The moment I read the first words of his third letter—You’re not going to like this next part, Gia—I sighed heavily, shutting my eyes tightly.
Twenty days, and summer was crawling slower toward the end. Senior year was on the horizon but I couldn’t fully join my friends’ enthusiasm when they spoke of what they planned on doing with their lives, the schools they want to attend, the people they dream of meeting. I smiled and I nodded and I answered all of their questions, but my heart wasn’t in it. It was still on the edge of a bridge, in the middle of a field.
It was still beating in my chest, but it was still broken.
He and I used to talk about our future. Looking back, recalling the reserved look on his face when I spoke of us lately, I realized that it wasn’t a fear of commitment.
He had known for some time what his fate was going to be.
That led me to diving into his next letter with a new ferocity. I wanted to get to the bottom of why he did what he did, and I wanted to know every piece of his mind he was willing to posthumously show me.
I would take anything right about now.
Well, he started.
I’m going to need you to do me a big favor.
The moment you get this letter, I want you to start moving. If you’re not ready to start the day, I want you to get dressed. Get your car keys and tell your parents that you’ll be back—maybe give them a hug because they truly care about you, angel, and they must be worried for you. Get in your car and start to drive.
There is someone I want you to go to. Someone I want you to help.
~*~
When I first met Devon Mueller, my first thought was that he was a chauvinistic pig.
My first impressions on people tended to be astoundingly accurate.
He had taken me home to meet his family and I had been so, so nervous. I didn’t know if my dress was too short or if it was too casual, and he was no help. He told me that I always looked perfect, and although it made my heartbeat speed up and sent blood pooling into my cheeks, his opinions were unhelpful. I stumbled inside, smoothing my skirt again before my hand moved nervously to my hair, as if checking to make sure my curls were still as unruly as ever.
His mother had been smiling. I had been taken aback at first by how beautiful she was.
Her name was Brenda and she was a wonderful, caring mother. She was a single mother—he told me that his parents had been divorced for a great deal of years now—and she had the protective instinct over her children that came with a doting parent. He had her sea green eyes but she had a head of dark hair, falling down around her face in soft waves so unlike the hairs on my own head, making me wince. Her smile was as bright as staring straight into the sun and her voice was soft and musical, enchanting. She was sweet and kind and I immediately felt myself begin to relax with her. He had squeezed my hand, trying to give me some of his strength, and I smiled up at him so widely that he had smiled back on reflex, something dancing in his eyes.
The moment hadn’t necessarily been shattered as much as it had just plainly been disrupted by the entrance of his older brother. Devon walked in with confidence and a smirk that let me know he would always have something to say.
And he did.
The first words I ever heard him speak were a remark on my league, the first movement he made toward me his lingering eyes. He slumped toward me, still wearing that cocky smirk of his, and he held out his hand as if he expected me to shake it, like I would believe that was his game. My eyebrows climbing higher and more apprehensive with every passing moment, I surrendered by placing my hand in his.
As I expected, the moment he captured my hand, he pressed them to his lips. The move was so smooth that it must have been practiced and mastered on a million girls before me. Even though my other hand was connected to his little brother, he didn’t once look away from my eyes, trying to entrap me with the eyes that were so different from his brother’s.
The boy with the chocolate brown eyes was so different from his brother. It was hard for me to believe they were even related.
I quickly realized that he was quite the player, and probably a damn good one. He had that uncaring attitude and that simple handsomeness, like he wasn’t even aware of it even though he used it to his advantage every passing moment. He was smart and calculating, always judging and analyzing the moves I made before he made his own, as if we were engaged in a chess game. As if that chess game was our lives.
He had the same dark hair as his mother but his was gelled up in that stylishly messy way that only the good-looking bad boys could pull off, his smile a sin and his eyes seeing too much. He knew all of the right words to say and he used his looks to send his messages. His long body was sprawled out but still safely curled and tucked, his posture always casual but I read a tension in the eyes he thought that no one could unlock. He dressed in that effortlessly fashionable way with low-hanging jeans that hinted at the boxers he wore underneath—red plaid—and a dark dress shirt, feigning as though he dressed up for the occasion.
From the moment I met him, I knew that Devon was just another kind of person altogether. Over the year I had known him, I realized how much of an understatement that had been.
He might have been only five years older than his brother and me, but there was something about his eyes that made him seem older, aged. Wizened by whatever he had seen.
Knowing the story of their father, I figured that I understood.
