She takes a deep breath. I know this is hard for her too. This was something we didn’t talk much about after the fact—all my fault, I know.
“I’m upset that he isn’t here to celebrate my big news. I hurt for my parents, for you, for Zach. I use it to make something of my life—a life he didn’t get. I was in a bad place after he died…I not only lost my brother, but I lost my best friend. I felt like I had lost everything. I mean, I did. So did Zach. He had lost his best friend and his only sister.
“Zach and I started hanging out and were just friends, but then it turned into something more—we drew strength from each other. Moving on doesn’t mean I’m any less sad or miss my brother any less. It just means I’m living.”
She continues. “Please don’t think that I’m not dying on the inside, all because I appear to have my shit together on the outside. There have been plenty of nights that I have cried myself to sleep and Zach will just hold me and let me fall apart. I cry if I see something that reminds me of him or when I see something that I think he would’ve liked. But I also know that he wouldn’t want me to be sad and not live my life. I know that I get to spend the rest of my life living for my brother and have a man next to me who I love so much.
“Through Em’s death, I found Zach. Yes, I’ve known him my whole life, but it wasn’t till we were both so broken and lost in the darkness and consumed by our grief that we found light in each other. We healed each other. It’s still a process, but we are facing it together. He would be so happy for us…well, after he thoroughly kicked your brother’s ass, of course.”
We both laugh at that thought, especially since Emmett could totally have kicked Zach’s ass. “He would want you to live too, Danielle. He would hate you like this; you and I both know it.”
Ugh, I am so tired of being tired. Haylee is clearly not giving up, so I respond with “But I feel guilty…” but she quickly interrupts me before I can finish what I feel guilty about.
She raises her hand, making sure I stop speaking. “I know how madly in love my brother was with you and vice versa. I know the dreams you guys planned and the life you both wanted together. I was there for both of you. I saw both sides of your love as his sister and your best friend. And then life stepped up to the plate and gave a big fuck-you and destroyed them, all of them—your dreams, mine, my parents’, and anyone who ever did or would have known Emmett. I know that Em wouldn’t want this for you. He told me once that all he wanted was for you to be happy—it was why he did stupid shit like the singing and dancing in public or verbally proclaiming his love for you as if he just discovered new land. He said his sole purpose in life was to make you smile. Yeah, he actually said that—big bad Emmett was pretty whipped. I never understood any of that until Zach.”
I notice that her cheeks redden, and she smiles while looking down at her new bling on her finger. Now I feel like an even bigger asshole for blowing up at them.
“Ya know, I don’t know exactly where my brother is right now, but I hope that he is at peace. And of course, if he chooses to haunt me, I hope he at least doesn’t do it while Zach and I are, well…” She waggles her eyebrows and giggles as I put my hand up, inferring that she should not finish that sentence. She continues. “But what I do know is that he would hate you not being happy. He would hate knowing that the smile that he made sure he saw every day was gone. He would understand and want someone to be able to put that smile back on your face if he can’t. We know that if he were here that you both would be together and hopefully by now I’d be spoiling the shit out of my nieces or nephews,” she says, smiling, but that smile quickly turns to a frown and the unshed tears start to spill over. “But he’s not. He’s never coming back. So, Dani, I need you to live, for you, for Emmett, for the dreams, and for the memories. You can’t live your life carrying the weight of my brother’s death, you just can’t. I won’t allow it. We let you walk away once before, and fuck if we are going to let you do it again. Prove that my brother’s death wasn’t for nothing but his dreams dying with him and yours as well. We can’t change your dreams together falling apart, but you can still do something about yours—make new ones.”
Fuck not being able to hide my tears and my shoulders trembling. “But I just feel so guilty that I get to live and he doesn’t.”
