Two years ago today, my brother died.
And on this anniversary of the worst day in my life, I sit alone in my apartment lit only by the glow of my laptop screen as I manually finish a data report because a glitch in the preprogramed steps caused it to quit running seventy-five percent of the way through.
My eyes itch. My lower back aches. The knuckles in my fingers have started popping in weird ways because of the repetitive movement.
But none of that compares to the squeezing splinter-covered hand that grips my heart.
Josh is gone.
I’m alone.
The reminders come with every painful beat.
And I’m angry at the universe for insisting I still hurt this way even though it’s technically been years since my brother died.
Why does it feel like I held his cold hand in the hospital yesterday? Why can I remember the rattling sound of his machine-assisted breathing at the end better than I can recall his laugh?
I lunge for my phone, hands shaking as I swipe it open and desperately scroll through videos until I find one from just over three years ago.
Josh grins up at me from the screen, and I press play.
“Hey, Magpie! Look what I found.” The screen pans around a clothing shop, every surface covered in thick knit sweaters. “Can you guess where I am?” The camera is back on his face. “Don’t worry, even if you guess wrong, I’ll still bring a jumper back for you. Extra large just like you like.” He chuckles.
That’s it.
That’s what it sounds like.
Clutching the phone to my chest, I leave my laptop on my coffee table and shuffle through my condo until I’m in my closet. There, hanging with a collection of other warm clothes, is the emerald green sweater Josh brought me back from Ireland. I pull off the sweatshirt I’m wearing, then tug the gift over my head, eased by the way it swallows me.
Before I leave the closet, another garment catches my attention.
The letterman jacket.
The silly company gift Dom gave me. A company he doesn’t even work at anymore now that he’s part of The Redford Team. A star member apparently, from the way my coworkers talk about him.
Though Dom’s natural state is akin to a stoic, looming tree, he knows how to turn on the charm at work. He’s only been in Seattle for a few months and half the company wants to be his best friend. Most of the others want to date him.
I dread the day I hear about Dom with someone else through the Redford gossip churn.
Not that I have any claim on him.
Still, there’s the text message he sent me after his first day on the job.
Dom: This is a reminder that I’m not going anywhere. But I also won’t badger you. I’m giving up control. What happens next is up to you. I’m a patient man, and you’re worth waiting for.
He hasn’t texted me since, and I never responded.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to feel.
Today, though, I know. Everything is pain.
Without thinking, I slide the letterman jacket off the hanger and slip it on over the sweater. I should probably turn the heat down if I’m going to wear all these layers.
This isn’t the first time I’ve worn Dom’s jacket. But usually, it happens after a few drinks and when I make the mistake of scrolling through the pictures we took on our trips. I don’t examine why I needed to put it on now. I simply fold my arms around my torso and settle in front of my laptop again, sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Sometime later there’s a knock on my front door. I blink and rub my eyes, realizing a pounding has sprung up at the base of my temple to go along with all my other pains. With a groan, I push to my feet and try to remember if I ordered myself food.
But when I pull the door open, I find Tula and Jeremy on my threshold.
Their eyes widen in sync when they take me in. That’s when I remember that I shimmied off my leggings at some point to deal with the heat of my many layers. Now I stand barefoot in a cable-knit sweater falling midthigh and a letterman jacket, probably with dark circles under my eyes since I don’t sleep well these days.
“When’s the last time you ate?” Tula maneuvers past me, carrying a pizza box with her.
“Uh, earlier.” I wasn’t keeping track. “You didn’t need to bring me food.”
She sets the box on my butcher block island, then glares across the room at my still-open laptop. “It’s eight. In the evening. And you’re still working.”
Self-consciously I tug on the edge of my sweater and scurry over to my laptop, saving everything before I close it. Jeremy shuts the apartment door and watches me with a wary expression, like he thinks I’m a timid animal easily frightened.
“What?” I snap. Then I silently berate myself for letting my anger spew onto my friends.
If you do that, they’ll leave you.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I didn’t expect to have people over.”
“We figured,” Tula says, her voice gentle, “but we hoped you would. That you’d reach out to us today.”
My head snaps up. “What?”
Jeremey leans a hip on the counter, tucks his hands in his pockets, and watches me as he speaks. “We remember what today is. That it’s the day Josh—”
“Don’t.” I slice my hand through the air, cutting him off midsentence and drawing sadness into his eyes. “I’m fine,” I lie.
“You let us support you last time,” Tula presses.
I try to meld my expression into something socially acceptable. “It’s been two years.” Two short years. Two long years. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m doing fine.”
