Wade - 27 Years Old
The cool water rushed around my fingers as I trailed them through the creek’s inky depths. The ripples waved around the traces of my touch, receding into nothingness as they edged outward.
Everything hurt.
I had come to the one place we shared since I was a little boy. Ma always brought Max and me to the cove when we needed a quiet place to chat, think, or just exist. It had become our place. It was the last place on earth where I felt as if I could still feel her.
I had discarded my suit jacket beside me as soon as I sat down on the riverbank, yet I could still hear my cell phone buzzing in one of the pockets. I couldn’t bring myself to answer whoever was relentlessly calling. I needed to be alone for a while.
Everyone always expected me to be the happy twin. The one they could count on to lift their spirits when times got tough. Max was the storm cloud, and I was the sunlight.
But right now, I couldn’t be that happy-go-lucky guy. There wasn’t a single ounce of happiness flowing through my veins that I could spare for anyone else. I was completely drained and exhausted.
The crunch of leaves and snapping of twigs behind me signaled her approach, but I didn’t need to hear her to know who it was. I had an uncanny ability to sense Ray long before seeing her.
I’m sure the fact that we had been best friends for fifteen years had something to do with it. Or, it could have been the uncomfortable fluttering in my stomach that had started recently, heightening my senses to her presence.
“Want some company?” she questioned, plopping down beside me on the bank of the small creek that flowed through the cove.
Here’s the thing about Ray: she rarely gave you a choice. Even if she posed something as a question, she really wasn’t asking. She was inadvertently telling you what she was going to do. Hence, she was sitting beside me when I couldn’t be bothered to be any sort of pleasant company.
We sat in silence for what felt like hours, but likely only minutes, before someone spoke.
Neither Ray nor I was any good at expressing our emotions.
We both repressed things until we exploded, often causing volatile blowups at each other that resulted in us tiptoeing around one another for a couple of days, before the person in the wrong apologized.
“The service was beautiful,” she whispered, breaking the quiet serenity.
I grumbled in response, not bothering to speak. I didn’t trust myself enough not to lash out after the emotional rollercoaster I’d been riding over the last week.
“I’m sure she would have loved it. All those people coming to see her? She was always one for a little bit of theatrics.”
I didn’t bother responding as I stared off into the trees surrounding us. I knew Ray meant well. When the situation was reversed, I had done the same thing, sitting beside her, cracking jokes and hoping to make her smile—even if just for a second during one of the hardest moments of her life.
Giving it one last valiant effort, Ray stood from her spot beside me, cleared her throat, and in a booming, announcer-like voice, exclaimed, “Welcome to the dead moms club!” She waggled her fingers dramatically at her sides.
That was enough to get a small tilt of my lip and a breathy chuckle. I scrubbed my hand down my face and rested it on my bent knee.
“Fuck, Ray. That’s not funny,” I huffed, doing my best to hide the sound of the secondary chuckle that threatened to crawl its way up my throat.
There was nothing, and I mean nothing, funny about losing my mother. Ma had been the glue holding our family together for so long, and the mere thought of returning to normal life without her had my heart beating wildly in my chest.
We weren’t even given a chance to say goodbye. She was here one minute and gone the next. She didn’t even see it coming.
A fucking brain aneurysm.
Life could be so goddamn cruel when it wanted to be. Our vibrant, beautiful, and full-of-wisdom mother had been taken from us without warning. She had lived a good, healthy, and happy life—only to be robbed of the rest by a medical anomaly.
“Got you to smile, though,” she said triumphantly as she sat back down beside me.
Her mood switched back to somber as she rested a hand gently on my knee. I ignored the tingle of desire that always niggled at the back of my mind when Ray’s hands were on me.
“But really, Wade, I’m sorry.” She sighed as she looked out into the water. The heaviness in the air was oppressive as the weight of the day settled around us.
The crickets and rustling of fall leaves became the soundtrack of our grief, dulling the ache ever so softly with each minute we listened to their quiet song.
We fell back into a comfortable silence, neither of us feeling the need to fill the void with empty platitudes, comfortable to sit together in our grief.
Surprisingly, I was the first to break. After being friends with Ray for so many years, I knew what I wanted to say would be met with receptive ears instead of the judgmental looks I would receive from my family.
“I’m just so… angry,” I said, plucking a blade of grass from the dirt beside me. “I don’t want to be. But I’m fucking livid.”
I could feel the festering rage burning inside of me, the lick of the flames flickering up my throat as I did my best to stanch their ascent. As the week had gone on, it had become more and more difficult to suppress the desire to destroy everything around me.
“Wade… It’s okay to be—”
“It’s not fucking going to be okay, Ray.” Using her name, not the nickname I had been calling her for years, was a true testament to how far into my grief I had retreated.
I felt my resolve slipping as I stood, pacing the edge of the bank, hoping to quell the anger radiating off my body in vibrating waves. Undeterred, Ray sat steadfast on the edge of the water, giving me the space I needed to sort through my swirling emotions.
If anyone could understand my pain and anguish, Ray could. She had lost her own mother when we were teens. I could never fathom the hardship and emotional strain she had gone through until now.
“I know this isn’t what you want to hear right now,” she started.
With a mirthless chuckle, I cut my eyes to hers, imploring her not to continue that sentiment. But Ray knew me better than anyone, and she would never back down from my wrath. I could throw everything in the book at this girl, and she would stand, unshakable, beside me.
“I’m not going to sit here and bullshit you, Wade. Losing your mom fucking sucks. Don’t I fucking know it.” She let out a breathy, humorless chuckle.
“What I am going to tell you is that she wouldn’t want you to be angry. You know that just as well as I do. Penelope Daniels may not have had enough time on this earth, but she treated me as the daughter she never had. I knew that woman longer than I had the pleasure of knowing my own mother.”
She stood and walked over to where I was pacing. I kept my eyes averted from hers, not wanting to give in to the emotion threatening to spill over. I knew the second my eyes met hers, I’d break, and the dam holding back my tears would crumble.
Knowing I was listening, even if I wasn’t looking at her, Ray took one of my hands.
“You boys were that woman’s entire world. She thought you and Max hung the moon and the stars. She was so proud of the man you have become.”
I felt the softness of her touch as she used the pad of her thumb to wipe away the tear I hadn’t realized was trailing down my cheek. I raised my eyes to meet the watery hazel gaze that would be my undoing.
“Grief is the price we pay for love, and love is always worth it,” she whispered as she pulled me close, wrapping her small arms around my waist and laying her cheek on my chest.
I let the tears that had been threatening to spill over my bottom lashes fall. I knew that in this moment, I could break because Ray would be there to catch all my shattered pieces to put me back together.