Chapter 36
Luke
When I wake up, there's a minute when I feel like everything is normal.
It’s a minute where everything is okay and how it’s supposed to be.
Bennett is happy and healthy; he’s doing what he loves; he’s alive .
Then, it all comes rushing back—I remember that my brother is dead.
Maybe that’s why I’m sleeping so much. Chasing that minute of blissful ignorance every chance I get, anything to make this pain that is wracking my body subside, even if it’s just a moment.
For a moment, I can forget the look on Caleb’s face when the doctor told us Bennett was dead. I can forget the sound of his muffled cries while he tried to hold back the tears, or the feeling of loss so tangible I had to look down to make sure I wasn’t just shot through the chest.
But then it registers that it wasn't just a bad dream.
Something woke me up this morning, but I couldn’t bring myself to care—maybe it was the door opening or closing, someone coming or going.
I don’t care.
I don’t want to get up to check—I don’t even want to open my eyes because even that feels like a daunting task.
I lost Bennett forty-eight hours ago, and the pain worsens with every hour that goes by.
I don’t know how people get through this. I don’t know how people find the strength to overpower their grief—it’s scary how tempting it is to let it win because at least I wouldn’t feel like this anymore and maybe I’d see my brother again.
I need another minute. Another minute where this all goes away.
And that’s the last thought I have before I drift back to sleep.
***
“ Are you sure you’re okay? ” I ask Bennett. We’re on our way to the end-of-season banquet with the rest of my hockey team and their families—most have their parents as their guests, but I have my brothers and Annie to support me. Caleb had to work, so he’s meeting us there, and Annie had an after-school rehearsal for the spring musical, so she’s already at the school waiting for us.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Bennett answers, glancing at me from the driver’s seat. He’s only five years older than me, and sometimes the age gap doesn’t feel that big, but on days like today, it feels like there are way more years between us.
“Because Dad basically disowned you last night,” I answer, the collar on my dress shirt feeling tighter the more I think about the fighting between the two of them last night. They were downstairs in my father’s office, but I could hear the screaming from my bedroom upstairs.
Between my dad’s insults to Bennett’s intelligence, to calling him lazy and ungrateful, to belittling his choice to give up law school and become a firefighter, I could hear it all.
“Y ou’re already in your first year of law school, why not just finish?”
We pull into the parking lot of my high school; Bennett pulls into a spot and cuts the engine. “ It’s not what I want to do .”
“But Dad said—”
“Luke. ” His voice makes the rest of my words get caught in my throat. Bennett turns to me, and the serious expression on his face looks weird on him. Bennett is always smiling, always laughing, always looking on the bright side.
He doesn’t look like my brother right now.
“Being a lawyer, that’s what Dad and Caleb want. Me? It sounds like the worst possible job in the world. I’m not about to waste any more time doing something I don’t want to do. Life is too short. ”
“But, ” I start. I hear the words he’s saying, but I can’t make them make sense to me. I can’t imagine being in Bennett’s position, going against our father, giving up the path and privilege he was given with law school and the position waiting for him at the family’s firm.
“But nothing,” Bennet says before I can say more. “Life isn’t about doing what everyone wants you to.”
“Then what is it about?” I challenge, anger simmering under my skin. It’s being directed at Bennett, but it’s not him I’m mad at. I’m mad for him. Mad that he is the greatest brother—greatest person —in the world, yet our dad doesn’t seem to see it.
Bennett exhales. “I don’t know. But what I do know is, we all deserve to chase after the things we want and let go of anything—or anyone—who holds us back from that.”
His words catch me off-guard, but I’m not sure what I was expecting him to say in the first place.
Do I even know what I want?
I know I want to go to college and play hockey, and I get to with my scholarship. I know I want Annie by my side, my brothers cheering me on. I want to prove to my dad that I’m a son he can be proud of, and I want to be happy.
A few moments pass, the silence stretching in the car. I see my friends and their parents walking into the cafeteria entrance, but I’m in no rush to join them. I look at my brother and find his blue eyes, identical to mine, and some of my frustration subsides. “Are you sure you’re okay? ” I ask my brother.
