With All My Heart → Transformers

I'm Here

*I don't own Transformers or anything affiliated with Transformers. I only own my original characters and plots. All rights go to Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg.*

The funeral passed by slowly, much to my despair. I didn't pay much attention to it though. After getting a good look at my best friend's coffin I spent the rest of the service just looking at the floor with a blank expression on my face. The preacher even asked me to speak at one point during the service. I kept my gaze locked on the carpet the entire time and just shook my head to decline him. After that I could literally feel my parents' worry for my well being heighten. I only shrugged it off though. We all had our own ways of dealing with grief and this just so happened to be mine. They didn't need to worry. It wasn't like I was contemplating suicide or something; I was just trying to understand how and why all of this was happening. It's been a week and there is still nothing about this situation that makes any kind of sense to me.

Being at the graveyard was much the same as the funeral only it was outdoors. While everyone stood by his grave and watched as he was lowered into the cold, wet ground where he didn't even belong, I stood by a tree about ten yards away playing with the leaves on the branches. Nate stood with me too. He probably thought I was losing my mind, and I might have been, but I didn't care. I was just glad he didn't try to speak to me. He just stood there and graced me with his presence for thirty minutes. I might have even found the smallest bit of comfort in it, but it wasn't exactly enough to make that much of a difference.

At the moment we were on our way to eat. To me, going out to eat was a celebratory type thing or something families did last minute when no one felt like cooking. First of all, Ethan's death was nothing to celebrate; second of all, even if no one did feel like taking the time to cook I would much rather have a home cooked meal than restaurant shit. Plus, I wasn't up for being in a building with a bunch of happy strangers. Either way I don't understand how anyone could eat in the first place. You'd think these people would be too emotional drained to even think about eating, but no. My grandpa, being the happy spirited person he is, is the one who suggested we do this in the first place. No one thought to argue with him, so here we were.

We were all now on our way to Olive Garden, the one restaurant we always came to. To me it was just another place we now had to go to without Ethan. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately-thinking of everything I now had to do without Ethan or things that I could no longer do because of his now permanent absence. This included training, our Witwicky/Hide sleepovers, our summer vacations to New York, and even pranking. I recall telling myself that I would never prank anyone ever again--and because of Ethan being gone I probably wouldn't--but if he were still here and had suggested it again sometime in the future I probably would have considered it. That boy was my ride or die, and there was no way I could continue any of that without him.

About five more minutes passed before my dad finally parked in front of the restaurant. I removed my head from the window and sat up. Without a word I opened up the door and hopped onto the pavement. Everyone was already here as I expected; I could see them through the entrance doors. You could tell they were waiting on us, because the moment we walked through the doors they all stood up and then we were being led to our table in the back of the restaurant.

On the way to the table Carly found her way over to me. She wrapped an arm around my shoulder as if to hug me, so I wrapped mine around her waist. Her and Sam were of course the two people that this affected most, but they were doing an impeccable job at handling it. They've both been through losing someone before what with Carly and her brother and then Sam and his dad, but I didn't want to assume that they were used to the pain. If anything they knew how to handle it in front of other people where as I did not. I just knew how to distance myself from everyone by not speaking at all and looking at the floor.

"I just thought I'd let you know how much I love you, babe," Carly started.

I looked up at her and gave her the smallest hint of a smile.

"Ethan loved you too, you know?"

I pursed my lips and nodded slowly. The tears were burning in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall, especially here in front of all of these people.

"I just want you to know that, sweetie. And just know that in time all of your pain is going to go away. I promise you that," she told me. She smiled at me and rubbed my cheek before going to sit down beside Sam.

I took a deep breath and walked over to sit down beside Nate. He placed his hand over top of mine under the table, and even as much as I wanted to smile at him I just couldn't. Instead, I just tightly wrapped my hand around his and squeezed it to let him know just how much I appreciated him being here with me. He promised me that he wouldn't leave me and he still had yet to do just that. That meant more to me than anything else.

Most of the hour was spent eating and talking...well for everyone else it was. Normally I would have been all over the salad, the breadsticks, and the seafood alfredo, but I was too emotionally drained to even think about eating. Plus, I wasn't really all that hungry either. I haven't been for the past week or so, and I doubted that it would change any time soon. All I really did was sit there and stare at the salad bowl.

"Kaelyn," my dad said.

I looked away from the salad bowl so that I was now looking at him. I guess that I really wasn't paying attention to anything. He was completely stripped of his suit jacket and his tie, only leaving a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

"Are you going to eat? You need to," he continued.

I just sighed and shook my head before turning back to the salad bowl. It was merely a glance though. My eyes flashed up to an empty seat directly beside Carly and directly in front of me. Adalyn had been sitting there earlier, but now she wasn't, obviously. That wasn't exactly what I was worried about though. The thing was that whenever we would come here and Ethan was with us he would always sit beside Carly and across from me. The fact that the seat was now empty just broke my heart into even tinier pieces.

All of a sudden I was having a hard time breathing; it was almost as if I were suffocating. I gripped the side of the table pretty hard, but not hard enough to bring damage to it. I needed to get out of here and I needed to get out fast.

"Kaelyn, are you okay?" my mom asked me as I stood up.

I just ignored her and hurried to the front of the restaurant. I pushed past several people trying to make their way to their tables and headed out of the restaurant doors. The fresh air was comforting, but it wasn't comforting enough. I began pacing back and forth in an attempt to control myself, but it didn't work. I began sobbing which eventually led me to begin hyperventilating. Many people who walked past me just looked at me instead of attempting to help me. They probably assumed I was crazy or something, but oh well. Let them think. I didn't need strangers trying to comfort me anyway.

It didn't take long for Nate to find me outside. The moment he saw me he ran over to me and unclasped my hands from my hair. The amount of comfort I received from his touch was enough to calm me down, but it still didn't help to cure the hurt that I wanted so badly to go away.

"It's okay, Kay. I'm here," he said as he pulled me to him.

I wrapped my arms around him and just cried. Getting over this was going to be much harder than I thought it was going to be.