My One Night: An On My Own Novel Page 17

  “Sorry about that,” Dillon said.

  I shook my head and got into the truck with him. “I should have realized, but I didn’t factor in how loud I would be. Louder than usual.”

  This time, Dillon’s smug look made me roll my eyes. “Glad I could make you forget.”

  “Jerk,” I mumbled.

  “You’re a jerk,” he said, and I leaned back into the seat and smiled.

  “Yes, my jerk.”

  I was happy. I was trying to find my balance. Maybe I was floundering in some ways, but I was making it work.

  I had my friends, I had Dillon, his friends, and maybe I’d be able to work things out with my family. I had to hope so. We just needed some time to breathe, and we’d make it work.

  Things were finally starting to work for me, and I would let them.

  “Let me walk you in,” Dillon said.

  “Dillon, I’m fine.”

  “But I want to kiss you on your doorstep. Let me.”

  I blushed. “Okay, I’ll let you.”

  I smiled again and then opened the front door, only to have the world shatter around me.

  “Corinne?” I asked. There was no response.

  My best friend lay on the floor, her white pajama top strewn about her as the cup next to her lay shattered, coffee spilled around her.

  Her eyes were open, vacant, and I screamed.

  Chapter 17

  Dillon

  * * *

  I usually had words for any occasion. I was the guy others could lean on if things were heavy or too much. I’d learned to be that way when I moved to Denver and my family had gone through hell. I’d thought I could handle anything. Watching Elise break down, albeit silently, told me I’d been wrong.

  So wrong.

  I barely remembered my mother’s funeral—not that we’d had one for her. It had only been Cameron and me, as none of her so-called friends had shown. We hadn’t had a graveside service, just a small moment in time when we gathered around the coroner and identified the body. I wasn’t sure if that counted as a funeral or just a goodbye that never made sense. But it was what we had done.

  And now I was here at a time of true mourning, a funeral with shattered hopes and dreams and one that was breaking my family and friends.

  When we had walked into the girls’ house, everything had changed. Elise had started screaming, and then it finally hit me what we were seeing.

  Corinne had only been twenty years old. Healthy, vivacious, and full of life.

  And a brain aneurysm that nobody had noticed had taken her life. A brain aneurysm that doctors might not have even been able to see even if they had run scans out of the blue for no reason whatsoever.

  Corinne Prince was dead. At twenty years old. And I still couldn’t quite believe it.

  I knew Elise didn’t believe it at all. She wasn’t allowing herself to grieve or even think about what had happened.

  I wasn’t sure if she could.

  As soon as we had seen Corinne, I had tossed my phone to Elise and told her to call 911. Corinne had been home alone, as the rest of the girls had already been out at their classes. No one had been there with her when she died.

  I had taken CPR training and had tried to see if there was anything I could do, but she’d had no pulse, no breath escaping her lungs.

  But I still tried. If I hadn’t, I wasn’t sure that Elise could have forgiven me. It’d been futile, though. Confirmed when the paramedics said that there was nothing they or anyone could do.

  And then they had taken her away. Pronounced her DOA.

  Dead on arrival.

  She was gone, and it was the most heartbreaking thing I’d ever witnessed. I would never forget the sound of Elise’s scream.

  Everything moved at a different pace after. As if waiting for death passed in a blink of an eye when it was proven that life could be shattered in those precious moments. But the paperwork and notifications and process of death took its sweet time.

  I wasn’t sure if everybody agreed with me on that, nor should they. After all, nobody had signed up for this, yet here we were, at the funeral of a young girl I was getting to know. One that Elise had loved and had had in her life since they were five years old.

  Corinne’s parents stood off to the side, watching the workers lower their baby girl into the ground. I stood with Elise, the rest of my roommates and hers around us as we wondered what we were supposed to do now. You weren’t supposed to die when you were our age. You were supposed to have a life and a future and wonder what choices to make for your next path. You weren’t supposed to watch someone your age die. You weren’t supposed to get there too late to stop it.

  But we had. The doctors had all explained that there was nothing we could have done, even if we had been at Corinne’s side. According to the authorities and those in the know, she had died quickly and without pain. I wasn’t sure if they had said that to alleviate her parents’ fears or if it was the truth. My sisters-in-law had all explained that what the doctors had said was true. It had been swift and sudden. She might’ve felt a slight headache before everything changed. But then again, we weren’t sure what to believe. Not when the girl I loved was in so much pain.

  And it wasn’t like I could tell her what I felt or what I wished I could do to make her feel better. This wasn’t the time, and I was honestly afraid there wouldn’t be a good time. But this wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about any of my friends. It was about a friend we had both lost, and the girl I loved, watching her best friend be laid to rest.

  “How does something like this happen?” Miles asked from behind me. It wasn’t the first time he had said something like that. The others were all in their Sunday best, saying goodbye to a girl they might not have known well but had known enough. Pacey was dressed in all black. Even his shirt and tie were dark. He wasn’t speaking to anyone, wasn’t saying anything. He just stood there looking lost while Nessa leaned into him, tears pouring down her face. I had known that Corinne and Pacey were close, but I never knew what the relationship was. It wasn’t that of a boyfriend and girlfriend, Corinne had explained that to us. But it had been something. And now, the girl was gone, and there was nothing we could do. My family and all their significant others stood behind me, even though they had only met Corinne once when she came to the bar.

