I pulled away from his gaze, feeling exposed. “Yeah, I guess.” I didn’t feel ready to tell him the truth about Adrien. Would I ever feel ready?
“Come on, Tember, you used to tell me everything,” he urged, smoothing out a clump of guacamole on his burrito.
“I know, I know.” I picked at my food, feeling increasingly slimy, like a worm on a sidewalk, fated to be stepped on.
“What’s going on? Are you still seeing what’s-his-face?”
I laughed nervously. “Yes.”
He stabbed his burrito with his plastic fork. “Are you…falling for him?”
“No. Well, yes, actually…I don’t know…It’s pretty complicated.” I couldn’t meet Chris’s gaze. I could already see in my peripheral vision he was crushed. It was then I knew for sure I wasn’t the only one falling in love. Chris seemed to have a thing for me and I was stupid not to have caught it before. I mean, I knew he had a little crush on me, but this was a whole different ball game. But why? Wasn’t he in love with Megan? And if he really did have a thing for me, why didn’t he dump Megan ages ago when the door was wide open? I would’ve had him, no hesitation, if the choice was there. Before I met Adrien, that is.
I lifted my gaze. Our eyes locked and there was an intensity shared between us that took my breath away. The way he looked at me—if there wasn’t a table between us, if we weren’t in the middle of a crowd, if everything wasn’t so damn complicated—I knew he would’ve kissed me. And a part of me would’ve let him. I did love Chris. I always have. He was sweet and cute and funny. He could do no wrong. Probably not even intentionally hurt a bug. And he cared for me—more than I deserved. But I loved Adrien, too, with a more desperate urgency. I fell for him harder, faster. But with Chris it was a slow, steady burn. A safer, more familiar love.
Why did life have to be so complicated? Why did I have to fall for two guys at once? And right after John dumped me and my best friend died, right when I swore to never let anyone back into my heart, ever again. The timing of everything was so off. But that’s the funny thing about life. It has no respect for silly things like plans or timing. It does its own thing, no apologies.
“Can I ask you something?” I said, regretting it as soon as I opened my mouth.
He put his fork down. “Anything.”
I choked on the words. “Are you in love with…Megan?”
“No. Well, yes, actually…I don’t know…It’s pretty complicated.” Almost like a tape recorder, he mimicked me perfectly. We both laughed nervously. “Honestly? I’ll always care for Megan. Deeply. But I haven’t been in love with her for a long time. I’m not sure I ever did love her that way.”
I was stunned. “Why—then why—?”
“Her dad’s sick. He’s dying. He has Huntington’s. His body and mind are deteriorating. Shutting down. Megan is devastated. She’s a daddy’s girl. I can’t leave her…I can’t leave her in the middle of all this.”
“Oh,” was all I could say. Why was I surrounded by so much tragedy? Only last year the world seemed to be a much simpler place. I was so young and innocent. So carefree. But ever since Abby died, I seemed to draw sadness into my life like a magnet. Or maybe this was just part of growing up—realizing there were equal parts of joy and sadness.
“She took a test a couple of months before I met you. She found out she has it, too, but it could take years for it to kick in.”
“Oh, wow. I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve been planning on breaking up with her for awhile. She’s a special girl, but she doesn’t let me breathe…When I finally gathered the courage to end things, she broke the news.” He raked his hands through his hair. “How could I, September? How could I dump a girl who’s going to die?”
I shook my head. “It must feel like an impossible situation. I’m so sorry, Chris.” I laughed, but only because it was so Chris to want to do the right thing. “You’re just too nice for your own good sometimes.” He sighed, his face screwing up, reminding me of a little boy. I continued, “But does that mean you should stay with someone you don’t love because she’s sick? Because her father’s sick? Is that fair to her, to live a lie? I know I wouldn’t want someone—no matter how much I loved him—to sacrifice everything, including his own happiness to be with me.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he said, studying his food. Suddenly, against my will, tears filled my eyes. “What’s wrong, Tember?” He reached across the table to touch my hand.
