damien
SIX
NOW
I’d never stepped foot inside a church before, but it wasn’t like the ones I saw on TV with wooden pews and stained glass windows and confessionals off to the side.
This was industrial carpet and rows of chairs that could’ve been found in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. Metal legs and sturdy upholstery. Cold.
I arrived just before the service was due to start and sat in a row near the back. I tried not to look for Callum, but he was hard to miss. Front row, on the aisle. His parents by his side. The rest of the row empty.
If the speech the pastor gave was nice, I couldn’t have told you. I didn’t hear a single word of it. Everything was static. Then Callum stood. Taller than he used to be. Maybe. It was hard to say. Everything was spinning. My chest was too tight. Air wouldn’t enter my lungs.
Callum walked up and took his place behind the pulpit. The sheet of paper he pulled from his pocket crinkled as he unfolded it and smoothed it out. He looked amazing. Older. Wiser. Still himself but sad now. His eyes were sunken and hollow. Blank.
“Apparently, Sam wanted me to deliver his eulogy. I don’t know why he requested that.” Callum’s voice cracked, the pain in it poured out of him. Even after all these years, I wanted to go to him. There was a tether between us, and like acknowledging it had tugged on it, Callum looked up.
At me.
Our eyes met across the church, and my next inhale felt like a kick in the chest.
Callum’s eyes lowered to his paper and when he collected himself and was able to keep going, he avoided my gaze.
“I wasn’t here for Sam when he needed me.
Not because I wouldn’t, but because he wouldn’t let me be.
Sam was… fiercely independent. He worked through high school, determined to make his own money so he wouldn’t have to rely on our parents as much.
No one worked harder than Sam did. No one shut people out better than Sam did. ”
Callum’s eyes almost met mine again, but he tore them away at the last second like we were playing a game of chicken and he kept losing.
But he was right. Sam was not only private, but he also had a strange jealous streak. He was possessive as fuck, or at least he had been when it came to me. At least when it came to me and Callum.
Why him, Damien? Why Callum? Doesn’t he have everything already? He needs my best friend too?
I’d never gotten him to explain that to me.
Sam and Callum grew up in the same house with the same parents.
They went to the same school, had the same opportunities as each other.
Yet Sam resented Callum for some reason.
I’d sort of known it all along, but I thought it was regular sibling stuff.
I didn’t realize it obviously went deeper than that.
The room swam back into focus as Callum told stories from their childhood, from simpler times. I noticed that he didn’t tell any stories from them as adults and the frown on my face deepened.
I wished I could say that I hung on his every word, but keeping my attention on what Callum was saying was nearly impossible when I was chastising myself for looking at him and cataloging the changes that time had made.
From a distance, it was hard to tell, but he looked like he was still in good shape.
He looked tired, though, and pale, and fucking miserable.
I hated that he was sad, and I hated the reason for it.
And I hated that I didn’t feel worse about it.
But to me, Sam had died years ago. I’d been dead to him.
I’d mourned his loss and licked my wounds. I’d built a life without him.
I’d texted Bowie from the parking lot before the service, and I’d text him the minute I left. I wouldn’t be joining the funeral procession to the cemetery. Once the final speeches here were over with, I intended to leave and hide out in my hotel room until tomorrow.
Luck wasn’t on my side, however. Because when Callum was done talking, he sat down, rejoining his parents in the front row. He leaned over and whispered something to his mom, who turned around and locked eyes with me.
Fuck.
She looked older and sadder and fucking gaunt.
Thin face and sunken, red-rimmed eyes. I nodded my head in acknowledgement, wishing I could sink through the floor and disappear.
I hadn’t wanted them to spot me. Sam wasn’t the only person I’d missed.
Camilla, or Milly as she preferred to be called, had been like a mother to me.
She cheered on my accomplishments. She scolded me when I screwed up, telling me that she knew I could do better, that she believed in me.
And John, their dad, he’d been the one to teach me how to drive, his patience drawn from this bottomless well.
He never yelled. Never raised his voice or got short with me.
And now they knew I was here, and it would be impossible to slip away without saying anything. Fuck.
A few more people spoke, and I found them easier to listen to. His new best friend told stories about Sam that both sounded like Sam, but also didn’t. And that was okay because his Sam wasn’t my Sam.
The funeral ended, and I wanted to leave.
I wanted to get up and run out of there as fast as I could and say fuck the will, fuck everything, and just go home.
I wanted my car and an endless stretch of road and shit that made sense.
