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"I'll think about it."
I stole a quick glance and admired the new man sitting beside me.
"I'm sorry I missed your birthday."
"It's okay. You had a good excuse." He winked.
Three hours later, we had finally made it.
"You brought me to the cemetery?"
"Yep."
I pulled into a spot and reached back for the brown bag I brought and carried it out with us. Grady slammed the door and followed.
I walked by my parents' gravestones first, kissed my hand, and touched the tops as I made my way to Tessa's. There were fresh flowers on all their sites. They were well loved by the community, so I wasn't all that surprised. I reached into the bag and grabbed a big bunch of forget-me-not flowers and handed some to Grady.
"It's hard being here," he mumbled.
"I know, but forgetting isn't the answer. We need to remember, but move forward, and that's what you're doing. You're moving forward while holding on to the life she gave you."
"And what a life it was," he whispered.
"She was one of a kind, for sure."
We stood in a moment of silence, clinging to the private memories we shared with her. When we were done, we sat on the grass nearby.
"Thank you for bringing me here." He smiled.
"You're welcome. I hope it shows you that no matter what, you have to keep moving forward for her."
"It does. You know, she was always pushing me to apply for the scholarship."
"Why didn't you? Wait, I already know. You didn't want to leave her."
"I didn't want to lose her."
I let that resonate. He knew he was already losing her, so that could have been the end of them. "I understand, but you didn't even apply to Stanford with her."
"I wanted to let her have that as her own, but I still wanted to be a part of it in some way. We had the business, so going to college wasn't a necessity or a priority for me. I just wanted to make her happy…" His voice trailed off at the end, and his daze became unfocused. "But I saw it when we were there that I was already losing her. She was pulling away, and the tighter I tried to hold on to her, the worse it got."
"She loved you, Grady. The miscarriage messed with her head, but don't ever, for a second, think she didn't love you. That girl loved you more than she could ever express."
"Thank you for telling me, because I wondered a lot about that after the accident. I beat myself up trying to figure out what I did wrong, retracing my thoughts until I drove myself mad."
"You mean to drinking."
"Same thing."
"True."
"That reminds me," he said as he pulled a joint and a lighter from his pocket. "This seems like a fitting send-off for us. Tessa style." He popped it into his mouth, lit it, inhaled, and reached it out to me.
"I can't."
"What? Come on, Bay. Just this time. For Tessa."
"No, really, I can't." I took a deep breath. "I'm pregnant."
