More Than Enough (More Than Series, Book 5) (14 page)

He drops to his knees in front of me and picks up the notes, opening each one and reading them before handing them to me. He doesn’t speak when he does it. He just takes his time, being as careful as I am when he unfolds and refolds them. And when we’re done, he leans back against the bed, his eyes on the ceiling and my broken heart weighing heavily in his hands. He stays that way for minutes, hours, who knows? Then he drops his gaze, looking at me silently crying in front of him.

“What happened to him?” he asks, and I shake my head. It’s one memory I don’t want to remember.

“Will you tell me about him?”

I release a sob. “What?”

He pushes off the bed and moves closer to me, his legs crossed as his hands reach for mine. “Not the memories you have of him or the things you did or the color of his eyes. Tell me about him, the boy who loved you.”

I look over at the full bottle of wine on my nightstand.

“No,” he says, his finger on my chin, making me face him again. “Let
me
be your alcohol. Let
me
dull your pain.”

I cry into my hands, free and uncontrolled and louder than I ever let myself cry.

“Come here,” he pulls me with him until he’s lying on his back, my head on his chest as he strokes my hair. He holds me to him while I cry. Not from grief. Not from anger. Not from missing someone so badly I don’t know how to get through the next hour, let alone the next day, but I cry because it’s all too much. Too real. Too raw. And for the first time ever, I allow myself to cry for
me
.

For
my
loss.

“Start from the beginning,” Dylan says. “Tell me how you met. How he asked you out. Where he took you on the first date. Your first kiss. Tell me how he made you
feel
. Tell me how he loved you.”

I sniff back my heartbreak and look up at him. “Why?”

“Because, Riley,” he says, kissing the top of my head. “I plan on loving you like he did.”

*     *     *

It was English class. Sophomore year. We were studying Shakespeare, watching the “modern” version of Romeo and Juliette. You were sitting next to me leaning on the back legs of your chair messing around with your friends. You were the popular Jock. I was the quiet, get-through-the-day girl. You and your friends started talking louder and louder and I lost it. I turned to you all and told you to be quiet so I could focus. You dropped your chair forward, your eyes wide and on me. “Excuse me?” you asked.

“You heard me. Shut up. Some of us are here to actually learn.”

Your friends laughed. You didn’t. You just kept looking at me. “Riley, right?”

I rolled my eyes.

You leaned forward, your forearm on my desk and your voice low. “You really think some old dude like Shakespeare wrote this shit so hundreds of years later a bunch of punk teenagers can rip it to shreds in order to get some score out of a hundred… so some self-righteous adult who once ripped the same material to shreds can give said teenager a number in comparison to how he feels about Shakespeare’s life’s work?”

Shaking my head, I glared at you and pushed your arm off my desk. “I don’t need to hear your bullshit opinion. I just want you to shut up.”

Your friends laughed again.

And again, you didn’t.

Instead, you turned around and told them all to be quiet.

You were their leader—an opinionated ass of a leader.

“Let the lady learn,” you shouted.

I yelled at you to shut up.

We both got detention.

And when the class was over I stood up and started packing my bag. You stood, too, right by my table, waiting for me to finish. When I was done, you took my hand in yours and placed your lips on the back of it, kissing it once.

I stood still, not knowing what to do… and annoyed that my first kind-of-kiss from a boy was from you. Then you smiled. “Sweet Riley,” you announced. “Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow… at detention.”

We fell in like in an otherwise empty classroom of detention.

We fell in love in the stands at one my swim meets.

We fell in forever at senior prom, while we danced under the twinkling lights with crowns on our heads at the highest point of our short-lived future. “Riley,” you whispered, my hands on your chest and your arms around my waist.

I looked up at you.

Then you spoke. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.”

*     *     *

I sit up
and look down at Dylan, his eyes sad and unfocused. He hasn’t said a word since I started remembering Jeremy. “I don’t think I ever felt worthy of him,” I say, wiping my tears.

He reaches up and replaces my hand with his, continuing the job of hiding the pain.

“I want to feel worthy of you, Dylan.”

“Riley, you are—”

“Not yet,” I cut in. “But I
want
to be. And that’s something I haven’t felt since Jeremy died. I want to stop drinking and I want to stop feeling nothing but despair when I think of him. I want to be stronger than that. I don’t want to feel like the horizon.”

His head tilts. “The horizon?”

“I feel like I’m the sky and the earth is reality. And the horizon… it’s just the sky and the earth appearing to touch, but they never do. I want to touch reality, Dylan. I want to live in it. I want to feel like I’m here… in this world, and not just floating around it. And if I’ve learned anything from Jeremy and from you—it’s that life’s too short, and no matter how much it hurts, it’s better than the alternative.”

Dylan

S
he tells me
not to come over during the next two days because her mom’s home and having her mom question why I’m there may just cause her to drink. She wants to do everything she can to avoid it, which makes me proud. I tell her so and she smiles. “Good. I want to give you a reason to be proud.” We exchange phone numbers so she can text me in case her feelings ever get too overwhelming and she reaches for the bottle.

