She smiled, nodding. Her face becoming hazy as tears formed in my eyes. My dad went to her. He held her face in his hands, resting his forehead on hers. Neither one of them spoke as he placed kisses all over her face. It was such an intimate moment shared between them that me and Lucas felt like we were intruders.
We wouldn’t get to see any more moments like that. This was probably one of their last and the realization killed me.
The sounds of despair that came out of my father’s mouth, a man I had never seen cry before, made me almost fall to my knees right then and there. Wanting to curse God for what he was doing to us. She soothed him by rubbing his hair and softly humming. The way she did when I was a child¸ and that’s when I lost my shit. I felt so selfish for doing that. I didn’t want to break their intimate moment. Lucas put his arms around me and hugged me so tight to the point of pain.
“It’s okay, Lily. I’m here,” he whispered into my ear, his tone composed and collected, which only made me cry harder. He was trying to be strong for me, for all of us.
“I can’t do this, Lucas. I swear I can’t do this,” I bawled so low I didn’t think he could hear me.
“Shhh… you’re the strongest person I know.”
I don’t know how long we stayed like that. Time just sort of seemed to stand still. Next thing I knew we were home and all of it was one big blur of emptiness and sorrow. My dad took my mom up to their bedroom after talking to Lucas privately. His eyes were red and glossy when he left his office and walked into the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” I immediately asked.
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“Please, please don’t do this, Lucas, please don’t treat me like I’m a child. I’m nineteen years old. I haven’t been a kid for a long time.”
He nodded with a downhearted expression.
“I can help. It shouldn’t all fall on you. That’s not fair.”
He took a deep breath and let it out through his mouth. “Dad’s going to call in a few favors to some of his alumni to see if they can take over his patients at the office, he’s going to close it for the time being.”
My eyes widened with the realization of why he was doing it. This was really happening. She was really dying.
“He wants to,” he cleared his throat with an uneasy expression, trying to hold back his tears. “He wants to look over mom’s will, make sure everything is in order and start checking out places,” he cleared his throat again, shaking his head. “Places for the fu—” he hesitated for a few seconds. “The services.” He couldn’t even say it.
Fuck… I couldn’t even say it. How were we going to live through this?
“Okay,” was all I could say.
“He wants me to call everyone, you know, the boys, Alex, their parents. Immediate family only, so they can say their goodbyes.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
“Can you call Alex and the boys? I’ll tell everyone else.”
“Yes.”
I hadn’t spoken to Jacob since Christmas Eve, but it didn’t matter.
Nothing did…
Anymore.
Ten months.
That’s how long it took for the phone call to come. I wish I could tell you I wasn’t expecting it. As soon as I saw her name and beautiful smile pop up on my screen, I knew.
“Baby…” I drawled out, and she burst into tears.
“Shhh… sweet girl… shhh… calm down. Breathe, shhh… listen to my voice, breathe in and then out. Good girl… shhh… let’s try again… in and then out. Good girl, baby.”
“How do you know?” she wept, sniffling, barely getting the words out.
“You’re a part of me. Always have been, Kid, always will be. How long?”
“A few weeks.”
“I’m going to email my professors to let them know that I’m taking a leave of absence. I’ll be on the next flight out.”
“Okay,” was all she could say.
I never wanted to tell her that I loved her more than I did at that moment.
“Lily, just remember to breathe alright? I’ll be there soon, baby. Please just breathe.”
She hung up first. Something told me it was because she didn’t want to say, “I love you.”
It took ten fucking days for my leave of absence to be approved by the Dean’s office. That was after I raised fucking hell in student services for them to approve it immediately. I had to get home to Lily and fast. I talked or texted her every day, but with each passing day she became more reclusive, barely replying with more than a few words. My plane landed at eleven am two days later. My mom picked me up from the airport, taking me home first to drop off my things, before heading back to Lily’s together.
The house had an eerie calm about it, the silence almost deafening around me. My mom led me to Lily’s mom’s room and the sight alone nearly brought me to my knees. Lily was passed out sleeping in her mom’s bed, her head on her stomach with her arm wrapped around her like she didn’t want to let her go. Her mom was rubbing her head and signaling with her other hand for me to come in. I closed the door and sat in the chair that was already placed by the side of the bed.
“It’s okay, we can talk. She’s passed out. She’s not going to wake up for a while.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to wake her,” I replied, taking in her swollen eyes and pale skin, her already tiny frame looking skinnier. Even in her current state she still looked beautiful.
“She hasn’t been sleeping lately. She’s been walking around here like a zombie, barely any life in her. She’s been my shadow. I know she’s just trying to get as much time with me as she can. I made Lucas crush up a sleeping pill in her tea, and she fell asleep maybe an hour ago,” she said, continuing to stroke Lily’s hair.
I nodded not knowing what to say but wanting to say so much.
“Remember how much she hated to sleep when she was little? When she has trouble sleeping she loves her hair to be played with, it’s the only way to get her to pass out.”
My eyebrows lowered as I took in her words. Confused where this conversation was going.
