Page 35 of Ours to Lose
He raised his brows like a child challenging his babysitter.
“I really think you should stay,” Aubrey said.
“Going alone it is.” He made for the door.
“But I’m the one who bails?” I called after him.
“Guess we know who I learned it from.”
Aubrey’s gaze caught mine, indecision warring across her features. She waited another beat before letting out a growl and spinning on her heel. “Evan, wait up.”
It was the decision I knew she’d make. The one I wanted her to. Their friendship would always be important to me because it was important to her. To both of them.
I was just glad she thought me worth considering at all.
Chapter Eight
Aubrey
“You knowyou’re being a dick, right?” I asked as Evan pulled his car out of his dad’s neighborhood. We had a thirty-minute drive back to Philly, and I planned to use every one of them to call him out on his shit.
“He deserves it.”
“No, he doesn’t. He lost your mom too. We all did.”
She’d been more of a mom to me than my mom ever was. Both my parents had been all too eager to offload me to my grandma rather than deal with me as they moved from one air force base to another. From the day they dropped me off and a boy named Evan wandered next door to make friends with the new girl, Mrs. Hardt had welcomed me into her home—into her family—like I was her own daughter.
She’d bought me presents for my birthday and Christmas. Not just gifts from Evan, but from her and Mr. Hardt too. She’d baked me cookies on game nights. She went prom dress shopping with me and taught me how to put on makeup. She was in the front row of my graduation from culinary school, right next to my grandma. She was warm and loving and fun and whip smart, and when she died, she took a piece of me with her that could never be replaced.
I knew the same was as true for Evan as it was for Gabe.
“He wasn’t even there,” Evan said.
“You know that wasn’t his fault.”
“He chose to stay for that fight.”
“He thought she had more time.”
The cancer diagnosis had been a shock. Aside from the occasional stomach pain, she’d seemed the picture of health. By the time they realized it was pancreatic cancer, it had advanced to stage 4. Her doctors came up with an aggressive treatment plan and were confident with her age and overall health that she’d have at least another year. They did one surgery to remove what they could of the tumors, and a week later, she was gone.
Gabe made it back in time for her funeral but not to say goodbye.
I’d never seen him so hollow. The funeral was the first time since I’d known him he’d ever looked small. Like an empty candy bar wrapper that could as easily be blown away by the breeze as it could be crumpled into a ball and discarded.
I would have been the same had I not been there with Nana for her final moments. The hours spent with her by her bed, even when she’d no longer been aware I was there, brought peace for me in her passing—a closure Gabe would never have.
“Then he should have been here for Dad,” Evan insisted, his grip tight on the steering wheel. “He didn’t even stick around a week after the funeral to be here for Thanksgiving. Two days after the burial, he’s gone. You know how hard that Thanksgiving was for Dad? That Christmas?”
I did. Holidays were a big deal for the Hardt family. Mr. and Mrs. Hardt cherished nothing more than celebrating life with the people they loved, most of all their sons. Mr. Hardt cooked, Mrs. Hardt decorated, and together, their home transformed into the kind of scene you’d want depicted in a Norman Rockwell painting. A moment you could capture in time and keep with you forever. No holiday since had been the same, though Mr. Hardt did his best to honor his wife.
“He was grieving too,” I said.
“Not here. Not with us. Then he comes back two years later, and I’m supposed to welcome him with open arms?”
“I’m not saying to pretend everything is okay or not to be hurt. I get how much it sucks to be left behind.” Evan had distracted me from enough birthdays without so much as a phone call from my mom or dad to know how true that was. “But your brother is here, and he’s trying, which is more than I ever got from my parents. I’m afraid if you keep pushing him away for dealing with his pain in his own way, you’ll push him away for good. And if that happens, the only person you’ll have to blame for him not being in your life isyou.”
I caught my breath and realized how tense I’d become. Enough that I’d almost been yelling. I peered out the passenger window and let the blur of passing buildings settle the pounding in my chest.