Haylee pulls me into an embrace, and we are both crying uncontrollably. She cups my cheeks, forcing me to look at her. “I know, I know, but I need you to fucking stop. Don’t let your guilt get in the way of being happy. You did not cause that accident. That’s what it was—an accident. A wrong place at the wrong time. I need you to make the decision to stop feeling guilty. To make the decision of living your life. You only get one, and how amazing is it that in that one life you get two great men who love you when most people don’t even get one.”
In a bit of shock, I pull back from her. “Kyler doesn’t love me.”
She tries to hide her laugh. “Oh yes he does. I’ve known him for a few years now, and I’ve never seen him look at someone the way he looks at you.”
Hmmm…. How does he look at me? Is she about to go full-blown Shakespeare up in here with me?
“And how is that?” I respond.
She puts her forehead against mine, and I’m brought back to being kids when we would try to make a point. It was our version of trying to get into the other’s head—kind of alien vs magic shit that we believed.
“Honey.” Haylee pauses. “Ky looks at you the same way Emmett used to.” She gives me a brief smile as she grabs my hand and squeezes it. “It’s also the same way you look at him.”
There is no use in hiding my feelings no matter how much they scare me. I nod in silence, I do love him, but hopefully I didn’t fuck this all up for us by our fight. I need to fix this, to fix us. It has felt good to smile again, to feel loved. Wiping the tears away, I’m sure smearing my already day-old makeup even more, and running my fingers down my hair to help calm the mess, I find myself giggling. “Shit, Hails, when did you become the smart and wise one out of the two of us?.”
Haylee gets one of those shit-eating up-to-no-good grins that I see often on my brother’s face, and I instantly know I will regret hearing whatever her answer is.
“Probably around the same time I started sleeping with your brother.”
Even through my laughter I make a playful gagging sound as if I just threw up a little in my mouth. Haylee lets out a loud, cackling laugh that I haven’t heard in forever. It’s like a sound of coming home, of memories that made us laugh so hard we snorted, cried, and sometimes peed our pants. Okay, so the last one only happened once, and I was ten.
“If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black, missy. Remember every time we talked about boys growing up and all your firsts? I had to hear about my brother, so bleh,” she says, sticking her tongue out at me. And just like that we are both rolling over laughing. How we went from tears of sorrow to joy, I’m not sure, but I’d like to think Em had something to do with it.
Taking a deep breath to regain some composure, I ask my best friend, “So you’re really going to marry my brother, huh?” I grab her hand to properly inspect that gorgeous rock he gave her this morning. The ring is simple yet beautiful, just like her. It feels as though so much has happened today that I can’t believe it was just a few hours ago that Zach was on one knee in front of her giving her this.
“Yeah, I am,” she says, wearing a grin from ear to ear. She turns to face Emmett’s gravestone, holding up her left hand. “Did you hear that, big bro? I’m getting married, can you believe it?” Haylee looks up to the sky and squeezes her eyes shut before turning back to me. “But you know what’s better than him becoming my husband?”
I put my thinking face on and move my head around as if I’m giving it serious thought. I playfully respond, “A root canal? Maybe natural childbirth? Falling out of the tree house and breaking your arm?” A smile comes to my face when I say the last one, remembering when we were kids and Haylee did exactly that.
Shoving me playfully, she is all full of smiles when she says, “Bitch! No, I was going to say, I still get you as my sister. See? That plan didn’t change.”
I’m forever thankful that my relationship with Haylee isn’t ruined. I know I made lots of mistakes over the years including leaving my family and friends behind. I was worried that Hails wouldn’t want anything to do with me, but that’s not her. And she’s right, after all these years, the one thing that never changed was that Haylee and I were meant to be sisters. It’s just a different Hanks and Jacobs marrying this time.
I pull her in to what is possibly our millionth hug of the afternoon. “I love you, Hails.”
“I love you too, D. Now, what do you say we get back to the apartment because I’m pretty sure Kyler has officially driven Zach insane and possibly paced the floor away.”
