I sat down too, not expecting much from him. Over the few years he’d lived with us, I learned that Shane usually spoke in his own time. Some days he talked immediately, and others it took him a few hours.
“Carter hates cream in coffee,” he finally whispered.
I smiled. “Yeah, he do—did.” It was difficult to change my words from present to past tense when it came to Carter. I forgot that he wasn’t here anymore. “But he put way too much sugar in his. So unhealthy.”
Shane made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a half chuckle. “He’s always had a sweet tooth.” He dropped the spoon on the table, which left a drop of coffee there too. Then he raised his gaze to me, those brown eyes big and sad. I didn’t expect him to say much else, he never did. I think that’s what I hated most about this. He wouldn’t talk to me. I wasn’t much better, though. I didn’t want to talk about how I felt losing Carter either, but I knew we’d have to eventually. Just not today.
Today was about Shane.
“What happened the last few days?” I asked, afraid I’d make him bolt from the room again.
He didn’t leave. He dropped his head again, eyes downcast and hair hiding his face. His grip on his mug tightened and he raised it to his mouth, taking a sip. “I got drunk, did stupid things.”
“Do you remember it?”
“No.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anyway, it’s done.”
“It does matter.” I put some force into my tone. “You’re in college, Shane. You have your whole life ahead of you, you’re only young.”
“Maybe I’ll get cancer and die at thirty too.”
The words stunned me into silence and the hairs on my arms stood up as my stomach churned. I searched for words, anything, to tell him how I felt. All I came up with was, “Don’t fucking say that.”
Shane snorted and took another large gulp of coffee that must have hurt to swallow because it had to still be burning hot. He didn’t apologize again like I expected him to.
We sat there in silence, the void of quiet pressing down on me until I couldn’t breathe. I hadn’t even touched my coffee when I stood, escaping the room toward our—my—bedroom. I stepped into the connected bathroom and took a scalding shower, the scorching water burning my naked skin just the way I liked. I washed myself until it hurt and then shampooed. Carter had liked my hair longer, but I cut it last week. Tears burned my eyes. I didn’t know how long I stayed in there, but eventually, I’d have to get out and face Shane again.
Taking a deep breath, I slid on some shorts and walked out into the hallway. My home office was behind the door straight across from mine, and Shane’s room was to my left, with the shared bathroom off to the right. Water dripped on my chest because I hadn’t dried off properly, but I couldn’t be bothered with it.
The stillness of the house made me wonder if Shane had left, but when I heard a quiet sob from his room, I got my answer. Shit. I raised my hand and knocked on the door.
“What?”
I twisted the knob and peeked inside. Shane rested on his bed, and his hands were in his lap and a wet trail from tears shined on either side of his face. He’d changed from his dirty clothes to a fresh pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and his hair flopped wet on his head, which probably meant he’d taken a shower too.
Stepping inside, I shifted closer to the bed. “Sorry I snapped at you.”
He shook his head. “I was being an asshole. I shouldn’t have said that. If Carter was here, he’d have bitched me out for it.”
I sat down on the edge of the mattress and grasped his knee with a reassuring hold. “Yeah, probably. He loved you, Shane, and he never wanted you to be unhappy.”
“I just… don’t know how to live without him.” Shane combed his fingers through his wet mop of hair and sighed. “I thought he’d be at my graduation, with you, that maybe you’d have adopted a couple of kids by then. And when I started work, he’d be there to make sure I had my tie on straight, or to make sure that I didn’t look like a complete idiot.” He cuddled his knees to his chest, dislodging my hold. “Fuck I miss him, West.”
“Me too.” I folded my legs underneath myself on the bed and massaged my forehead. “I’m not going to pretend that it will be easy. We’ll struggle without him, but it’ll get better, I know it will. I need you to help me, though. I can’t worry about you getting arrested, because Carter will haunt my ass for it.”
Shane curved his mouth into a small smile. “Yeah, he would, wouldn’t he?”
I laughed gently. “You’re eighteen and I can’t tell you what to do. You’re an adult, but I am going to ask you to work with me on this. We can get through our heartache. Do you know why?”
He stared at me, eyes watering.
“Because we have memories of Carter. We loved him, just like he loved us, and fuck, I know it hurts. Waking up in my bed without him at my side kills me. It destroys me, but I go on because he would have wanted me to. And I promised him that I would make sure you were okay, and I don’t care what I have to do, but I will make sure I keep that promise. All right?”
Shane chewed on his bottom lip, and there was vulnerability in his eyes as he looked away from me. Carter used to do the same thing, when we’d first met, and we first began playing. I hadn’t thought about that since his death, the way he was my boy, and I was his daddy. Now, I was boyless, and the love of my life was gone.
“Okay.” Shane raised his chin. “For Carter.”
“For Carter,” I agreed.
For Carter.
Chapter 3
Shane
Turned out, I made it sober the rest of the week and got tested once. The jitters of being alone with nothing to do set in as the weekend hit. I paced the small house that had been my home, my refuge, for the past few years, but there was no relief from the feeling of being trapped. School wasn’t back in session for another week, the entire world restarted mid January, after all the holiday cookies had been consumed, and we weren’t quite there yet. I wanted to do something, go out, but I wasn’t supposed to bar crawl—not that I should have been in the first place. I didn’t have anyone I trusted myself to be around while I was mopey and depressed.
Fucking Teddy had proved to me he wasn’t a good friend. I frowned as snippets of that night out with him, before everything went sideways, filtered into my mind. Things weren’t that great even when they were good with Teddy. He was tall and handsome and could do this eyebrow thing where he lifted one up and looked a lot like a supervillain, but then he also sort of acted like one too, when you got right down to it. He didn’t give a fuck that Carter died, and he didn’t want to hear about it.
So to punish my brain for constantly throwing Carter and Teddy at me, I rooted through the cupboard in the kitchen, behind the fake mashed potatoes and seasonings that none of us really knew how to use, and found whiskey shoved far back in the corner. When I pulled the bottle out into the light, I actually had to wipe dust from the Maker’s Mark label. I wasn’t usually a big drinker. I might be a coward, but I’d never turned to alcohol when my life was rough, and things had been bad before. But today the red wax stuck to the bottle seemed to draw me in like a hummingbird.