Page 182 of One More Kiss

April

I didn’t wantit to come out as a blubbering mess although I didn’t have much in the way of expectations for it to be anything better. It wasn’t like this guy was some permanent fixture in my life. The likelihood that I’d ever see him again once we escaped this torture was slim. Somehow, I translated that in my mind to mean that it didn’t matter if I dumped an emotional trash can on him or fell apart in the process.

“It hasn’t been the greatest day—”

The side of his mouth tipped up in an apologetic smile. “The black dress and the tears gave that away.” Thankfully, he didn’t comment on my hair or the mascara streaking my cheeks.

I looked down and realized it was likely easy to tell I’d been at a funeral, or maybe this guy was just super intuitive. Either way, that was pretty impressive for a man. I’d yet to meet one who understood I was unhappy when I told him, much less have one who just knew. Maybe it was the brokenness I kept seeing in his eyes that gave him the ability to recognize others’ pain.

Tears slipped down my cheeks, and I didn’t try to stop them. At that point, I’d blubbered into his chest and cried on his shoulder for God knew how long, and I hadn’t missed the fact that I’d managed to get what little remained of my makeup on his sleeve. Thankfully, I didn’t see any snot amongst the wet spots on the fabric, but the shirt was likely ruined.

“My brother’s funeral was this morning.” The deep breath I took didn’t help ease the pain or get out the words. “He was hit by a drunk driver last week as he walked across the street after leaving a bar.” I thought back to what the doctors had told us when we had gotten to the hospital. “Alex wasn’t killed on impact.” I swiped at my eyes, not because I cared about crying but just to be able to see Ryan as I told my story. “When the EMTs got there, he was talking, coherent. He was pinned between a tractor-trailer and a Camaro.”

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to tell any more of this story. Part of me still refused to believe it had happened the way we’d been told, but the EMTs who had come with him to the hospital had given detailed accounts of what they’d seen to the police and the coroner. Bringing the body to the hospital seemed nothing more than a formality.

Ryan waited patiently for me to continue. He didn’t interject or interrupt. He remained silent, but his focus was glued to me, not in a morbid way, but almost as if he feared what would come next. And I remembered that feeling as I had listened to the story being told to me for the first time…and the second…and the third because I simply refused to believe anything I was told, even though I knew—no, I felt his loss.

I hiccupped and took a deep breath. I needed to acknowledge this to someone—anyone who would listen. My parents had all but acted like nothing had happened, and at the funeral, they’d just gone through the motions. I knew we all handled grief differently, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around what appeared to be indifference. Instead, I chose to believe they were in shock. Hell, their twenty-eight-year-old son had just been horrifically killed in a fatal crash. How did anyone ever come to terms with that?

“His body was severed in half by the impact. The hood of the Camaro and the bar of the truck that’s designed to keep cars from going underneath them acted as a tourniquet to keep him from bleeding out.”

I shook my head, wishing I had been called to the scene instead of the hospital. I’d known something was wrong before I had gotten the call, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. But had they called me to the scene, I could have told my brother I loved him. I could have held his hand so he wasn’t as scared. But more than that, I could have been with him as he passed into death the same way I’d been with him as he’d come into life. Minutes separated us in birth, and now years would divide our lives.

The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I choked, trying to get them out through the tears. Ryan pressed my head back to his chest and wrapped his arms around me in the tightest embrace he could manage without hurting me. But I wasn’t finished.

“The EMT held Alex’s hand when they pulled the cars apart, but she said he died faster than they could get him on a gurney. His body was pretty much cut in half. She said it was the fastest blood loss she’d ever seen.

“But my brother didn’t cry. He didn’t yell out in pain. He was the picture of dignity that he always was. Where I would have wailed and caused a bigger scene than what already existed, Alex wasn’t that man. Even as kids, I was the one to yell, and he’d patiently wait for me to be taken care of first. Alex always had my back, and I hadn’t been there the one time he’d needed me to show up and let him wail.

“How is that fair? He was so young.” I knew Ryan didn’t have an answer, and I hadn’t really been looking for one. I just couldn’t see the justice in a vibrant man being taken so early in life, not when there were killers and child abusers and all sorts of bad people still breathing and running free. “My family—I, I will never be the same. I will never recover from losing him. No parents should ever have to bury a child, even one who’s an adult.”

Ryan held my hands, but I felt him flinch and looked up. His pupils looked blown, and instead of the brokenness I’d seen several times before, there was something else. Whatever it was, it was unidentifiable. “Were you guys close?”

If I hadn’t watched his lips move, I wouldn’t have heard the words that came from his mouth. I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth, blinked, causing more tears to fall, and nodded. “He was my twin. Two people can’t get any closer than Alex and I were.”

Ryan’s expression and body language softened; however, his hold on me did not.

Now that I had an outlet, I wanted to expel everything I’d been feeling but hadn’t had anyone to share it with. My parents were practically catatonic, and people just don’t understand the bond between twins unless they are, in fact, a twin.

“One careless action of some selfish person getting behind the wheel when they shouldn’t have not only caused irreparable damage to my family, but I lost my best friend; my parents lost their son. My aunts and uncles lost their nephew. Coworkers, friends, cousins, family—everyone we know had their world turned upside down over something that could have been avoided.”

There was a huge part of me that was angry, not just sad. I was furious at the injustice of my brother’s passing while the asshole behind the wheel would get to take another breath and see another sunrise and sunset. Alex had his whole future ahead of him, and now, there was nothing.

I shook my head and looked back up at Ryan. “People have no idea just how precious life is until they lose it. My brother was one of the greatest human beings I’ve ever known, and I’ll never get to hug him again or tease him or share a birthday.”

Something I was saying was resonating inside Ryan’s mind, but I didn’t know what because he wasn’t saying anything. He listened intently, and he held me like we were lovers, but he didn’t speak. His expressions said volumes, but it wasn’t a language I was fluent in since he was a stranger.

“His life was just snuffed out, and the rest of us have to figure out how to go on.” I raised one shoulder and let it fall. “Alex never knew how significant he was in all our lives, but if he had seen the attendance at his funeral, he would have been floored by all the people who loved him. He would have been shocked by those he affected while he was here. And he would have been even more dumbfounded by the people who will forever be changed not just by his death but by his life.”

Ryan leaned back against the wall, leaving me sitting up. There was something he wanted to say, and I got the feeling he was trying to figure out how to word it and be sensitive to the situation. “Your brother was a lucky man to have such a loving family and adoring friends.”

I couldn’t stop the huff of laughter that bubbled past the tears on my lips. “He would have disagreed.”

“How?”

Part of me hesitated to share Alex’s demons, but I wasn’t doing it to be disrespectful or malicious. This certainly wasn’t gossip. “Alex had demons. He struggled with never being enough, living in the shadows, depression—you name it, and at some point, Alex dealt with it. He didn’t believe he was worth it—whatever it was. He never saw the value in his life that the rest of us did. Maybe that’s what makes all of this so much worse.”

I thought about that for a second before expanding on it because it was true about so many of us. Alex just acknowledged it instead of hiding it. He often struggled with it, but he never shied away from it.

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