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I nod slowly. “You mentioned before how you were angry with her.”
“I was angry at myself for not seeing the signs. We both were. There were things we missed, like reckless behavior, drinking, weird sleep patterns.” He rolls onto his back, his profile highlighted in the gleam of the starry ceiling. “He said something to me about death a week before he died. We had a whole conversation about what we thought would happen in the afterlife.”
The urge to reach out and touch him is so strong my fingers twitch. “Luke, you couldn’t have known. A lot of teenagers talk about those things and don’t kill themselves.”
He shrugs. “I know that now. It was hard to deal with when I was sixteen. Granny Bea had him in therapy when he was younger, for PTSD and some abandonment issues from when his mom left him. But he had gotten better under her care, for the most part. He was cranky and irritable sometimes but didn’t seem clinically depressed. He was a teenager, we were both angsty sometimes. I mean who hasn’t listened to Dashboard Confessional and cried?”
I can’t help but smile at that. “That’s just a teenage rite of passage.”
His mouth tips up and we watch each other, a speck of buoyancy in the middle of a heavy topic.
I shift a little, giving in to the impulse to reach out, and rest my hand on the floor between us. “When people die, I don’t know, it seems like they leave behind a cornucopia of guilt, no matter the cause.”
“You feel guilty about your sister.”
It’s not a question.
“Yes. But it’s more than that. It’s not only about Aria. The truth is that Taylor saw Jake and Aria at a party the night she died. Taylor told them to go home, and they did, and they crashed. Neither of them had a license, but Taylor did. When Taylor told me, I completely lost it. I have been so angry at her, but the truth is that I’m not mad at Taylor for what happened. She was only sixteen. I’m angry with myself.” I shut my eyes. “When Taylor told me about what she did, I was . . . resentful that she would share it with me. She had reached a point where she was ready to confide in someone about her guilt. But I hadn’t. I didn’t have the guts to face my own culpability. Every time I looked at Taylor after that, all I could see was my own guilt, my own fear, my own cowardice staring me in the face.”
The warmth of his hand covers mine, a gentle pressure.
I lift my gaze to his.
His face is awash in compassion and concern. “Why do you feel guilty about Aria’s death?”
I swallow and avert my gaze, focusing on his fingers. “Aria wanted to come stay with me that weekend.Theweekend. We had talked before that, too, multiple times, about her coming to visit for a night or two so she could see the campus and hang out with me in the dorms. I kept blowing her off. She was feeling a little off, as teens do, and she just wanted to get away from home. But I was always too busy. I told her no. Maybe some other time. Every time, I said maybe some other time. Then she died.” My heart pounds away even though sharing this past wound is like sawing it open and it should be incapable of beating.
When Luke speaks, his voice is low and even. “So when Taylor came to you and told you she saw them that night and told them to go home . . . .”
“It was easier to blame her than blame myself or acknowledge my own culpability. Because the truth is, it wasmyfault.Icould have prevented it. I was too busy partying with friends and chasing boys I liked. I didn’t want my little sister to ruin my weekend plans, and so after she died, I couldn’t do it anymore. I stopped dating, I stopped having a life, and I focused completely on work.” I sniff.
His hand squeezes mine.
I’ve never told anyone the full truth, and now that I have, it’s like a dam bursting. “Then Dad got sick not long after Aria died. I threw myself into my work, like it was all that mattered, and I barely went home to see my family. Jake handled most of Dad’s illness, he and Finley. Where was I? Working.” I grind my teeth together, trying to suppress the desolation twisting through me. “I never got to say goodbye.”
“Mindy. It’s not your fault.”
“I was twenty-one, Luke. I was an adult acting like a child. I made a choice that was like Taylor’s, but she had the excuse of being a child, barely older than Aria and Jake.”
“Hey.” His hand moves up my arm, fingertips tracing up to my face to cup my jaw in his palm. He exerts the gentlest pressure until I meet his eyes, sympathy and understanding stamped all over his features. “It’s not your fault, Mindy.”
Water drips down my face. I blink and try to stop it, but I can’t. It’s as if a faucet behind my eyes is stuck in the on position.
His strong arms wrap around me, and I press my face into his chest.
The sobs are uncontainable, wracking my body, pressing me into Luke. He holds me and murmurs words I can’t make out over the roaring in my ears as a torrent of emotion surges through me.
He’s so warm and solid and comforting that the quiet strength of him seeps through my skin and into my bones.
I don’t know how much time passes while he holds me, but by the time I come up for air, the front of his shirt is soaked with my tears. It’s like every feeling, every fight, everything I’ve been holding in from Aria’s death, Dad’s death, Blake’s abandonment, losing my job, and the stress of the past six months, it’s all coming out and being splattered all over Luke’s T-shirt.
Eventually I run out of tears and pull back, wiping at my face with my hands.
“I think there’s some tissue in here, hold on.” He reaches overhead, pulling a tissue box out of a little cubby. “Here.”
I take a few and wipe my face off. “I’m so sorry. I snotted all over you.”
“Hey, it’s fine.” He’s still holding onto me, one hand heavy on my waist. “What’s a little mucus between friends.”
