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“I know, Mads. I know.”
And then we cry together until we fall asleep. Not once does Chloe leave my side, even when the daylight breaks and I still sleep, she doesn’t move until I’m ready.
I don’t know where I’d be without her at this moment.
ChapterTen
Asher
The rain holds off for the burial ceremony but the skies are gloomy and dark. Just like how I feel inside.
My best friend is gone.
How do I even wrap my head around that?
Feels like a part of me is gone. Like a part of me died when he did.
I don’t know.
It just doesn’t feel real.
I keep expecting to turn around and see him walk through the door or to see him say hey guys it was just a big joke I’m really here thanks for caring.
A typical Mason joke. He’ll tell me he’ll explain it to me later and I’ll tell him I’m gonna hurt him. For making me worry, for making us all worry.
But that’s not the reality.
A fact that keeps springing around and around in my head.
Mason’s in a casket. His life ended by a quick five second car accident. A life that never should have ended, not now, not the way it did.
My life will never be the same. And I know I can say that about a lot of others too.
As I watch them lower his casket into the ground, I feel as if I lost my own brother.
Soft cries are heard all around as the funeral director leads us all in prayer. Even Sienna is here, with a black umbrella and full on mascara tear streaks down her cheeks. Did I really expect anything less?
The sadness is real and so heavy. I see it on the faces of everybody around me. Mason and Madison’s parents John & Cindy Blackwell, our friends, our neighbors, and those we went to school with or who taught us there.
The whole community came out, remembering him in high school as one of the star football players. People I haven’t seen in years offering their sympathies.
It’s weird, as if I’m in a trance. I know it’s happening to me but it shouldn’t be.
After the cemetery, the plan is to head over to a banquet hall for dinner. The last thing I feel like is food but it's wrong to leave.
Besides, I can’t leave Madison.
I turn my head towards hers and catch a whiff of her perfume, the scent calming. I squeeze her hand, the one she’s kept wrapped tight around me the entire day.
She’s struggling and I’m worried about her. The need to protect her has quadrupled, something I know Mason would understand. He would want me watching over her and I will do that.
For him.
I have to.
I ride in the car with Madison and her parents to the dinner hall. The entire trip is awful. There’s so much despair, so much pain, it’s palpable. Madison and her mom, Cindy, weep softly as they hold each other’s hands. John stares out the window and says nothing, his friendly personality now extinguished.
My throat grows thick with emotion and I wipe back tears.
