“Hey,” I said. “Do you guys want some privacy? It might be easier without an audience, you know?”
“I want you here,” Dex murmured without looking up. Phoebe looked between us, chewing her lip. “Cat will be grateful for the distraction. It’s fine.”
“August.” His eyes snapped to me, fingers curling into his palm. “The hard part is over. Now you need to go in there and have a real conversation with her, without us. She deserves that much.”
He stared at me, all those fractured feelings shining through. It meant something to me, the way he’d allowed me to witness the deepest pits of his soul from the moment I discovered his name. He meant it when he said he’d been honest with me, and if I asked him to stand under a spotlight and monologue his side of the story from beginning to end, he would. He wanted me to know him. I already did.
“You’re right,” he said. He climbed to his feet, taking a slow breath. “Don’t leave. Please.”
“We’re here,” I promised.
“You don’t have to be.” He stared at the doorway, eyes hazy.“After this, I mean. I don’t want you to think you’re obligated to stay or forgive me. I’m not an easy person to care about. No hard feelings.”
He was gone before his words made their impact. All this time, I’d had the thought that Dex and I were the same, and here he was repackaging the saddest thoughts I’d had about myself, dropping them at my feet, like he was damaged goods that should be cast aside. But he wasn’t damaged to me. All those broken pieces snapped together in a mosaic masterpiece, beautiful and raw.
Left alone in Catalina’s living room, Phoebe and I didn’t look at each other, didn’t speak. We let ourselves out, taking refuge on the porch swing. Overhead, the sky was a crisp, cloudless blue. The grass swayed in a warm breeze. It wasn’t our grief, but when my sister buried her face in my shoulder, choking up, it could’ve been.
By the time Dex came to find us, frogs and crickets had begun chirping in the grass, and his eyes were red.
Catalina invited us to stay for dinner so earnestly, we couldn’t say no. We grilled and ate burgers on the cobbled patio as dragonflies zipped over our heads. The afternoon sun was relentless, but we sat out there for hours listening to stories about Benji Dexter, the man who’d brought us together. He was a talented artist always sporting acrylic paint on his hands. He and Cat were friends growing up, but they didn’t fall in love until their struggling twenties, sharing a shoebox apartment outside city limits, him freshly transitioned and finding comfort in working at Sequest, her working at the library, meeting up for lunch every day on a bench equal distance between their jobs. Asa big believer in the grand gesture, he would try to one-up himself after every fight—Catalina cringed as she recounted a flash mob years after the fad died out.
They were going to get married, though they weren’t officially engaged. It was simply a fact everyone around them knew. But Benji lived with depression and occasionally went through phases of mania, during which he would self-destruct and push away the people close to him.I wish I hadn’t left, Catalina said with a sad smile.But he told me to. It sounds so stupid, now.
His death was a cosmically unfair accident on a Thursday night. Benji had told friends that when he died, he didn’t want it to be a drag, so there was no official funeral, only a meetup at his favorite lighthouse where the people who loved him toasted to him and cried together and spread his ashes.Gav got a mouthful of him, Dex said, cracking a smile.Ben wouldn’t have had it any other way.
It seemed strange to posthumously meet the person who shaped the last month of our lives. Phoebe and I sat rapt through the stories, the memories, the tears shed. Benji was a special person, his loss catastrophic. And when Phoebe launched into a story about our dad, Catalina and Dex leaned in, hanging on every word. We would keep them alive like this. My dad could’ve been right there, standing over my shoulder. As the stories began to slow and the air cooled, I caught Dex’s eye over the glass-topped table. Now that I’d been formally introduced to Benji, it felt easier to understand the wreckage he’d left behind and how it led to Dex’s inability to face his past. The bravery it took for Dex to make the choices that led him here took my breath away—he couldn’t say Benji’s name out loud, but he chose to take this trip, to sit alongside Phoebe and me in our own grief, to keep going. He’d been fighting so hard for so long, alone.
Eventually, Phoebe and I said goodbye to Catalina, intendingto give her and Dex some privacy, but he ducked his head and followed us out, everything about him weighed down by exhaustion. I hadn’t recognized the grief for what it was, but in retrospect only the most catastrophic losses could dismantle a world the way it had for Dex, and for Phoebe and me. It was all over him. I wished I’d looked a little bit closer.
A soft breeze rolled in, sending cherry blossom petals dancing around our feet as we made our way to the car. I watched them settle, a sense of impending doom pressing in, either from the glances Phoebe kept shooting Dex or the way he couldn’t seem to lift his gaze from the ground.This is over, I thought, but I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly was ending.
“You okay?” Phoebe asked, nudging Dex’s elbow with her own. “That was alot.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Yeah it was a lot or yeah you’re okay?”
“I think…” He slowed to a stop and I curled my fingers into my palms, bracing for the end of his sentence. His eyes met mine under the golden hour sun. I could see him, read him, feel the weight he was carrying like it was my own. Iknewhim. He would never be a stranger. “I think,” he continued, voice low, “you guys should go home.”
The words landed somewhere deep in my gut, sharp with shame as if he’d grabbed me by the shoulders and shoutedGotcha!instead of handing over something I was supposed to give him.
“What?” Phoebe said, sounding so small. “But… no. No, we’re supposed to be in this together. You can’t just decide on your own. That’s not how it works.”
Dex dragged a hand down his face. “I’m sorry.”
“You’resorry?”
“I am.” He dropped his hand, meeting her eyes, and thenmine. “I never wanted to hurt either of you. You trusted me, you let me into your world, and I fucked it up.”
“You lost your brother!” Phoebe wheeled around to look at me, eyes wild. “We talked about it, right? He wasn’t trying to hurt us. We know that.”
“But I did,” Dex said quietly. “I did hurt you. Whatever my intentions were can’t erase that.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m one of the kids at Sequest!” Phoebe spat, blinking back tears. “You’re not my therapist. You’re my best friend.”
His voice cracked: “Phoebe.”
“You’re punishing yourself on our behalf!” she cried. “You can’t do that!”