I watch as that serious expression of his fades, a wide grin taking its place. A grin that shows all his teeth, making the skin near his eyes crinkle, accentuating the shine in them.
“I’m more than okay,” he answers. “I know being a firefighter isn’t as cool as being a hotshot hockey player,” he lightly punches me in the arm, trying to make me smile, “and if Dad doesn’t want to support me, I don’t need him in my life.”
I want Bennett to do what he wants, but if Bennett doesn’t follow Dad’s path, who will?
I’m the only one left.
I have so many thoughts and emotions swirling around in my brain, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get them all straight. Bennett deserves to be happy, but what about my dad? Caleb? Who’s going to fill Bennett’s spot? Junior year is almost over, and I have yet to decide what I want to major in. The scholarship allows me to choose, and I can play hockey as long as I keep my grades up. I thought I’d have all of senior year to decide, but maybe if my dad’s path for Bennett didn’t work for him . . .
I don’t finish the thought because my brother digs his elbow into my arm, bringing me back into the moment. “Someone’s waiting for you,” he says, a small note of teasing in the way he sing-songs it.
I glance out the window to see Annie waiting outside the cafeteria doors, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, the familiar red sundress she wears for any formal event making my breath catch as if I haven’t seen her wear it a dozen times.
“Shut up, ” I mumble to my brother. Even though I’ve known Annie for most of my life, we’ve only been officially dating for almost three years, and Bennett still gets a kick out of teasing me about it.
I reach to open the passenger side door, not wanting Annie to keep waiting outside alone, but I freeze when I hear my brother ask, “What would you do if someone told you that you were making a mistake with Annie?” I turn to look at him, confused why he would even be asking that.
Annie isn’t a mistake.
If anything, she’s the only thing I’ve ever gotten right.
Bennett continues, “That being with her was the wrong choice, or that there was someone better out there for you? What would you do?”
“I’d tell them to fuck off,” I answer quickly, my eyes going back to Annie. She’s looking around for me, constantly stepping out of the way of the people still filing in now that the banquet starts in less than five minutes.
“Exactly, ” Bennett replies as he opens his door.
Realization hits me. His words about life and chasing after what we want no matter what others say sink in. It all makes sense; why he quit law school, why he doesn’t care about the horrible things Dad said to him, why he is doing what he wants anyway.
I want to tell him that I get it, that I understand, that I’m not some naive 17-year old who can’t wrap my head around going against our father.
I want him to stay in the car, to say more, to tell me—no, teach me—how to be just like him.
I want to tell him that he’s already taught me so much, and I need him to stick around forever so I never know what life is like without him.
I need to tell him I am so proud to be his brother.
But I can’t.
Because one second he’s there, and the next he’s gone.
And I’m staring at my bedroom ceiling.
***
It’s been a week since Bennett died.
And today is his funeral.
It’s the first time I’ll be leaving my apartment since we got home from the hospital.
The past seven days have been a blur, for more reasons than one.
I crave the moment of bliss when I wake up, but it’s been harder and harder to fall asleep, let alone stay asleep. The nightmares started a few days ago, so I’m constantly trying to decide between the lesser of two evils—staying awake and living with the loss of my brother, or falling asleep and reliving the moment I found out he died.
Either way, it got me out of bed, the need to do something to distract myself from being too strong.
When Annie is gone at rotations during the day, Eddie, Emmett, Mia, or Drew are here. Mia scared the shit out of me when I walked out of the bedroom and found her on the couch. It was the first time I got out of bed since Eddie and Emmett carried me there.
We didn’t say anything to each other—she didn’t try to ask me how I was doing or tell me how everything was going to be okay. She just kept watching TV, even as I brushed my teeth and showered—Rosie never leaving my side.
Even when I went to my bedroom to get dressed and chugged the cold water that was on my nightstand. Even when I scarfed down the granola bar that was there next to my water bottle, and the rest of the box of them in the kitchen.
Not even when I opened the cabinet above my fridge, the bottle of whiskey looking like it could solve all of my problems.
Not even when I turned around to see if she was watching me, and our eyes met.
She didn’t say anything as she patted the spot next to her on the couch with a knowing look on her face—free of judgment but full of concern—and I closed the cabinet and sat down next to her, empty-handed, Rosie laying at our feet.
