Page 93 of Grumpy Sunshine

“Your sister is a character,” I said as I watched her go.“I feel like maybe we should make sure she gets there.”

“She’s going to get there,” Aella said.“She’s too fast not to.”

“She’s really fast,” I agreed.“Does she run?”

“She did in high school, but something happened with her coach when she was qualifying for state, and she quit.”She paused.“She’s never told me what happened, though.”

“That only makes me want to know all the more,” I admitted.“Come on, let’s go home.”

Twenty-Two

I just wanna get rich the way y’all got pregnant.Unplanned and fast.

—Aella’s secret thoughts

AELLA

I wasn’t fond of funerals.

Especially funerals for children.

Though, I hadn’t really been to any funerals to know if a child’s funeral was worse.

I did know that there was no way it couldn’t be worse, though.

Seeing that tiny little casket made my heart ache.

Caskets shouldn’t come in sizes that small, and a child shouldn’t die before their parent.

“I know that some of you are going to question the music choice today,” Apollo said as he stood off to the side of the room, his hand on the back of his neck as he stared off into the distance.“But I thought I’d play some of Tavi’s favorite songs.They’re ones that we used to sing at the top of our lungs when he was smaller.”

Sniffling.

There was so much sniffling throughout the room that my own sniffles were barely noticed.

At least by everyone that wasn’t the man at my side.

I was sitting sandwiched in between Cutter and Chevy.Cutter’s wife, Milena, was on Cutter’s other side already balling her eyes out.

Cutter’s other brother, Copper, was in the row behind us, and Reign was with him, both of them quietly sitting behind us.

Though when I’d looked back, Reign was silently crying, her tears unchecked.

Something in the way she was being so quiet, though, made horror run through me.

How did anyone cry so silently?

She was unmoving, unblinking, staring ahead at the small coffin like the rest of us were.

It was eerie.

A loud nose being blown had all of us turning toward the sound.

Tavi’s father.

He was unapologetically devastated and didn’t care who saw.

Cakes—my dad—was sitting next to him, patting him on the back.

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