Page 88 of A Minute More

I stare up at my best friend and then let out a long sigh. It hurts to breathe, but my lungs keep doing it anyway. Fucking traitors.

“You have a house that you bought. It’s just sitting there….”

“I don’t want to move into that house when I bought it for him!”

Seth’s mouth opens and he shakes his head. “Fuck, you’re hopeless, Simon. Jesus. You bought him a house?”

“I know. I know,” I murmur. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But I saw it and I wanted it. I pictured us in it. I’m so fucking lame….”

Seth sits down next to me and pats my leg. “No, you’re not. You need to go to therapy or something.”

“I have been. I have.”

Seth’s surprised at this because I haven’t told him what I’ve been doing. But I have been going to therapy for a year. I started even before James passed. I needed it because I felt like I was falling apart. It hasn’t done much for me besides helping me to process my feelings and the reasons behind my actions. My therapist has given me zero opinions on Wesley, and I appreciate that. For too long I was told what to do.

I want to make my own decisions.

And I finally did. I made it.

And now he’s gone.

“You’re getting up and we’re moving you out of this place this week. I’ve already listed it for rent—”

“Don’t care,” I say, turning over and staring at the back of the sofa. The sofa that Wesley and I fucked on. If I close my eyes I can still feel him inside of me.

“You do care. Now get up. Get through this and be better. For Wes.”

I blink my eyes open.

“Show him the man you can be, Simon. Go make him fucking proud. Show him you can move on. And maybe, just maybe he’ll see it and move onwithyou.”

I turn my head and stare at my friend. “Do you think he’ll see…do you think he will know that I’m doing this all for him?”

“No,” Seth says, his gaze stern. “No, you’re doing this foryou.Now get your ass up and get moving.”

I debate it and then slowly stand. My legs are wobbly, my stomach rumbling, but still I move toward the bathroom.

“Shower and then we’re going to get boxes. Then we start packing.”

“Okay,” I mutter as I close the door and stare at my sullen expression in the mirror. I’m doing this for me, I chant to myself. For me.

And for him.

CHAPTER13

SIMON

SIX MONTHS LATER

“You’re back early!” Joe, the campus security guard says, offering me a wide smile. Since arriving on campus, I eat lunch with him once a week. He’s an older man, lonely, just like me. We’ve bonded over our mutual sense of loss, and I find that Joe is a far better listener than most people I know.

He knows all about Wesley.

One day, I opened up over an egg salad sandwich and blathered on and on until my throat hurt from talking so long. I was embarrassed once the verbal diarrhea stopped, but Joe just told me that he understood.

He lost his wife four years ago.

I wave and then duck my head. “Yeah, had some things to finish up before classes start.”