Sparkling Hope (The Eastburgh Devils Series Book 1)

I waited until my Mom, who was in an Uber, drove out of the sports field parking lot, and the silver car disappeared around the corner.

For the first time, I could breathe again and couldn’t wait to leave this place, Ethan’s favorite place, as his two friends had mentioned in their speech at the end.

I was so grateful to Weston when he approached me on the small stand and offered me his hand. It was the first time in a long time that we had this physical contact again. I didn’t know where we were standing right now and where we might find each other again someday.

It was all so much.

Weston was still standing right there when my Mom yelled at him. I knew it wasn’t right of her, but since Ethan died and Dad hadn’t shown up at his funeral, she had become stubborn and cold towards others.

‘Have you guys seen Charles?’ I asked as I walked over to my friends standing by Weston.

‘I think he went home,’ Aria mentioned.

Fuck.

He’d been slimming down all week.

I felt like he was just now realizing what really happened and that my brother’s death was real.

During the time after the funeral, he was a strong shoulder for my Mom and me. At first, I was uncomfortable with him seeing my Mom being in her dark room and me trying to get everything together to find a rhythm in my daily routine.

He was by my side the whole time, and now I will be.

‘Where are you going?’ Aria called after me as I was already running across the sports field, using it as a shortcut to get to where Charles was faster. ‘To Charles.’

To my surprise, Charles was sitting outside the front door like he had been earlier in the week, only this time, he was on the last step and leaning his head against the wall.

‘What are you doing?’ I looked at him gloomily and saw a flask in his hand.

‘Getting drunk,’ he sniffed.

‘Come on, let’s go in there together.’

‘I’m not going in there,’ he said in a panic, looking up at me with  red, underlined eyes.

‘You can do this. That’s what you used to say to me,’ I reached my hand out for him to put his in, ‘we have each other,’ I continued, trying to encourage him.

It felt overwhelming to get over myself to gather his things.

Before I went to get Charles things, Henry had kindly taken care of it.  I turned the key in the door lock, heard the safety click, and opened the door.

Again the cold settled on my skin, and the smell was a little different again this time. A bit stranger, and somehow it smelled uninhabited. Otherwise, it always smelled like aftershave and something cooked, which smelled so stuffy because Ethan had the heating on in every room.

This smell was now extinguished.

I turned on the light in the apartment, and Charles was still standing in the doorway.

‘Luna, I can’t. This used to be Ethan and mine apartment, and now that he’s gone, the place is hell,’ he sniffed and sighed.

‘I know, but if I can make it work, you will too.’ I held the front door open for him, and Charles walked in short, hesitant steps across the threshold into the hallway.

Charles didn’t even gaze at Ethan’s door but walked over to the sofa and rested his head on the back of his neck.

‘I hate it here,’ he hissed, drinking half of the liquor inside the flask in one big gulp.

 I didn’t know what to answer because I couldn’t really say if I hated it here. Instead, I felt a little more comfortable in this apartment and closer to Ethan. After all, it was his home, and I knew it would stay that way forever.

Charles handed me the silver flask as I sat beside him on the sofa.

The bitter liquid burned in my throat as I drank two sips.

‘Do you think it will get better?’ he murmured dreamily, and I looked at him.

‘I hope so, but I think it will take time. Ethan wouldn’t have wanted us to live on in mourning forever. That would be wrong,’ I tried to answer his question.

The truth was that I didn’t know if it would ever get better, but we would have to try and make the best of each day. I really hoped so, and deep inside, I was also convinced that it would get better eventually.

Jude and I were talking about it the other day before she left to go back to her parents in California, and we wondered when the moment would come when we would realize that it was getting better.

Sometimes I lay in bed thinking that the coming day could be good, but then it all comes over me again, and I know that the coming day and the days after will suck.

Since Jude told me she was pregnant, she had offered to visit the gynecologist with my Mom and me several times.

Mom didn’t go, no matter how much I tried to talk her into it and convince her that getting out and seeing Ethan and Jude’s baby would do her good. I went once, and it was a surreal feeling to see such a tiny baby on a screen and hear the heartbeat.

The day I went with Jude, we cried during that sound of little the crumb’s heartbeat.

It was nice to hear little crumb was doing well, but at the same time, it was sad because Ethan was supposed to be standing there with her.

He was supposed to be holding Jude’s hand and not me.

Ethan had always been good with kids, which I never understood because I found kids incredibly stressful and annoying, but he was always on such an intimate level with each child.

Jude flew out to California to be with her family over the holidays, and she will be staying there for the time being and taking the classes online.

I wish I could escape like her too.

I would have loved to fly with her and leave Eastburgh.

She continued to send me pictures of the baby bump and ultrasound pictures, which I printed for Mom and put on her nightstand.

 Jude should soon find out about the gender, but before he died, she and Ethan decided they wanted to surprise themselves with what the little crumb would be of the gender.

Suddenly the front doorbell rang, and while I looked at the door wondering who would ring now and, more importantly, why, Charles continued to stare at the white-painted ceiling and showed no reaction.

I opened the door, and before me stood Weston with a pillow and blanket under his arm and his gym bag in his other hand.   Behind him, Aria emerged, also carrying bedding and a bag.

