Page 14 of PS: I Hate You
And this way I only have to see Dom seven more times.
Less if we can lump a few states together, which I plan to.
The man watches me, and I try not to fidget under his silent scrutiny. And when I do fidget, I blame my scratchy tights and not the fact that my body always seems to want to lean toward and away from him at the same time.
Dom doesn’t answer right away, quietly finishing the process of portioning my brother. Only when we have the Rubbermaid containers stacked in a box, the table cleared, and I’m hovering by my bag, ready to escape his presence, does he finally speak.
“Okay. Let’s go now.” Dom grabs his keys, picks up the box with all that’s left of Josh, and heads toward the front door.
We’re really doing this. We’re really going to play Josh’s postmortem game.
After my mind fully grasped the wildness of the task, I half expected the responsible, no-nonsense accountant to say there was no reason to follow it to the letter. That the outlandish request was extreme, and we could find a practical solution.
When we were teenagers, Dom was always the reasonable voice in the face of Josh’s outrageous antics. He couldn’t always talk my brother down, but sometimes he managed it.
Then there were the times Josh was more persuasive, and Dom ended up playing sidekick in a senseless activity he never would’ve chosen himself.
This is one of those times.
My brother’s death must have been the ultimate debate winner because Dom is acting like Josh’s wishes make perfect sense. Here he is, ready to drive a state over to spread only a fraction of my brother’s remains with a woman who hates him.
Hell, maybe he hates me, too.
Most likely I just annoy him while also making him feel guilty, which somehow hurts worse.
Part of me is furious that Josh foisted this task on me without my say-so. That he’s using my grief to make me go along with one of his tricks.
But then there’s another open, bleeding wound in my heart that wants to do anything possible to connect with my brother again, even if it means playing his silly game.
When we get to the beach, we can open the envelope. I can read another thing he wrote.
Will the message be for me? For Dom? For both of us?
But Dom and I aren’t anus.
Maybe for a few weeks—years ago—we were.
A silly, naive bundle of days that meant too much to me and nothing to him.
While I’ve always hated the idea of being Dom’s dirty secret, I am glad that Josh never knew what happened between his best friend and me, and that he never had to choose sides. I’m not sure how I would have survived if Josh had picked someone else over me. Not after Dom already had.
Which reminds me…
As much as the words twist in my throat on their way out, I manage to ask the question that’s been quietly nagging me since the moment Dom slipped into his car at the same time as me in the funeral parking lot. When he drove away from the wake alone.
“Don’t you need to check in with Rosaline?” Even if the two arefighting or whatever, the guy should at least send her a text. “We’ll be getting back late. The missus might worry.”
But if you say your wife is coming with us on this errand, I’m out,I silently vow.
I tried to avoid them both in the weeks leading up to Josh’s death, dodging them in the hospital hallways and ducking out of my brother’s room to go work whenever one of them showed up for a visit. I thought of it as trading shifts so Josh was never alone. But really, I was being a coward, hiding from the reminders of how I wasn’t good enough.
Josh is gone now, and his final request only demanded I spend time with Dom. I refuse to suffer through this alongside the happy couple.
Dom pauses in the kitchen doorway, then slowly turns, and I watch his thick brows drop low, his expression confused.
“Didn’t anyone tell you?” His tone has a touch of incredulity.
There’s something big. Something I should know that I don’t.