“It’s fine,” Abe replied. “I just can’t go.”
Oliver understood how he felt, smiling sadly as he placed a hand on Abe’s shoulder.
Abe didn’t really feel anything when Oliver touched him. There seemed to be no weight to Oli’s hand. There was no rush of emotion from observing Oli’s smile.
Just a vast pit of nothingness in Aberlour’s soul.
“We could go to a bar? Have a wake? I’m sure—”
“No,” Abe protested before Oli could finish. “You should be there. The wives deserve it. I just—” He shuddered at the thought of having to interact with their families.
Every time he shut his eyes, they were all there, smiling at him. Trusting him.
“You’re shaking,” Oliver whispered, reaching out to touch Aberlour’s forearm.
Aberlour recoiled, quickly stepping out of touching range.
“You have to go. Tell Sabine and the others—tell them I’m sorry,” Aberlour said, slightly surprised to note how steady his voice was.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Oliver said, like the broken record that had been playing on repeat in Aberlour’s head.
“You ever seen me miss a shot?”
Dead silence. As dead as the headless corpses of their friends.
Oliver sighed. It was a lost argument. They both knew it. They both knew Aberlour was right.
“Does it have to be like this?” Oliver asked with a plea in his eyes.
It must have been the sleep deprivation because it took Aberlour a moment to understand what Oliver meant. With a brief glance in Abby’s direction, he noticed she was laughing at something that Oliver’s father was saying. Aberlour sighed before he nodded.
“She’s what you want, isn’t she?” he asked boldly.
Oliver shook his head and opened his mouth to respond but Aberlour beat him to it.
“Kids. A marriage your parents can be proud of. The victorious son. She’s what you want.” No longer a question. A statement that neither could deny.
“It isn’t that simple,” Oliver replied with a grimace.
“Isn’t it?”
The wind blew through the maple trees of the graveyard, stirring up the sweet scent of fall and Aberlour took a deep, calming breath and let it out again.
“You sure you don’t want to come to the wake?” Oli asked, having given up on dealing in depth with any more serious topics.
Aberlour nodded.
They walked side-by-side towards Oliver’s parents and Abby.
“Thank you for coming,” Aberlour told Oliver’s parents. He even managed to nod politely at Abby. He wanted to make his exit a well-mannered one that his mother would have been proud of.
“It’s over now,” Abby said, with a brilliant smile. “You both get to rest.”
It was the wrong thing to say. The wrong thing at the worst time, and yet, when Aberlour spared a look in Oliver’s direction to confirm they felt the same way, he sawit.
The final straw. The one that finally broke Aberlour was right there in front of his face. Oliver smiled at her. He smiled his most heartbreaking smile. The same that had always belonged to just him. But now, it was Abby’s too.
It was over.
