MY DOORBELL RANG for the third time, but I didn’t move off of my couch. I knew who it was, and I didn’t care. Within a minute, Brody appeared at the sliding glass door in my kitchen, cupping his face with his hands as he peeked through the door. He saw me staring back at him.
“Hey!” he yelled as he banged on the glass. “Open the damn door!”
My arms and legs felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each, and it took all my strength to peel myself off of the couch and go unlock the door.
“What the fuck?” He frowned, closing the door behind him. “Did you hear me ringing the bell?”
I walked over and lay back on my couch again. “Yep.”
“Why aren’t you dressed? We have to leave.”
I lifted my head and looked back at him, finally noticing the sharp black suit he was wearing, before rolling away.
“Viper!” he called again, sounding annoyed. “Get dressed! I just dropped Kacie, Andy, and Darla at the church. Come on!”
Funerals suck. No one wants to get dressed up and sit in a stuffy church and listen to people say the same bland crap about someone they loved. To top it all off, Michelle asked me to say something at the service. I’d tried to sit down and write out a speech several times over the last couple days, but that just wasn’t me. I wasn’t a planner. I figured I’d just get up there and say the first thing that came to mind.
“Hey! Asshole!” Brody shouted from the kitchen. “Stop ignoring me. Get up!”
I groaned as I got off the couch and headed toward my bedroom to get dressed.
“Don’t forget to bring your jersey!” he called out as I walked down the hall.
“Wait…” I stopped and turned back toward the kitchen. “What? Why?”
Brody grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and leaned against the island as he cracked it open. “Some of the guys thought it would be meaningful to wear our jerseys instead of our jackets during the service.”
“Great,” I mumbled and closed my bedroom door.
The street leading up to the Cathedral of St. Paul was crowded with people, some making their way to the church to pay their respects, others gawking at the people coming and going. Bloodthirsty reporters and cameramen tried to get as close to the church as they could, all trying to snap pictures of crying teammates or get the money shot of the grieving widow.
“Try not to break any cameras today, okay?” Brody said smugly, as if he were reading my mind.
Ignoring his comment, I put my sunglasses on and squeezed my jersey tight in my hand.
Just get through today.
Brody pulled into a parking space a block from the church, put his truck in park, and sat back in his seat without turning the engine off. Looking straight ahead, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You ready for this?”
“Not even kinda.” I stared straight ahead and zoned out too. The sun was shining bright and the sky was crystal blue, not a cloud to be seen. A perfect Minnesota day, except for the absolute horror of burying my best friend.
Brody turned his truck off and grabbed his jersey out of the backseat. “Let’s get this over with.” We hopped out and started making our way down the street. The closer we got to the church, the thicker the crowd grew. We both kept our heads down and tried to make it through the hordes of people without being recognized. Once we finally got to the steps leading up to the cathedral, the whispers were too loud to ignore and the cameras were clicking as fast as they could.
“Move please,” I barked at a couple people in jogging clothes on the steps, clearly there being nosy pains in the ass.
“Geez,” the girl snapped as I brushed past her.
I stopped and started to turn back around, but Brody was behind me and pushed me to keep moving up the steps. His nostrils flared and I knew he was annoyed too, but he shook his head. “Don’t. Not worth it.”
We walked through the big wooden doors of the cathedral into the lobby. People dressed in all black stood around talking and laughing as if it were just a normal day.
Fucking assholes.
Brody craned his neck, looking into the actual church. “It looks like most of the guys are here and they have their jerseys on. You gonna change?”
I nodded.
“All right, me too. Let’s do that fast.”
We hustled off to the restroom and changed into our Wild jerseys, heading back toward the church as soon as we were done. Brody was taking his time walking through the lobby, shaking a few hands and chatting with people, but I was in no mood, so I passed him quickly and headed up the aisle, looking for a familiar face. As I scanned the pews already filled with people, Darla stood up and waved at me. I waved back and walked toward her, Kacie, and the rest of the group.
As I got closer, Darla stepped out from the pew and stared at me with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. Her chin started to tremble and a tear fell down her cheek as she pulled me in for a giant hug, which I gladly accepted.
“Hey,” she said softly into my shoulder.
I cleared my throat. “Hey.”
We hadn’t seen each other since the accident. She’d been swamped at work while Mike was in the hospital, and when the whole gang had a little get-together the other night at Mike and Michelle’s house, I ignored the thirty or so texts from various people begging me to come over.
“How are you?” She sounded sincere, like she actually gave a shit how I was doing. I wanted so badly to tell her how I really was, but lying was always easier.
“I’m fine.”
She pulled back and looked at me with puffy, red eyes, shaking her head. “No you’re not.”
I smiled, kissed her cheek, and scooted past her into the pew next to Kacie, Michelle, Andy, and a few other friends. They all chatted quietly while I stared straight ahead at the big wooden casket.
Do not cry.
Next to the casket were more flowers than I’d ever seen in my whole life, and pictures of Mike were everywhere. Some hockey pictures, but mostly pictures of him with his parents when he was little, him with Taylor, and of course him with Michelle and their kids. His jersey was draped across the end of the closed casket with his stick leaning against it. The sight of it was almost too much for me.
