I woke up with a start in the still-dark hours, time granting me one more hour of my own misery within which to drown, hands stretched out to help me pushed away by the sheer weight of the memories pressing in like waves, their cold tendrils of thoughts unfinished washing over my skin.
Lochlan is standing in the doorway with a single cupcake, lit with a lone birthday candle.
Wish the fucker a happy birthday and let's get on with our goddamned lives.
He brings me the cake and I blow the candle out, carefully. Then he takes the candle out and we divide the cupcake in half, eating it for breakfast, leaving crumbs in our bed. He kisses me before I am finished and I laugh but it ends in a sob and suddenly I can't speak.
Here's to the fifty-one you didn't get, Preacherman, Lochlan says spitefully, stretching out on his back to look at the ceiling while I finish my half. I nod to myself in the dark. Jacob's fifties would have been incredible as he finally got the respect he wanted so badly in his thirties but between his good lucks and unconventional ministering style it was hard for people to take him seriously, though once you knew him it was exceeding easy to balance him on a pedestal so high you could no longer see him for the reach, and then for the sun.
I figured out why you're stuck, Peanut. I am finished my cake now, licking my fingers and thinking about ghosts who take up so much space in my life even filling it the way I have still leaves these wide open spaces and they're all holes, today.
Why is that? My hands are beginning to shake.
Because. Lochlan leans toward me, leaning on one elbow. He is the only man who ever fucked up your life and never came back to try and fix it.
I am surprised. He's not wrong. Lochlan came back, making sure he always had a hand in my life, that I've never been too far out of reach, Caleb came back to try and atone for his sins, and Ben changed every single face of his entire existence in order to be who I needed him to be.
But Jacob just left. It's the biggest betrayal of all and I don't know what to do with it.
Jacob leans in and whispers in my ear. He just wants to look good and make me look bad by default.
And I laugh and choke on icing and tears as a shiver runs down my back.
He's not wrong either.
Too bad he doesn't get a say anymore.