He tilts his head in response, and it communicates more than I want it to.
Because I know you, he doesn’t have to say.
I shake my head. The embarrassment of leaving the funeral during speeches and now being intercepted by the last person I’d want to see feels like a physical attack. If we’re going to have any conversation right now, it isn’t going to be within hearing range of these maddening speeches.
I spin around, march toward the exit sign at the back of the funeral home, and throw open the doors that lead to an empty parking lot. The cool breeze gives me some relief, but my head is still spinning. I sit on the closest thing I can find—the parking curb.
“Blair, wait,” Declan’s voice comes from behind me, but I don’t look. I can hear the sound of his uneven steps as he approaches, and then he sits beside me on the curb. An errant tear threatens to escape, so I keep my head bowed in hopes that he won’t see it.
“I know your friends weren’t able to make it. And I know we’re…” He breathes in deeply before continuing. “I just wanted to be here.”
“How did you know my friends weren’t able to make it?” I snap my head toward him, stunned.
Roshi and Faye weren’t able to put their lives on hold on such short notice to come to the funeral. The flight plus the road trip makes Seabrook quite the trek to get to, and with their exciting new lives ramping up at full speed, there just wasn’t any way for them to come. Still, though, he’s never met them. Did I mention them at the coffee shop?
“I…” he stammers, and it catches me off guard. This manhas never been one to stammer. Even at the age of twelve, he spoke with a conviction that was borderline funny.
“I didn’t see them in the front row next to you,” he explains. “So, I figured.”
That doesn’t begin to skim the surface of how he would know this. I tilt my head to the side like a dumbfounded golden retriever. Minus the golden part.
“You stalked my Instagram, didn’t you, Declan Renshaw?” I guess.
I’m aware of my eagerness to revert to humor to avoid the reality of today, but I smile a mischievous smile anyway.
“Yes. I stalked you, Blair. Is that actually shocking to you?” He smiles at the pavement. His voice sounds confident, but I can tell he didn’t mean to reveal this information to me. He’s witnessed me stumble through countless friendships throughout my adolescence. So, his awareness of Roshi and Faye feels good. Like a stamp of my growth since him.
“And did you like what you saw?” I prod. A lightness I haven’t felt all week enters my body.
Declan shakes his head and lifts a hand to run it through his hair. He’s smiling bashfully, looking caught in an act he didn’t mean to expose.
“Of course I liked what I saw.” His tone is so matter of fact that I feel my heart thrash jaggedly against my rib cage. He looks at me, letting the silence of what he’s admitted to stretch on. Is it a challenge I see in his expression? To confront what he’s just admitted to?
“Are you still with that girl?” I blurt the question, unable to handle his piercing stare any longer.
His eyebrows furrow. “What girl?”
“You’re not the only one capable of using Instagram,” I state dumbly, looking away. I can’t believe I’m saying this right now.
“Shelby?” he says, voice dipping and coming back up.
I shrug my shoulders. “Is that her name?”
He begins to laugh.
Oh gosh. He’s laughing at me.
“Look, I didn’t mean it in any way. I’m happy for you if—”
“No! No,” Declan says between fits of laughter. His shoulders bounce up and down, head shaking. “No, please don’t be happy for me. We’re not dating.”
He wipes a literal tear from his eye from laughing so much and I want the ground to swallow me whole. “Shelby is my cousin.”
“Oh,” I mumble. I’ve never felt dumber.
It was his freakingcousin.
All these years, I was jealous of his COUSIN.
