“I miss him too,” she says, and it stings the hell out of me.
Inhaling a deep, aggravated breath, I tilt my head back and let my eyes slam shut. The last thing I want to do is talk about my brother—it’s the one thing I don’t like to talk about, even on a small scale. I’m constantly having to avoid it around my friends and my family: How are you doing? they ask. How are you holding up? they ask. And sometimes people I don’t even know—new friends of Seth or Braedon—ask, How did it happen? Knowing damn well how it happened because Seth or Braedon already told them, and they don’t know what else to say, but feel like they have to say something. How about nothing? How about leaving it the hell alone? How about not constantly reminding me to open my eyes to my brother’s fucked-up, horrific death that was my goddamn fault?! How about that?
My fist clenches into a rock at my side, then the other, until I slowly let out a long, deep breath and feel the calm wash over me and my fingers uncoil.
“You have to stop doing this,” I tell her as my head comes back down. My eyes lock on her sad brown ones, which seem flecked with insult. “Everybody misses Landon,” I say carefully. “But you’re—”
Seth comes out of the bathroom with a knowing look in his eyes and saves the day.
“Let’s go, Ken-doll!” I hear a loud pop and see a flash of yellow behind Kendra’s head. A rubber band falls onto the linoleum floor at her feet.
“Owww!” She reaches behind her, cupping her hand over the back of her neck, her round, doll-like face scrunching up like a head of lettuce. “You asshole!” A thud resonates through the confined hallway space as her knuckles make contact with his chest. Seth jerks forward and both arms instinctively come up to defend the area. They both laugh.
Covertly, I thank Seth with my eyes.
Kendra, still rubbing the back of her stinging neck, turns to me. “Next time you’re going,” she says, pointing a finger at me. “I’m holding you to that promise.” Then she points at Seth. “And he’s my witness.”
I put up both hands in surrender.
“I always keep my promises,” I say, and that stings too, because it’s a lie and I feel guilty playing that card—my brother wouldn’t be dead if I kept my promises.
Finally they leave me to my room, where I hurry and close the door before Kendra thinks of something else to say. I hear the screen on the front door slam against the house as they walk out, and then their voices carrying on the air as they move past my bedroom window.
Falling against my bed with my arms raised above my head, I stare up at the water-damaged ceiling, where swirling patterns of brown have eaten away at the material in spots. The damage was there when I bought this house seven months ago, and I’ve yet to do anything about it. Or with any of the other multitude of things wrong with this rare gem of a fixer-upper with a stunning ocean view! Those were the real estate agent’s exact words when she showed me the place. She was laying the bright personality on thick to prepare me to hear the price. It’s not the house you’d be buying, but the view, she had said.
That was all that mattered to me, really. I needed a beautiful view, something to help smother the image of Landon’s closed-casket funeral, the blue and white flowers that covered his grave; the photo of us together with our mom and dad when they vacationed on Oahu that I buried with him. I needed to get out of the old house that I had shared with him because I woke up every morning expecting him to be crashed in the living room instead of his room, and it killed me when I saw that sofa empty. Every single day.