“I’m sorry again about the timing of all this.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s been a sucky year…for all of us.”
Grief is a complex web that expands and molds itself differently around every person. It’s moments like these when I’m reminded that just because she doesn’t call herMomdoesn’t mean Bri isn’t as affected by Mom’s accident as I am.
Her grief and mine are the same. But also different.
My reply is thick and weary. “Yeah, it has.”
At the cashier counter ten minutes later, my phone call with Mom and Bri still occupies prime real estate in my mind—front and center. An assault of images flash through my brain. Mom, forced to use an assistive walker on her worst days, a cane on her best. Pops, alone at the lake house, lifeless in his bed for hours before the police arrived to perform a well-check at my request.
The beep of the register as the cashier drags my items over the scanner jolts me back to the present. I shake my head, dislodging the swirl of thoughts I can’t afford to dwell on at the moment, and accept the bag the attendant holds out for me. I give my thanks and make for the exit.
One hand buried in my pocket to grab my keys, I push the door open with the other. Before I can gain control, the glass, which apparently weighs negative ounces, catches a breeze and propels forward with the torrential force of a wrecking ball. It launches ahead of my flattened palm and I’m unable to pull it back in time as it swings out of my grasp, straight into someone’s face on the sidewalk.
Smack!
The woman stumbles on her feet. In the span of a millisecond, her head launches back and slingshots forward, ending with her hinged at the waist, face in her hand.
I kick the door shut behind me and rush over. “Oh my god! I’m so sorry, are you okay?”
Sweet baby Jesus, please don’t tell me I broke her nose or gave her a concussion.
She mutters something into the phone she impressively still has held to her ear.
Her hand forms a fist on her temple when she finally straightens to her full height. Eyes pinched shut, she mouths a string of curses that reads a lot likeholy mother effing shit balls.
Three heartbeats is all it takes.
One.Hair the color of warm honey.
Two.Smoothest legs I’ve ever seen in a tight black dress.
She drops her fist. Her lashes lift, eyes open but unseeing as she shakes away the dizziness. I think she curses some more, but I’m too distracted to notice because…
Three.Irises of speckled brown, green, and gold.
Hazel eyes meet mine, and I smile. I smile like a proud, smitten, happy fool.
8
gaping face hole
Hannah
Here lies Hannah James.Time of death: I don’t know…afternoon? Cause of death: Concussion by way of a glass door pummeling her in the face with the force of a thousand winds. Or maybe it was the snapped neck, head flung back from the impact that did her in.
Nope. I think it’s the tall, dark, handsome stranger I shared a bed with five years ago staring down at me with a shit-eating grin that stops the heart in my chest.
God, he is as disarmingly handsome as I remember.
Broad shoulders and a muscled chest. Gray T-shirt pulled taut in all the right places, tattoo sleeves on full display. Dark brown hair, well-kept but a little wild at the edges, curling from underneath his Army baseball cap. Scruff along his jaw on its way to becoming a full beard.
And those eyes. Cobalt blue. Piercing and hypnotic.
“What should I tell them?” a female voice says somewhere deep inside my skull, but the words flit away as fast as they came.
I should say something.Yeah, words would be good.