Brody slid past me in the pew and sat down between Kacie and me just as the organ started playing.
Once the priest started his service, I zoned out. I wasn’t religious so most of it went over my head, plus I’d started panicking about what I was going to say when it was my turn. There were way more people there than I’d been anticipating.
Not surprising, though. Mike is a great man. Was.
I didn’t think I’d ever get used to talking about him in the past tense.
“Lawrence Finkle.”
The sound of my name jolted me back to reality.
Game time.
I took a deep breath and stood up as Darla grabbed my hand. She gave me a tight smile and squeezed gently, trying to comfort me. I appreciated her gesture, but it was pointless.
A week ago, my life had been normal. My biggest worry had been who I’d be spending the night with or did my bike need to be washed, but now, I was sitting in a church with my best friend dead in a box, dreading walking up the steps in front of me. The priest cleared his throat, pulling me out of my own head once more. I was still standing in the pew aisle, staring down at Darla, though I wasn’t really looking at her. More like through her. She pulled her brows together and leaned in close.
“You okay? Can you do this?”
I swallowed a lump the size of a golf ball. “No, I’m not okay, but I have to do this.”
She offered up another sympathetic smile as I let go of her hand and scooted out into the center aisle. My shoes echoed loudly with each step I took toward the front.
I made my way up a couple of stairs toward Father O’Malley. He pursed his lips together and nodded toward the podium as he took a step back. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was turn to face all those people, but it was too late to back out now. I spun on my heel and wrapped my hands around the edges of the wooden podium without looking up.
I felt their eyes on me as I stared at the ground, taking my time. Some of them knew me, some of them didn’t, but they were all focused on me, wondering what I was about to say. It was a lot of pressure to have a couple hundred people hanging on my every word, praying that I’d be the one to come up with the magical phrase, some fucking generic sentence that would make them feel better. Take away their pain. How could I take away theirs when mine was so real, so raw?
I deserved this pain, every second of it.
It was my fault we were there.
I’d caused this.
I’d killed him.
Father O’Malley cleared his throat again, and I turned my head to the left slightly, looking at him out of the corner of my eye. He stepped forward and held his hand over the microphone. “Can you do this, son? If you’re not ready—”
“No, I’m ready,” I protested, harsher than I’d meant to. I looked at him and attempted a smile. “I just needed a minute. Sorry.”
“Take your time.” He moved his hand away from the microphone and stepped back again, folding his hands in front of him.
Obviously I can’t. You keep clearing your fucking throat.
I took another deep breath and looked out into the crowd. “Hi.”
Really? Hi? Nice start, asshole.
“Some of you know me, some don’t. My name is Vip—Lawrence Finkle—and I want to be here as much as you all do.”
A small gasp came from somewhere in the back of the church, and a couple people frowned in confusion.
“Please bear with me. I’m not a plan ahead kind of guy, so I’m winging this today. What I meant by that was I’d rather be anywhere on the planet other than here, saying good-bye to our friend.” I took a shaky breath, determined not to lose it, certainly not up there in front of all those people.
“Calling him a friend is an understatement. He wasn’t my friend; he was my brother. Not biologically of course, but we were as close as brothers, maybe closer. I was there when his kids were born, and he was there… for me. All the time. That’s the kind of guy he was. He’d give you the shirt off his back if you asked.”
I sighed and ran my hands through my hair. “I don’t know why I’m telling you guys this. If you’re sitting in this room, you already knew that about him. I’m guessing every single person in here can think of some way he helped them, or better yet, some goofy story about how he made them laugh.”
The low rumble of laughter vibrated through the room.
“What happened is… terrible, but that’s not how I want to remember him. I want to think about all the times he made me laugh in the locker room. I want to remember him grinning like an idiot when he sent me a picture of him holding his new baby girl. I want to remember the man who had my back no matter what, no questions asked, and trust me, sometimes he should’ve asked questions.”
Another small wave of laughter and I wondered if I’d said enough. I just wanted to be done. I looked down at Michelle, who was sitting in the pew with tears in her eyes, gently rocking a sleeping Maura back and forth while Matthew rested his head on her arm. Maura would never know her father. Matthew would never remember his father, and it was all my fault. Michelle leaned down and gently kissed the top of Maura’s head, and the lump in my throat came back, bigger than the last time. I blinked hard and shook my head slightly, trying to regain my composure. I needed to stop; it was too much. Way too fucking much.
“Anyway… Big Mike was amazing, but you all know that or you wouldn’t be here. Thanks for coming,” I finished abruptly and stepped down the steps as the crowd started chattering quietly, probably about my sudden departure, but I didn’t give a shit. Once again, their eyes were glued to me, the weird guy who could barely form a complete sentence up there. As I walked down the aisle, I paused briefly at the row I’d come from. Darla scooted in so I could sit down, but I shook my head. “No. I’m leaving, but do me a favor, please?” I handed her a small box of Lemonheads. “Set these on the casket at the end, okay?”
She blinked and frowned up at me, completely confused. “Wait. Aren’t you—”
“No, I need to go,” I interrupted and rushed toward the exit.
I needed air.
I needed to escape.
I headed straight out the doors.
Straight out into a shitty world that would never be the same again.