Maybe if I’d been expecting it, his offer wouldn’t have felt like a battering ram to my sternum followed by a nuclear bomb being detonated where my heart used to exist.
My legs went weak. Grief and something close to misery boxed in my throat, and with a strength I didn’t think I had in me, I turned to look at him without letting the tears burst like Niagara Falls out of my eyes and nodded. Goose bumps broke out over my arms. “I think your dad would like that. Goodnight, Lulu.”
“Night, dudu,” he called out as I mostly closed the door behind me, biting my lip and swallowing, swallowing, swallowing hard.
I pressed my back against the wall next to his door.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
My nose started burning. My eyes began watering, and I gasped for air, for strength, for anything that could get me through the pain slicing through everything that made me, me.
How did it never get easier to know that life was unfair?
How did it never hurt any less to know I would never see someone I loved again? Why did it have to be my brother? He hadn’t been perfect, but he’d been mine. He’d loved me even when I got on his nerves.
Why?
I hadn’t moved a single inch when I heard Josh peep up, “Aunt Di.”
Fuck.
“You’re ready for bed?” My voice sounded cracked and splintered even in my own ears as I made my way to his room.
“Yeah,” he replied, the sounds of the bed creaking, confirming his statement.
Wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand and then pulling up my shirt to dab at them, I did the same to my nose and took a deep, calming breath, which probably didn’t do anything because I was three seconds away from bawling. But I couldn’t put off seeing Josh before he fell asleep. It was one of the last few things he still let me get away with every so often.
When I had myself about 10 percent under control, I forced a smile and stuck my head through the doorway. Sure enough, on the mattress was Josh and right alongside him was my third boy, Mac, with his head on his paws, one eye on me at the door. His tail swished right by Josh’s face.
“What story did you tell Lou?” he asked immediately, like he knew it had killed me inside. He probably did know.
“I told him the story about your dad and socks.”
A small smile crossed his lips. “I know that one.”
“You do?” I asked as I went around the edge of his bed to sit on the opposite side of where Mac was. I reached across to put one hand on the dog and another on Josh. If he already knew I was upset, there was no point in me hiding it.
“Yeah. He told me about it.”
I raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised.
Josh lazily raised a shoulder, those brown eyes gazing right into my own. “I had to use one of his socks one day when we went to the park,” he explained, his ears turning pink.
Those all too familiar tears stung the back of my eyes. He’d told Josh about it at least. Given him another memory I didn’t have to. “I’ve had to flip my underwear inside out a couple of times. No big deal. It happens.”
He gave me a horrified look that immediately had me frowning. “Gross!”
“What? I didn’t say it was gross you had to wipe your butt with a dirty sock!”
“That’s different!” he claimed, gagging.
“How is that different?” I asked, reminded of how many times I’d had this back and forth sort-of arguing with Rodrigo.
He was still choking and gagging. “Because! You’re a girl!”
That had me rolling my eyes. “Oh God. Shut up. It’s normal. It doesn’t make it gross because I’m a girl and you’re not. I’d rather be a girl than a boy.” I poked him. “Girls rule, boys drool.”
He shook and shivered, still supposedly traumatized, and I only rolled my eyes more.
“Go to bed.”
“I am,” he played around.
I grinned at him and he grinned right back. “I love you, J.”
“Love you too.”
I kissed his cheek and got a half-assed one in return. On the way out, I gave Mac a kiss and got a lick to my cheek that made me feel just a little better. Just a little. But not enough.
Sometimes I felt like a traitor for how much I loved them. Like I shouldn’t, because they weren’t supposed to be mine to begin with. Like I shouldn’t think they made my life better when the only reason they were mine, lighting my life up, was because of something awful.
My heart hurt. It ached. Throbbed. It was heavier than it’d been in a long time. Tears and some kind of shitty bodily fluids filled my nose and eyes and throat, and for a brief second, I thought about going into my closet to cry. That was the usual place I went to bawl my eyes out, ever since I’d been a kid. But the fact was, this house was old and my closet was too small. Just being inside with this weight made me claustrophobic. The kitchen, living room, dining room, and laundry wouldn’t work either.
Before I knew it, I found myself outside, closing the front door behind me as I sucked in huge gulps of breath that battled my lingering headache for attention. Silent tears—the worst ones—poured out of my eyes as my throat seemed to swell to twice its size. I plopped down on the first step, the palm of my hand going toward my forehead instantly, and I curled into myself as if trying to keep this pain from flaring to power. My nose burned and it was hard to breathe, but the tears kept right on coming.
Life was unfair and it always had been. It was nothing personal. I knew that. I’d seen that mentioned in the pamphlets I’d read on grief after Drigo died. But knowing all that didn’t help for shit.
Grief never got any easier. I never missed my brother any less. Part of me accepted that nothing would ever fill the void his death had left in my life or the boys or my parents or even the Larsens.
Snot poured out of my nostrils like it was on tap, and I didn’t make a single sound or bother cleaning myself up.
He’d had two kids, a wife, a house, and a job he’d enjoyed. He’d only been thirty-two when he’d died. Thirty-two. In less than three years, I’d be thirty-two. I still felt like I had my entire life ahead of me. He had to have thought the same thing.
But he hadn’t had years left. One minute he was there, and the next he wasn’t. Just like that.
God, I missed his stupid jokes and his bossiness and stubbornness so much. I missed how much he gave me shit and never let me live anything down. He’d been more than my brother. More than my friend. More than the person who taught me to drive and helped me pay for cosmetology school. He’d taught me so much about everything. And the things he taught me the best came after he’d died.
Only he could manage that.
I would gladly go back to being a selfish, self-centered idiot with awful taste in men if I could only have him back.
I missed him. So. Fucking. Much.
“You all right?” a voice carried itself over, damn near scaring the shit out of me.