Page 25 of For Keeps. For Always.

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BROOKS

We’re fully dressed.Laid upon my comforter in the clothes we buried my grandmother in. Shoes and all. Bodies resting in an unnatural stillness. Statuesque; the only exception, the short shallow breaths of our grief.

Gran’s wake was held here at her home ,following the service. A collection of the town accosting me at every opportunity, wanting to share stories of how they knew my beloved grandmother. Their grief was potent, but mine was more so. How did they not see that? My reluctance to entertain their company was palpable, but they chose to ignore it out of discomfort. My mother wasn’t much more hospitable, her graciousness at being a host lost to the grief at having just buried her mother-in-law.

Mom and Dad left the house the moment the wake wrapped up, needing space from everyone who wanted tohelp.Dad invited us along, but politely accepted my silence as the rejection I intended it to be. My fear of speaking aloud had been obvious enough over the past days, my voice weakened by the heavy lump in my throat.

Even at this moment, I can’t bring myself to mumble a single word. My stomach feels hollow. My eyes are scratched raw, and I feel a selfish need to forget it all. To bury myself away into something greater than sadness.

But I can’t move. I can’t save myself from the abyss I’m floating aimlessly within.

Henley does it for me when her palm slides across my comforter in search of my hand. I'm jolted by her touch, but my fingers wrap around hers immediately. The warmth of her hand was a balm to my soul I didn’t realize existed.

It’s only then that I can fully appreciate the immensity in the way I’ve missed her. Eighteen months is a long time. For us, it was the difference between our early adolescence and our current journey into adulthood. I knew Imissedher, but having her here, this close, close enough to be able to touch her, has overwhelmed me.

I roll to my side, needing to see her. It’s been a whirlwind since her arrival, and now is the first breath we’ve been able to take, together, through this clusterfuck of a day.

She follows my movement, her cheeks pressed against my pillow. Her face is smooth, lacking any emotion. A blank canvas. I feel much the same. My heart is struggling to decide which emotion is strong enough to keep me alive.

Denial.

Anger.

Regret.

Sadness.

All horribly morose feelings I’d do anything to erase.

“It was a nice service,” she murmurs eventually, but I can’t find it in me to respond because as selfish as it seems, the moment our eyes meet, that void I was praying for finds me. Everything fades away, and she is all I see. All I can concentrate on.

The heartache of my world all but falls away. Henley is the center of everything. My best friend consumes me in a way I never considered she would.

My eyes fixate on her lips of their own accord. She speaks, but her words are lost as I track the defined line of her upper lip. The prominent bow that begs to be caressed by my teeth. Her tongue darts out, dampening the deep red cushions I'd give anything to feel against my own.

"Are you listening?"

I glance up at her eyes. "Of course."

"You're a liar."

I smile, my eyes once again dropping to her lips.

“Do you feel the change?” I ask her, knowing I likely shouldn’t. “Inus?” But I need to know my feelings are shared. That the tsunami of lust and need and want coursing through me isn’t one-sided. That she feels just as drowned by it all as I do.

My eyes zero in on the thick roll of her throat. The deep swallow that echoes between us. I long to reach out and touch it, to feel the nervous flutter of her pulse.

“Yes.” The word is but a whisper, barely audible, but enough to quicken the beat of my heart.

I exhale in relief, my breath gliding over her face in salvation. “What do you think changed it?”

“Distance?” she guesses without thinking.

She’s thought about it already, like I have. Working to understand how we went from friends to being caught in a cloud of somethingmore.

“The longing for a friendship we both needed exaggerating itself into something deeper.”

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