Jeremy drops his chin to his chest, then raises it in a defiant tilt. “The guy I dated before you, Maddie…He would hit me sometimes.”
Air leaves me in a rush, and I press my hand against my stomach to help guide it back in. “What?” I wheeze. “He…What?”
Jeremy nods, solemn. “Not all the time. But once was enough. I should’ve left. I say that now. But I didn’t. I lived with him for a year. Told myself I loved him, and he loved me. Until he broke my arm.” My friend, the joyful, funny, flirtatious man I love like family, rubs his forearm as if the limb aches. “That’s when I left. I never told anyone. Not until Carlisle.” Jeremy grimaces, his focus on his feet. “I was ashamed. Thought that people would think less of me for staying so long. That you might, even though you’re the first person I learned to trust after him.” He offers me an apologetic smile. “But I didn’t trust you enough then, I guess. Didn’t trust you to understand. To stay.”
To stay. The words batter my chest. “You’re telling me now.”
Jeremey holds my eyes this time when he speaks. “I trust you. I want you to trust me. To know you’re my best friend, and that’s not about to change.” He leans forward, but still stays by the counter, giving me space. “Even if you open up and show me, show us”—he nods toward Tula, who’s been quietly letting him speak—“the less flattering parts of your past and present. Even if you get mad and snap at us. Even if we argue. We’re not leaving.”
I swallow hard.
The idea of being open with them both—truly open, holding nothing back—is terrifying. How many times have I allowed someone else access to my heart, only for them to hurt me?
Then again, how many of those people deserved the chance?
My mother, Florence, and my father didn’t.
But then there are people like Josh, who tried his hardest to make me happy. Adam and Carter, who sought me out when I drifted away.
And Dom, who makes me want to believe I can trust someone. That not everyone I dare to love will hurt me.
My hands clutch at the long sleeves of Dom’s jacket, fisting in the smooth leather.
It seems like I’ve tried to trust so many times before. But maybe, like the footsteps on a hike, when my lungs feel shredded and my muscles protest and ache, I should take another step forward.
Keep going. Keep trying.
Keep trusting.
Even when it hurts, let yourself heal, then try again.
Keep loving.
“My mom wasn’t around much, and when she was, she wasn’t really there,” I start. And then, as if all I needed to do was chisel one crack in the wall around my emotions, suddenly they spill out. As Tula puts pizza on a plate for me, I tell them about my dad leaving before I knew him. Between bites, I describe the strained childhood I had in Florence’s home, with Josh as my only supportive bright light. I explain the respite of the Perrys’ house, and the boy I had a crush on. While wiping my fingers, I tell them about Dom and Rosaline, and being jealous of a girl who was nothing but kind to me. And as I sink onto the couch, feeling much better than I had before I ate, I tell them about falling for that boy, having him for a moment, then watching him walk into another woman’s arms.
And how I fell for him all over again these past two years, and I’m terrified of him walking away from me again.
My hands, needing something to do during this verbal vomit, reach for my laptop and open it to click on a familiar icon.
“What are you doing?” Tula’s voice is sharper than I’m used to, and only that tone is what gets me to turn my head. My friend wears a scowl as she eyes my screen.
“It’s just my email,” I explain, not sure what has her so pissed off.
“It’s your work email. It’s late and you were telling us some heavy stuff, Maddie.”
I shrug. “Work doesn’t ever really stop for me.”
“It does if you have a proper work-life balance.”
Doesn’t she know I don’t like my life right now? I’d rather give it as little time on the scale as possible.
“I’m just checking some things.”
“You need to take a day off. Hell, you need to take a week. A month even,” she presses.
“Impossible. No one else can do what I do.”
She scoffs. “Come on, Maddie. Yes, they can. They don’t need you.”
They don’t need you. Her words scorch through me, igniting my temper.
“Actually, yes, they do. Literally no one else in the company does my job. No one else knows how to. Not even my boss. When certain things go wrong, I’m the only one who can fix them. So yes, they do need me!”
The apartment rings with the echoing aftermath of my heated outburst, and I cringe when I realize that I’d just yelled at Tula.
Tula circles the couch and carefully picks up my laptop before setting it aside so she can settle herself on the table in front of me.
“Honey,” she speaks carefully, as if I’m a bomb with a touch trigger. “Why doesn’t anyone else know how to do your job?”
“Because they don’t need to,” I snap. Why am I still snapping? Tula isn’t arguing with me. She’s just asking questions. But I just laid out my childhood of pain and now it feels like she’s digging her sharp acrylics into a tender spot at the center of me. “I get it done. The workload only requires one person and that’s me.”
