Eighteen

David

“Sutton,” I said, cautiously placing a hand on her shoulder.

She was white as a ghost. Her mouth hung open slightly, and she looked like she might vomit or faint. I tried to draw her attention away from her aunt.

“Hey, Sutton, why don’t we get you out of here?”

“Hmm?” she asked, as if going through a wind tunnel.

“I think you need a minute to regroup.”

“Okay,” she murmured listlessly.

I placed a hand on her back and carefully maneuvered her out of the backyard. She felt stiff and motionless as the reality about Helene sank in. She was dying. Another person Sutton loved was dying. I could already see she was drowning.

We moved through the glass double doors into the cool, air-conditioned interior of Landon’s house. It was a giant open floor plan with high-vaulted, wood-beamed ceilings. Everything was contemporary rustic and looked like it cost a fortune. I was pretty sure that it was Landon who had the discerning tastes and Heidi who liked to accent things in pink.

“Take a seat.”

I gestured for her to sit on a barstool, and she stared blankly forward.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay. Your aunt still has a fighting chance. There’s no guarantee that this is the end for her. And, in either case, none of this is your fault.”

She tilted her head to look at me. I saw the years of sorrow wash over her youthful face. She was scarred from the pain of all the deaths in life. Internal emotional scarring that nothing could ever erase or heal.

“Sutton, you have a wonderful life. A son who loves you with all his big heart. Four siblings who think the world of you. Two best friends and a great job. You have…me,” I offered carefully. “You have so much. Your entire life isn’t just…this.”

“I know,” she said.

Then, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed me.

Her lips were soft and tender and inviting. These were the lips I’d been dreaming about long before she kissed me. Yet…this was wrong.

She was only doing this out of grief for what she had heard. Her sadness and her mourning and her pain had led her to this moment. I would never take advantage of her. I couldn’t do it. I wanted more from her than that, and it wouldn’t be right to take it in a moment of weakness.

With difficulty, I placed my hands on her shoulders and pushed her away. “Sutton…no.”

“No?” she asked in confusion.

“Why don’t we go for a walk and get you some fresh air?”

“But, wait…I thought this was what you wanted?”

“It is. It was,” I corrected. “But not like this. Not when you’re doing it in reaction to something else.”

She nodded, and I could see shame cross her face. “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s just walk.”

“I am sorry,” she repeated.

“I know.”

We moved out of the house and away from the rest of the party. Neither of us looked back to see what was happening. We moved farther across the backyard and onto the golf course that Landon’s house had been built on. A gravel trail wound around the course, large enough for a golf cart, and we walked along it, away from the house and all its responsibilities.

“I can’t go through another death,” Sutton finally said.

“You don’t know that she’s going to die.”

“With my luck…”

“That’s not true. It’s the grief talking. You have no bearing on whether or not your aunt beats her cancer. The best you can do is get to know her while she’s here. She clearly came here for a reason, and she loves you all enough to tell the truth.”

“Yeah, the truth. What a burden.” She shook her head and sighed. “I don’t mean to sound this down. I am happy that she’s here. I like her a lot and wish that we had known her our whole lives. But, fuck, it sucks.”

“It does. It really does. Death like that…even just the thought of death, it fucks with you. It shreds you from the inside out. Time might numb it, but it never really heals.”

Sutton’s eyes crept over to mine. “Exactly. How do you always know the right thing to say?”

I blushed and turned my face away. I felt a pang in my chest. I should tell her everything. Reveal the past I kept so close to me. That no one knew, and I never wanted anyone to know. But this was real, and she deserved my truth. Except…everything was still so precarious.

“David?” she asked quietly.

“My best friend committed suicide.”

It took me a second before I realized that Sutton had stopped entirely at my words. She was standing a few feet behind me.

I turned around to look at her. “What?”

“Your best friend committed suicide? You never told me that.”

“You never asked.”

“This whole year, you were here for me through what happened with Maverick. You never pushed me. You never tried to make me feel guilty about the pain. You never tried to make me get over it. You never even had a misstep where you just said something that I’d heard a million times before and was so over…like that stupid fucking phrase, Everything happens for a reason. You never said any of that.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why did you never tell me?”