I pushed my half-eaten food away. “I’m not going to lie to you anymore.”
He seemed hurt and confused. “What? Lie about what?”
I struggled to talk through a lump in my throat. “Megan’s not the only one who’s dying.”
Chris’s eyes moved around my face, searching for clues. “What’s going on?”
“Adrien. He’s…he’s going to kill himself in eight days. The night of my parents’ party.”
He laughed nervously. “Adrien’s killing himself?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Wait. Why? Why would any guy who had it all—who had September Jones—want to kill himself?”
I shook my head. “I’m flattered, but it’s more complicated than that. He was suicidal before we met. In fact he told me he was the first day we met. Actually, it was the second day,” I said, remembering we’d first crossed paths when I worked at that art supply store.
“Why, though? Is he depressed or something?”
I bit my lip. “He won’t tell me the reason. And he refuses to get help.”
“I want you to break up with him. Right away,” Chris said through his teeth. I was taken aback. I’d never seen him angry before. “I can’t believe this guy. Does he know about your recent breakup? About the accident? Does he know how much you’ve suffered already? You don’t need this, September. You don’t need some wallowing loser pulling you down like this.”
“It’s not his fault. I practically begged him to spend time with me. I basically stalked him until he agreed to hang out with me.”
“But why? Is he that good-looking? Or is it the whole moody, bad boy thing he has going for him?”
I laughed. “Oh, come on. You know I’m not that shallow. I just felt this responsibility to save him. To keep him from hurting himself. And then he wasn’t anything I’d expected. I started…falling for him.” Unable to meet Chris’s gaze, I studied the edge of my plate, fully aware I’d stabbed him in the heart—again—with those words.
After a long silence, he said, “Okay, but if he refuses to get help, if he’s going to kill himself in a week…wouldn’t it be better for you both if you just walked away?”
I swallowed. “Maybe…Yes.”
“Okay then,” he said, frowning, standing up.
“But—”
“Leave him, September. This will only end badly. You were just starting to find some happiness. I don’t want to see him crush that. Please, I beg you to leave him.”
23
“Did you know, on average, people with mental illnesses die twenty-five years earlier than normal people?” Mary said as we climbed out of Adrien’s ancient silver Nissan. Keaton had offered to pay for a cab, but Adrien insisted we ride in his car, which was finally out of the repair shop.
“Mentally ill people are normal, too, Mary,” I said, watching Adrien as he locked the car. Was he mentally ill? I was certain he was depressed. Why else would he…I let the thought trail off. No use dwelling on the inevitable. It was something I couldn’t think about too much. In fact, I pretty much had to be in denial because there was no other way I could enjoy my limited time with him.
“That’s pretty random,” Adrien said, laughing, raking a hand through his hair.
“And anyway, what is normal?” I said to Mary. “You certainly aren’t.”
“Ha!” she said to me. She then turned to Adrien, “Abby was mentally ill. She was bipolar.”
“It wasn’t a serious case,” I said. “I barely even noticed her lows. She was pre
tty happy most of the time. It was her highs that got her into trouble.”
Keaton laughed, adjusting his fedora. “She really thought she was invincible.” He said it wistfully and with affection. I frowned. Poor Keaton. He really did love Abby. They’d made a really cute couple, too.
It was a chilly afternoon. Despite the bright, clear sky and the sun directly overhead, an icy wind still managed to bite the skin underneath our clothes. The crisp, earthy smells of fall permeated the air. I almost hated fall. It wouldn’t be so bad by itself, but cold, bitter winter always followed.
“Cold?” Adrien asked, wrapping his arm around me.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mary asked. It was my first time visiting Abby’s grave since the funeral. The visit was long overdue.
“I’m sure. Adrien, you really didn’t have to come. You’re the only one here who didn’t know Abby,” I said, snuggling up to him to keep warm. I wasn’t sure what made my heart race more—anticipating seeing Abby’s grave again or Adrien’s strong arms encircling me.
