Page 78 of All the Promises We Break

He gives one small chuckle before he answers. “I’ll survive. Next time widen your stance when you charge someone. You won’t end up on your face.”

“There won’t be a next time. I’m sorry.” I let those words resonate and sink in before I continue, “I need to know how youfeel about my sister. I need to make sure Hayley’s not someone you’re just passing time with.”

“Do you really think I would trash my friendship with you, lose my second family, and mess up her life for a lay? Is that what you really think of me?”

“No. At first, I thought you’d gone after Dylan.”

He slaps the iron of the railing so hard it rattles. “Are you serious?! That’s so much fucking better. God damn.”

“I know. Fuck. I know. Just listen. I know I didn’t, but I need you to, okay? I fucked this up. I did. I heard things I didn’t hear and saw things I didn’t see. It somehow all made sense in my head. I didn’t stop to actually think anything through. Could that be from my accident? Possibly. Could that be a hangover from my past? Definitely.”

“What does that have to do with me? Tell me. Can you?”

“No. I can’t.”

“Then fuck off. Today isn’t the day.”

“I know what today is. Don’t you think I know? Don’t you think I feel it? I do. I was awake all night thinking about it and how what I did only made Michael being gone hurt more. He’s just as much a part of this narrative as we are. Hayley told me she knows. Dylan does too. We’ve swept it all under the rug for so long. We can’t hide it anymore. My accident just brought it all back front and center.”

My weight shifts toward the half wall. Exhaustion and adrenaline are the only things I’ve known for the last forty-eight hours. I can feel for the first time one taking a foothold over the other. I lean back against the wall and slide my back all the way down until my ass reaches the concrete.

“Hey, you good?” Wes reaches down to grip my shoulder. “You prick. You decide to talk it out at your own expense. You can’t end up back there, okay? You can’t. You deserve better and I can’t take it. I can’t.

“Think what it was like for me watching you in the hospital. It was like I went from holding Michael in that ditch to watching all the wires and tubes hooked to you. I could hardly tell the past from the present. Everything I didn’t deal with ran me over. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. I felt like when I’d leave you’d be gone when I came back.

“I needed so badly to scream at someone or put a hole in a wall. I couldn’t. I held Mikey in my hands and couldn’t do a damn thing. I could do even less for you. How the fuck could that happen twice? How? Tell me. I watched Dylan and I knew how she was feeling. She was on that thin line.

“Step to the left and you explode at the next person in your path. Step to the right and you ignore absolutely everything. I took the ignore route for years. It was the least painful until it came within this close of suffocating you to death. She didn’t want to admit her fear because then it was real.

“She’s too sweet to end up like me. I made her look at it. The bitch of the deal is that in the process, I went there too. You’ve got a great woman there, Eli. She let me have it and I let her have it right back. She didn’t know why I was so angry, really. She assumed it was because of her self-pity when in reality, it was mine. She was looking into the reality of having to live without you and so was I.”

“I know. People always leave.”

I can feel him staring into the top of my head. “What did you say?”

“Dylan’s subconscious heard you. She remembers you calling your mom from the hospital. She doesn’t remember a lot, but she clearly remembers that and the pain in your voice.” Wes’s shadow over me quickly fades as he slides down the wall. His body sits in full defeat beside mine. “You’ve never said that to me before.”

“That was something only my mom and my shrink heard.”

“I should have. They don’t always leave. Just sometimes.”

I watch out of the corner of my eye as he processes what I just said. The one who’s always been strong for me. The one who’s pulled me out of hole after hole the last three years is sinking and sinking fast. Wes’s knees pull closer to his chest as his elbows rest on his kneecaps. His hands tend to shape the brim of his hat again. His hands shield himself from me and the rest of the world.

His breaths become deeper, and they all catch at the end. I reach across to rest my hand on his arm. His head hangs lower and lower. I wrap my arm around behind him and he leans reluctantly into me. I feel transported back in time to fifteen years ago. Then we were in the valley of a ditch. Today we’re at the lowest point of our entire friendship.

I’m going to do the same thing now as I did then. I’m going to sit here with him until he’s ready.

Wes

Eli is easy to forgive. He’s not the type of person who needs or seeks forgiveness often. When he does, it’s given. Some of the weight was lifted with him just walking back through the door. More came with I’m sorry. The rest came in the form of tears I didn’t think would ever stop.

When you lose someone, it takes a piece of your heart with them. That piece will always be missing. Nothing will ever fill it. It’s one thing to lose a parent, grandparent, or any elder. You can somehow rationalize it, no matter what the situation was that took them. The older ones are supposed to go before you.

When it’s a sibling, it’s different. It’s a fucking wrecking ball that slams through every memory, every way you do things, every day forward without them. You’d give anything and everything to have that one last conversation or hug. You look at pictures of them and try to remember every detail surrounding them.

What did you say? Do you still remember their voice? Do you hear the things they taught and told you? The only silver lining is that I have Eli, who’s in the same boat with me. Though not blood, he lost just as much as I did that day. He not only lost Michael that day, but he lost the person that was me.

I’ve never admitted that I’m not the same person. How could I be? I don’t think anyone expected me to be. I never asked. The weight of this grief in silence is killing me slowly, every single day.

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