  But they were there for me, Elise, and for the girl who had died far too young. Because that’s who my family was. They were good people who cared about those in their care, even if we were all too late to do anything about it.

  Natalie stood between Tanner and Miles, tears sliding down her face as both men tried to console her. Mackenzie and Sanders were off to the side. Mackenzie wasn’t crying at all, but her eyes were wide, her face pale. I hadn’t heard her utter a word, not even when Sanders asked her how she was doing. She was just as lost as the rest of us, and nobody knew how to deal with grief. We had dealt with our fair share of heartache, at least in my family, and I knew sorrow must’ve touched everybody here, at least in some respects. Nobody lived in this day and age without understanding at least some semblance of it. But this was different. This made no sense. There were no answers, and damn it, it wasn’t fair. But as my brothers had said before when they lost their friend when I first moved to town, life wasn’t fair, and it ended far too soon for too many of us.

  Elise wasn’t speaking at all, and she sure as hell wasn’t talking to me. I didn’t know what to do about that. She wasn’t doing anything. We stood there, watching the proceedings take place. Her parents had come for the start of the funeral but had left soon after. They hadn’t even spoken to her. I had only known who they were because Corinne’s parents had mentioned their names.

  What were you supposed to do with something like that? With people who didn’t even acknowledge their daughter but still had time to say goodbye to her childhood friend? Maybe they had done it because they knew the drama of seeing her would be too much for a funeral. If that was the case, I understood that. They’d stil
l come to pay their respects but hadn’t wanted to intrude. I really wanted to think that was the case.

  When the final words were spoken, and Elise leaned into me for a second before stiffening, I squeezed her hand. She let me go almost immediately and walked away towards Corinne’s parents. I stood there, not knowing if I should follow her or not. Pacey didn’t move. Neither did Miles or Natalie. Nessa still leaned on Pacey; Mackenzie, and Sanders did the same with each other. But it was Tanner who moved forward and reached out to squeeze my shoulder.

  “Come on. We have to settle dirt on top of the casket, or the rose in your hand, and then we’ll head to Corinne’s family home for the wake.”

  He said it, and we all nodded like we understood.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “We’ve got you,” Violet said from behind me, and I sighed as my sister-in-law spoke. They had all been through this before when they lost their best friend. It had been heartbreaking for them, and I hadn’t even known the woman they’d buried. But they had gone through it, too, and yet somehow found a way to heal.

  Maybe we would be able to do the same.

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to do for Elise.

  “Come on, she’s going to need you, even if she doesn’t say so,” Violet said, and then we moved. I laid the rose on top of the casket while others gently tossed in dirt and muttered blessings and memories. I had never done this before. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, but I followed along and copied what others did. I looked at Elise, but she looked right through me as she stood by Corinne’s parents. Corinne’s mother held Elise’s hand in a tight grip, and I knew that Elise needed space to help her friends’ parents. I would be there when she was ready.

  I would do what I could to make things better. I just didn’t know what she’d let me do.

  I sat in the back of Cameron’s SUV as he drove most of my roommates and me towards the place where the wake was being held. My brothers had come to carpool for us so we didn’t have to drive. They seemed to know that we were all a little lost and not sure what to do. I would be forever grateful that I had them. Miles’ parents had shown up for the funeral, as well, for a girl they hadn’t known. Still, they had wanted to be there to support their son. There were so many connections, so many people trying to help their kids who might not be minors in the eyes of the law any longer. We’d always be children to them, though. All of us were a little lost, and I didn’t know how we’d ever be found again.

  “She’s going to need you,” Violet said from the front seat. Her hand rested on the baby bump that got larger by the day. “She may push you away, may act as if she needs space and can’t focus, that you’re too much. But she’ll need you.”

  I swallowed hard. “I’ll do what I can, but I don’t want to push her. I already almost pushed too much before, and it ended with our first fight. I don’t want to do it again.”

  “You’ll find a way. Just do what she needs, make sure she’s hydrated and fed, even if she doesn’t want to eat.”

  “How are they supposed to go back to that house?” Miles asked, his voice low.

  “We’ll see what happens when they’re ready. Until then, we’ll let the girls sleep at ours,” Pacey said, and I was grateful that Nessa and the girls weren’t in the car with us. They were going with Corinne’s family, leaving mine to help us get to the next phase of saying goodbye. “We’ll make room for them,” Pacey added, and Tanner cleared his throat. “Yeah, we will. I don’t know what they’re going to do after...well, after. But we’ll find a way to make it work.”

  “You guys are good people,” Violet said as she turned to us, her eyes full of tears. “I’m so sorry, but you’ll be there for each other. You have each other. Never forget that.”

