, so I’m going to go with a no.”

“Then you better get going. Have fun tomorrow.”
 

He paused with a pained look on his face. “I hate leaving you when I know you need me. It really is not a big deal to change plans with my mom. She would understand.”

“No. Please, people have been making concessions all week and things are going back to normal soon enough, so we might as well start it now.”

“Promise to text me if you need me. Or if you need to maul me again, I promise I won’t stop you anymore. Please?”

“Kicking yourself now?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“No. Well, maybe just a little.” He held up his finger and thumb to indicate an inch.

“I promise if I need you or want to maul you, I will text you. I love you, and thank you for saying no.”

“You’re welcome, baby. I love you too.” He leaned over and gave me one last kiss and was out the door.

Aria was already fast asleep, and I, having just woken up, was wide-awake and alone with my thoughts.

I decided to start on my creative writing final assignment, thinking about how I had changed this semester. The semester wasn’t even over, and I had already changed in so many ways—it’s what death did to people.

I searched the room and found my book bag Trevor had bought over and took out my notebook and pen—old school, I know—and began to write.

Chapter 13

The next two days went by in a whirlwind, and then they didn’t. On Thursday, I didn’t see Trevor, but I saw plenty of Mick, who kept wanting me to change my mind about trying to look for the will. He had made up some ridiculous story about some family heirloom that Mom had that was passed down to her, and he wanted to see if it was either in the safe or in the will to be passed over to him, and since he was leaving right after the funeral Sunday night, he wanted to know.

I had told him I had too much going on and I wasn’t going to look. I hadn’t been able to go into my parents’ room since the accident, and I didn’t even think I would after the funeral. On Friday, Aria had started acting somewhat back to normal, being the sister I once knew, only having a few bouts of the bitchy teen angst here and there. I caught her staring at her phone again. When I came up behind her, she quickly closed her text message screen and screamed about privacy and ran upstairs.

Opal was still Opal and hadn’t had anymore bouts of memory lapse since the day of the funeral home, and she and Mr. Eugene seemed to be doing fine, although to be honest, I wasn’t really checking in too much these days with her and Mr. Eugene. I wasn’t checking in with anyone, really. The funeral home had called and said that the service was set for eleven o’clock Saturday morning, so the house was abuzz Friday evening, and a sort of morose calm had settled over everyone. Aria was eerily quiet and off by herself, not speaking to anyone, just staring at her phone. And me, well, I was stuck in my head feeling incredibly guilty.

Tina had kept asking me how I felt about Wally’s death because of our relationship when he was alive, and I didn’t know how I felt. I had been avoiding answering that question, but I was going to have to deal with it sooner or later, and I had no doubt I would be thinking of nothing but that while I was sitting through the service. If I wanted to be honest with myself, I felt guilty that I didn’t try hard enough with him. He was my father, the only one I would ever have, and now he was gone. And sure, he hadn’t given me the hugs and kisses he had given Aria, but he had loved me, he had clothed me and fed me and made sure I was healthy up until Mom came along, then he passed it on to her.

And Mom, who wasn’t my birth mom but had never once let that stop her from loving me from day one like I was...She took me and loved me and hugged me and kissed me for all the times Wally didn’t or couldn’t. I would always love her for that, and now she was gone and I would never get her back.
 

“ What are you thinking about?”
 

Trevor had come to sit beside me on the couch, where I was huddled in a blanket, lost in my rambling thoughts.

“Just about tomorrow.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes.” No.

He gave me a look as though he didn’t believe me.

“I’ll be fine, babe. I’m more worried about A. She hasn’t said much of anything tonight.” I looked over at her sitting on the two-seater, still staring at her phone, lost in thought.

“Neither of you have said much of anything, but that’s understandable. Tomorrow is a...an emotional day for you both.”

“Yeah,” I said with what felt like my millionth sigh.

The house was so full of people, but I heard none of them. I was so exhausted from all the thinking and also wound tight—I wanted it all to be over and done with.

