She stepped aside, and hanging there was the “To Write Love on Her Arms”shirt McKenzie’s mom had bought me at the thrift store, my leather jacket, and a pair of gray jeans.
I chuckled and shook my head. “You know me too well.”
She shrugged. “I just know that if you want to show the world who you really are, you should feel like yourself.”
She was right. I didn’t even have to open the bags to know exactly what I’d be wearing.
“Thanks, Grace.”
“I’ll see you out there.” She exited the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I pulled the clothes Grace had collected from the closet and laid them across the bed, the message printed across the T-shirt staring back at me.
“Hope is Defiant.”
If hope could defy the odds, maybe I could too.
THIRTY-THREE
McKenzie
It wasa quarter to eight Friday night, and I was on my couch, surrounded by my mom, Kia, Jen, and Ravi. They’d come over to watch Luca’s interview with me for moral support. Everyone had brought food and drinks to share, but the mood was decidedly somber. I’d been on edge all day. My thoughts had me wound up like one of those creepy jack-in-the-box toys, ready to strike at any moment. There were a few too many people around, so the cats had made themselves scarce.
“You need to eat something, sweetheart,” my mom said, placing her hand on my leg. “How about I make you a plate?”
I shook my head. “I can’t. Not now.”
She nodded, but she couldn’t hide the concern on her face. “How are you feeling?”
“Not great.” I sighed. I’d done little besides go through the motions at work in the days since I’d talked to Luca. The letter I’d written to my brother earlier in the week had lifted a weight off my chest and given me a sense of clarity around his death that I hadn’t had in…well,ever. But I still missed Luca.
I was already thinking about him before I saw the commercial for “Live and Uncut with Luca Sterling” while channel surfing Wednesday evening, but since then I’d been going out of my mind with worry. An interview this big could be a turning point in his career, but it also had the potential to go south. The only thing people loved more than a comeback was a total takedown. And if the worstdidhappen, would that send him running again?
“I just want him to be okay, Mom,” I whispered, my voice choked with emotion.
“I know you do, Kenz.” She pulled me close and kissed the top of my head. “I do too.”
Another promo for the interview played on the TV screen, and my stomach clenched.
“Have you reached out to him at all?” Kia asked as she sat at my other side.
I shook my head, then buried it in my hands. “No. I’ve just been so fucking scared. I want to be with him, but I can’t stop wondering if I’ll lose him.”
“Hey, that’s perfectly understandable,” Kia said. “After the kind of losses we’ve suffered, it’s something we have to at least pause to consider. When Luca disappeared on you the way he did, it triggered something deeply painful for you. That’s not to say his response to that kind of stress was irrational. He was in survival mode, but it still shook you up.”
Ravi shifted in his chair nearby, and Jen propped herself against the armrest.
“After we lost our son, we struggled a lot with how to sit in our own grief while also holding space for each other,” Jen said.
“And we’d been together foryears,” Ravi added. “It’s not easy to be a support person when you’re hurting too.”
Jen nodded. “There was a point about a year after Carson died when I thought we might not make it. But we did therapy, separately and together. We learned to communicate better and realized we didn’t have tofixthings for each other. That we couldn’t.”
“Yep,” Ravi agreed. “We were both putting a lot of pressure on the other to be everything—our comfort, our happiness. That’s too much responsibility for one person. So our therapist encouraged us to work on strengthening our bonds with our family and friends.”
“And that doesn’t mean we don’t love and support each other,” Ravi said. “If anything, we’re able to do it so much better because we’re not carrying the load alone.”
I stared ahead at the screen, not really seeing what was on it. There was still a part of me that felt like I had to be everything for Luca, but that wasn’t true. Over the past week, he’d been able to lean on his friends. Though I didn’t know the details of how he was doing, I knew he wouldn’t have agreed to the interview if he didn’t feel like he had the support he needed.
