It didn’t last because that’s not my ticket in life.
My brother died on my watch. The pain that caused reached far beyond what I felt or what my grandfather endured.
The night that I found Apollo dead in his bed, I stood on the street outside of our apartment building. I was numb to everything going on around me.
I have hazy recollections of police cars blocking the street to oncoming traffic. I remember a neighbor trying to assure me that time would help. She said time always helps.
She was a liar.
Off in the distance, I could hear the sound of a young woman screaming. Her pain mirrored what I was feeling.
She was calling for Pol. Over and over again, she wailed his name as her friends held her upright.
When I stumbled over to her after she yelled at me, she beat on my chest with her fists.
She tore through me because I’d let my brother down.
The memory of her face got lost in my grief, but I saw it again today at Sweet Bluebells.
Her big blue eyes, and her long blonde hair.
Delaney is her name.
I didn’t bring that up from memory. She had to remind me of that today as she told me that she’d never forgiven me for not keeping a closer eye on my brother. She wanted to know if I had called him that day. I told her I hadn’t because that was the truth.
She’d called him six fucking times because she knew something was wrong.
When he didn’t answer, she went to the building and begged someone to let her in. No one listened to her that day.
Deep down inside, she knew.
I didn’t have a goddamn clue.
I worked until noon. Then I hit up a bar and then a hotel with a woman I met at the bar because I couldn’t take her back to my apartment out of fear that my brother would find her.
During the six weeks he lived with me, I found him with four different girls. Not one of them had blue eyes and blonde hair.
Delaney loved Pol, but Pol loved everyone.
He was young, and he wanted to experience life for the first time. He was finally out from under the watch of our grandfather, so he made friends with the girls who turned his head.
Seeing the pain that still consumes Delaney was enough for me. It was too damn much. She reminded me that my brother never got the chance to be happy. She told me that it killed her to hear me say that I was buying cupcakes for the woman I love because my brother will never love anyone again.
How the fuck do I deserve more than him?
I reach into the pocket of my pants and pull out the key to my apartment.
I walked out of here this morning in love and on top of the world.
Tonight, I’ll break my own heart into a million pieces.
I walkin to find Emma standing at the dining room table. She’s wearing a short blue sundress that’s bouncing around her thighs.
I drop my gaze because I can’t look at her if I’ll never touch her again.
“Hey,” I offer when she doesn’t say anything to me.
“Hi.”