“I’m going upstairs. Are you staying the night, or will I see you in the morning?” I asked him.

“I’ll see you in the morning, babe. Let you spend the night with your sister. It looks like you need it.” He hugged me sadly, kissed my forehead, then went over to do the same to Aria before making his way around the packed house to tell everyone else, minus Tina, bye.

Riley left shortly after Trevor did, saying he would see us tomorrow. He was going to meet Trevor at the house, as they were going to ride together with Mr. Eugene behind the family cars.
 

“Bye, Ri-Ri,” Aria said distractedly.

“I wish you guys didn’t have to do this tomorrow, especially her,” he whispered to me, gesturing to Aria.

“I know. Me too.” Then something dawned on me. “When all of this is over, we need to have a talk about the amount of time you are spending with my sister.” I gave him a weak but sly smile.

He looked at me with fake innocence, then smiled and left.

Honestly, if he had any interest in Aria, she couldn’t pick a better guy, although I didn’t actually know if she felt that way about him. Another issue for another day.

Mr. Eugene and Aunt Opal were next to leave, saying they would also be over early.

“The healing begins tomorrow, girls.” She hugged us both and left while Mr. Eugene patted us on the shoulders and followed her out.

That left Mick, who had been silently brewing over the whole will thing but remained silent about it, wisely, sensing that today would not be a good day to broach the subject.

“Well, I guess I will see you girls in the morning. I can come over earlier if you want to try the safes in the morning.”

I was wrong. The man had no shame. And I lost it. I’d had it with his jerky, pushy ways.

“Are you fucking serious? You have a lot of nerve, you know that? My parents just
died
, you asshole,
your sister
just died, and all you can think about is a family heirloom, which I can see right through and I know there is no family heirloom—you just want money. Well, let me save you the trouble. There is no money, and even if there was, you’re not getting your greasy little hands on it,” I huffed.

Tina had come in from the kitchen to witness my verbal takedown of Mick, and Aria stared wide-eyed at the now red-faced Mick.

“Now you listen here, Dacey. You are no kin to me, and I don’t like you. Now that we are no longer tied together by marriage, I don’t have to pretend to like you. The only family I have is this girl right here and—”

“No, you don’t,” Aria seethed. “You don’t have any family in this room. Get out of
our
house, Mick. My
sister
is right. How dare you? How dare you say you have pretended to like her? I love her! Mom loved her! She was her daughter! And you, you’re just a dick and always will be. Please leave. Now. Before I say something Dacey will have to scold me for later.”

Mick looked as though he wanted to say something, but he just looked between the two of us, disgusted, and spat, “You’re just like your mother,” and walked out, slamming the door.

“Forget Lifetime—that was HBO all the way right there,” Tina clapped, breaking the tension in the room.

Aria turned to me. “I’m sorry, Dac. He’s an ass. I’m sorry he said those things to you.”

I held up my hand to stop her. “It’s not like I didn’t know he didn’t like me. The feeling was mutual, trust me.”

“Still, I can’t believe I’m related to such a dick.” She shook her head sadly.

“Every family has one.”

“We only have each other now.” She grabbed my hand and hugged me tight.

“And we’re back to Lifetime.” Tina came up and joined our hug.

“Shut up, Jussy.”

“What am I going to do with you girls? Between
Opal: The Untold story
and you two over here, the never-ending Lifetime Network, I never run out of entertainment,” she joked.

I rolled my eyes. “Speaking of entertainment, what’s going on with the professor?”

“Professor?” Aria asked, eyes widening.

“Come on, don’t taint the young’un with sex talk.” We pulled out of the hug and sat down on the couch and two-seater.

“Young’un? I’m eighteen! I’ve kissed boys and done things,” Aria scoffed.

“Wait, what things?” I looked at her, shocked. I knew my sister was no angel, but I also knew she still held on to her V-card proudly. Please let her still have it.

“You have a boyfriend, Dacey. You know things.” She gave me a smirk.

My mouth dropped open.