I nod as we stand up and brush the grass off our clothes. Haylee steps forward and kisses the headstone. “I’ll see you later, big bro. I promise I’ll take care of her. I miss you. Love you, E.”
“Can you give me a minute?” I ask Haylee as she steps back. She nods and turns to head toward the cars. I bend down, kiss my hand, and place it on the dash between Emmett’s birth and death date. I am reminded of the poem Zach spoke at Em’s funeral, “The Dash” by Linda Ellis.
Emmett was only on this earth for eighteen years, and he spent most of those years loving me. He loved me with everything he had and will always be in my heart. I’ve wasted years of my dash angry, sad, and hurt, thinking my dash was over when his ended. It’s time to rearrange my life and start living. There will never be a day that I forget Emmett. He lives with me, and I hope that he will be with me every day till the end when I hope one day we will be reunited.
“I love you, Emmett Adam Hanks.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, imagining him standing there in front of me. “I love you, Cupcake.”
Blowing out that breath, I respond, “Forever and always.” I smile as I turn and walk toward my car where Haylee is standing next to my brother’s Jeep. We silently nod at each other before hopping in the cars and heading back to Pennsylvania.
“I f you don’t stop pacing and sit the fuck down, I’m going to punch you. You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor, and then we’ll never get back our security deposit,” Zach chuckles before taking a sip of his beer.
I stop pacing and take a seat on the chair next to the couch. I’m so anxious, I adjust myself in the seat four or five times before Zach puts his hand on my arm and looks me in the eye. “Ky, you need to calm down. Hails said they’re on their way back. She’s okay.”
“I know. I just really love her, man, and I’m afraid it’s all fucked up,” I tell him honestly.
He smiles. “Nah, my sister is stubborn as fuck, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders.” He pauses and looks to his hands before looking back at me with unshed tears. “It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen a true honest smile on my sister’s face. And you did that, Ky, not me, not Haylee, but you.” I’m startled at first when he pulls me to my feet, slapping my back in true man-hug fashion. “Thank you for bringing my sister’s smile back.”
Shit, now I’m on the verge of crying. What the fuck is wrong with us men… Love, that’s what.
“I’d make her smile for the rest of my life if she’ll let me one day.”
Still wrapped up in our embrace, we completely miss the sound of the key turning and the door opening, until we hear a throat clearing. It brings us to the present, and we see Dani and Haylee standing in the doorway. We quickly separate, making all sorts of macho noises and grunts that I’m sure do nothing to help our case except make us look stupid. I look up and see her. God, she’s beautiful.
Haylee giggles. “Ummm, we can always come back, but Kyler, maybe you should remember that this Jacobs is already taken, and I don’t like to share.” She walks toward her fiancé and wraps her arms around his waist. Zach leans down to her and gives her a deep kiss that clearly makes them forget that Dani and I are still standing here in the same room.
I look over at Dani, who is nervously playing with her hair and looking down at the ground. There must be something interesting on her shoes because she hasn’t lifted her beautiful blue eyes in a few minutes. As if she can feel my stare, she looks up at me and mouths, “Can we talk?” and looks toward the hallway. Nodding, I follow her to the guest room, leaving the future Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs standing in the living room still making out. Oh, young love!
I take a seat on the edge of the bed as she closes the door. Danielle begins to pace back and forth. To break the awkward silence, I joke, “You may want to stop pacing because we may end up in the crawlspace below after all of my pacing may have weakened the floorboards. And for some reason, your brother still thinks there’s a chance we’re getting our security deposit back and doesn’t think we need to remodel the floors.”
Her head jerks up, and her eyes narrow at me before they soften. I am almost expecting her to bitch me out, but instead she smiles at me and I’m not talking about a half-assed fake smile—I’m talking a real Danielle Jacobs smile. It warms my heart as I remember a time when I would have given anything to see that smile on her face.
Dani takes a deep breath and begins to speak. “Okay, so I’m going to say something, and I need you to let me get this all out without interrupting, which you love to do…”
“I don’t love to interrupt you,” I say, doing exactly what she said for me not to do.
