Cement Heart(29)

“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.”