Page 140 of Fly with Me

Her dry eyes might have given her mother more ammunition against her, but it hadn’t seemed like she’d noticed. Her mother hadn’t looked anywhere beyond the casket. Her gaunt face remained flat while Olive’s father shook every hand and even accepted the hugs. Her dad let people hug him?

Olive downed half the water in a choking gulp and then walked over to her living room couch with it and collapsed.

Derek sat beside her, his head resting on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, O.”

“Today sucked.” She set her glass on the coffee table harder than she meant to, and she had to check to make sure she hadn’t broken it.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She told herself she was hoping it was her sister, who had reluctantly said she’d call later. But every time she had looked down at her phone for the last five days, she only wanted to see one name there.

Stella.

And once again, she was disappointed.

Olive swiped the random junk call away to ignore it, and she let the phone slip out of her fingers and clatter onto the coffee table.

Stella hadn’t called her since she left her at the Christmas party. Well, since Olive’s heart shattered as she’d walked away from Stella and sobbed all the way home in an incredibly expensive Uber.

“Why didn’t she come today?” Derek frowned. “I assumed…”

“We’re broken up.” She tapped the glass with her nails, and a sob escaped her throat. She’d avoided talking about Stella all week. “Well, I mean we didn’t ever get together.”

“What?” Derek’s dark eyes searched hers. “You said the party went well.” Uncharacteristically, he hadn’t pressed her for details about Stella. He’d seemed as broken as she had been since Jake’s death.

Yes, Olive had lied, but Jake’s death eclipsed her relationship troubles. She could only manage wallowing in sadness about one thing at a time. The lawyer had called yesterday to try to set up an appointment to go over the will. She hadn’t called him back yet.

“It did go well in a sense. I think she’ll get the job she wants. That was the point, right?” So much bitterness in her voice these days. “Our relationship ending was always the plan.”

“But—”

“I don’t want to talk about Stella.” Olive shuffled through random journals on her coffee table to find the one she wanted. It had a cactus on the cover. Jake had bought it for her after his first round of national parks travel. The paper she slid out of it bore the scars of creases in two places. It had been folded in Jake’s desk when she’d found it. The list was in her brother’s handwriting, a slanted mix of cursive and print. She held it out to Derek.

“That’s the list?”

“Yup.” She grabbed her glass and swallowed another gulp.

“You did most of this stuff that wasn’t crossed off.” He scanned through, his gaze faltering as he reached the last line. “Oh, Olive.”

“Yeah.”

She knew why his expression shattered. Hers had too when she’d read it the first time. He’d labeled all the goals with dates. When he made the goal. When he completed the goal. The last couple written at the bottom were ones he had made in the days before his accident, after he’d called her to tell her about the Disney reservation, his insurance policy to make sure she didn’t flake on him again.

Run a half-marathon with Olive - - help Olive realize she’s worthy of happiness.

“His last goal was for you,” Derek said softly.

She leaned her head onto Derek’s shoulder. “Do you believe that people know stuff? Like, have some preternatural sense their death is coming?”

“I never did before.”

“Me neither.” She swirled her drink, making the ice crack and chip on the side of the glass. “He didn’t like Lindsay. But I think this was about more than that. I started trying to do everything on the list because I thought it was what he wanted. I thought it would make me feel less guilty about being a disappointment.”

Derek shifted his position to face her. He took her hands in his. “No one who’d ever met Jake would think it was possible for you to disappoint him. Ever. He was so fucking proud of you.”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

“He loved you. I think all he was saying was that he wanted you to know your worth. He must have known what it was like with you and your mom and Lindsay even before all this shit went down. He was making changes with his life and doing big things, and he wanted you to know that you could too. Don’t you think that’s why he made the list in the first place?”

Her shoulders slumped. “I miss him.” She shielded her face, as if that would hide her tears.

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