Mia didn’t say a word as I wiped the tears forming in my eyes—she just reached out and grabbed my arm, giving it a squeeze, reminding me that she was there.
Emmett stopped by at one point that day with some pre-made meals Drew made—our afternoon and evening together being the same as my morning with Mia—and Mia left shortly after he arrived. I quickly caught on to the fact that Annie probably didn’t want me to be alone.
And rightfully so.
I don’t want to know what I would’ve let myself do if I was alone when I woke up that Monday morning, but I’m grateful to Annie and my friends that I wasn’t.
When Annie got home that night, Emmett left, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to her. I felt like I should voice these feelings—say them out loud—but it felt too intimidating, too difficult, too impossible, to form the words.
But just like Mia and Emmett, Annie didn’t push me. She just set down her things and walked over to the couch, pulling herself into my lap and held me tightly, somehow knowing exactly what I needed.
The next few days looked the same—I was able to get out of bed, and that in itself was a feat. Every day, it took all I had to push the comforter off and swing my legs over the edge. It took all my energy to push myself up and stand.
But it was slightly easier knowing that my friends and my Annie girl never expected more from me.
And I didn’t expect more from myself.
Until today.
Because today is the day we bury my brother, and I will not be missing that.
I still can’t fully wrap my head around the fact Bennett is gone, half-expecting to get a text or call from him, laughing and full of life like I’ll always remember him, but the funeral makes it so real.
I’ve always prided myself on being able to always look at the bright side, something Bennett taught me, but I’ve been struggling to find it here. There’s no bright side to the world losing someone like Bennett, no silver lining in his life ending right before he could live out his thirties, doing what he wanted, finding love, spending time with the people who cared about him most.
“Ready to go?” I hear Annie say from the kitchen.
“Almost,” I croak out, my voice still sounding foreign in my ears after saying maybe a dozen words in the last seven days. I straighten my tie, giving myself a once-over in the bathroom mirror.
My face is pale, my cheekbones a little sunken in, and I look about as good as I feel, which is about as shitty as you can get. The dark circles under my eyes give away how little sleep I’ve gotten the past five days, and I just hope I can hold myself together long enough to get through the day.
“Drew, Emmett, Lennon, Mia, and Eddie will meet us there,” Annie says, peeking her head into the bathroom. She doesn’t say where “there” is, but we both know it’s the gravesite where Bennett will be buried.
She helped Caleb plan the funeral—my parents weren’t even willing to help. Losing Bennett wasn’t a priority in their lives, not since their commitment to disown him all those years ago—and it was another way she lets me lean on her in this process. I plan on thanking her when I finally get myself to sit down and voice all these thoughts and feelings I’m having.
We’re skipping what most people do at a ceremony—the welcomes, introductions, prayers, and readings—and keeping it small with the burial and a eulogy from Caleb and Bennett’s best friend. Both Caleb and I agreed we didn’t want to do an open casket, wanting to remember Bennett how we last saw him, not what he looked like in his last moments.
“The celebration of life afterward will be at Lenny’s, but we don’t have to go if you don’t want to. It’ll be us, your brother, Jack, and the crew from the fire station.”
“No,” I say quickly, “I want to go. Bennett’s life deserves a celebration.”
Annie nods, and for the first time all week, I take a second to take her all in.
Her black dress wraps around her body, half of her hair pulled back in a little black bow, the shorter pieces in front framing her face.
She’s beautiful, breathtakingly so, but she looks so tired.
I’ve barely seen her this week, only when she gets home on time from her rotations, but there have been two or three nights where she texts that she’ll be home late. I figured it was to do her charting and typing up reports she didn’t have time to do during the busy day .
“Hey, honey,” I whisper, reaching out and grazing my thumb against her cheek. “Are you okay?”
She exhales. “I’m supposed to be the one asking you that.”
“You look tired.”
She shakes her head, and I drop my hand back down to my side. “It’s been a busy week, but I’m fine. Are you okay?”
“No,” I answer quickly, and she closes the space between us and wraps her arms around my waist. I rest my chin on the top of her head, inhaling her jasmine and rose scent.
“That’s okay,” she says against my chest. “I’ll be okay for the both of us.”