“Still, they could train someone else—”
“Why? Why would they do that? Why would I do that? Train my replacement? Make it easier for them to fire me if they felt like it? I’m not the CEO, but I’m necessary. I hold important parts of the company together and everyone knows that. They know I’m necessary. If they need me, then they can’t leave me!” I choke after that last sentence, the panic steeling my breath and my fingers scrambling against the couch cushions, on the verge of reaching for my inhaler.
Jeremy perches at my side, rubbing a soothing hand over my back.
Tula’s eyes widen with every statement, and her perfectly shaped brows rise until they meet her hairline. “Leave you?”
I try to suppress a cringe. “I meant fire me. Of course a whole company doesn’t leave a person.”
But that’s what it would feel like. If The Redford Team handed me my notice, it would be one more abandonment in my life.
I’m not letting that happen again.
“Oh, Maddie,” Tula whispers, sounding so heartbroken I can’t meet her gaze. She settles on my free side, the cushion dipping with her weight until I’m leaning my shoulder against hers, Jeremy’s hand still on my back.
I close my eyes and breathe, focusing on calming my spiked heart rate.
“I’m sorry for yelling at you,” I say eventually, wondering how long until they both get up and leave. Wondering how much damage I’ve done and if this is the beginning of the end.
“You know we’re forever, right?” Jeremy whispers before pressing a gentle kiss against my hair.
I gasp a little and squeeze my eyes shut tighter. But Tula speaks next.
“You, me, and Jeremy. Forever.” Her fingers squeeze mine. “You’d have to do some fucked-up shit just for me to even consider not talking to you again. I’m talking ‘sleep with my boyfriend, murder my dog’ level shit.”
I huff out a stunned laugh. “You don’t have a boyfriend. Or a dog.”
The soothing caress of her hand runs over my hair, comforting me. “Not yet. But you get what I’m saying. You don’t have to earn our friendship to keep us around. It’s yours. We’re not going anywhere.”
“My job—”
“Your job is a job, Maddie. You do your best within reason. Work normal hours, be a team player, show them your passion, and then trust them to realize what an amazing employee they have. And if they don’t, that’s on them. Not a judgment of you. Jobs come and go. Don’t let it overwhelm your life. Don’t base your self-worth in the same place you get a paycheck. And give yourself a goddamn day off when someone you love dies.”
Thinking back over the year when Josh was sick, I see I worked extra hard not because of the joy of it but because of the distraction.
Why did I let myself do that? Why do Pamela and Redford expect me to take on so much?
Don’t be ungrateful.
But shouldn’t I be? Just a little bit?
I like my company. I like the people that I work with. But Tula is right. For a long time, I’ve let work take too much of me for fear of losing the comforting safety of a position I’m familiar with and confident performing.
But lately, all I am is my job. Tula and Jeremy had to show up here unannounced because I’ve made no effort to meet up with them.
Not since Dom moved to Seattle and I’ve hid myself away as much as I could.
I brace my elbows on my knees and bury my face in my hands.
“If you need to cry,” Tula whispers, “you can.”
“I haven’t cried since Josh told me about his diagnosis,” I admit, the confession muffled by my palms.
Jeremy stiffens at my side, but Tula goes back to stroking my hair, leaning her cheek on the crown of my head.
“Everyone grieves differently. Tears are a symptom of sadness, not the feeling itself. You can be sad with your eyes dry. Your pain is valid in whatever form it comes.”
As I let her words soak in, trying to draw them inside myself and believe their truth, we three sit quietly.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Dom,” I murmur after a while. “At first, I just didn’t want to talk about him. But then things started to be different between us. Better. And I liked him again. More than that. He…made the pain of losing Josh easier. Because he loves my brother like I do. And I thought if I told you about him then, I’d have to tell you everything. The way he hurt me in the past. The way he left me.”
“Something else changed, didn’t it?” Tula asks.
I nod, feeling so close to crying. But my eyes stay dry.
“I fell in love with him again. But I…I still thought he’d end things after a while. So I wanted to keep him separate from you. Like”—I groan in self-disgust as I articulate my irrational fear—“leaving me is contagious.”
When I hazard a glance at my friends, Jeremy’s mouth is in a hard line and Tula gapes. She snaps her mouth shut and shakes her head, but before she can speak, Jeremy leans in and captures my eyes.
“You’re not as easy to give up as you think, Maddie Sanderson. I hope you figure that out one day.”
As I sit in stunned silence, absorbing Jeremy’s words, I thank the universe that my bag full of cheeses spilled in the lobby the day he was walking through it.