This didn’t make sense. A world where Sam and I weren’t friends, and never reconciled, and he died didn’t make sense.
A world where I still looked at Callum and got hot all over didn’t make sense. Not after a lifetime spent apart.
We were together for a blink.
A drop of water in an ocean.
Hardly any time at all.
I shouldn’t have missed him the way I had.
Like I’d had a vital organ removed. Like I’d lost something more precious than a friend.
It shouldn’t ache deep in my bones to be in the same room as him.
I shouldn’t want to gravitate toward him anymore.
We were barely anything then, and now… we weren’t anything at all.
“Damien.” Milly Weeks looked up at me, her husband’s arm around her, holding her up. Jesus, she looked old. Ancient. Frail. I wondered if she looked like this before or if this was a transformation brought on by the sudden loss of Sam.
Their names got stuck on my tongue. Too much time had passed for me to feel comfortable calling them Milly and John the way I used to. But calling them Mister or Missus Weeks seemed cold.
“I’m sorry about Sam,” I said instead, because what else were you supposed to say at something like this? “It sucks,” I added because my tongue got away from me sometimes, even after all these years.
John almost smiled and Milly sniffled.
“It does suck,” she agreed, dabbing her eyes with a well-used handkerchief. “Thank you for saying that.”
“We’ve all missed you,” John said, but it wasn’t the truth. Sam hadn’t missed me, and I was sure that, after a while, Callum wouldn’t have either.
“I’ve missed you too.” And I had. Every day.
When I first met Sam and became his friend, I hadn’t realized that his friendship came with terms and conditions.
And when he took his friendship away, I not only lost him, but his parents too.
And Callum. Last but not least. Never least. Callum Weeks, who strolled over to stand next to his parents.
He gave a polite nod, not even a proper hello, then he turned to speak to his mom.
“We need to get going. The car is waiting to take us to the cemetery.”
Milly looked at me, eyes red and brimming with tears. “Ride with us, Damien.”
“Oh, I can’t. I wasn’t—”
Callum’s head snapped toward me like now that I spoke in his presence, he suddenly couldn’t resist acknowledging my existence anymore.
“We’ve missed you, son,” John repeated in that same voice that had always been so patient. So kind. And I couldn’t say no, despite the look Callum was giving me. He was silently begging me to refuse, all the while knowing I couldn’t. Not now. Not this.
“As long as you’re sure.” Dear Earth, if you were going to open up and swallow me whole, now would be a good time, I thought to myself even as I fell in line behind John and Milly, who trailed after Callum.
Callum held the door of the limo open and John and Milly climbed in first. I tried to catch Callum’s eye, but I seemed to once again be all but invisible.
That was fine. It was probably better that way.
The less he acknowledged me, the better.
Maybe I’d duck out of town early. There was no reason to stay for the will reading.
I didn’t care that I was in it. There was nothing I wanted. Not that I could have, anyway.
What I really wanted was a time machine. Or a stiff drink. Or ten.
What I got was an uncomfortable ride in the back of a limo that I hadn’t planned on sitting in. But Milly reached across the seat and took my hand in hers. Her skin was cold, and it made me fold my other hand over hers. If I could do nothing else for her, maybe that was enough.
So I held her hand and guilt gnawed at me that it wasn’t Callum she reached for, but I felt better about that when we arrived at the cemetery and she reached for him.
She linked her arm through his, and he and John helped her to the gravesite.
I followed, feeling lost and out of place and in desperate need of escape.
Despite the open air, the walls of the universe were closing in on me, squeezing me down into a space so tight I couldn’t move or breathe.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
But it was too late now to change anything.
There was no more time. No more chances.
I swallowed back grief’s razor blades as they cut my throat and tried to tear out of me. I bit my tongue so hard I tasted copper. This wasn’t about me and how I felt. Sam had been gone from my life now longer than he’d been in it, and I wasn’t even certain that I deserved to mourn him.
Then Callum looked back at me, the mask on his face cracking just a little. Just enough to see that he was as mixed up about this as I was, because through the pain there was a glimmer of something. A long-buried look that only came to life when he looked at me. And it was still there.
He blinked and it was gone just as fast. It was possible I’d only imagined it.
I looked ahead, not focusing on anything, and counted my breaths until it was time to go.
And this time, I didn’t let Milly or John stop me.
Callum swept his mom into a hug as she crumpled, and I left them alone to their grief.
I headed for the entrance of the cemetery on foot, feeling Callum’s stare on me the whole way.