by Shandi Boyes
“What about me?!” Jacob pounds his thrusting chest. “What about fucking me?! You’re my brother, Noah. You hate that Chris left you, yet now you want to do the same thing to me. I won’t fucking let you leave me like he left you; I won’t fucking let you!”
Chris’s death is the reason I wrote ‘Hollow.’ When people commit suicide, they don’t consider the loved ones they leave behind, what they trudge through: the hurt, the anger, and the years spent wondering if there was something they could have done so they would have stayed—so they would have lived.
“You have to fight, Noah; you have to fight to live. Emily would want you to live.” He kneels on the ground next to me to clutch my hand in his. “Promise me you’ll fight. Promise me, and I’ll promise that you won’t go through this alone. I’ll be there for you every day. I’ll fight alongside you. You will survive this, Noah. It’ll never stop hurting, but you will survive this.”
Jacob has always been there for me, just as I have for him, but what he is asking is too much. I want to deny his request. I want to finish what I started. Instead, I stare into the eyes of a friend who’s always been more like a brother to me while murmuring, “I’ll try.”
Now, four days later, he still watches over me as haunted memories race suicidal thoughts to the forefront of my mind.
Chapter 44
Noah
“You’re not going through this alone, Noah.” Jacob removes the razor from my hand before placing it on the edge of the blood-smeared sink.
“I know.”
Jacob and the boys from the band will always support me, but nothing can soothe my devastation. For the past four days, I’ve reverted back to the coping mechanism I used when my brothers died. I appear to be functioning, but I don’t live—because I’m dead on the inside. My emotions are so out of whack, my moods can swing from depressing lows to scorching anger within minutes. Emily could subdue the demons raging inside me, but now that she’s gone, I’m left to battle them on my own once more.
After a cautious glance warning he is always watching, Jacob exits the bathroom. “We leave for the church in thirty minutes.”
He leaves my bedroom door hanging wide open because my saying I would try isn’t the same thing as promising. I never make a promise I can’t keep. That’s why I never promised to fight.
Today isn’t about me, though. It’s about Emily. I don’t know any of the details of her funeral. I was kept out of the planning. I’m okay with that as long as they have white lilies on her coffin as requested. They are her favorite flowers. She told me how much she loved them after they were included in the floral arrangement I ordered for her eighteenth birthday. They were also the flowers scenting the air in the hotel room the first time we made love.
She told me she loved me that night. I didn’t think anything could top her beautiful smile when she noticed the candles I had lit for her, but those three little words made a quick liar out of me.
Desperate to hear them again, I snag my cell phone off my bedside table and log into my voicemail. My hands shake when her singsong voice comes down the line, “Hey, baby, I’m so sorry I didn’t get to take you to the airport this morning. Someone must have worn me out last night. I love you, Noah. I’ll see you real soon.”
I listen to her message three more times before shutting down my phone. I miss her voice and her laugh every second of every day. I swear when I sit really still, I can sense her near me. Her vanilla scent, the smell of her recently shampooed hair. Everything around me has absorbed her scent, making it seem as if she is here with me, even though she isn’t.
My eyes lift from my hands when someone darts past my bedroom door. Jacob must be checking on me since I’ve been unattended for five minutes. He doesn’t leave my side for long.
As my eyes stray back to my phone, I spot a suit bag hanging on the front of my closet. It’s black and looks flashy. After staggering to the bag, I lower the zipper, my breath hitching when my eyes roam over a black suit with dark gray pinstripes. There’s a matching dark gray dress shirt underneath and a swanky tie.
I don’t recall much of the past four days, and have no clue how I arrived back in Ravenshoe, so I assume the suit is from Jacob for me to wear today. I may be a selfish, heartless man, but even I know you don’t wear jeans and a leather jacket to the funeral of your fiancée.
Once I put on the suit, I shift on my feet to face the only mirror in my room. The heaviness on my chest grows when I stare at my reflection. This isn’t an outfit anyone should wear to a funeral. It’s more suitable for a man standing at the end of an aisle, waiting for the love of his life to walk toward him.
