He lifted his brow. “Why are you winking at me?”
“I’m not…my eye is twitching because—”
“Because you’re nervous. I know. You used to do that when I first met you. Glad to see we’ve come full circle.”
“I guess some things never really change, do they? It’s been seven years, but it seems just like—”
“Like yesterday.” He repeated, “It seems like just yesterday, and that’s fucked up. This whole situation is.”
“It was never supposed to happen.”
His gaze fell to my neck and then back up to my eyes. “Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Your fiancé.”
“I’m not engaged. I was…but not anymore. How did you know I was engaged?”
He looked dumbfounded then stared down at the ground for the longest time before dodging my question. “What happened?”
“It’s kind of a long story, but I was the one that ended it. He moved to Europe for a job. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
“Are you with anyone now?”
“No.” I changed the subject off of me. “Chelsea is really nice.”
“She’s wonderful; one of the best things that’s ever happened to me, actually.”
Punched in the gut.
“She’s really worried about you, because you haven’t shown any emotion. She asked me if I knew what the story was between you and Randy. I didn’t know what to say because there is so much I still don’t even know.”
“You know more than she does, and that wasn’t my choice. The bottom line is, he was a crappy father and now, he’s dead. Seriously, that’s all my mind can process right now. This hasn’t even hit me yet.”
“It was such a shock.”
“My mother is taking it really hard,” he said.
“How was she doing before this?”
“Better than she was back then, but not 100-percent. The verdict is still out, though, on what Randy’s death is gonna do to her mental state.”
The wind suddenly intensified, and misty raindrops started to fall. I looked up at the sky then down at my watch. “We have to leave in a few minutes.”
“Go back inside. Tell her I’ll be in there in a minute,” he said.
I ignored him and stayed standing there. I felt like a failure. I’d gotten nowhere with him.
Fuck. My eyes were starting to water.
“What are you doing?” he snapped.
“Chelsea’s not the only one who’s worried about you.”
“She’s the only one that has a right to be. You don’t need to be worrying about me. I’m none of your concern.”
It had stung harder than anything he had ever said to me.
In that moment, he’d violently thrown back and stomped on whatever piece of my heart I’d given him all those years ago. It disappointed me that I’d idealized him all this time, compared all my boyfriends to him, put him up on a pedestal when clearly he didn’t care about my feelings.
“You know what? If I didn’t feel so sorry for what you’re going through right now, I’d tell you to kiss my ass,” I said.
“And if I wanted to be a dick, I’d say you were asking me to kiss your ass because you remembered how much you fucking loved it when I did.” He brushed past me. “Take care of your mother tonight.”
The past couple of hours had been an emotional roller coaster of shock, sadness, jealousy and now…anger. Pure anger. The tears started to pour down my face in a stream that matched the intensity of the raindrops now steadily falling after he left me speechless in the garden.
***
“I didn’t know Randy had a son.”
I couldn’t count the number of times someone visiting us in the receiving line had said it. It made me feel really bad for Elec despite his crushing me earlier.
The smell of flowers mixed with the perfume of a dozen random women was suffocating.
Most of the people who showed up to the wake were either Randy’s work friends from the car dealership or neighbors. The line curled around the corner, and it was a little unsettling to see people having easy conversations, sometimes laughing as they waited to visit the coffin. It was like a cocktail party without the alcohol, and it was pissing me off.
I stood next to my mother who’d broken down completely after seeing her husband’s lifeless body for the first time since the heart attack. I rubbed her back and replaced her tissues and did whatever I could to help her hold it together long enough to make it through until the end.
Chelsea had convinced Elec to stand in the family lineup despite his initial resistance. I think he was just too worn out to fight it.