Page 1 of Anything But Lonely

CHAPTER 1

EMERSON

If one more person asks me how I’m doing, none of us are making it out of here alive.

The thought of explaining to anyone how I’m feeling right now literally makes me want to set myself on fire.

Sure, it makes sense that people want to know how I’m feeling—it is my mom’s funeral after all. But I learned early on that feelings are better left unsaid.

And if I answer their concerns truthfully, it means admitting to everyone—even myself—that I haven’t been okay for as long as I can remember.

Besides, people don't actually want to hear that my heart was ripped out of my chest and stomped into the pavement.

That kind of honesty makes people uncomfortable.

But they also don't want to hear that death is inevitable, and at least she's not suffering anymore.

Being practical about death earns you the same look you'd get if you casually admitted to burying bodies in your backyard.

So I've learned there's a narrow range of acceptable grief. Too sad, and you're a burden. Too okay, and you're a serial killer.

Indifference is easier. Or at least it looks better from the outside.

You shove the feelings so far down they settle somewhere beneath your ribs and start collecting dust. Eventually, you can't tell if you've healed or just gone numb enough to stop noticing the wound.

You can pretend they don’t even exist.

Indifference—apathy—is how I cope.

A cool breeze causes goosebumps to pebble over the black ink covering my skin as I pull the sleeves of my sweater over my hands, my eyes continuing to avoid the headstone just inches away from my black loafers.

I look over at my older brother, finding his usually stoic face streaked with tears as he holds his daughter in his arms. His posture is rigid as his fianceé—and one of my best friends—rests her head against him, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. Her brown hair blows when another gust of cool air blows past us.

It’s a reminder that fall is coming to an end. That winter is just around the corner.

A season, coming and going. Expected. Normal. But the thought is like a punch to the gut.

Because it’ll be the first season without my mom.

I feel a familiar prickle in my nose that radiates to the backs of my eyes, and it feels more painful than usual. Maybe because holding back these tears has guilt piling high in my stomach.

My mom deserves my tears. She deserves my grief.

They’re all I have left of her.

But the prickle dies almost as quickly as it came, the feelings dissipating, leaving me empty once again.

I didn’t like the way my mom tried to hide her tears in her already-tired eyes when she saw me upset. Even as young as five years old, I hated how seeing me cry made her cry.

She was the one getting eaten alive by her own body while the man who gave her the STI that caused her ovarian cancer walked out the front door and never looked back. My father barely wanted to be part of our family before the cancer—the diagnosis was like his one-way ticket out of our lives.

Leaving her with two kids who spent the rest of their lives in doctor’s appointments, hospital rooms, and in a state of constant fight-or-flight, waiting for good news that never seemed to come.

So I stopped crying.

“Emmy?” I hear, bringing me back to the moment, finding my brother looking at me. “Did you hear me?”

I didn’t realize most of the other guests had already left, heading over to the coffee shop I work at for the celebration of life, leaving just me, Jack, Rumi, and my niece, Evee.