  I nodded, and we each got out of the car, making our way inside. People were somber. A light so young shouldn’t be extinguished like this, with no one to blame but God himself. At least that’s what someone had muttered under their breath when we walked in. Really, there was no one to blame. It hadn’t been a prolonged illness that we could come to terms with. It hadn’t been an accident where we could blame a stop sign or a drunk driver. It had been a moment in time, something that had taken her so quickly that nobody even had time to breathe.

  I tried to find Elise, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know where she was or what I was supposed to do. But I would give her the space she needed. I wouldn’t forget that she might need the space, but she needed someone, as well.

  Finding that balance nearly broke me, but I had no idea what to do. I barely knew Corinne, but I had liked her. She had been the one to dare Elise, to set us on this path, and now she was gone. I couldn’t change that. I couldn’t bring her back.

  “What are we supposed to say?” Miles asked softly.

  “Nothing,” Pacey said, his voice low. “There’s nothing you can say. But from the way it looks, people will soon want to tell stories and remember her. So you’ll tell a happy story about the girl who’s no longer here.”

  He cleared his throat. “And you’ll make sure that people remember her happy and alive, not only the feelings they have now. You have to do everything you can to make sure others remember her.”

  I looked at the other man, trying to understand what I had missed. Maybe I hadn’t missed anything. Perhaps they had just been friends, and this was how Pacey dealt with things. I wasn’t sure, but I wished there was something more I could do. All of my friends were in so much pain, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I let out a breath, and we moved around the room. My family was wonderful, and Aiden had brought food. It was what we did, we found a hole for what was needed, and we filled it.

  Corinne’s parents were in the corner, speaking with Aiden as I walked up.

  “Dillon,” Corinne’s mother said softly. “Thank you again for offering your brother’s services,” she said, her eyes shiny but her tears not falling yet. “We truly appreciate it. We had some of it covered but having Corinne’s friends take care of the details has been wonderful. I wish we had been able to get to know you before this,” she said, holding out her hand.

  I swallowed hard and nodded. “Corinne was great. She was nice and made me laugh and introduced me to Elise. I’m just so sorry.”

  This time, her mother let her tears fall, and her father squeezed her around the shoulders.

  “She was always doing that, setting people up so they got with the people they needed to. We love Elise like our own daughter.” There was something there, but I knew I wasn’t going to get into it now. “We love her. So, you be there for her. This will be just as hard on her as it is for us. She’s so good about closing people off. So, make sure she doesn’t do that.”

  Corinne’s parents knew Elise pretty damn well for them to say that. And the fact that they were worried about their daughter’s best friend when they were so mired in their own emotions meant the world to me. I nodded, said my condolences once more, and walked away to look for Elise. I saw people I knew from campus and others I didn’t that must have been from Corinne’s life before she moved here. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, but in the end, I found Elise at the back of the house, sitting on the back porch all alone, holding a glass of water and staring out into the distance. I knew she needed space, that it was likely why she had come out here, but now that I was here, I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I sat next to her without saying anything and let out a breath.

  She didn’t lean into me, didn’t move towards me, just sat there, blinking.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered after ten minutes of silence where nobody came out to talk to us.

  Elise still didn’t say anything.

  “Can I get you something to eat? Anything? What do you need, Elise? I’m here for you.”

  Still no words.

  “Do you need me to go? Do you need some space?”

  I quit speaking, letting her mourn in a way that I didn’t
fully understand. I was not a part of this for her, and I knew I didn’t have to be. These were her emotions, but I needed her to know that I would be here for her when she was ready.

  She turned towards me, her eyes hollow. “I think I need some space.”

  I nodded, my chest aching. “I’ll make sure someone knows you’re out here, but I’ll leave, let you breathe.”

  She shook her head. “No, just...the semester’s over, and I just... I don’t know what to do. I already told you that this was a lot, and I didn’t think I could do it. And now with Corinne...” Her voice broke, and I knew she couldn’t finish the statement. “I need you to go. I need to be alone.”

  I felt a pain in my heart, and it was as if a cavern had erupted within my soul, breaking me into a thousand pieces. But I didn’t say anything about my feelings. I swallowed hard and nodded. “You don’t need to do this alone. So many people care about you, Elise. We’ll be here for you.”

  She looked at me and then blinked, not a single tear falling from her eyes. “Where was I when Corinne was in pain? When she was dying? I wasn’t there. My best friend in the world, and I wasn’t there. I need you to go. I need to think. And I can’t do that when you’re around. I can’t do anything.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said softly, trying to hold on. But I wasn’t sure there was anything I could hold onto.

  “Maybe. But I wasn’t there. My best friend died alone with broken shards of porcelain around her, and coffee splashed into her hair and across her face. She died, and I wasn’t there. So, yes, I need you to go. I need to just be. Because I can’t be with you around. I’m sorry.”

  And then she turned away but still didn’t cry.

  My mouth went dry, and I swallowed hard one more time, trying to breathe. I knew she was doing this because she was scared, and me pushing her right now would be the worst possible thing.

  Instead, I stood on shaky legs and turned to see Nessa and Natalie and Mackenzie standing there. They had all linked hands and gave me pitying looks. But I knew they were just as upset. So, I nodded tightly and knew that they would comfort Elise where I couldn’t. I was too much for her right now, and I understood that.