Tilting her head at me, she gives me a seriously, yes you do look. I smirk, putting my hands up in surrender. She continues. “So I need you not to interrupt so that I can get all of this out because if I don’t, I’m worried I won’t have the strength to say all I need to.” She takes another deep breath, and her eyes land on something in the corner. I follow her gaze to the nightstand where I know the photo of Emmett sat, but it’s no longer there. Did she move it? How am I just noticing? Then again, we don’t spend much time in this room. Dani sleeps in my room every night but still keeps all of her stuff in here.
Dani takes a few deep breaths; her eyes give the impression that she is giving herself an internal pep talk before she starts to speak again. “First, let me say I’m sorry for lashing out at you this morning. I was diverting the shock of my brother getting engaged and displacing it on you. It was wrong and unfair. You’re not just a stand-in or replacement. Please don’t think that’s how I see you.”
I know she didn’t mean it. Her eyes fill up with unshed tears, and her voice trembles.
“To be honest, it freaked me out but not in the way you think. See, when I saw my brother down on one knee, I envisioned my happily ever after. For the longest time I thought I didn’t deserve one, but actually it was that I wasn’t allowing myself to have one.
“There is not a memory in my mind for eighteen years that didn’t have Emmett in it, and then all of a sudden he was ripped from this world, and I didn’t know how to face the new reality of it. Or well, more that I didn’t want to face it. I felt guilty at the thought that I get to live, and he didn’t, so I pushed all possibilities of a future away.”
Dani begins a slow pace around the room. She just can’t keep still. I want to reach out and touch her to let her know it’s okay, but I refrain to let her finish.
“When you answered the door all those months ago, something inside me woke up. It was something that I had convinced myself had died along with Emmett. But you brought me out of the darkness and into the light, and well, that scared and still does scare the shit out of me. I only ever loved one man, and I have been broken and empty for a long time, so I might not be very good at this, but I want to try…with you.”
Is she saying what I think she’s saying?
“I loved Emmett with all my heart, and when he died, my heart was crushed into a million pieces, pieces that I never thought could be put back together…until you put me back together. God, the first time you kissed me…”
She
begins to blush, so I think it’s safe to assume her mind has taken her back to that memory as has mine, and I adjust myself in my pants to hide what that memory does to me. Thankfully, she doesn’t notice.
“That first time you kissed me, I knew you would knock my barriers down. The first time I looked into those beautiful brown eyes, I knew I was in trouble. But if I thought of you and fell in love with you, then it meant that I loved him less and was betraying his memory. But I was wrong—yes, I’m admitting I was wrong.”
My eyes go wide in shock, and she points at me. “But don’t get used to it.”
Her expression goes serious again. The lighthearted moment, though, eased the tension in the room. “I was betraying his memory by letting life pass me by and not living. I love you for your patience, your kindness, your willingness to learn, your bad jokes, and horrible taste in movies. I love that you make me feel complete and whole again. Maybe I came home from being lost for you to find me. I guess what I’m saying is…” She pauses and bites the inside of her lip, her eyes locked on mine, desperately trying to finish that sentence for her. “Kyler, I’m yours if you’ll still have me.”
I see my girl is nervous as fuck since I haven’t said anything yet. I mean, what do you say to the girl of your dreams when she just gave a speech like that? That’s some serious Jerry Maguire “you complete me/had me at hello” shit.
After a few moments, I realize I can’t wait any longer, I need to touch her. I stand and stalk toward her in two strides. I place my hands on her hips and look her directly in those beautiful baby blues. “You really don’t like my jokes?” How I’m keeping a straight face right now I have no clue. It’s not until she smacks my chest, smiling, and says, “Seriously? Out of that entire speech, that’s what you remember?” that I smile back at her and push a strand of hair behind her ears.
I Never Planned on You Page 24