Dance In The Rain

~27~ Funeral

Julianne's POV

"Why do you have to wear black to a funeral?" I ask over my shoulder as I smooth the plain black dress over my hips and watch the way it lays against my tummy.

At least black makes me look smaller

Tate tucks his white shirt into his suit pants and shrugs. "How the hell do I know? Of course Quinn would make us buy this shit."

He grimaces as he looks at himself from behind me in our floor-length mirror attached to the door. "I look like dad," he says in horror, as if that's the worst realization in this entire world.

And to be fair, it probably is

I smirk at him in the mirror and shrug. "Dad had gray hair. Yours is brown."

"Yeah, but sharing a room with my sister will help the graying process, I'm sure....."

He picks up his tie and puts it around the back of his neck, letting it drape over either shoulder. "Any idea how to tie this thing?"

I stare at him with my mouth open and he raises an eyebrow. "What?"

"Tate, we lived in formal attire when dad was home and we had to go to a million things. You have worn a tie since you were little."

"So? I never tied my own tie."

"Who did?" I ask in astonishment, not believing dad would actually take the time to do it for him.

"Cook....."

Pain sears my heart, and I nod. "I wish we could've went to his funeral....Do you think it's weird we didn't go to dad's?"

Tate stops for a moment in stunned silence, and then clears his throat. "Probably not as weird as me not even thinking about that before. I wonder if he had one."

"Do you think Holden knows?" I ask as I turn around and take the two parts of his tie, and start tying.

"Probably not a good day to ask him," he says, and then shakes his head as he looks down at me. "Hold up, you know how to tie a tie? What the hell?"

I smirk in embarrassment as I finish it, and straighten it against his neck, folding his collar down smoothly. "A few years ago I was missing Holden. I went into his room and found a few ties in the closet, so I YouTubed how to tie them and wore one."

"That's kinda weird," he says simply as he takes his suit jacket from the bed and shrugs into it. He looks back in the mirror and curses. "Now I really look like dad."

~*~

Holden has been unnervingly quiet the last four days. He has basically completely ungrounded me, which has been awesome, but it feels wrong or something.

Tate isn't taking advantage of Holden's inability to parent at the moment, but I can't imagine that will last much longer.

Not that I want Holden to parent, but I'm ready for him to snap out of it. I get that he's sad, but he's acting like his heart is broken, which is weird because we hardly saw Chippy. We would see her in town, and Holden would stop and chat, but I don't know. It's weird how hard he's taking this.

"You guys look nice," Holden says as we come out of our room, and it's unnerving how much Tate and Holden look alike right now. Their hair color is a bit off with Holden's coal black hair and Tate's chocolate brown, but other than that it's as if they're twins, just different ages.

"You apparently remembered how to tie a tie," Tate says with a small smirk, and Holden smiles back, but it doesn't reach his eyes like it normally does.