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A small, misshapen burger with the cheese half melted off lands a few inches from my bun. I swallow hard, meeting a flinty gaze that strips me bare. Beneath his mustache, Mr. Torres’s lips twitch.
“Good to see you, son.”
He waves me away. Adrenaline leaks out of me, leaving my knees shaky. I search out a place to sit away from everyone and find it, making my way to a couple of lounges near the side of the house, opposite the bustling table. Angled away from everyone else, I transfer the burger patty onto my bun, smash lettuce and tomato on top of it, and take a bite that tastes like ash.
Mid-chew, a shadow falls over me, then a body plops onto the other chaise. She doesn’t wear perfume, but I smell her, anyway. Something light and airy and indefinably her.
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t even look at me as she eats. I manage a few more bites. She finishes her burger.
Finally, she says in a faint voice, “It wasn’t always like this. The first few Memorial Days, I didn’t get out of bed except to visit the cemetery. Then, for a long time after, I actually hated today. I understand the importance of it, obviously, and I’m glad it exists, but…” She shrugs. “No one remembers the day he died, but everyone remembers that he died in war. They remember today.
“People would come out of the woodwork like they were checking off a box on a list of How to Be a Decent Human. It was a yearly funeral. ‘I’m so sorry,’ and ‘You seem happy now!’ or they’d try to make it about politics and tell me he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Like any of it is their fucking business. And then once they checked that box, they’d forget about it, about us, and have their block parties and wave their flags.”
She sets her plate down and leans back on the lounge, crossing her arms over her chest. Still without looking at me. Her gaze is unfocused on the early evening sky, watery blue with streaks of pink and orange.
“It’s different now,” she continues after a moment, her voice stronger and more present. Her gaze flickers to me before returning to the sky. “We come together to celebrate his life. To remember and bring him out of our hearts and into our minds. And we each have our own way of doing things. Angela and Oliver usually spend the morning at his grave. I used to as well, but when Damien was eight or so, he decided he didn’t want to go anymore.”
“Did you go? Today?” I ask softly.
Celeste shakes her head. “It helps Angela and Oliver. Billy, too. But I don’t need the reminder.” She pauses. “I mean?—”
“I know what you mean.”
She carries his grave inside her. His life, too.
I trace her profile with my gaze, seeing the echoes of slightly fuller cheeks and more freckles. A hint of a sunburn on the bridge of her nose. Jaw jutting with stubbornness as Jeremy and I insisted we should give her Beta fish, Josie, a funeral instead of a quick flush down the toilet.
She’d loved that damn fish. We’d thought we were helping. Until she told us: “Josie is gone, idiots. Who cares where her body goes? She’s not using it anymore. She lives in my heart now, anyway, and she’ll live there forever.”
Now, Celeste’s lips compress as she stares across the backyard. I follow her gaze to see Damien lying on the grass, propped on his elbows as he plays on his phone.
She sighs. “When he was little, he loved hearing about his dad. Watching videos, looking through photos, all of it. But now he gets mad at me whenever I bring up Jeremy. I can’t really blame him, either. All his life he’s been fed stories, pictures, a million second-hand details about someone he’s never met, all with the expectation that he should love his dad as much as the rest of us do.”
The words fall softly between us, journeying from present to past, a gift she doesn’t know she’s giving me. I don’t know why she’s opening up to me right now, but I won’t take it for granted.
“That must hurt,” I say.
Celeste glances at me, a hint of surprise in her eyes. “Thanks for not telling me he’ll get over it or some other bullshit advice.”
Because I can’t help it, I say, “But I’m sure he’ll get over it.”
She rolls her eyes. “Jerk.” Then her lips quirk. “You still sweat bullets when you’re nervous. When you walked out of the house, I thought you’d just gone for a swim.”
I hold back my grin. “Liar.”
She doesn’t smile, but her stare isn’t antagonistic. If I didn’t think it was impossible, I’d say it’s almost… forgiving.
“I’m glad you came, Lucas. Even if you are twelve years late.”
22
I don’t know what it was, exactly, about my conversation with Lucas at the barbecue four days ago, but something shifted between us that night. Or rather, something shifted inside me.
Maybe it was when I realized, after observing him for a bit, how truly uncomfortable he felt being there. I hadn’t been lying when I told him he’d been sweating. Seeing him like that—pushing himself into emotionally painful territory despite his instincts—was so out of odds with his younger, devil-may-care self, I had no choice but to accept that, for better or worse, Lucas Adler the man was not Lucas Adler the boy.
The other side of the coin was that his presence—and the way the Torres family welcomed him instead of throwing his ass to the curb—brought forth a wave of memories from the past. The good past. When the bond of friendship between the three of us had been its purest and deepest, and that bond had extended to our families. Mine and Jeremy’s families, at least. And it was the type of bond that withstood time, heartache, even betrayal.
These truths weren’t easy to swallow, dragging on the way down, but when I woke up Tuesday morning, I felt different. Clearer and more peaceful. Angela, Oliver, and Billy welcoming Lucas back into their home had tenderly wiped away the resentment I’d carried for so many years.