“She’s still so afraid of the dark, so I make sure to buy the scented plug-ins with the light on them. I scatter them through the halls, in the bedrooms. Anywhere I know she could get scared.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, but she never took her eyes off her daughter.
“I have a notebook to give you that I started when she was nine. It has all her made-up words in it. I wrote down what they meant so when she talked to me I could get just as excited as she was when she was telling me something. It’s much easier when you know what she means.”
My eyes watered as I realized what she was doing.
“Music always makes her feel better. Her favorites are the classics, like Jimmy Hendrix, Santana,” she said smiling down at her as tears started to fall down my face.
“I think you know why,” she knowingly added. “She hogs the bed, it doesn’t matter if it’s a king size or a twin. You need to make sure that you start in the middle, that you fall asleep there first because by morning you’ll be on the end. It will give you a few more hours to be comfortable.”
I wiped away my tears as her lip started to quiver. “She loves to be touched,” her voice broke, and I swear my heart was too.
“It doesn’t matter where. She just loves affection. You have to tell her that you love her often and all the time. It will always make her smile. She will tell you that she hates to be tickled on her inner thigh, but she absolutely loves it. You have to squeeze right in the middle, you always get the best laughs when you do that.” Tears slid down her face as did mine, both of us getting choked up.
She breathed in and out, trying to gather her composure, and I reached for her hand, trying to give her any strength that I could.
“The last thing, Jacob, and it’s the most important.” She finally looked at me with an expression I would never forget.
“I spent t
oo many years coming in between Lucas and Alex. I won’t do that to Lily. To you. I know you love my girl. I’ve known you loved her since before you even knew. Your age gap was so big, I didn’t think anything would ever come of it until she was older, but love is unexpected. It’s beautiful that way. It’s something that needs to be cherished. I need you to promise me that you will always look out for my little girl. That you will always love her, protect her, you will never hurt her again, even if you think it’s the right thing to do. Can you promise me that?”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” I murmured high enough to where she could hear me.
“Okay.” The instant relief on her face was like looking at a completely different woman. “I love you, Jacob.”
I swallowed back the tears. “I love you, too.” I kissed her hand, feeling like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
My mom passed away one week after Jacob arrived.
I spent every waking moment by her side, getting in as much time with her as possible. Silently praying that when she did die, it would be a little less painful, that the hurt I felt in my heart would ease just a little bit. Something, anything that would take away the empty feeling I felt every time I thought about her not seeing me get married, not meeting my kids and teaching them all the things she taught me. That was the hardest pill to swallow. I had been thinking about my wedding since I was a kid, what my dress would look like, how I would style my hair, the decorations on the tables, my color schemes, the list was endless. My mom was there in each and every scenario. I never imagined she wouldn’t be there.
She was gone.
Forever.
She wasn’t coming back.
I stared at the black dress on my bed that I bought for the funeral today. I wanted something I could throw away after wearing it. Something I would never have to look at again. I had been staring at it for the last hour, dreading putting it on. I knew once I did, all of this would be really happening. I was actually getting ready to attend my mom’s funeral.
“You don’t have to wear that, Kid,” Jacob announced, leaning against my doorframe with his hands in his slacks.
“You look handsome. You clean up nice."
“You can wear whatever you want. Your mom would want it that way.”
“I don’t think I can put anything on. It doesn’t matter what it is. I know what’s it’s for, so it doesn’t change anything,” I whispered so low I didn’t think he could hear me.
He looked at me with an expression I had never seen before then he moved from the door frame to close it. He walked toward me, reaching his hands out for me to take.
I did.
“I’ll help you get through this day, Lily,” he coaxed, kissing the top of my head.
He slowly took off my dress, leaving me in nothing but my bra and panties. There wasn’t anything sexual about the way he looked at me or handled me. He grabbed the black dress off the hanger and told me to lift my arms, gently easing it down my body, helping me with my shoes next and then combed my hair for me. The gesture brought me to tears.
He stood in front of me when he was done, swiping my hair from my face, placing it behind my ears.
“You look beautiful.”
“I don’t feel beautiful.”
I heard Alex’s mom yell for us and he grabbed my hand, whispering all sorts of reassuring things to me before we left my bedroom. I barely remember any of it as I blankly stared at the hearse in front of us the entire drive to the church. I sat in between my dad and Lucas, Alex by Lucas’s side and Jacob on the other side of her. I sat in a trancelike state the entire service. Everyone paid their condolences to us and all I did was nod when they were done.
If I heard, “I’m sorry for your loss,” one more fucking time I was going to scream at whoever said it to me.
Lucas handed me my guitar at the funeral. I almost forgot I was singing This Little Light of Mine, a song my mom used to sing to us as kids as they lowered her coffin into the ground. There was no getting lost in the symmetry of the lyrics or the strings vibrating against my fingers that time.
Nothing but an empty feeling.
I was empty now.
After the funeral was over, I stayed seated in my chair, watching as they shoveled dirt onto my mom’s new home.
