Sideways snow smacks me in the face as I walk past the eighteen-wheeler. Behind me, I hear a car door slam, then crunching snow getting closer.
There’s hands on my shoulders.
“Ethan!” The hands turn me around and Shane’s eyes are full of fury. “Are you crazy? It’s freezing and pouring snow. Come on.” He tugs on my arm to get me to go with him.
I don’t budge. “I’ve gotta go back!”
“Dammit, Ethan!” He grabs my gloved hand, and I stumble forward in the snow, nearly falling on my face.
“Let go of me!” I shake my hand out of his, and turn around, but he grabs me again.
He’s stronger than me, just like he used to be, but I still try to fight him off as he hooks his elbow through mine and starts to drag me backward. I stubbornly pull forward. We probably look insane to the people sitting in their cars right now, and I’m betting all those observers are on Shane’s side, trying to drag the crazy guy back to the car to keep him from freezing into an icicle in this blizzard.
We have a little tug of war for a couple of minutes, but inevitably Shane wins. He practically drags me through the snow, back to the Blazer and pushes me into the passenger seat, slamming the door almost on my foot. He gets in the driver’sside, buckles himself in, and turns to me. His face is red, and his hair is wet from the snow.
“Stay right there,” he growls. “I mean it, Ethan.” He locks the doors.
For a second, we’re back in high school and Shane is my protector. My hero. The one that always knew what to do, where to go, and what to say. My admiration of him often intermingled with my crush, which inevitably led me to get my heart broken. There’s no reason to admire him now. He’s only in this car with me because Everett’s dead, and I’m the idiot that left him behind.
“Shut the fuck up,” I shout at him. “What if something happens to him? What if they accidentally throw him in the trash?”
“They’re not going to do that!”
“You don’t know that!”
“Neither do you!”
“Fuck you!”
“Fuckyou!”
I fight for a response, but all the fight drains out of me. I slump back against the seat, feeling myself crumble like brittle paper. Tears pour down my cheeks before I can stop them.
Shane reaches over to put his hand on my shoulder. “Ethan, I’m sorry.”
“I can’t do this,” I choke out. “I can’t. I can’t do it.”
Shane’s hand squeezes my shoulder.
“I thought I could do it, but I’m fucking this up.” I smack my head against the head rest. “I’m. Fucking. This.Up.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I fuckingleft my brother’s ashes at a Denny’s.” I angrily wipe the tears from my face. I try to get a hold of myself. “I can’t do this. I can’t.”
After a moment or so, Shane says, “No. No, you can’t.”
I shift my eyes over to him.
“But I’m here with you, Ethan. You can’t do this. Butwecan do this.”
The sincerity on his face makes my heart swell with gratitude. If this were five years ago, and none of that shit ever happened, I’d hug him tight right now, hold him close to me, and thank him, and thank the gods a million times that he’s here.
But I don’t reach out to him. It’s still sore. Even though he’s familiar, he still feels like a stranger.
The rest of the evening sort of goes by in a daze.
The storm is insane. The snow keeps coming down and everything around us is a cold white blur. Shane manages to get us off the highway and into a motel parking lot. I protest at first, argue with him that we need to go back, but it’s snowing too hard, and the traffic is too thick. I’m panicked. Are we really going to leave Ev’s ashes there all night?