I can imagine how beautiful Emily would have looked. She would have hated the fanfare, but I would have forced her to relish it. She loved things understated because she was anything but. I was all about the hoopla, and look where it got me.
Pretending anger isn’t overtaking my heartache, I slip my feet into the black dress shoes I found next to my bedroom door. Now I’m ready to go, except instead of attending the wedding I’ve dreamt about since the week I started dating a shy, wholesome girl with the face of an angel, I’m going to my beautiful fiancée’s funeral.
When I round the corner separating the living areas from the bedrooms, I spot Marcus and Slater at the dining room table. Marcus notices me first and fumbles out of his chair before bridging the gap between us.
“Noah,” is all he whispers. When he pulls back from our embrace, his green eyes reveal the words he can’t speak. He’s sorry for my loss and will be here for me no matter what.
Slater replaces Marcus’s arms with his own. “I’m so sorry.” His rumbling baritone breaks through the haze surrounding me. “But you’ll pull through this.”
He tugs me tighter before giving my head a noogie. These men are my brothers before anything else. They’ve been there for me through thick and think. Marcus dragged me away from Michael’s wreckage when the ambulance arrived, and his grandmother drove me to the hospital so I wouldn’t have to travel in the ambulance with Michael’s body. They’ve been at my side for every unfortunate event that's happened in my life, but even they won’t be able to pull me out of this. I’ll never recover from losing Emily.
My eyes float up from my shoes when Jacob enters the dining room from the kitchen. He stops dead in his tracks when he sees what I’m wearing. I understand his shock. I was just as stunned when I noticed Slater is also wearing a suit. I shouldn’t be surprised. No one could meet Emily without falling in love with her. Even someone as rough and rugged as Slater was no match for her affections.
After gathering his keys and wallet, Jacob spins around to face me. “Ready?”
I nod, even though no one will ever be prepared to say goodbye to someone they love.
We drive to the funeral service in Marcus’s car. I keep my eyes planted on the scenery outside, watching puffy white clouds form in the blue sky. They have me wondering what heaven is like. It would have to be beautiful since Emily is there.
Once we arrive at the church, my second coping mechanism kicks in. I block everything out: the attendees patting my shoulder as I weave through them, the flowers lining the aisle, and the hum of churchgoers offering their condolences. None of it matters. My focus is on one thing and one thing only: the white casket at the end of the aisle.
Emily’s coffin has the lilies I requested surrounding a photo of her in a large white frame. I recognize the picture; it’s one Jenni took of us at Bronte’s Peak. We’re gazing into each other’s eyes and smiling. She looks so happy. She was back then because it was before I let my dreams take me away from her—before I fucked up in a way I can never fix.
I find it hard to tear my gaze away from her picture. That beautiful, smiling, happy Emily can’t be the same person lying in that coffin. How can a bright, hopeful future get squashed without any warning? Why take someone like Emily when there are millions of monsters in the world every day? Murderers, rapists, and pedophiles breathe every fucking da
y, but Emily’s life gets ended way too early. How is that fair?
Tears burn my eyes when I recognize the song playing faintly in the background. It’s about being in the arms of an angel. I wish I could wrap my arms around Emily, who is now an angel in heaven.
I don’t know how much time passes before Jacob’s large frame blocks my view of Emily’s photo. I was too busy staring at her beautiful face to keep track of the time. It feels like we’ve been at the church for around an hour, but don’t quote me on it.
“Do you still want to be a pallbearer?”
Nodding, I wipe my sweat-drenched hands down my trousers before standing. I’m shocked my heart can drum against my ribcage as wildly as it does when I take my spot at the front righthand side of Emily’s casket. I thought it was too broken to respond to the pain roaring through it.
When Emily’s brothers, Dominic and Aiden, lift Emily’s casket in unison with Jacob and me, I recall how petite Emily was. Her coffin is as light as a feather.