“Let’s go,” Jacob said, standing beside my chair.
I raised my eyes to him and that’s when someone caught my attention.
Austin.
He was standing in front of Lucas and Alex with some girl, dressed in a black pencil skirt and a matching colored shirt. Her sleeves were rolled up and I could see tattoos on her forearms. She was in sky-high heels and her hair was a dark shade of purple. She was beautiful in a hard and edgy kind of way.
“Who is that?”
Jacob followed my gaze. “That’s Briggs, I’m assuming she’s Austin’s girlfriend.”
That’s when I took a good look at Austin. He was covered in tattoos now too, he appeared older, taller, and much broader than I remembered. I hadn’t seen him in three years. No one had. We made our way over to him and when he hugged me, I swear I felt all of his remorse for not saying goodbye to my mom. They talked for a few minutes and then my brother said we had to go.
My mom was adamant that she didn’t want anyone to mourn her death. She wanted us to celebrate her life. There was a get together at Alex parent’s restaurant after the funeral. I don’t remember much about it. All the faces seemed to blend together, my emotions becoming numb. I watched the good ol’ boys, all four of them together for the first time in three years, their Half-Pint right beside them as they all stood on the beach.
For the first time, I didn’t feel like I belonged anymore. I was like an outsider looking in. That’s when I took one last look at them…
And left.
“Good to see you, man,” Austin said, taking me away from my thoughts as I looked around for Lily.
“Likewise, bro. Where you been?”
“Everywhere.”
“With the girl?” I nodded towards Briggs.
“For the most part.”
“She looks like trouble.”
“In more ways than one. You have no idea, man. I guess there’s something about us good ol’ boys and our women,” he implied.
I stared at him not saying anything, because honestly what could I say to that? I scanned the area again looking for any sign of Lily while still giving my attention to Austin.
“Listen, man, I know.” He nervously scratched the back of his head. “I know we… fuck… this was a lot easier in my head,” he chuckled. “It wasn’t my goddamn business. Lily… well, she’s Lily. To know her is to love her.”
I nodded understanding what he meant all too well. It was.
“She would be lucky to have you, Jacob. You both would,” he said with sincerity in his voice.
“I wish it were that easy.”
I was starting to get worried about Lily. I couldn’t find her anywhere and now was not the time for her to be alone.
“Then it wouldn’t be worth it,” he simply stated, once again taking me away from my thoughts of her.
My eyes widened, surprised with how grown up Austin seemed. Maybe it was a good thing that he left. He definitely wasn’t the same guy he was before he disappeared.
“Anyway, I gotta get back to Briggs.” He motioned towards her.
“You sticking around for a while?”
He shrugged. “We’ll see.”
He smacked my chest a few times and left, and I looked back at the party with still no sign of Lily…
I knew where she would be.
It didn’t take long for me to find her down the beach by the pier. Her hair blowing in the wind as the sun was setting, she looked fucking beautiful on the outside, but on the inside I knew she was dying.
I sat down beside her, placing my ball cap on her head.
“When is it going to go away?” she faintly asked, not taking her gaze off the waves in front of us.
&nbs
p; “I wish I could tell you, Kid.”
“There’s so many things that I didn’t get to say to her.” Her voice laced with nothing but pain.
“She knows them already, Lily. She even knew about us, baby. It doesn't make everything that’s happened between us right, but it makes me feel better knowing I had her blessing.”
“I know, we talked about it. She told me to live my life, whatever that may be. Follow my heart, that it would lead the way. All that mattered was that I was happy.”
“I agree.”
“Liar. If you actually thought that, you wouldn’t be doing this to us,” she wept. “Everything hurts right now. I don’t know what it feels like to not hurt anymore. It’s a part of me now. I feel like I’m dying all the time, like a little bit of my air is being taken from my lungs each day, just enough to where I know it’s missing. It’s leaving me. And there’s nothing I can do about it, knowing it’s happening and I can’t stop it. All I’m doing is waiting for the day where I can’t breathe anymore,” she cried, tears flowing down her cheeks, landing in the sand beneath her.
“Look at me, Kid. You have me. I am here,” I reminded her, trying desperately to make her see she was not alone in this.
“How do I forget about her? How do I forget about you? How do I go back to being that carefree girl that I was, when the two people I love the most are gone?”
“Please, Lily, don’t say that.”
She peered down at the sand and that’s when it all became too much for her. She lost it. She bawled hysterically, her body shaking so bad with each sob. I don’t think she even noticed when I shifted her onto my lap, hugging her tight against my body. Rocking with her, wanting to comfort her the only way I could. Expressing all sorts of soothing comforts, over and over again. It didn’t help, her sobbing only became worse, her body nearly convulsing. I didn’t know what to do.
“Baby… please… you’re scaring the hell out of me right now.” I hugged her tighter, her face hiding from me in the nook of my neck.
“I feel like I’m dying, Jacob. I feel like I’m fucking dying,” she said, on the verge of hyperventilating.
“I know, sweet girl, I know. I wish I could take away your pain.”