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I hear a snort behind me and jump. Wyatt’s standing a few feet behind me in a long sleeve T-shirt with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He has on a Braves baseball cap that’s covering his face, but somehow, I know he’s smirking.
“You’re developing a habit of listening to my private conversations with my deceased father,” I point out.
“Is it really a conversation if you’re the only one talking?” he muses.
I think about that for a second, then say, “It’s a one-way conversation. He’s a very good listener.”
Wyatt laughs and then comes to sit next to me.
“Your daughter has a very twisted sense of humor. She’s also painfully honest, ” Wyatt says to my father’s headstone.
I blink and look between him and the headstone. It’s a little weird, the man I only talked to once, a few months ago, sitting here beside me talking to a slab of rock. But it’s kind of comforting too, I guess.
“He’s aware, I get it from him,” I say. “Well,gotit from him.”
Wyatt leans back on the palms of his hands and regards me with a tilt of his head.
“How are you?” he asks. And before I open my mouth to speak, he continues, “Like, how are youreally? Because, as someone who’s been exactly where you are, I know you’ve gotten that question a lot and I know you probably haven’t been honest any of the times the question has been asked.”
“Incorrect, I am always honest when my therapist asks.”
He doesn’t even bat an eye at the fact that I see a therapist. A guy hit on me a few weeks ago and I told him my therapist didn’t think I should be in a serious relationship right now and he literally walked away before I could even get that full sentence out.
“My therapist doesn’t even ask how I’m doing anymore. He just starts telling me I’m twenty-five and need to get my act together.” Wyatt sighs.
Oh. That’s why he didn’t react, he sees a therapist, too. I laugh at his comment, and he gives me that half-smile before bumping his knee against mine, his head tilting to the side again.
“It depends on the day, I guess. Sometimes I’m fine, sometimes I stay in bed most of the day. Sometimes I walk around in a fog and don’t even remember how I got to wherever I am. So, yeah, it just depends on the day.” I shrug.
“And today? How are you doing today?”
I pick at a blade of grass and look at my lap. “Today I didn’t want to get out of bed.”
“But you did.”
I nod. “Yeah, I did.”
“That’s a good thing, Lucy. I still have days where I don’t want to get out of bed.”
I lift my eyes to his and raise my eyebrows. “That doesn’t exactly make me feel better, you know.”
He laughs. “It’s the truth. Granted, I don’t have those days nearly as often as I used to, but they do still happen.”
We’re quiet for a minute, and I pull another blade of grass. I haven’t talked to Wyatt since the day of my dad’s funeral. I’ve been to the grave site countless times over the past five months, but to be honest, I never really thought that much about Wyatt. He helped me with my panic attack and made me feel a little less alone that day, but I’ve been so consumed by my grief that I couldn’t focus on anything else even if I wanted to. But I like having him here, and it makes me wish I would’ve walked down the hill more to see if he was there.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I ask.
Wyatt lets out a startled laugh, glancing at me. “Are you flirting with me right now?”
I scoff. “Of course not. If I were flirting with you, you’d know.”
“Okay, then what’s with the girlfriend comment?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I was just curious if you had one. If having someone like that made the pain . . . I don’t know, easier to shoulder. If having someone to talk to like that, someone who genuinely cares about you, helps.”
I look up at him and can’t quite decipher the look in his eyes, so I start picking at my blade of grass again.
“I don’t have a girlfriend. I had one when my mom died, but she didn’t get why I was suddenly so depressed all the time, those were her exact words, by the way.”