“
Dios mío
, say it ain’t so? Little Aria? What boys did your milk shake bring to the yard?” Tina asked.

I held up my hand. “We are not having this conversation.”

“There is some boy out there who I’m sure would like to keep his life,” I looked at her.

Aria rolled her eyes and laughed.
 

I wasn’t kidding. Why was she laughing?

“Relax, I was safe, before you ask, and my clothes stayed on. There, you happy?”

“Not really.”

“Why am I just hearing about this now?”

She shrugged. “It never really came up in conversation.”

“Oh, that’s the kind of thing you make come up,” Tina giggled. “Oh, hey, Dac. How’s it going? So guess what? I totally made it with so-and-so last night. He went to...” Tina mocked.

“Hey, that’s not how it went, Jussy!” Aria shrieked. “And besides, the opportunity for that conversation never presented itself, and then I just forgot.”

“You forgot? He must not have been very good.” Tina said, shocked.

“Jussy!” Aria started turning red.

I was more than a little uncomfortable with this conversation. I couldn’t picture my sister doing the things that Trevor and I did. “Okay! Let’s pretend this portion of the evening never happened and focus back on you and the hot married professor.”

“He’s married?” Aria scandalized.

“Yes, but wait, did your mom know about you and Mr. Not Very Good?”

“No! Are you crazy?” Aria screamed.

“Dropping the subject.
Now
,” I said with finality.

Tina rolled her eyes but didn’t mention it again. She started telling Aria and me more about her hot professor and how she had been shamelessly flirting with him since she got to Miami but he had treated her like nothing more than a student.

It was nice to talk about regular things, normal mindless things for a change. We laughed, and I forgot for once that my world was full of death, that tomorrow I would be burying half of my family, that my aunt was losing her mind, that it was just me and my sister, and that we were in college and alone. Yeah, forgetting was good.

Before we knew it though, Mrs. D came in and said that it was getting late and we had an early and long emotional day tomorrow and had better get to bed. So Aria and I said good-night to Tina and Mrs. D and headed upstairs to our room.

“Dacey, are you scared about tomorrow?” Aria asked.

“I have a knot in my stomach the size of a watermelon, but I don’t know if scared is the right word for it. Are you?”

“Not for the reason you think.”

I think I knew why.

“The whole town will be there, everyone will be looking at us and pointing and whispering. I wanted people’s attention in acting. Not this way.”

“I know. It’s just tomorrow, and then everything will go back to normal.” But even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true.

“What’s normal? We will always be the girls who lost both of their parents.”

“Maybe. You know what Mom would say. She would say, ‘Make a new name for yourself. Don’t let what happened
to
you define you.’”

“Yeah, but what does that even mean?”

“It means we are not the accident. We are more than the girls who lost their parents.”

“But what if we’re not?” She had started to cry.

I got up and went over to her bed and lay down with her, hugging her back like I did that first night that seemed so long ago.

“We are. I know we are. We just have to start healing from this. It can happen.”

“Dacey?” Her tears flowed harder now.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry I took him from you.” It was barely a whisper.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just sorry,” she choked out and broke down some more.

I didn’t reply. I just rocked her and shushed her until her sobs eased up and became hiccups, and she soon fell asleep in my arms.

I didn’t know what she meant by taking him from me, unless she was feeling bad again in how differently he treated us and she felt the need to apologize again for him. I would tell her again when she woke up that it wasn’t her fault and that I didn’t blame her. She couldn’t live with this because it would eat her up.
 

I dozed off into a fitful sleep and dreamed of emptiness.

* * *

My first thought was ugh, it’s D-day, and my second thought was I’m gonna be sick. I untangled myself from Aria and ran to the bathroom in time to make it to the toilet.

“Dac?” Aria knocked on the door frame of the bathroom. “Are you okay?”

“That’s left to be seen,” I said, trying to catch my breath as another wave of sickness rolled over me.

“I’m going to get Mrs. D,” she said worriedly, then went downstairs to retrieve her.