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I nodded and walked around into the living room. Sitting down on the sofa, I set the box down on the coffee table and stared at it. So many memories waited for me inside, and as happy as they were, reliving them was painful. Seth sat next to me. He handed me a soda.
“Thanks.”
“Are you ready for this, Em? Because we can do it later. Take as much time as you need.”
“I’m ready,” I said, my voice thick with emotion. Was I ready? No, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever be. My hands shook as they lifted the lid off the box. I pulled out the folded-up list, and the handful of photos that lay in the bottom under the weight of the videotapes and his camera. I flipped through photo after photo of the three of us, together. Smiling. Happy.
Taking a deep breath, I unfolded the list. My heart pounded as I laid it down in front of me so we could both read it.
Andy’s bucket list
# Cliff jumping
# Get a tattoo
# Ride a bull
# NASCAR
# Dinner in a Michelin-star restaurant
# Camping in the backyard
# Learn another language
# Swim with the sharks
# Spend the night in a jumping castle on the lake
# Hot-air ballooning over the ocean
# Get drunk and make prank calls
# Help Em and Seth move on
Wow. There were things on there that he’d done ages ago. He had been working on this list for months. Things began to make sense: his sudden desire to learn French, his insisting we go to Decant—one of the top restaurants in the state—even though he could barely eat. He had been slowly working his way through this list and I’d never known it. Tears began to form as my eyes fell on the final item on the list.
# Tell Em that I love her every single day
I reached up and wiped away the tears. Seth’s arm crept behind my back as he held me close, letting me know he was there for me. I reached into my bag and pulled out my pen, drawing a line through the words.
“Because he did that. Every single day he told me he loved me, right up to the day he died.” I began to sob. Seth’s fingers stroked my hairline as all the stress and anxiety I had built up over the past few weeks began to tumble out.
This was all so wrong. Andy hadn’t deserved to die. How could such an amazing, wonderful, loving person’s life be over so soon? It didn’t make any sense. Nothing in this stupid world made any sense any more. I hated life. I hated living. And more than anything, I hated death.
“Shh, it’s okay. He loved you more than anything else in this world.” Seth held me in the warmth of his arms, my head resting against his chest. He held me as I cried. I traced my fingers over the scrawl of Andy’s writing, as if touching the dried ink would somehow bring me closer to him. I missed him so much, but I had to be strong for him. As much as I wanted to hide in bed and wait for death to take me too, Andy had wanted me to get on with my life. As impossible as that felt at that moment, I had to try.
“Let’s do this. Let’s go out and do these things for him,” I mumbled.
Chapter Thirty-One
Seth
I had no idea how hard it would be to book a hot-air balloon ride on such short notice. Three hundred dollars and a lot of groveling later, and I’d finally managed to convince a company to squeeze us in by giving the guy a sob story about living out my best friend’s final wishes.
It was just after five in the morning when I woke Em. Tangled in my embrace, she hadn’t left my arms all night. I had barely slept because I’d been too consumed with watching her sleep. There was something beautiful about the way she looked sleeping in my arms, with all her walls down. I could see the real her, vulnerabilities and all.
I tickled the tip of her nose, chuckling as she screwed it up, smacking at my fingers with her hand.
