When I Was Theirs

30. Jared

30

Jared

M y brother looks peaceful.

The lines of pain bracketing his mouth, his eyes… they’re gone.

He’s gone.

And I am drowning.

Emilia doesn’t speak. She curls up against Ben, holding onto him, and she doesn’t move.

An hour passes. Another.

“Emilia.” My fingers barely brush her shoulder before I pull them away. “You need to… they need to take him now.”

There are people here. A hospice nurse came first, and then others. They keep talking to me, to Emilia, but it sounds like we’re all underwater.

I can’t breathe.

“Not yet,” she barely whispers. She doesn’t look at me. “Not yet.”

I swallow down the lump binding my throat together. “They need to know what he wanted. The… arrangements. Do you know?”

Why don’t you know? Some fucking brother you are.

I take a step backward. “I… excuse me.”

I push past the sympathetic, professional faces, stepping onto the balcony. The sunset, shades of gold and orange and red, feels like an insult.

He picked this view.

I suck in the cool afternoon air, trying to fill lungs that refuse to expand.

It hurts.

Everything hurts.

What the hell do I do now, Benny?