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The moment I saw her name on my phone screen it was a gut punch reminder that I’d been in love with her since we were both kids.
Chapter Two
SAGE
Any ex-smoker will confess that they never stop thinking about it. And sometimes they even have a secret pack of cigarettes hidden somewhere. As a just in case thing. Some have the cigarettes as a temptation. A reminder not to touch them.
For me, once the chaos had settled down, I couldn’t believe how mechanical I acted. Like a zombie stumbling toward some living brains, I went right upstairs to my bedroom, right to the closet, in the far right corner, and dug through an old shoebox of bills that I no longer needed, to find a slightly smushed pack of cigarettes.
My brain screamed these things were going to taste like absolute crap, but that little voice that begged for just one cigarette had me convinced that just one cigarette would taste like fresh, warm bread right out of the oven.
I went down to the porch.
The first drag was the most disgusting thing I ever tasted.
The second drag lit up my brain with delight.
My mouth felt ashy and gross, my chest tight, unfamiliar with the smoke at the moment, yet I went back for more.
I was halfway through the cigarette when the door opened behind me.
There was only one other person in the house now and that was my son, Travis.
Nine going on forty-nine, he was tall for his age but held tight to that baby-boyish face.
I knew it was only a matter of time before one day he’d wake up and have a deep voice and facial hair, being on that quest of turning into a man.
I could have and should have quickly hid the cigarette from him.
But today…?
Tonight?
I just watched my father get loaded up like a broken washer headed to a landfill… and driven away.
Obviously my father wasn’t going to a landfill to be buried.
Although of all the people in the world, he would have gotten a kick out of that.
No.
My father was now in the basement of Mackelmore’s Funeral Home.
Only a couple miles away too.
But never again inside my house.
Travis walked to the top of the steps on the porch behind me.
Guilt punched me in the chest.
This was one of those awful single mom moments.
I lost my father.
But my son lost his great-grandfather.
The only man in my son’s life.
