1. Gigi
CHAPTER 1
Gigi
ALMOST TWO YEARS LATER
Think of happy thoughts, Gigi. Picture the ocean. Picture the park. Picture Andrew kissing you in the dark.
I stand up. Hearing the echoes of my own heels click on the church floor, I make my way to the podium.
Think of happy thoughts, Gigi. Picture the ocean. Picture the park. Picture Andrew kissing you in the dark.
“Most of you have known Andrew longer than me,” I read what I’ve written down on the index cards aloud. The ones he got me when we were preparing for exams. “Some of you have known Andrew his entire life. I wish I did.” My voice breaks, and I feel a tear fall down on my left cheek. The cheek he used to caress with his thumb. “I wish I did, because two years were not enough to be able to say that I have spent enough time with Andrew Ethan Palmer. How do you say goodbye to the kindest blue eyes? To his warm laughter?”
Swallowing down the mental breakdown that’s simmering, I finish my eulogy on autopilot. I think I hear some people clap. I think I see his parents smile. I think I feel Andrew here next to me when the wind breezes through the open side door.
Andrew would hate this—being the center of attention. If he could plan his own funeral, I bet he would do it differently. Maybe a small get-together instead of cramming everyone his family knows into a church, after this at the cemetery, and later at his house. By the end, he didn’t even like half of the people who are here. He told me as much. Funny, how they all now claim to know him so well as they shake my hands and pull me into tight hugs.
Autopilot stops working the moment his old high school basketball coach decides to play a PowerPoint presentation in his living room. It’s a slideshow of picture after picture of my boyfriend in his glory days—Andrew holding a trophy, Andrew having fun with his friends, Andrew focused, trying to make his shot. At the end of it, his former teammates who couldn’t make it to today’s funeral because they all just moved out of state for college a few weeks ago, appear one by one in separate videos. We love you, Andrew. Let the eagles take you up high in the sky is written on the last slide.
He looked so happy in all of the photos. I remember him being happy, too. I might have only had the luxury of knowing him for a blip in comparison to the others here, but I know one thing for sure—deep inside, Andrew Palmer was the human embodiment of a golden retriever. What happened? How did we get here, Andrew?
Think of happy thoughts, Gigi. Picture the ocean. Picture the park. Picture Andrew kissing you in the dark.
His friends all flock to me after that, gifting me with their condolences, as if their words mean anything. As if it would bring me comfort. As if it could resurrect him from the dead. I smile and nod. That’s what you do, right? It’s the polite thing. I can’t exactly yell at them to shut up.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Gigi,” a familiar guy I’ve seen during orientation week on campus says, pulling me into yet another hug I didn’t ask for. “I’m Zach. I used to go to school with Andrew. Saw you cheer when we played against Kinsdale Springs High once. I was on the football team.”
“Thanks for coming,” I mumble.
Think of happy thoughts, Gigi. Picture the ocean. Picture the park. Picture Andrew kissing you in the dark.
Seeing Zach is my cue to find some air. He’s the living proof that this is not just some fucked up joke. By the time I’m back in Ravensfield, the nightmare will continue. Andrew and I might have not been freshmen long enough to make friends yet, but I’m not kidding myself—people will start to approach me after this, their wandering minds getting the best of them. Everyone will gossip about us.
They won’t talk about how he was so excited to go to college, how he made a geeky bucket list for things to do in Ravensfield. They won’t ask me questions about how cheesy his prom-posal was. They won’t care about how we overcame our rough patch together as a couple. No. They will come to me to pump me for information and run their mouths about one thing, and one thing only. They don’t want to know us, not really. They’re just curious about the guy who was found in his dorm room. And the girlfriend that he left behind.
Think of happy thoughts, Gigi. Picture the ocean. Picture the park. Picture Andrew kissing you in the dark.
“Let me have a sip,” I say when I spot Luke all alone on the dimly lit back porch, holding a tumbler of amber liquid. My stepbrother despises big gatherings, and for the first time in my life, I understand the appeal.
Luke cocks an eyebrow. “No,” he says as he brings his drink closer to him, taking another sip.
“I’m not here to fight, Luke.”
“And I’m not Andrew. I don’t bend to your every will.” He turns on his heel and walks away.
I could have said something—a nasty comeback, a snide comment—but I don’t. I let him go. Most people wouldn’t let it slide, mourning girlfriends probably shouldn’t. I normally don’t. It’s because I get him.
By the way he’s already drunk at 7:00 p.m., noticing his rumpled, button-down shirt, seeing how disheveled he looks…Luke is suffering. The heart-cracked-in-two type.
If there is one person that I pity more than Andrew’s parents and myself, it’s him. Once upon a time, two boys spent all their free time and summers together, despite the fact that the only similarities they shared were their last name and the same dirty blond hair color. It all changed when Luke left for Ravensfield. Andrew going to the same college was supposed to be a new start for the both of them. I might have lost my boyfriend, but Luke lost the person who he probably loved the most.