I watch her spin on her heels, her steps rushed as she walks through the door. I listen to those same steps move across the hallway, and finally, the front door open and close, shutting me out of her life and out of her world.

Riley

Dylan,

I realized something today as I let the memories of the forever you’d created for us rip my heart in two.

I was wrong.

There’s no emotion greater than love.

No ache greater than longing.

No sound greater than you.

Fifty-One

Dylan

An entire week passes before I work up the courage to take her advice. I shower, dress, and do my best to look presentable. I call a cab to drive me the few minutes it takes to get to Dad’s house.

It’s hard to make eye contact with the people you hurt, especially when they love you as much as my family loves me. There was never a doubt in the loyalty and honor of the Banks men. Not until I went and changed all of that.

I disappointed them.

I disappointed myself.

I look up at my brother again, a man who’s always been there for me, and then over at my dad as we sit around the kitchen table, my leg propped up on the seat Riley used to occupy.

From the corner of my eye, I see Sydney’s arm move, her hand most likely going to Eric’s leg under the table, showing her support.

I hurt her too.

I hurt everybody. Riley especially—but no amount of apologizing will ever make up for what I did to her.

Eric blows out a breath.

I switch my gaze back to him. After a thousand different words run through my mind—reasons, excuses, all of them useless, I decide on the truth. “Fuck man. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Quit cursing at the table,” Dad says quietly.

Eric shrugs, not giving anything away. Then he leans forward, his forearms on the table. “Remember that time when you were in second grade and you fell off your bike and broke your arm?”

“Yeah…”

“Two days earlier I heard you tell Dad that you’d seen me smoking out in the yard when he was at work and I was supposed to be taking care of you. So, I saw you out on the sidewalk riding my old bike, happy as a pig in shit and I picked up a stick and threw that fucker right at your wheel. I told Dad you must’ve hit a rock. I convinced you of the same. So I guess this is payback.”

Dad stands quickly. “We’re family, son. End of discussion.”

I’d created the chaos that brought me here and as easy as that, they offered me the calm to face reality again.

*     *     *

Jake’s car is parked out front when Sydney drops me back at the house. He’s standing at my door, back turned, hand raised as he knocks.

“What’s up?” I ask, getting out of the car and hobbling up to him.

He lifts the giant plate of food in his hand. “My mom wanted me to drop this off.” Then he sighs. “And I guess I just miss my friend. I’ve tried to give you time, like you said. But I don’t know. I guess the worry won out and now I’m here, offering you food I bought at the diner to make it look like my mom made it just so I had an excuse to see you.”

Without a word, I walk past him and open the front door, leaving it open as an invitation.

He stores the food in the fridge, along with the many others and sits in the living room with me.

“Lucy gave Cameron a black eye,” he says, and I make a sound similar to a laugh but I can’t be sure because it’s been that fucking long.

“How?”

“Story goes she read a book—”

“It’s always a fucking book.”

“Right? So she read a book and told Cameron he needed to be more assertive and dominating. He said he wouldn’t do it. She kept asking him to. And one night they were screwing and he told her, and I quote, ‘to take it like the filthy whore she is’. So yeah. Black eye.”

I make that weird sound again, only this time, my shoulders shake with it. “They’re fucking crazy.”

“Yep,” he says, and I glance over at him sitting on the couch opposite me, gazing up at the ceiling.

For a moment, I see the fifteen-year-old kid I met, the one who took in the new kid at school and quickly became my best friend, the only one who could read my actions when my words had failed me. “You ever feel stuck, Jake?” I ask, pushing away the memory from when I asked Riley the exact same question.

He lowers his gaze to mine. “What do you mean?”

“Like, sometimes I look out my window and see the world spinning around me, like time hasn’t stopped and a life hasn’t ended. I see people smiling, laughing, and I wonder how it is they can function and I’m just… stuck. I felt it when I came home on medical and I felt it after Dave died and I feel it now and I don’t know why.”

“Because you experienced near death twice and actual death once?” he says simply, sitting up higher in his chair. “I mean, when you think about it, time is just that… time. It’s what life is made of. So time stops when a life ends.”

Nothing in the entire world, besides Riley, has ever made more sense than Jake sitting in my living room right at this very moment.

He adds, “But that doesn’t mean you don’t fight to make time move again. If you want Dave’s clock to keep ticking, find a way to make it happen.”

“Like a legacy?”

Jake shrugs. “I did a little research… into your friend.”