As we walk out of the church packed to the brim with people wanting to say their final goodbyes to my beautiful Emily, I spot numerous familiar faces. Emily’s mom, Patrice, and her dad, Mitchell, are in the row I just left. Lola is huddled close to her mother’s side with tears streaming down her face and a ghost-white appearance. Jenni, Nick, and Nicole are in the pew behind them, and Slater and Marcus flank Maggie. All their eyes are rimmed with red circles, and many of the girls have tears cascading down their cheeks.
Once we exit the church’s double doors, camera lights hinder my vision. I grit my teeth, annoyed by the paparazzi’s intrusion. The police barrier is keeping them at a reasonable distance, but can’t the vultures give me one day of peace so I can bury my fiancée?
My lips quiver when we take the final steps between the church and the waiting hearse, then moisture fills my eyes when we place Emily’s casket inside so she can be taken to her final resting place at the Erkinsvale Lawn Cemetery.
After pressing my lips to her casket, I step back so the funeral director can close the hearse’s door. My hand shakes when I flatten my palm on the cold glass window. “I love you, Beautiful.”
As I divert my gaze away from her coffin in an effort to hold in my tears, my eyes lock onto a figure leaning against an old oak tree next to the church. I adjust my vision, confident the person I’m seeing is a figment of my imagination.
It’s been years since I’ve seen him, but I’m certain I recognize the face staring back at me. His hair now has more strands of gray in it, and his face is more wrinkled, but there’s no denying the dark, soulless eyes staring back at me.
They belong to my dad.
Chapter 45
Noah
My dad spans the distance between us, his steps shaky and unsure. “It’s good to see you, son.”
Emily’s graveside service at Erkinsvale Lawn Cemetery has just finished, so we’re preparing to go to her parents’ house for the wake. When I learned my dad had followed us to the cemetery, I asked Jacob to give me a minute. Today isn’t about me, but I’m too curious about my dad’s sudden arrival and can’t harness my curiosity for a second longer.
With my hands stuffed in my pocket, I scan my dad’s face. He looks as he did the day of his sentencing, but his eyes are darker than I remember. He has my wild hair and broad shoulders, but he’s a couple of inches shorter than me.
I’m taken aback when he unexpectedly bands his arms around my shoulders. “I’m so sorry, son—”
“How are you here?” I ask groggily, still stunned by his arrival. How does he even know about Emily, let alone that her funeral was today?
My dad draws back before raising his soulless eyes to mine. Glancing into his makes it seem as if I'm looking into a mirror. The same shattered soul stares back at me. He has lost everyone important to him as well; there's just one difference: his losses were a result of his recklessness. Mine weren't. I'd give anything to have Emily still here with me now.
“I was granted parole earlier this week...” My dad’s words trail off when he detects the same snooping watch as me. Jacob is standing at our right, eyeballing our exchange with the focus of a hawk.
“Jacob.”
Realizing he’s been busted, Jacob spans the distance between us to return my dad’s greeting. “Trevor.”
After they shake hands, Jacob asks, “Are you ready to go? Emily’s parents are waiting.”
I jerk up my chin before returning my eyes to my dad to give him a wordless sendoff. If he thinks I appreciate him turning up uninvited like this, he’s wrong. Today is not the day for us to hash things out. Tomorrow isn’t either.
I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.
Although I appreciate that Emily’s family is holding her wake in a private location, far from the public eye, entering their home without Emily is more painful than I ever imagined. Her presence is felt in every room. Her photos adorn the walls; her vanilla scent is embedded in the furniture, and even strands of her straight, dark locks are knotted in a brush on the mantel.
Needing something to take the edge off, I head for the caterers serving attendees in the kitchen. When a pimple-faced teen hands me a glass of whiskey with a teeny drop in the bottom, I snatch the almost full bottle out of his hand, unscrew the lid, then swallow numerous mouth-filling gulps. My throat sets on fire, but the burn settles the wave sloshing in my stomach.
