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I never had to say a word to this guy, who became like a brother to me overnight. He just knew. Unlike Mikey, who’s known me since I was a kid, Kelley has never seen me happy. He’s never seen me full of dreams and ambition. He only knows this decaying version of me. And yet, he stays. Unconditionally.
Just like Jasper, my faithful blue-eyed childhood dog.
I wish I’d met Kelley right after the accident when I was in what I call the infectious stage of grief. The few friends me and Bri had avoided me like they were afraid what was happening to me would grab on to them next if they got too close. Instead, they sent cards and left voice mails while they hid at home, silently clinging to whoever they loved, grateful to be the lucky ones.
Lying to Kelley isn’t an option. “Brianna was there last night,” I say, leaning back in the wooden chair.
He puts his elbow on the table and rests his chin on his palm. “You see her and talk to her?”
My gaze follows my finger as I run it along one of the long grooves in the table. “Yeah.”
“Tell me about that.”
I’ll never be able to describe how Bri never really died. How she still lingers here, leaving me a little more each day. Slowly, fragments of her have disappeared, but she’s still here. Everywhere. In the shadows. Whispering in my ear, jolting my heart back to life when I least expect it. She’s between my bedsheets. Her voice and her laugh still echo in the halls and near her beloved rose bushes. Her special scent clings to the air and the curtains and our closet. I can still feel her touch, late at night when I’m trapped in the place between exhaustion and insomnia. She’s everywhere and nowhere, and every little leftover piece of her breaks my heart and heals it again over and over and over.
It’s both heaven and hell to be trapped in grief.
“She’s just there,” I say simply. “She sits on my workbench and watches me.”
“You ever see her in here? In the house?”
“Sometimes.” All the time.
His expression remains level, not laughing or looking at me like my elevator doesn’t go to the top floor. “Does she talk back to you?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you actually hear her, or do you only hear her in your head?”
“I hear her just like I hear you right now.”
“Do you ever see her and talk to her when someone else is here?”
Kelley obviously has massively overestimated my social life. Other than him, Mikey is the only other person I’ve seen in months.
Until little Miss Penny Rose came.
“Not until yesterday. A little girl came by.”
Concern flickers across his face, narrowing his brows. “Was it your little girl?”
Painful memories clutch at my throat. “No, it was a kid who lives around here. I’ve never seen her before.”
“Did the little girl see or hear Brianna?”
I’m not positive, but I’d swear Penny saw Bri standing in the doorway of the barn when we walked away. I think Cherry did, too.
Scoffing, I say, “C’mon, Kel, I haven’t lost my fucking mind. Logically, I know she’s not really here, but in a way, she is. It’s messed up. I see her—maybe envision is a better word. I can hear everything she’d say to me if she was here.” Then there are the magical times when alcohol blurs reality. Perception shifts. For the briefest of moments, Brianna is really here. Not just in my head.
He’s stone quiet as he studies me, weighing my sanity in his mind. No doubt I’m tipping the scales into crazy town.
“You think I’m screwed up, don’t you?”
He coughs and lets out a short laugh. “After everything you’ve been through, I’d worry about you if you weren’t a little fucked up. I think this is your coping mechanism. The only way you can accept she’s gone is to not accept that she’s all the way gone. That she’s still here with you on some level.”
Smirking, I tilt the chair back on two legs. “Singer, landscaper, shrink. Anything you can’t do, Kels?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
Cherry comes into the room and stares at us, purple tongue hanging out, probably wondering what we’re doing on her favorite resting spot. I get up and put my dishes in the sink. “Whaddya want me to say, Kelley? You’re right. I pretend she’s here because I miss the hell out of her and I’m lonely.”
“You don’t have to be lonely. There’re millions of people out there.”
“And none of them are her.”
“They’re not supposed to be. You’re allowed to move on.”
“I have absolutely no interest in ever falling in love again. Bri took my heart to the grave with her.”
“Did she take your dick, too? You could at least go out and have some fun. You’re twenty-seven, not eighty. And maybe get a haircut. I can’t even see your face anymore.”
