“You said I could torture myself sometimes,” he says. “Remember?”
I nod, glancing at the empty liquor bottle on the ground next to his foot. “I remember.”
His buzzing phone doesn’t even make the tears stop. When I pull my eyes away from the liquor bottle, I see Coach Williams’ name covering the screen.
Pops.
That’s all it says. There’s not an emoji or a picture to go along with it, and I hate that. When he hangs up, the ten other missed calls from him and Cree sitting on the screen tell me what kind of day it is on Planet Ace.
“What you got going on, Kid?” I ask, flipping the phone over and wrapping his face in my hands like he did to mine the morning after Splashtown.
“Shit...” he rasps out. “Been waiting for you to come home all day.”
“What you need me for?”
He looks past me, swallowing with a loud gulp. “I can’t celebrate alone.”
There’s that talk about a celebration again and I can’t digest the word while his face is slick with tears that don’t look like joyful ones.
“What we celebrating?”
It’s a scary thing to ask when his brown eyes are so hollow, but it’s Ace—the man I hate and like, the man I swear I knew in a past life, the man that gave me hives and cured them. Shit, nothing is ever as scary as it seems on his planet.
“Mom’s birthday,” he replies, looking back at me. “I’m a mama’s boy, remember?”
A desperate groan gets caught in my throat and itisas scary as it seemed.
I reach out to catch the new tears that fall with his admission, but I’m too slow. They roll over my fingers and leave me with no choice but to do another scary thing.
I press my lips against his warm cheek and catch them with my lips. “I remember. For an eternity, right?”
He nods, nudging my face from his. “It’s my first one without her.”
The aggressive texts, Marcus’ vague statement, and Gus’ glum mood make sense now.
“That’s why you wanted me home so bad?”
His tongue darts from between his lips. “Don’t get shit confused. I always want you home but to—today Ineededyou home.”
As if I didn’t halfway wash a sink full of dishes and run a block to Gus’ truck—as if my body didn’t know he needed it too.
I don’t know how to mourn first birthdays because I was too little to remember Marshall’s. I just know how to live with the birthdays that come after. The house gets real still, and it’s the only time of the year Marcus can’t step foot out the front door. Nothing’s left of Marshall at our house because Mama got rid of it all except some pictures she made Marcus put in the attic. She even gave his ashes to his mama, but his birthday is the only time of the year we all can exist together without fussing.
I smash my lips against his cheek again.
A salty tear trickles into my mouth, gliding against my tongue and it makes me want to throw that question he wanted me to forget back into the Universe. I want God to tell me why certain shit happens. Why would he take a lady like Angie away when Ace needed her to help him understand that it’s not just him against this shitty world?
“Lourdes?” he asks, picking up his vibrating phone and pushing it into my chest.
“Ye—yeah?”
“Why won’t his selfish ass get that the only person I want is right here?”
“Don’t say that.” I slide my hand down his cheek, chasing more never ending tears. “It’s his first one without her too.”
“Nah...it’s not.”
“What you mean?”
