Lance

I hate this fucking place. It’s no place to spend a Saturday morning.

My shoes sink into the soil. It’s never solid. For whatever reason, the ground is always soft here and I don’t even want to imagine why that is.

Machlan comes here a lot. He makes sure the stone is decorated for each holiday and that the crew that mows the cemetery doesn’t damage the headstone my siblings and I had designed when our parents died. Machlan says he finds peace here. Well, he doesn’t say it like that, but it’s what he means. It doesn’t do that for me.

My steps fall with trepidation at seeing the black stone sitting near the back. There are purple flowers in the urns. It was Mom’s favorite color and although Machlan acts like a badass, and is one, really, he’s the one of us who remembers things like that.

“Hey,” I say to the stone, a flock of birds taking flight at the sound of my voice. “I know you aren’t here and that I’m talking to an inanimate object. Yes, Dad, that worries me too.”

There’s a bench Mom’s bowling league asked to place on their grave perched right next to the stone on the slab. I sit, feeling the sun on my face.

Despite the warmth, I haven’t felt alive in days. It’s funny, really. I’ve always been a guy who springs out of bed in the morning fairly excited about my day. But since Mariah and I stopped talking, since she goes out of her way to avoid me, none of that is true.

“You always taught us to be a blessing to others,” I say out loud, wishing my parents were here to answer me. “Told us we had so many advantages, so much to offer that was given to us by no work of our own, and we had to share that.” I stroke my chin, trying to get my thoughts together. “How do you decide what’s a blessing to someone and what’s a curse?”

“Depends how you figure.” The voice rings out behind me, making me jump. I spin around to see Machlan standing a few feet back. “Didn’t mean to scare ya.”

“What are you doing here?”

“The landscaping crew left a bunch of trash the mowers cut up around the cemetery, so I picked it up and threw it in the garbage over there,” he says, motioning over his shoulder.

“Where’s your truck?”

“I walked down here. Not too far from my house.”

“Yeah. Guess not,” I say, getting to my feet.

“What were you talking about?” he asks. “Yeah, being nosy, but you have a lot of shit going on and I’m starting to worry a little. You haven’t told us one fuck story in weeks.” He looks at our parents’ stone. “Sorry, Mom.”

Shrugging, I look at my little brother. “I’ve been thinking a lot.”

“That spells trouble.”

“Right?” I sigh. “Mom always preached about blessings and all that, but …”

“Look,” Machlan says. “If you take one thing away from our parents’ lives, take this.” He bends down and circles the date of their death. “Take that.”

The numbers are etched into the stone, a stark reminder that the end of their lives was marked on a certain day, month, and year. Still, his point is lost on me.

“I don’t get it,” I tell him, still looking at the etchings.

“Did any of us expect them to die that day? Hell, no. If you would’ve gone with them, you would’ve been right beside them in the ground and I’d be sticking flowers on your grave too.”

The thought makes my skin crawl. We were all supposed to be with them that July afternoon on the boat. We all opted out, choosing instead to do our own thing. When the news reached us, it was devastating to a degree I didn’t know existed. Every time I think it could’ve been me sends a shock wave up my spine.

I look at Machlan. He doesn’t flinch.

“How different do you think things would’ve been if they’d lived?” I toss the question out there, not sure if he’ll answer. It’s all a guess anyway.

“Who knows? I think it’s safe to say it’s changed us all in one way or another.”

“I’ve been thinking about Mom a lot,” I admit. “I wonder what she’d have to say about the choices we’ve made in our lives.”

“She’d be pretty happy more or less. More about Blaire’s successes and Walker settling down, less about my arrest record and your fighting this thing with Mariah.” He gives me a look, begging me to argue with him. I don’t. He sucks in a breath and blows it out slowly. “We can keep pussyfooting around whatever the reason is you’re here or you can just tell me. But I do have shit to do today.”

“I didn’t come here to see you. Let’s remember that.”

“Guess it’s your lucky day I showed up then, huh?” He sits beside me, his elbows resting on his knees. “What’d she do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing as in you aren’t telling me or nothing as in it was you that fucked up?”

I hang my head. “Nothing as in it was me who lied to her.”

He works his head in a circle, realizing this is a little deeper than some one-night stand I have to figure out. “What’d you lie about?”

“Listen, if I tell her the truth, it’ll put her in an impossible situation.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “Answer me this: did you cheat on her?”

“Nope.”

He seems shocked but continues on without commenting. “Did you hurt her in some way?”

“Nah, but I’m trying not to. If I tell her the truth, she might get hurt eventually.”

“Lord, you’re such a girl.”

“I am not,” I say, tossing him a dirty look.

“We’re in the twenty-first century, bud. Women can make choices. They like them. And, quite frankly, they get a little pissy if you try to take them away. Just throwing that out there.”

My stomach knots up as I consider what he’s saying. Mariah is an intelligent woman. She’s capable of handling her own business. Should I have just laid it all out there, no matter how embarrassing to me it is?

“I don’t know,” I groan, still unsure.

“Even if it means not getting her back?”

I hate the way he put that. It feels … final. I’m considering that when he taunts me more.

“Even if it means never feeling her—”

“Our mother is right there,” I say, motioning towards the ground. “Have a little couth.”

“Fine. Even if it means never feeling her in your arms again,” he says with a mock-sweetness. “I don’t know what you lied about. But I know you’re in love with that girl and you’re going to feel this way for the rest of your life if you don’t grow a pair and at least come clean. Maybe she loves you too.”

I’m zapped right back to a couple of days ago at Goodman’s when she said she loved me. She glossed right over it, but it’s the only thing I remember hearing her say.

I’ve replayed that single line over and over and held onto it like a life raft.

Women have said they loved me before. Lots of them, really. But even when they were looking me in the eye and professing their undying devotion, it didn’t register like Mariah’s words did. It didn’t feel the same. Not even Britt, the woman I thought I loved. The woman I’m sure now I didn’t. Not even close.

“You’re overcomplicating this,” Machlan tells me. He ponders this for a second. “Let’s go back to the blessings, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Mom didn’t say all blessings were pretty. She just said to find them, identify them, and use them. That they were given to us so we could do something with them, right?”

“I guess …” I try to follow him, but the surge of adrenaline in my veins starts to make it difficult.

“Take Britt, for example. If you hadn’t had that accident, you’d be married to her sure as shit. If that happened, we wouldn’t be here right now all pussy-whipped over Mariah.”

I turn my head to react to that, to smash him in the arm, but the weight of his words stops me.

Oh.

My.

God.

He’s right.

“What if Mom and Dad had lived? Yes, we’d all make that happen if we could, but we can’t,” he continues. “Let’s look for the blessings. Well, Blaire is a hotshot at her law firm in Chicago. Walker happened to be at my bar the night Sienna rolled into town. Us kids are really fucking close, something that might not have happened had we not had to rely on each other.” He looks at me. “You feel me, Lance?”

“Yeah,” I say slowly, trying to keep up with the thoughts pouring through my head. “I think I do.”

“Good.” He stands and stretches his arms over his head. “I got shit to do. Come by and see me at Crave if you need more professional opinions.”

He cackles to himself as he walks away, leaving me on the bench alone.

I consider everything that’s happened over the last few weeks, the things that have really affected me. Getting to know Mariah, hearing Ollie’s story, seeing Brandon start to turn around—all of those are blessings. But what if my story took a turn the day I had the accident? What if the one thing I considered a stain on my manhood is actually a blessing in disguise?

I plant a kiss on top of the tombstone and let my gaze linger on that date for a long moment. Then I turn and head to my car, my shoes sinking into the ground once more.