Clutching a half-empty bottle in my hand, I stumble into the living room. Well, I think it’s the living room. My head is so woozy, I’m having a hard time recognizing anything. I flop onto a hideous floral sofa so I can gather my bearings. It’s the same ugly couch Lola and Jacob were making out on over two years ago.
Over the rim of the bottle I’m guzzling, I notice Emily’s best friend Jenni entering the room. Her cheeks are wet, her eyes, red. Fresh tears mark new stains when she spots me looking at her.
After a quiet word with Nick, she hesitantly paces toward me. She doesn’t offer me the same consolatory words everyone else has been giving me today; she just slumps into the chair next to me before resting her head on my shoulder.
Her breaths flutter against my neck when she murmurs a short time later, “She’d want you to fight, Noah. You can’t give up. You have to fight for her.” Her tears dampen my dress shirt when they dribble down her cheek. “If you truly love her, you’ll live for her.”
She steals my chance to reply by snatching the whiskey out of my hand and strolling into the kitchen. She empties the rest into the sink before dumping the bottle into the bin underneath. She wants me to heed her advice, but she doesn’t understand how much this hurts. I couldn’t have loved Emily any more if I tried. She was the love of my life, so how can I be expected to live without her?
I receive the answer I’m seeking when I hear a baby crying in the distance. Jasper is nestled against his daddy’s chest, his fist shoved in his mouth as he sucks frantically, announcing to the world that he’s hungry.
I'm sure his stomach is gurgling as severely as mine is as it struggles to keep down the liquid I guzzled too quickly. I swallow numerous times in a row, hoping it will keep my stomach contents inside, but when its churning ramps up, I race for the bathroom. Since I haven’t eaten the past four days, the only thing expelled is alcohol.
After swishing some water around my mouth and throwing some over my face, I exit the bathroom. Memories of the first time I met Emily filter into my mind when I glide down the hallway, stopping to admire the picture she busted me laughing at that night. Emily later told me she was ten years old in this portrait. She had already lived half her life when it was taken.
That’s fucked. She didn’t deserve to die any more than Michael did.
While clenching and unclenching my fists, I peer into Emily’s childhood bedroom, which looks the same. Her pink floral bedspread is perfectly in place on her white cast iron bed, and her bedside table still holds the vanilla oil responsible for her sweet scent. It’s as if she never left.
Wit
h my heart beating in an unnatural rhythm, I proceed into her room. I asked Emily to be my wife in here. She thought I only proposed because she found her ring in my wallet, but that wasn’t true. I knew after our first month of dating that she’d be my wife one day, but since I wanted her to have a nicer ring than what I could afford, I waited.
What I wouldn’t give to go back and fix the mistakes I made. If we had followed through with our original plans, we would have been married by now. Instead, Emily will be forever remembered as Emily McIntosh instead of her rightful title of Emily Taylor.
Strangers often argued that we were too young to get married, but those closest to us understood that age doesn’t matter when you’re marrying someone you’re destined to be with. We loved each other with everything we had, so why should we wait years just to follow the norm?
After swirling Emily’s bottle of perfume enough to leave her fragrance in the air, I exit her room. I’m so glad I didn’t wait to crack the seal until I got home, or we may have never met.
“It’s the last door on the left,” I recall Lola stating when I asked her if I could use the bathroom before heading out.
“On the left,” I repeat to myself. The left.
My heart freezes as my eyes flick between the bathroom door and Emily’s room. Emily’s bedroom is on the left; the bathroom is on the right. But Lola said it was on the left...
My bewilderment tapers off when the truth smacks into me.
That fucking bitch!
I storm out of the hallway, my legs moving surprisingly fast considering how much I was stumbling earlier. “Lola!” Numerous people stop what they’re doing to stare at me, but none of them have the light brown eyes I’m seeking. “Lola!”
I move through Emily’s house, seeking her older sister in a sea of hundreds. I spot Lola a few seconds later in the backyard, talking to friends. Jacob bolts for her when he sees the fury on my face, but I beat him to her.