“You look like
ass,” Eric says when I step into the living room.

“It’s been a long ass day.”

He motions to my shoulder. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, nothing like that. Where’s Sydney?”

“Work.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s a nurse.”

“Seriously?” I ask.

Eric laughs. “Don’t let her shitty life choices—aka, being with me—fool you. Sydney’s a really smart girl and she’s funny and compassionate and… yeah….” He clears his throat. “Hey! Have you seen my balls? I swear I lost them around three weeks ago.”

“She probably took them to work with her,” I say through a chuckle. “Yo, what’s with all the computer shit in my room?”

“It’s just work stuff.”

“You work?” I ask in disbelief.

He laughs. “I also pay half the mortgage if that means anything.”

“What the hell do you even do?”

His eyebrows rise. “Ah, baby brother. If I told you, then I’d have to kill you.”

“Fuck off.” I throw a cushion at his head. Clearly, I’ve been hanging around Riley too much. “Tell me.”

He throws the cushion back. I catch it. “I work for a secret government agency. I try to find online predators, kiddie porn, all that stuff.”

“No shit?”

He nods.

I stare at him. “Yeah. You really look like you’re doing a good job with that.” I point to him sitting in his boxer shorts with a beer in his hand.

“Fuck off, dickhead. I work nights. That’s when the assholes come out.” He shrugs. “It works out, though. I get to be home all day and Sydney and I both work the same schedule so we can see each other as much as possible.”

“You really like her, huh?”

“Yep,” he says, now unashamed. “Thinking of asking her to take it to the next step.”

“What? Like marriage?” My voice is loud. Too loud.

“No. Not marriage.” He’s looking at me like I’m stupid. Maybe I am, but what else could the next step be?

“I’m thinking about asking her to date me, you know. Not just fuck me.”

I shake my head. “You’re fucking gross.”

“Okay, guy who’s on The Drug.”

“I’m not on The Fucking Drug.”

He laughs. “I know. Sydney told me about the girl next door. How’s she coping anyway?”

“What do you mean
coping
?”

“After the accident. She kind of went a little…” He spins his finger around his ear and whistles.

“Don’t talk about her like that.”

“Oh,” he says, his eyes wide while he nods slowly. “So you’re
more
than boning her?”

“I’m not boning her,” I snap. And now I’m pissed. Maybe because he’s talking shit—or maybe because he seems to know more about her than I do. Sighing, I drop my head forward. “What accident?” I ask.

“She hasn’t told you?”

“Obviously not. How the fuck do you play detective online and you can’t even work that out?”

He shakes his empty beer and stands up. “Just look up her name online. I’m sure you can find out.”

“Can I borrow a computer?”

He shakes his head as he passes me. “Just use your phone.” He smacks the back of my head. “How the fuck are we brothers?”

I pull my phone out of my pocket and search for the Internet app. When I finally find it, I don’t type her name. I type his:
Jeremy Walters
into the search window, and when the results load, my eyes scan the headlines, my breath leaving me completely.

Freak cliff jumping accident takes life of promising teen.

North Carolina teen dies after taking “The Leap.”

I continue to scroll down the page, my heart beating wildly in my chest.

Then I see it—the one headline that causes my heart to stop and my head to spin.

Pre-college rite of passage tradition ends in tragedy for teen couple. One dead, one injured.

She was
there
.

She was there the exact moment the love of her life took his last breath.

I click on
the link and start to read the article, but a message pops up, blocking my view.

Riley:
Exactly how needy would I come across if I told you I was missing you already?

I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding and read the text over and over. I picture her in her room, in the corner with all her cushions… the way her gaze lifts when she watches me in her bed. I picture her smile when I say something stupid, her head as it tilts back with her laughter. And then I picture her eyes, her clear gray eyes full of hope.

Dylan:
Aboutxas needy asxit would sound ig I tolf you that Is deal wit th wra th of your mpther just to saee you.

Riley:
What?

Dylan:
Im reakky bas at this.

Riley:
Um. Maybe go on your computer because I’m not kidding. I’m needy. And I need you to keep me sane right now.

Dylan:
Ok. Hanfxin.

Riley:
What? Lol. Wtf are you on?

I find Eric on his laptop in his room. “Yo. Can I borrow a computer?”

He faces me. “What? You can’t google on your phone?”

“No. I’m texting with Riley and I can’t type on my phone for shit.”

He laughs and gets up from his chair. Then he opens his closet where more than ten laptops are piled up high. He grabs one and turns to me. “You need me to set it up so you can text from here? Or are you on Facebook?”

I shake my head. “Yeah, set up the text thing.”

Riley:
Dylan?

I start to reply with Eric hovering over me. “Jesus Christ,” he says, taking the phone from my hand. His fingers fly across the screen and when he’s done he hands it back to me and gets to work on the computer I’ll be using. I look down at the text he just sent.