That being said, I studied Devon the same way he studied me, but we didn’t back into our individual corners because we stood on common ground. In fact, I think that was what made it worse.
We clashed. We butted heads often and when we were in the same room we usually ended up dissolving into an argument, even if it was over something trivial or otherwise pointless and unnecessarily. It was like a constant pissing contest with him, one I didn’t even want to compete in, but he made it impossible to decline. When Devon got ahead, I wouldn’t stop until I turned the tables.
It got to the point that I just ended up avoiding him entirely. When I would get a text message from the boy I loved asking me to come over when his brother was there at the same time, I would find an excuse not to come. I know that he noticed—they probably both noticed—but I never got asked. I never knew what I would even say if I did.
The last time I saw Devon was before his little brother died, two months before. When I had seen him at the funeral, a defeated stance to his shoulders and pain concealed in his eyes, it made me wonder why I had hated him so much.
Why I had let him get to me.
I had still avoided him during the funeral even though I could feel him watching me, waiting for me to look up and for my gaze to fall onto his. I never did. I didn’t want to look into his eyes and see that he knew what had happened here.
I didn’t want to see the way that Devon was going to look at me knowing that I couldn’t save his brother.
But the words were written on the page, and I had sworn to the starry skies he used to watch that I would do as he asked of me.
I know that you don’t like him, sweetheart, but Devon is my best friend.
He’s always been there for me, no matter what. He’s stood up to our father for me even if he knew that my father would just turn on him, too. He’s fought my battles even if I didn’t want him to, but what counted was that he cared so much that he blindly threw himself into a situation like that so selflessly. He’s my older brother no matter what and I know him in a way that no one else does.
He’ll pretend like my death hasn’t destroyed him, but it will all be a lie.
I want you to find where he is—whether that be at my house or at his apartment. Talk to him. Let him know that he still has someone around that he can talk to.
He needs this, Gia. I’m begging you.
Please help him.
I was going to help Devon Mueller.
Even if he wouldn’t let me.
~*~
I knew the moment I stepped out of the car in front of Brenda Mueller’s small three-bedroom, two-bath duplex that Devon was home. This loud music, all bass, shook the ground beneath my feet, vibrating the windows and threatening to send them shattering with every beat. I closed the car door, sighing to myself as I started toward the home.
The man who shared the other side of the duplex was sitting on his front porch, as normal. He was frowning.
“Can you tell him to stop that pounding?” he demanded of me as I walked past. “I tried knocking, but he can’t hear a damn thing.”
“I don’t think I’m the right person to tell him what to do,” I replied.
I didn’t stick around to see what the older man’s reaction would be because it didn’t matter. I could ask, but Devon would only throw it back in my face and it would only be a fight. I had been asked to help this lost man, and I was going to do my damn best to keep my word.
I still had a key. Although it felt like a crime, I put it into the lock and pushed the door open, closing it behind me. Brenda was not home—she had returned to work—but Devon would have never heard me if I had knocked. Maybe that was the point.
I slipped the key back into my pocket before crossing into the familiar space, breathing in the familiar scent of cinnamon. It was somewhat of a monumental relief to see that it hadn’t changed.
The door to his bedroom was still closed.
But his pictures remained on the wall despite the pain. And I knew that, at least with Brenda and me, we were coping the only way we knew how.
Living.
I didn’t bother to knock on Devon’s door, either—he wouldn’t have heard me. And even if he had, he wouldn’t have let me in.
I wouldn’t have let me in, either.
Devon’s room was the same as it had been the first glance I got inside of it once, when I passed by the open doorway. Not much still sat in the room that he used infrequently because it was only a temporary arrangement, as well as the guest room, but it still had signs of telltale, characteristic Devon about it. Dirty laundry was strewn about the room and the large stereo sat in the corner and the walls were bare for all but a large mirror, which he probably used to admire his figure behind closed doors. I glanced around in disgust at the unearthly mess before my eyes fell on the bed, onto the man I had once believed I had hated.
Death teaches you a funny thing about life. I didn’t even know what hatred was anymore.
He was shirtless, and he was laying face down on the bed. One of his arms was burrowed underneath of the pillow while the other one held down the back of his head, gripping at his hair like he wanted to just pull it out by the roots. He still had on a pair of dark jeans with his striped boxers poking out, but his shirt was lost somewhere to the mess that was the floor. I stepped inside tentatively, my head pounding at the volume on the stereo.
He continued to lay there, unmoving. My heart squeezed uncomfortably in my chest as I reflexively wondered to myself if he was breathing.