“I didn’t want your pain to be about me.”

All the tension left her body. “Really?”

“Everyone grieves differently. Everyone’s pain is different. I could be here for you, but I couldn’t console you. Because no one could console me when Holli took her own life. They could be there for me, but nothing could change what happened. No one else’s stories made me feel better.”

“Exactly,” Sutton said. She reached out and tenderly, deliberately touched my arm. “Tell me what happened.”

My throat closed up at the thought of talking about Holli. I’d told the story before. It had been nearly fifteen years before, and still, it choked me up. “It was a week before school got out our sophomore year of high school. Nothing was wrong. Holli had always been…dark. Like she saw the world as bleak. But I’d known her my entire life. When it looked bad, she always got help. Then, suddenly, it was as if everything was finally better. She was really doing well in school, she had all these plans for summer break, and she’d finally gotten her first boyfriend. Then, I got a call from Holli in class. She’d skipped that day, but it wasn’t out of the norm. I didn’t answer. An hour later, her mom found her with a bullet between her forehead and blood down her white walls.”

Sutton gasped and threw her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God. That’s awful.”

“It was. Holli was really more like my only friend. She was smart and funny and quirky. She liked to play lacrosse and video games. She doodled on all of her notebooks. She could wear high fashion in one breath and ratty sweats the next and still look effortless. She had everything going for her, and she’s still gone. And there’s nothing I could have done to stop it…except answer that phone call.”

“You don’t know that.”

“And, fifteen years later, it still haunts me.”

Sutton nodded at me, understanding blooming in her eyes. It was like we understood each other completely for the first time. Something passed between us then that I’d never felt in my life. I’d felt connected to Sutton from the start. But having it out in the open, what had happened with Holli, seemed to change everything in a way I’d never thought possible. I’d wanted to keep it to myself so as not to burden her or try to redirect the conversation about her grief. But it was clear that telling her what had happened and why I was so attuned to what she was going through had opened her eyes.

“I don’t remember the last thing Maverick said to me,” she confessed.

“Does it kill you?”

“Yes. I try to remember constantly, but it’s just not there.”

“Holli didn’t even leave a note.”

Sutton sighed. “That’s horrible. I can’t imagine how that must have felt.”

“I think you can.”

“Different,” she conceded. “Thank you for telling me about her. She must have been very special to you.”

“She was. I would have liked to see the person that she grew into.”

“I know what you mean.”

We stood in silence. No longer walking down the golf course path. Just standing in the shade of a tree and looking at each other. We’d come to a mutual understanding, and I liked that we could stand together without it being awkward. With the weight of our pasts not weighing us down, but lifting us up.

“Can we start over?” Sutton finally asked.

“I think I’d like that.”

“I think I let my fears dictate my life. I don’t want that. I still have fears, but I want to live. I shouldn’t have let that hinder me in such a way, and I definitely shouldn’t have lashed out at you.”

“It’s okay. I knew where you were coming from,” I assured her.

“Thank you for understanding, but it’s not fair for you to have to deal with that.”

“I’m not dealing with it. It’s part of who you are. You can’t change how his death affected you.”

“I know,” she said softly. Then, she stepped forward, very close to me. “But I can change how I let it affect other people. I don’t think that it’s too soon for me to date. I think I’m ready.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded. “I know you’re not a danger to Jason. I think maybe…we should keep our romantic relationship to a minimum to begin with and see how it goes.”

“That sounds reasonable to me. I would like to be his friend though, if that’s all right.”

“Oh, yes,” she said with a broad smile. “He can always use another friend.”

“You know what?” I said, moving my hand to her waist and tugging her a little closer.

“What?”

“I think I’ll take that kiss now.”

She giggled. “Oh, yeah? Think you deserve that kiss?”

“Come here,” I growled.

I nipped her bottom lip and then melded our mouths together.

I had come to this party, thinking that the worst that could happen was an uncomfortable conversation or maybe getting kicked out. I’d never thought for a second that Sutton and I would somehow get on the exact same page. And, now, here we were. My butterfly was spreading her wings.