‘Friends are there for each other, right?’ smiled Weston cautiously, and I couldn’t quite understand what was happening right now.

Weston entered the apartment and walked over to Charles.

‘I’m supposed to say hello from Lucy and Trevor. They were going to come over too, but his Dad is in town and invited them over for dinner,’ she mumbled in my ear while we hugged and set her things down on the sofa.

I opened the door more because Carter and Henry dragged a big mattress up the stairs.

‘You know I’m never going to do that again? Lugging a mattress from Aria’s dorm room halfway across campus,’ Carter complained, walking backward into the apartment.

‘Do you think I’m volunteering to do this? You can’t do that with Aria,’ Henry joked, stumbling over the doorstep.

‘I heard that,’ she called to Henry from the living room.

The two put Aria’s mattress in front of the sofa as Weston pushed the small wooden table aside.

Charles stood up and looked as confused as I was, not fully realizing what was happening. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Being here for you and Luna,’ Weston replied, and the two hugged.

‘Thanks, man,’ Charles patted him on the back.

The mattress was retrieved from Charles’s bedroom and the living room, quickly creating a large sleeping area.

Charles and Carter were already comfortable on the large sofa, which was the same as the one at my house, only ours was white.

Aria’s and Charles’ mattresses lay together on the carpet in front of the sofa, and while Henry sat on the bed and leaned against the sofa, Aria lay between his legs and leaned against his chest.

That left just Weston and me.

‘Can you order the pizzas? I have to go back home and get my stuff,’ I handed Weston a little slip of paper where everyone wrote down their pizza, which I would order from the pizza delivery place until I realized I didn’t have anything to stay here for the night.

‘I have everything with me. If you like, you can take a shirt of mine, and I have two toothbrushes, too,’ he said carefully as we stood in the kitchen.

I wanted so badly to say yes and accept his offer, and that’s precisely what I did. ‘That sounds good.’ It bubbled out of me, and I grinned slightly.

I liked the feeling that the thought of me getting closer to him put out in my body. I felt like little sparks going through my veins straight to my heart.

The moment I decided to hate him, I was subconsciously aware that this attitude was doomed to fail.

While Carter and Charles fell asleep on the sofa immediately after dinner, the others were already in the bathroom, changing and getting ready for bed.

Weston handed me a still-wrapped toothbrush and a shirt, which I had slept in a few times when my Mom and I still lived with him and his family.

In the bathroom, I thought about today and was glad when it was in the past, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I could sleep today. I turned off the light in the bathroom, and the only light that didn’t make me run into the sofa was that of the moon, which shone through the large windows into the living room.

My temptations to lie quietly on the mattress next to Weston, thinking he was already asleep like the others, failed when he moved and slid a little to the side.

I lay under the covers and on one of the pillows from the sofa and began to stare at the ceiling like I did every night, waiting until I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer and they would fall shut.

So much was going through my mind because so much happened today. The memorial service, this situation here, me lying next to Weston even though I swore to myself to stay away from him.

While I was thinking about everything, my fingertips played with the gold bracelet and the heart pendant.

Although I believed and hoped I could get some sleep tonight because I was not alone, there was still this fear. This fear of waking up in the middle of the night and waking up in this nightmare all over again.

Sometimes it was the feelings you were most afraid of, but at the same time, the ones that would set you free.

That I felt like I might get some sleep tonight because of him.

I wasn’t afraid of Weston.

I never associate his name with that feeling, but I was scared of the feeling I got when I thought about him.

The feeling of never loving him again the way I actually did.

I realized that this feeling could go away if I didn’t give it strength and give the small, strong part of me more strength to allow the love I always felt for him. The person lying next to me, despite saying that I hated him, did not leave my side.

My statement was wrong.

I didn’t hate him and never could, but I forced myself to believe it. I felt I had to allow this distance between us because when I thought of him, I automatically thought of the car accident but never considered that he was also suffering.

I took my hand away from my bracelet and placed it next to me on the mattress. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Weston’s hand resting on the mattress.

Slowly and cautiously, I found my way across the mattress to his hand until my pinky touched his hand.

My heart raced like crazy as I felt his skin against mine. Our little fingers intertwined, and a tear rolled down my temple from my eye because I felt how much my heart needed him.

‘I don’t hate you, but I talked myself into it so that the feeling that I miss you would go away,’ I whispered as I didn’t take my stare off the high ceiling.

‘Did it go away?’ he asked quietly to not wake anyone.

‘Not a bit.’

I turned my gaze from the ceiling to him, and a moment later, he leaned over me, took my cheek in his hand, and wiped away the tears rolling down my cheek with his thumb.

Very carefully, he put his lips on mine.

This kiss, this careful body contact between me and him, was like medicine for my heart. Our lips moved perfectly together, and I felt how much I was missing this.

He stopped kissing me and looked at me for a moment, nudging the tip of his nose against mine.

‘Can you ask me that one question again?’

‘What one question?’ he whispered softly against my lips, and I felt his warm breath which tickled.

‘If I want to be your girlfriend?’

I regretted saying that it was over between me and him because I didn’t want that.

‘Oh, believe me, Luna, we were never apart. I’ve already given you so many kisses on the forehead to promise you that in this life and in the thousands after, we are forever.’