Maybe an important part of keeping someone in my life is knowing who is worth hanging on to.
I watch as my two friends share a heavy glance, then face me simultaneously.
“We brought you something,” Tula says.
“It’s nonreturnable,” Jeremy adds.
They got me a death day gift? Weird, but I guess it’s on brand for them.
“Okay.” I glance around the condo, wondering where this thing might be.
They each grab one of my wrists and pull me to my feet and toward the door.
“I’d like it noted,” Jeremy says as they guide me, “that I am still very pro this present even after everything you shared.”
Tula nods. “Agreed.”
“Wha—”
Jeremy lets go of my wrist and pulls open the door. In the hallway, leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed, head bowed, is Dominic Perry.
Damn it, he looks good.
I haven’t been able to avoid him entirely these last few months. We’re in the occasional meeting together, and his name pops up in my deployment emails all the time. A ghost haunting me.
I’d prefer a real ghost.
But now he’s here, in my space, looking slightly disheveled and super tempting in a well-fitting pair of gray sweatpants and loose sweatshirt.
Dom’s chin jerks up at our appearance, his dark gaze dragging over my body until his eyes stay directed at my chest. For a brief second, I wonder if Dom turned into a pervy boob guy at some point in these last few months. But then I remember what I’m wearing.
His letterman jacket. Over the sweater Josh gave me.
Which brings back the reason I wrapped myself in these comforting clothes.
“Happy Death Day,” I announce to the awkwardly quiet gathering, once again falling into my penchant for morbid humor in uncomfortable situations.
Dom’s mouth tightens into something like a smile. “Happy Death Day, Maddie.”
“You both are weird,” Jeremy says. Then he slips past me, along with Tula. “You alright? Is our gift acceptable?”
“Well, you said it’s nonreturnable so…” I give them a little shooing gesture. “Thank you. I’m good.”
Tula lifts a brow, and I roll my eyes. “Okay, not good. But better. I’m better.”
And it’s the truth. Finally, being honest with them eased something inside me. Lightened a strain I didn’t realize was wound so tight.
Tula nods, and my friends leave me alone with Dom. I cross my arms to mirror his pose and lean a shoulder against the doorjamb. “So. You’re here.”
“I’m here.”
“My friends brought you.”
“They like me.” He shrugs. “And they know I love you.”
I swallow hard at that, all snarky comebacks smothered under the weight of his honesty.
Dom continues to watch me. “I’m not here to plead my case.”
“Oh.” I swear I don’t feel disappointment.
He unfolds his arms and spreads them wide. The hallway light reflects off my brother’s watch, and I feel my pulse trip in my wrist, under my tattoo.
“I’m here because I miss you. And I miss Josh. I’m here because this day is brutal. And I…” His voice is gravelly and dry like a road leading to a ghost town. “I could use a hug.”
A hug. He’s not demanding my love or my trust or even my forgiveness.
Just a moment of holding someone who hurts the way he does, as if pressing our bodies together might lessen the never-ending ache of loss.
And the asshole is wearing a hoodie.
It’s impossible for me to do anything other than step forward and slip my arms around his waist. To fist my fingers in the cotton and press my cheek to the warm, soft fabric.
Dom doesn’t immediately return the embrace. Maybe he thought I’d refuse. That I’d kick him out with a goodbye fuck you like I did the last time he was here.
But something about my conversation with Jeremy and Tula left me extra vulnerable. But also, oddly, hopeful. I told them about my childhood and my mistakes with my heart and the way I cling to my work. They listened. They told me I was worth sticking around for.
And I think I might believe them.
Dom hugs me in return. He clutches me against his chest, and I pretend I never have to leave this glorious spot.
But eventually we break apart, and I haven’t been cured of my perpetual melancholy.
“I think we should go to Alaska this summer,” I say to the pouch pocket on Dom’s sweatshirt. “When it warms up.”
Maybe once my pirate chest doesn’t have any more of my brother’s remains, I’ll be able to move on. We both will.
“Okay.”
“And I think…” I straighten my shoulders and meet his searching gaze. “I need to work on some things. About myself. Before then.”
“Can I help?”
I shake my head.
He rubs a rough hand against the back of his neck. “Can I do anything?”
Such a Dom thing to ask. You can’t fix me, I want to say.
But also…Stay. Don’t leave me. The words are there, on the back of my tongue, ready, yet unwilling to come out. Just like my tears have been and still are.
So, I say the only thing I can manage. The only request I need him to fulfill.
“Just keep living.”