The night Langston’s father died flashes in my mind. I don’t know why that particular memory makes its way into my head. Maybe because I’m currently at my mother’s funeral.
I thought that night was a turning point in my life. I thought things between Langston and I would change. I thought we would stop bickering and become friends again.
Instead, we continued the back and forth between liking and hating each other. Right now, all I feel toward Langston is hate.
I thought Langston’s father was the biggest monster in my life. I was wrong. Mr. Pearce was barely a cockroach compared to the Godzilla I later faced.
I’m not going to think about that now. I have to focus on burying my mother. She died of an overdose on my birthday.
I release a fistful of dirt over my mother’s coffin. The minster finishes speaking and starts walking back to the church, giving me some privacy.
I’m the only person who showed up to my mother’s funeral.
Enzo and Zeke offered to come, but they’re off training somewhere. I didn’t want to bother them.
And Langston…I haven’t spoken to him in a while. At first, I thought he might show up. But the short funeral came and went, and no Langston.
Stop thinking about him.
I force myself to think about my mother. About how I’ll never see her again. I try to cry, really I do. But after the suffering I’ve been through in the last couple of years, I eventually stopped feeling pain at all. I couldn’t cry even if I wanted to.
I stand another moment, trying to pay my mother her respects before I leave and never come back to this place. Too much torment has happened here. I’m about to turn when I feel his fingers brush against mine.
Chills race up my arm at his touch—that’s new.
Then his fingers lock around mine.
I don’t look at him. I refuse to be the first to speak.
Deep down, I’m grateful he’s here, even if he is late. No
one wants to bury their mother alone.
“Here,” Langston says.
I glance up and see him holding a single flower—rose-like, but not quite a rose. It looks almost identical to the flower I gave him to place on his mother’s grave when we buried her in this exact cemetery all those years ago.
I take the flower and place it on my mother’s stone.
And then I look at Langston. I should say something—thank him, perhaps. But I don’t need to use words to tell him how I’m feeling.
Langston, on the other hand, looks like he’s about to spill everything inside him. He opens his mouth, “Liesel, I—”
“Hold onto that thought.” I glance at my watch. “I’m supposed to meet my lawyer at the house to go over my mother’s will and decide what to do with the house.”
“What house? Enzo’s guest house?”
“No, she never sold our old house here, even after we moved into Enzo’s guest house. I’m meeting him there.”
“Oh, okay.” Langston rubs the back of his neck. He’s wearing a dark shirt and jeans. Langston thinks he’s the devil now after everything he’s done. He’s right, but I wish he would become my light, my laughter, the boy I used to care for.
“We could grab a bite after, though. Meet me at the house in thirty minutes?”
He smiles tightly. “Okay.”
Langston walks to his car, while I walk to mine before driving the couple blocks to the house. I get out of the car, ignoring the feelings flooding me as I walk up to the house.
I stand on the single step and knock on the door, peering over at the dried-up bush under the window. There is a car in the driveway that I expect is the lawyer’s.