Page 15 of PS: I Hate You

Something everyone else knows.

I cross my arms over my chest and glare, not liking that I’m in the dark, even though I firmly put myself here by never wanting to hear anything about Dom when I talked to Josh.

His gaze flicks down to my brother’s ashes, and I brace for what comes out of his mouth next.

“Rosaline and I are divorced.”

Chapter

Four

Two hours alone in a car was not enough time to come to terms with the fact that Dom is divorced. When he offered to carpool, I immediately shot him down because no way did I want to be in an enclosed space with the guy. But also, I needed the entire drive to work through the new information in my head like an equation.

How is it that the perfect couple are no longer together?

Dom and Rosaline were the model high school couple: the handsome straight A captain of the baseball team with the gorgeous debate captain and valedictorian. Homecoming King and Queen. They would have been Prom King and Queen, too, if Josh hadn’t convinced half the senior class to vote for him instead as a joke on his best friend. My brother wore the same suit as Dom and a black wig and insisted his queen waltz with him before he returned Rosaline to her exasperated—yet clearly amused—boyfriend. The summer Dom and Rosaline broke up—the one where he kissed and touched me and I convinced my hopeful heart there was a chance with Dominic Perry—was merely a blip of a mistake on their spotless record.

Once they got back together, they got married in a beautiful ceremony that both their families attended. Dom got a job at an accounting firm, and Rosaline eventually enrolled in law school.

All this info was fed to me through Josh, who relayed his friends’lives like they were on a hot-air balloon ride to perfection. No bumps or unsteady breezes. Just a constant upward trajectory.

And now they’re divorced.

“What the fuck?” I mutter to myself, not for the first or even the tenth time.

I can’t make sense of it. If I want to understand what went down, I’ll have to ask Dom.

Not going to happen.

If Josh were here, I could have gotten the details from him.

Or…maybe not.

After pulling my car into an open spot on the street that leads to the Rehoboth boardwalk, I consider the timeline. Dom said they’re divorced. That doesn’t happen in a week. This has been in the works for a while, and there’s no way they’d be able to keep news of it from their best friend.

Which means that Josh knew before he died and made no mention of it to me.

Why wouldn’t he say anything? Am I truly this cut off from what’s going on with the people from my childhood?

Isn’t this what I wanted?

There’s a knock on my window, and I yelp in shock.

Dom waits outside my car, standing by the door with an unreadable expression. I’m tempted to stay here and make him hover there like a creep until I get my whirling thoughts in order.

But then he holds up an envelope.

Delaware

The need to know what my brother wrote overwhelms everything else.

He’s not gone yet. There’s a piece of him in that envelope as well as the glass container I pluck from my passenger seat.

Yes, Josh rode shotgun.

Yes, I may have had a few one-sided conversations on the way down here with my dead brother.

I pop the door open, almost whacking Dom in the leg with it, but the asshole moves out of the way too fast.