“Yeah.” Leo sighs.
“I was already there when he arrived. He was so fucking mad at me. I understood why. I got it. It’s hard to watch the personyou’re in love with fall in love with someone else, especially when you love that other person too.”
The words burn. Like acid rain falling from his mouth and landing on my skin.
“I told him I understood it, but I wasn’t sorry, and that his anger wouldn’t change anything.” August swallows, tucking his knees into his chest and hugging them. Leo shuffles sideways, forming a circle of the four of us so he can look at August head-on. “We went back and forth for a while, but he seemed to settle—to somewhat understand. He told me that it made sense, that you and I had always made sense.” He glances down at me, and when our eyes meet, I know the guilt is slicing through us both, leaving him and me in tatters. “He said he’d get over it eventually, but that there were things he’d said to you…”
You are impossible to love.
“I was the one who got angry then. I hadn’t known he’d been with you that morning, and he was taunting me for it. When I realized that you two had your own confrontation, that he’d said something hurtful to you…” August shakes his head, his eyes a million miles away as he relives the memories flashing across his mind. “I figured that he and I—the three of us—would end up okay. We were angry in the moment, but had a base of understanding. You were the one who got left behind, so I wanted to find you. I told him he leaves damage in the wake of his recklessness. He called after me, but I kept going. I knew I was leaving things unresolved, but I didn’t care. He was my brother, you know?” He turns to us, tears streaming freely from his eyes. “Even when things weren’t okay, you had confidence they would be. They always are in the end.”
How many times has August watched Leo, Everett, and me fight over the years, end our conversations abruptly, and shut each other out, always having faith in future resolution? Howmany times did he watch those interactions, knowing he hadn’t escaped one of his own?
He told me love had been a question, and that’s why I was so afraid of it. It’s only now that I realize the meaning of family may be the same for him.
A drumming ache erupts in my chest at that thought.
“Things won’t always be okay,” I whisper. “Even when they’re not, I want you to remember that they are. No fight between us”—I glance at my brothers—“will ever mean more than the love that’s there too.”
In my periphery, I register both Everett and Leo nodding.
“I told him it was a bad day for surfing before I left, and when I reached my truck at the top of that cliff, I looked out over it, searching for him so I could tell him again.” August’s gaze tracks the horizon line once again. “He was already gone.”
I loop my arm through August’s, leaning my head on his shoulder. I close my eyes, the setting sun warming my cheeks as I face the horizon. I embrace the warmth, because I know the memory we confront next will be the darkest of them all.
“I tracked the shoreline from end to end, searching for his red board, but I came up short. That’s when I immediately began bounding back down the stairs, yelling his name.” August takes a rattling inhale, and I hear Leo mutter a curse beneath his breath. “Apparently someone down there had already seen whatever wave took him out. They’d called for a lifeguard, and I made it to the beach just in time to see them wading through the water in search of Zach. I ran straight to them, but by the time I was knee-deep, they were pulling him out.”
I squeeze my eyes like I’m trying to rid my mind of the image August presents, but it doesn’t work. Suffocating beneath my emotion, I gasp for air. August’s palm slides beneath mine, clasping our hands together and resting them on top of his knee.
“Paramedics arrived, and they were doing all they could, but I knew. Before we made it to the hospital, before the doctors confirmed. I knew the moment I looked at him that his soul wasn’t there anymore.”
I feel the warmth of a second palm on mine before the pressure of another lands atop it. I know it’s my brothers, but I’m not ready to open my eyes yet. Not ready to face the devastation I’ll see reflected back at me.
I’m not sure how long we sit in silence before Leo shakily says, “This is what I retrieved from inside the house.”
I let my eyelids flutter open, vision blurry through my tears before I wipe them away to find my brother sitting cross-legged in the sand, a small black box in his palm.
“Sadie was too distraught to handle the aftermath of it, and you were taking care of her.” He nods toward August, before doing the same to Everett. “You were trying to help Elena, and though I made my own attempts, I felt like there was some deeper twin-level connection I couldn’t reach. I felt so fucking helpless,” he whispers. “So, I helped Alex with a lot of the…logistical shit that nobody should be having to think about. I remember calling to cancel his gym membership…” He shakes his head. “I closed his bank accounts, sorted through his belongings, cleaned out his fucking car. I also retrieved his ashes from the funeral home.” Leo looks at the box in his hand. “They asked me if I’d like to have them split into individual parts for loved ones to keep. I knew Sadie and Alex probably would’ve said no, but I said yes. I had the majority set aside for them, but I made sure to have something for each of us to keep or spread how we wanted.”
A sob rips through me at the realization of what my brother holds in his hand.
“I spread mine for him in Nazaré, because he’d always dreamed of going,” Leo continues. “We keep Everett’s at Heathen’s, because he was supposed to work there with us.”
“I keepmine in a leather pencil box he made for me when he lived in Wyoming. It’s on my desk in the sunroom,” August whispers brokenly. “He bought that house for the sunroom. It was going to be his favorite place.”
Sorrow holdsme in a death grip, thrashing inside the hollow of my chest. I want to let it out on a scream, but I clamp the urge down, swallowing it with nauseating effort.
“I hadthese ones saved for you,” Leo chokes. “I didn’t think you were ready for them before, but I hope…” He’s trembling as he extends them to me. “I hope you might be ready now. I think you need them now.”
I takethem with shaking hands. Staring down at the box, I’m unsure of what to do. I never thought I’d have any piece of Zach again—didn’t think I deserved it.
“I understandthe guilt you’ve been harboring,” Everett says softly. “I didn’t get it before, but I do now, and I think it’s time to let it go.” His eyes bounce between August and me. “We all fought, we all hated each other at times. I know for damn sure if Zach were sitting here right now, he’d be laughing at the fact that the last thing he ever called me was a whore. He’d find it fucking hilarious, and he’d probably say it again just to remind me.”
He doesn’t pullthe laugh I know he’s attempting to from me, but I toss him the best smile that I can muster.
“We were young and tumultuous.We were reckless and loud and unabashed in the way we loved each other. We always have been. There’s never any way of knowing which conversation is going to be your last with someone, and I can’t imagine that the last words are what I’m going to remember when I die. It’s going to be a compilation of every happy moment that came before them, and I think I knew Zach well enough to say he’d feel the same.”
“I thinkevery single one of us knew, even back then, that the two of you made sense,” Leo adds. “I think a lot of people are meant to be in our lives. I think we can experience love in a million different ways, but some things are just…written in the stars. I think death might be one of them, and maybe his was. I think that our souls are another, and yours are fused like that.” He nods to August and me. “At some point we have to accept that there are questions we’ll never know the answer to, and then we have to decide if we’re going to chase contentment without them, or spend our lives tangled in what-ifs.”
