“What? You shouldn’t be throwing anything out. This isn’t your house!”
Mac tore through the Hefty bag against the wall. His heart crumpled in his chest. He wouldn’t let them see him cry, and it took everything to hold the tears back. They wouldn’t have that satisfaction.
May we always be each other’s good luck charms.
The keychain was a damn needle in a haystack. His fingers slid against the sides of the trash bag. He pressed his eyes shut, hoping he could feel Aunt Rita’s spirit in this house. His thumb touched metal. He peeled off a ketchup-soaked Burger King wrapper covering the keychain. He wiped grease and more ketchup off the four-leaf clover. The anger was hot and liquid in his veins, lava ready to spew.
He ripped a glass shell out of his mom’s hands. She jolted back, afraid of her son. Good.
“Mac!” His father yelled.
“What is your problem?” He yelled back. “You don’t get to throw out somebody’s stuff!”
His mom didn’t try to take back the shell from him. “Look, I know this is sudden. Going through her stuff is another way for your father and I to remember her.” She sounded somber, and Mac was glad in a way that Aunt Rita’s death actually meant something to his parents. They weren’t devoid of emotion and compassion. Only when it came to him.
“You should’ve called me. This is my house, too! What were you going to do with my stuff?”
“We don’t know. We were going to talk to you about it at the funeral,” his dad said.
Mac took in his final glances of Aunt Rita’s house. He didn’t want his last memories of this place to be of his parents ripping it apart. “You never told me about the funeral. You didn’t even call to tell me she died.” Tears fell down his face. “You knew how much she meant to me. You didn’t even call. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Watch that mouth of yours, Cormac.” His father pointed a stern finger at him. “You made it clear in the hospital how often you wanted to hear from us. Communication is a two-way street.”
“Fuck you and your two-way streets. I hate you. I used to be mad at you and hurt, but now I really hate you.” Mac clutched the keychain as he headed to the front door. “Don’t touch my room.”
Φ
More family than Mac assumed would come showed up to the funeral, people he hadn’t seen in years. He was glad that they cared about Aunt Rita.
This was the first time Mac had stepped foot inside a church since West Virginia. Aunt Rita was not religious. He imagined how much she would hate this service. The pastor preached from the front of the church, and people looked to be in their own worlds.
Mac didn’t sit with his parents. He had a pew to himself. A few family members he recognized said hello and kissed him on the cheek, but they didn’t sit with him. They didn’t ask him to join him.
“Let us remember and cherish the times Rita brought joy into our lives. Let us not dwell on the sadness we feel now, for sadness is only temporary.” The pastor made eye contact with Mac. At least one person here did.
He zoned in and out of the sermon. He thought about the good times with him and Aunt Rita instead. Grand pronouncements about the meaning of life and death were a snooze compared to remembering their Christmases and the smell of the kitchen when Aunt Rita made pancakes.
He wondered what was going through his parents’ heads, if they were in mourning at all. They didn’t talk to Aunt Rita much. When Mac first moved in with her, they would call for updates, just to make sure he hadn’t dropped out of school and spiraled out of control. Mac didn’t want to speak to them, and soon, they stopped asking to speak to him. He believed that that parent-child bond was unbreakable, but it was just as tenuous as any other relationship. As sturdy as a damn tissue.
The ceremony moved out to the graveyard. The sun would not stop shining, which really pissed Mac off. It was the type of winter day everyone dreamed of. Crisp breezes and blue skies. Aunt Rita would’ve loved it, but she couldn’t get to enjoy it.
His family congregated on one side of the casket, while assorted friends spread out around them. Mac stood off to the side. He was alone, unflanked by family. Even Helen had her two grown sons at her side. The crisp breeze morphed into a strong wind that slammed into his side.
Aunt Rita’s casket was lowered into the ground. That was, so to speak, the final nail in the coffin. She was dead. She was gone. And she was never coming back. She would never get to meet Mac’s future boyfriends or attend his wedding or see what would become of his life.
Mac sobbed into his sleeve, deep sobs that made his body shiver. He outsobbed Helen in the car and anyone else at the funeral. His face was soaked and hot. He was the only one making noise with his crying, as the rest of the funeral stood in solemn silence. He squeezed his four-leaf clover keychain between his fingers as hard as he could. Emotions ripped through his chest. His head vibrated with his crying, for Aunt Rita, for being alone in the world.
He felt a calm as the wind stopped.
Only it didn’t stop. Someone shielded him.
An arm maneuvered around his waist and pulled him into a warm body. Mac wiped the tears off his face. He looked up, and Gideon’s green eyes shined back at him.
CHAPTER twenty-two
Gideon
He missed those brown eyes so freaking much. Mac radiated a need that emboldened Gideon, made him stand up straight and puff out his chest. It wasn’t until he looked away from Mac and saw people staring at them that he realized how gay he was being in public. A man and woman across the plot shook their heads and grimaced. It was Mac’s parents. He just had that feeling. He could sense the disappointment coming off them in waves.