I crossed the room to the stereo, locating the volume control and turning it almost all the way down, until it was a distant hum. I kept my eyes on the bed, waiting for his reaction.
Although it should have been muffled by the pillow, I heard him sigh.
“Home for lunch again, Mom?” he asked into the pillow, not even bothering to move his head. “Disappointed in my idea of coping still, Mom?”
“Is that a new hipster nickname?” I demanded. “I’m not a fan. Too maternal, if you know what I mean.”
In an instant, with the same speed in which lightning strikes through the sky, Devon shocked from his prone position. He scrambled up until he was standing on the opposite side of his bed from me, his hair rumpled and his eyes wide, a youthful look to his face despite that he looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. His eyes didn’t look all that alarmed because they looked too busy being sad. My heart tugged uncomfortably in my chest because I hated to pity people the same way that I hated pity in general.
His eyes fell on me but it took him another moment to process my presence. The moment he had, he exploded.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?” he demanded to me loudly and in a snarl, his eyes alight with uncontrollable fire. I wanted to flinch away but I stood my ground, my chin high as he continued. “I can’t believe you would have the nerve to use the key that my brother gave you, that you would come here as if you belonged here. I don’t want you here treading on my brother’s memory. You’re the reason he’s gone, and I don’t want you here, you evil bitch!”
I flinched.
He seethed, so angry he could spit. “Do you have anything you want to say to me, Gia, before I kick you out of my fucking house for good?”
I surprised us both when I asked him, “Are you doing okay?”
He blinked slowly, looking at me as if he expected me to be kidding. He let out a sharp bark of surprised, sour laughter.
“My brother is dead,” he said so sharply that I felt it digging into my skin. “In what way should I be okay?”
“Twenty days,” I said.
“What?”
“He’s been dead for twenty days.”
He looked at me, not saying anything. It didn’t take me long to see that he wasn’t about to, either.
I looked around at his room just so I would look at him. He knew what I could see. He and I both knew that his eyes were bloodshot.
He rubbed his hand over his face roughly before he sighed.
“What do you want, Gia?”
“I want to know if you’re doing okay,” I whispered finally, letting out a long breath, immediately taking another one. “I know that you and H—you and him were closer than you led a lot of people to believe. I wanted to make sure that you’re . . . surviving.”
I don’t even know if he heard the last part. He was still sneering because of my stutter.
“What, G?” he demanded, the devil’s advocate. “You can’t say his name yet? It’s been twenty days and you can’t even say his name out loud?”
I didn’t respond.
“His name is Holden, Gia,” Devon told me. He suddenly sounded less severe and more exhausted, like the years were being sucked from him with every breath. His shoulders slumped as he murmured again, “His name is Holden.”
He closed his eyes.
“His name was Holden.”
Devon Mueller looked like a burning man.
Before I knew what I was doing, I staggered forward a step, reaching out for him. I froze only when he recoiled from my outstretched hand, like one touch of my skin would burn him.
Slowly, I brought my hand back to my body. I used it to grip the opposite wrist instead, reminding myself just how loose the shirt I wore was.
My fingers tightened unconsciously. I looked up at Devon, meeting his eyes.
I was surprised by the weakness in them, the vulnerability that he normally never let show.
He looked lost.
Like he would never be found again.
Just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone again, and he was back to being the man that no one could read. The man that was completely untouchable.
The man who, when his friends probably thought he was spending the night with a supermodel, was really lying in bed at his mother’s house, crying over the suicide of his little brother.
“Just get out, Gia,” Devon sighed, everything slipping from his body with that breath. “Just go.”
And because I didn’t know what else I could possibly do, I left him there. I locked the door behind me and hesitated only a moment before I pocketed the key again, tucking it safely back where it would feel like it would always belong. I vaguely wondered if the boy from the letters was going to make me get rid of that, too.
I almost made it back to my car before I heard a voice call out, “Thank you.”
I turned back, surprised, only to realize that it was the old neighbor, that it was not Devon. That Devon was not grateful to have seen me.
The neighbor snorted. “Damn teenagers and their music.”
I didn’t even acknowledge his words. I just got in my car and I drove away.
~*~
He likes to pretend like the world can’t touch him.
But he’s human, Gia.
Not a lot of people seem to realize that.
He’s human.
He still has a beating heart.
And he can still be hurt.
He can still be knocked down.
I just want you to be there to make sure he gets back up.
-Holden
~~~~~~~~~~~
Part three :)
Pictured: Devon.
x Riley