The Fight In You [18+]

21 - Right Here Waiting

"Will that be everything then, Miss Armstrong?"

I blinked slowly and opened my mouth to speak. "I um...I think so."

"I have some songs," Colt sighed from beside me. In his hands he carried a legal pad with lists on it's worn pages. "He wanted these played."

"Can I see that?" I reached for the yellow pad of papers and tried to ignore the way our fingers brushed. For the last few days, even when I had asked him not to, Colt was there. He knew all my father's wishes and they had spoken about how he wanted this to go. And evidently they were things my father couldn't talk to me about because we never talked about any of this. I passed the list to the man sitting behind the desk at the funeral home and I nodded. "These will be fine."

I wasn't making it easy for Colt. He kept trying to get close to me. He wanted to do what he could to help, but all I did was push him away. When we were done, I rushed across the parking lot even though I knew Colt was trying to talk to me. 

"Would you wait up, please?" he called out, his fingers grazing my elbow.

"I'm busy," I huffed.

"Can I take you to lunch?" Colt whispered, lowering his head to catch my gaze. 

I glanced away and slipped my sunglasses over my face, effectively hiding my eyes. "Can't. I need to get a dress for tomorrow."

Colt's shoulders visibly slumped and leaned against my car. "Okay. Well I wanted to ask you something."

I glanced away, obviously perturbed. Colt knew once I was in the house, he couldn't talk to me. He was keeping his distance like I asked him to no matter how many times I wished I could just take it back. "Go ahead."

"The songs? I recognized all of them as ones I had heard Charlie play sometimes except for that last one."

I glanced at the ground and shrugged my shoulders. "That song, Right Here Waiting by Richard Marx...he never played it because it reminded him of my mom. He said it was playing during a school dance but he didn't have the nerve to ask her to dance with him so he watched her dance with someone else."

Colt didn't say anything in reply, so I lifted my head to see him staring at me with unshed tears in his eyes. "I didn't know."

I shrugged when he reached for me, sliding out of his reach and moving to sit behind the steering wheel. "I gotta go," I eked out, my voice cracking. 

I didn't wait for him to respond and I didn't dare look back in the rearview mirror because I knew he was most likely still watching me leave.

"I'm so sorry for your loss."

I don't know how many times I heard that phrase over the course of the next two hours, but it was a lot. It was the go-to thing to say in that situation. Colt and I stood side-by-side, along with my great aunt, because we were the only family my father had. Charlie had wanted to be cremated with a small service. But this service was in no way small. So many people showed up to show their respect for my father. I was overwhelmed.