We don’t go to the viewing. I’m glad. It’s always freaked me out, the thought of looking at a dead body, preserved to make it look like the person is still alive and just sleeping.
“I completely agree with you,” Nova said when I’d reluctantly told her I didn’t want to go to the viewing. We were sitting in her car, preparing to go inside the church. “Maybe we should just wait a few more minutes to go inside and then just sit at the back.” Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, but she’d managed to pull herself together for the most part.
“If that’s what you want,” I said, placing my hand on her knee.
She nodded, staring at the church, people wandering up and down the stairs, a lot of them sobbing. “Yeah, I think it’s what I want.” She finally looked at me after thirty minutes of just staring ahead. “The idea of going in there is freaking me out.”
I gave her leg a gentle squeeze. “Just remember, I’m here for you.” It felt strange saying it. I’d spent the last couple of years thinking solely of my pain and me. My loss. My inner agony and guilt. And now suddenly all my emotions were centered on Nova and her pain.
After the funeral I leave her with her mom for a while to meet up with Tristan, who drove out here for the funeral with Lea, Nova’s friend. I briefly saw him at the church, but he was with his parents and so I couldn’t go up to him. But I want to see him before I go back to Seattle, and make sure he’s okay. Make sure he’s still sober and not going to crack and fall apart like Nova was worried about.
After texting we agreed to meet up at this park we used to spend time at when we were kids. It’s within walking distance of Nova’s house and so I decide to make the journey on foot, despite how cold it is and that there’s three feet of snow on the ground.
When I walk up to the gated area, I find Tristan sitting on a park bench surrounded by piles of snow, smoking a cigarette, with the hood of his coat over his head, a slight flurry of snowflakes drifting down on him. I try to assess the situation as I hike through the snow toward him, pulling my own hood over my head.
“What’s up?” I ask, taking my own cigarettes out of my pocket, then lighting one up. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says distractedly as he gazes down at the snow with his arms resting on his knees. “I’m just thinking.”
“About Delilah?” I plop down on the bench beside him. It’s not like either of us ever really got along with Delilah, but at the same time we lived with her for a while, got to know the cracked part of her, saw the ugly shit that might have eventually led to her death. I remember the time I got into a fight with Dylan over his abuse toward Delilah, when I was high and could barely think straight. It didn’t end well. In fact, Delilah got mad at me for intervening. And even though the police haven’t found the person who shot her, I think all of us—Tristan, Nova, me—know it was Dylan.
“Yeah, sort of.” He glances up from the snow and I’m relieved to see that he’s not high. “I was just thinking about how many times we saw Dylan yell at her… we should have done more to stop it.”
I take a drag on my cigarette and slowly exhale the smoke. “I tried to intervene a few times, but she wouldn’t take my help.”
He elevates his eyebrows, returning his attention to the snowy ground as he puts his cigarette into his mouth and takes a drag. “Well, you did better than me. I just got high and overlooked it because I was too involved with myself.”
“I overlooked it, too, for the most part,” I say, frowning. “And the fact that she died that way… it f**king sucks.”
“Then why do you seem so calm?” Tristan asks, glancing up at me. “No offense, but I actually expected you to be a f**king mess over this.”
I put the cigarette up to my mouth and inhale. “I’m only calm on the outside and only because Nova needs me to be that way.”
“Are you two together, then?” he asks, grazing his thumb across the bottom of his cigarette and scattering ashes all over the snow.
It takes me two more drags before I have enough nicotine in my system to answer. “I don’t know… maybe.”
He nods, still fascinated with the ground. “Well, if you are, then good for you.” There’s a small amount of bitterness in his voice that makes me feel guilty, part of which is connected to Ryder’s death and the feeling that I owe him for that. It’s a gnawing feeling I don’t think I’ll ever truly be able to get rid of.
I reach up and draw my hood over my head, before inhaling another breath of smoke and exhaling it. “Are you okay if we’re together? Or does it… does it bother you?”
He pulls a nah face as he hops off the bench into the snow. “I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?” I get to my feet and trample through the snow after him as he heads for the gate. “Because you can talk to me if it does.”
He shakes his head, walking backward so he’s facing me, with his hands tucked in the pockets of his coat. “I’m fine with you and Nova being together. You’re better for her anyway.” He spins on his heels, walking forward and kicking the snow.
I’m baffled as I hurry after him, because I’m not better for her. She just chose to be with me, despite how much I don’t deserve her. “I’m not better than you in any way, shape, or form.”
“Yeah, you kind of are,” he says simply. “And besides, I don’t think I’m going to be with anyone for a very long time.”
“What do you mean?”
He’s quiet for a while, flicking his cigarette ashes into the snow as we reach the gate, where he pauses and faces me. “You know, after I got clean again, I looked at it as a second chance.” He opens the gate and then walks through it, turning his back toward me as he continues. “I mean, I f**king nearly died, for Christ’s sake, and so I should be grateful I’m alive.”
“Aren’t you?” I ask, closing the gate behind me.
“I was.” He stares out at the icy road as we walk up the side of it. “Until a couple of weeks ago when I found out I have hepatitis C.”
I freeze in place, stunned beyond comprehension. “What?”
He shrugs as if he didn’t just say something major and life-changing, eyes ahead, refusing to look at me. “Yeah, I feel like it’s some kind of cosmic joke. Keep me alive just so I can find out I have some stupid disease that might complicate my life depending on how things go”