We wandered through a maze of headstones, trying to find hers. Cemeteries always freaked me out. It was so abnormal to be standing on rotting corpses. Okay, not directly on them, but over them, which wasn’t much better. But, unlike Mary, I was definitely not comfortable with death. Morgues, coffins, crematoriums, all of that. Even an approaching hearse on the road unhinged me. Every time I saw one, I’d get this sick feeling in my stomach and wonder if it held a dead body and then, of course, my imagination would get the best of me and I’d start making up tragic stories about the poor dead guy in the back. How did he die? Strangulation? Drowning? A black widow bite? Who was he leaving behind? His soul mate? A paraplegic mother? Five children?
“Here it is,” Keaton whispered. Alarmed, I stopped so fast I stepped on Adrien’s shoe.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling like an idiot.
“No problem,” he said, stealing a kiss from my cheek. What did all these touches and stolen kisses mean? Was my plan working? Could I change his mind?
When I saw her name engraved in the granite headstone, it felt like being punched in the stomach by a world champion boxer. I wasn’t ready for this. Why did it still catch me off guard, all these months later? When would I finally realize she was really gone?
We stood in silence, listening to chirping birds and leaves being rattled by the wind, before Mary said, “Death is so beautiful.”
I shot Mary a look. Had she lost it? “Death is not beautiful,” I said. “Are you crazy?”
“I’m just saying—”
“How can you say that?” I nearly spit the words out.
Mary’s eyes darted left and right. “Wait, I—”
“You weren’t in the car with her. You didn’t see all the blood. You didn’t watch her take her last breath. You don’t know anything,” I said, nearly shouting.
Adrien cringed before taking my trembling body in his arms and holding me tightly, soothing the anger and hurt away.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” Mary said, clutching her black velvet jacket tightly over her chest, looking down at the ground.
“No, I’m sorry. I just—I guess I freaked out there for a minute. This is all so fresh for me still. I thought I was getting better, but sometimes it just hits me all over again.”
Keaton, who seemed oblivious to the rest of us, began singing Abby’s favorite song, Lovesong, by The Cure. Surprised, the rest of us stood in silent wonder, carefully listening. Keaton had a decent voice. He’d sometimes sing backup in The Striped Goat, his smooth falsetto perfectly complimenting Abby’s deeper voice. Mary hid her face in her hands, on the verge of hysterics. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying, or maybe both. Keaton took her hand and squeezed it. That last part got the best of us and we were all in tears. Even Adrien’s eyes became glassy and I felt him trembling, too.
After a few intense moments of silence—which I was sure were going to kill me—Mary spoke up first. “Abby, you were the most beautiful soul I ever knew. My very best friend.” She placed an iridescent silk butterfly atop the tombstone. Abby loved butterflies.
Keaton was next. He set a paper origami bird next to the butterfly and whispered, “Now you’re free…Free as a bird…I will always love you, Abby.”
It was my turn. I opened my mouth, unsure of what to say. I managed to get out a frog-like croaking noise.
Adrien pulled his arm around me tighter and said, “I’ve never met you, Abby, but I’ve heard nothing but good. I—I’m sorry your beautiful life was cut short.” His face crumbled in pain. “I’m so sorry.”
Finally I said, “Abby, you’re my best friend, my sister, my soul twin. Death can not keep us apart. Somehow, I feel you near me. Somehow I know you’ll always be around. I love you.”
Mary did that laughing-crying thing again. I pulled a handful of gourmet ginger ale bottle caps from my jacket pocket and sprinkled them, like dirt, over the grave. “She loved ginger ale,” I explained. This struck everyone as funny and we all laughed. Really, really hard.
On our way back to the car, I started feeling funny. Tired, weak, nauseous. Like my stomach turned inside-out. The grave. Mary and Keaton. Chris. Adrien. John and April. It was all too much.
“Are you okay, September?” Mary asked, her heavily made up face concerned. “You don’t look too hot.”
Keaton nodded. “You do look a little pale.”
