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“Are you okay?” Joni asked tentatively.
Dylan placated his sister with a bite of cheese. I’m fine. Couple work projects have kept me busy. That’s all.” The last word came out like a tremor. He tried to eat one of the baby carrots, but it was slimy so he spat it out.
Felicity faced him. “What happened?”
Dylan slid the plate onto the coffee table. “How’s he doing, Joni?”
Joni shifted in her seat. “He called out of work three days in a row. Said he was sick. He… uh… had a hard day at work the last time I saw him, so I was kind of hoping you could tell me actually. You haven’t heard from him?”
“No.”
His sister leaned her head on his. “Come on, Dylan. You’ve got two emotional support gingers at your disposal.”
“There’s nothing to say.” He dug the boniest part of his knuckle into the spot between his eyes, remembering how Derek’s eyebrows used to furrow together during those sweet, earnest moments.
“So you broke up with him?” Felicity asked.
“I-I didn’t want to be one more thing that he gave up parts of himself to try to help, Lissy. You saw what he did for his sister. What he did for Olive and her dog. That’s the kind of person he was.”
“Why’s that a problem if he wants to be with you?”
“Because he’s obviously still in love with Jake Murphy. You saw how protective he is. He wasn’t willing to be honest with me about it. Probably because he didn’t want to hurt me. I gave him a chance… and he just let me walk away.”
“Derek had a tough time that day…” Joni said.
“He’s been having a tough time for years. And I’m not going to be another obligation.”
Joni patted Dylan’s shoulder. “Why do you think you were?”
Because Derek wanted a Jake Murphy. Even Dylan Gallagher had too much self-respect to sign up to be a consolation prize.
He needed to escape this conversation. He’d seen how much Derek had been put through because of him already. He’d had to deal with that horrible end to the Grill-Out night. He’d had to deal with Dylan yelling at him and being insecure and needy. He’d had to deal with him falling through his ceiling.
“I need to figure some shit out. I think he does too.”
Dylan needed to be alone. He needed to lose himself in something else. He needed a new distraction. A project. A book series. A hobby. Anything to keep his mind off Derek Chang and how Dylan was not enough. He’d been too much of a coward to tell him what he felt. To ask him what he was so desperate to ask. He’d been too scared.
It was just one more sign this wasn’t right. He pulled his crooked glasses off his face and tossed them onto the coffee table next to his plate.
Joni placed a hand on Dylan’s right hand and Felicity placed one on his left. He pulled his hands away and leaned forward, body shaking. He pushed his fists against his eyes to try to stop what was happening. The two hands rested on each of his shoulders now, giving him a few slow pats and just letting him go.
When he found the ability to speak again, he managed to get one sentence out. “I just want to go home.”
Chapter 49
Derek walked up the hill to the graveyard gate just before dawn. It was misty for summer, the damp coolness out of sync with the coming heat. Movement caught his attention from the corner of his eye. She was already there, leaning against a tree. They hadn’t discussed it this year, but then again, he hadn’t been answering his texts or phone calls lately.
He smiled through blurry eyes.
Olive held out her hand with an open palm, and he sank to the ground when he saw what she was holding. “I figured you’d bring them too, but I picked some up just in case.” She reached down and folded Derek into her arms. “I made you a promise.”
Derek was eighteen years old, standing in his parents’ room. His mother had asked him to do it because she couldn’t. “It’s been two years almost to the day, why now?” he had asked her.
She’d cried more and said she couldn’t keep looking at it every day. Not for another birthday. His dad had always made a big deal about their birthdays and his own. His father loved holidays. Derek didn’t blame his mom for being struck hard by another birthday without him.
Derek could do this. He could fix this. He should have already done it.
He tackled the closet first, carefully folding each of his father’s suits into a box to take to a charity that gave them to unemployed men for job interviews. He went through the dressers, bagging up everything else for Goodwill. The last thing in the room was the nightstand, and for some reason it seemed more personal than the clothes.