Page 3 of Before We Were

Beside him stands Jake Sullivan. He and Ollie grew up like brothers, thick as thieves, always giving me grief for not being fast or strong enough to keep up with them.

Jake's head snaps up from his hushed conversation with Ollie, and our eyes meet across the room. He smiles, soft and boyish, his sapphire-blue eyes and sun-kissed chestnut hair catching the afternoon light in a way that shouldn't feel possible right now. For a moment, I see the ten-year-old boy who used to chase fireflies with me in the Sullivan's backyard.

But that was before.

Before everything changed.

I want to smile back, to give him some sign that I'm still me, still here. But the ache in my chest has become a permanent resident. It's been there for over a week, like a thorn lodged deep, impossible to ignore. Smiling only seems to make it worse. This morning at the cemetery plays on a loop in my mind, the raw pain tightening its grip around my heart.

"David Wells wasn't just a father or husband; he was a beacon of light,"Lydia had said at the funeral, her voice steady but threaded with grief. Her words echo in my mind, cutting through the fog of numbness I've been hiding behind.

It's impossible to accept how quickly life can flip, how one moment you're arguing about curfew, and the next, the person you thought would always be there to argue with is just... gone.

No warning. No goodbye.

Just emptiness where his laughter used to be.

A sharp pang shoots through me, and suddenly, the room feels like it's closing in, the walls pulsing with each heartbeat.

Breathe, Nora.

Just breathe.

My heart races, a runaway train threatening to jump its tracks. It's the same every time the tears threaten to come—this wild panic, this desperate need to escape.

Get out. Now.

Run. Hide.

Jake's face flickers with concern, his eyes following me as I move. There's history in that look, years of shared summers and secret hideouts, of understanding without words. But I can't bear his kindness right now. I can't bear anyone's. I turn toward the hallway, away from the suffocating crowd and their endless condolences.

And those goddamn clinking teacups that won't stop their mournful symphony.

This isn't a nightmare. It's worse than that.

One I can't run from.

No one's entered the spare living room since I found Dad there eight days ago. Yet now, my feet move toward it, pulled by a force I can't fight against.

I take a jagged breath and slide open the glass doors, the smooth metal cool against my palm. The sound of the party—because that's what funeral receptions become, somehow—fades to a distant hum.

This was Dad's sanctuary. His library. His refuge. Shelves of books stretch across the room like embracing arms, interrupted only by carefully curated photographs. It should feel warm, alive with memories—but nothing makes a space emptier than the absence of the person who gave it life. The air is heavy with what's missing, thick with the ghost of his presence.

Dad was an English lecturer, the kind of man who could find poetry in a grocery list. Books weren't just his passion; they were his love language. He passed that love on to me early.

Sundays were our sacred ritual: just Dad and me, lost in stories that spanned from Siddhartha to Nicholas Sparks. He never judged my teenage romance phase, just smiled and said,"Every great story is a love story at its heart, Leni."

Those quiet afternoons, sharing passages and possibilities, are what I'll miss most. Dad was my greatest cheerleader, the only one who ever truly believed I could make it as a writer. That dream feels further away now than ever before.

The hush of the room wraps around me as the door slides shut, muffling the sounds of forced normalcy outside. The photos on the walls catch my eye, each one a snapshot of a life I took for granted. My fingertips graze the frames like I'm reading braille, trying to decode the stories behind each frozen moment.

There's Mom in Paris, caught mid-laugh with a chocolate-smeared croissant in front of the Eiffel Tower on their honeymoon. Her hair was longer then, wild and free like her smile. Ollie beams from another frame, his first football uniform hanging loose on his lanky thirteen-year-old frame. And there—my heart catches—I am at six, gap-toothed and glowing, clutching my first poetry competition certificate. Dad helped me write that poem—a simple ode to the sun and moon, to light and darkness, to the dance of day and night.

"Sometimes the simplest truths are the most profound, Len,"he'd said, helping me practice my reading. Now the memory of his voice feels like a punch to the gut.

Then there's the last summer at the Sullivan lake house, one of the rare photos where Dad allowed himself to be captured instead of playing photographer. He was always behind the camera, preserving our moments while staying safely removed from them.

"Remember, my little love," he'd said, his voice carrying across the water as I sat on the dock with him, "life is just an accumulation of micro-moments. If we're not present for them, we'll miss the beauty of a moment we'll never get back."

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