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“The Seamus we knew died a long time ago,” Mom had told me when she decided she wasn’t going to attend. Will told me Reggie said something along the same lines.
Did anyone show up for it? No idea. Maybe some of his old drinking buddies, I imagine. The ones who, to this day, continue to excuse what he did all because he lost his wife when she gave birth to their son. As if his loss entitles to him a free pass. If it’s not God people use to get away with shit—on the promise of Paradise, so long as they repent before they die—than it’s pain. Suffering.
Will and Waylon pull apart at the sound of our doors slamming shut as Shawn and I climb out from the backseat. I tuck Mason’s keyboard beneath my arm as I round the front of the car. Shawn has a guitar strapped to his back, and carries another one in his hand.
A couple rows down from where Will and Waylon are, I find Mason sitting in front of Izzy’s grave, knees curled up to his chest. It’s not unlike how I found him back in September, just minus the gray skies and bottle of vodka.
My gaze lingers, a ball of emotion forming in my throat.
“Hey, boys,” I hear Phoebe chirp, but I pay her little notice.
Ivy gets out of the car, brushing past me to join her. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to make out on your parents’ grave?” she calls out.
Shawn hangs back without a word as my feet start carrying me toward Mason.
I haven’t seen him since December, in the hospital, but we’ve texted back and forth here and there. Surface level things, mostly, like exchanging updates regarding Will and Waylon and how they’ve been coping since everything went down, for one.
Basically, anything that doesn’t involve the massive elephant in the room that is us. Well, except for the couple times he brought it up.
I grip the keyboard a little tighter, and inhale deeply, bracing myself as I approach him.
When he senses me, he lifts his gaze, and for a moment, I swear time stops.
And I’m lost to those pale, glimmering ice blue eyes of his, made to look even more shocking by the sun bearing down on us and the clear cerulean sky.
“Hey,” I rasp, my throat unbearably tight all of a sudden.
Mason smiles, breathes my name, and while the earth might still be at a standstill, I’m sure not. My heart kicks into overdrive, and my stomach feels all fluttery. And somewhere low in my gut, heat amasses, boiling hot, sending a wave of chills across the back of my neck and around my face.
He wets his lips, the tip of his tongue catching on his piercing, and I feel something sharp snag in my chest, like a wire clawing into me, reminding me of what I’ll never have.
My gaze drifts to the headstone glinting under the sun, and I feel another hook digging in, pulling me in the opposite direction. Between the two of them, I’m lucky I haven’t been torn apart.
If anything though, seeing them together like this…
I’m more certain of my decision than ever. Today’s not just to celebrate Izzy’s and my birthdays, together, for the first time in years in the only way we can now…
But it’s to say goodbye.
To her.
To him.
To all the messy what if’s.
To these last four and a half brutal years, once and for all.
I don’t think I would’ve come home for this for any other reason than to finally have closure. Make peace with the past and finally leave it behind.
Footsteps and hushed voices sound from behind me as the others join us, and I turn away, busying myself with setting the keyboard down on the blanket Ivy lays out for us.
I’m vaguely aware of Mason pushing to a stand, his gaze still aimed at the grave marker before him. His light ash-brown hair ruffling in the breeze.
Ivy stays close to me, nudging me with her arm.
“You okay?” she murmurs, and I nod.
This is a good thing…what we’re doing. Why I’m here for this…