“I’m always pale,” I said right before I threw up all over some poor guy’s grave. My half-digested black bean salad slid down the center of the headstone.
“Poor Jonathan,” Adrien said, struggling to read the victim’s last name, “Jonathan Bacon. He never saw it coming.”
“Ha, ha,” I said, feeling increasingly miserable by the second.
“You’re running a fever,” Mary said, feeling my forehead with the back of her hand. “Let’s get you home.”
***
“September, you have a visitor,” Mary said, yanking me out of a rare good dream. I dreamed Adrien, Mary, Abby and I spent a perfect day at the park, playing on swings, eating strawberry ice cream.
I moaned. “Leave me alone.”
Not unlike a dentist extracting a tooth, Mary yanked open the curtains. Cruel, ruthless sunlight blinded me. My eyes slammed shut in protest. “Wakey-wakey. Hot Waffle Guy’s here.”
“What time is it?”
“3:27.”
“What day is it?”
“It’s September twenty-sixth. Two days after you puked all over the cemetery,” Mary said, running a damp cloth over my face. “Sit up.”
Obediently, I struggled to get into a somewhat seated position on the bed. She pressed a glass of room-temperature water to my lips. I sipped carefully, afraid if I drank too much, I’d throw up again. Some of the water wandered and dribbled off my chin, wetting the front of my shirt. Mary smiled at me affectionately. How did I ever hate her? Every day I understood a little more why she meant so much to Abby. She grabbed a brush from her back pocket and began running it through my hair.
“Wait. What are you doing?” I asked, confused.
“You want to look good for Hot Waffle Guy, don’t you?”
It finally clicked and I sat up, panicked. “Adrien’s here? I don’t want to see him. I mean, I don’t want him to see me. Not like this. I’m a wreck.”
“Calm down, you actually look kind of cute, in a half-dead sort of way,” she said, yanking on a knot in my hair.
“Ow! I don’t want to see him. Not today. Send him home.” A quiet tap on my door informed me it was too late.
“September?” It was him. Great. How much did he hear?
I groaned. “Come in, if you must.” When he opened the door, I wanted to hide under my covers and never come out again. I felt naked without makeup and my hair was a stringy mess. Did I have B.O.? My breath could probably kill anything within a ten mile radius.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Mary said, in mocking tone. I shot her the look
of death before she slipped out.
Adrien entered the room, looking around for a moment. His eyes rested on Abby’s photo, the one of her on the fifty cent kiddie ride, before he sat on the edge of my bed. He placed a single sunflower in a simple blue vase on my nightstand and a mysterious paper bag on the floor. He noticed the pile of books on forgiveness and flipped through one of them.
“Are these working? Are you forgiving the man who killed Abby?”
“They’re helping a lot. I’m starting to. I didn’t think I could, but I’m really starting to.”
“What if he doesn’t deserve your forgiveness?”
I laughed, surprised. “Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. Forgiving him is more for me and my own happiness than for him.”
He thought about that for a few moments before asking, “How are you feeling?”
“A little better,” I said, aiming my offensive breath away from his general direction.
“Good,” he said. “I missed you.”
I laughed. “We’ve been apart for like two days.”
“I guess I’m used to spending every day with you. The past two days have felt endless. I’m having September withdrawals. The truth is you should be illegal. You’re like a drug.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s what all the guys say,” I joked. I explored his face. He looked tired. The whites of his eyes had red rivers on the surface. His usual vibrant skin had become dull. Even his green shirt looked as disheveled as his hair.
As if he could read my thoughts, he said, “I haven’t been sleeping much lately.”
I opened my mouth to ask why, but I knew why. He had six days left before…No. I shouldn’t think it. I was going to get him to change his mind. Somehow.
“I brought you something,” he said, opening the big brown bag.
“What is it?”
“A flu survival kit,” he said with a goofy, proud look on his face. “Let’s see…vegetarian chicken noodle soup.” He pulled it out. It was in a foam To-Go container with a plastic lid.
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