Trifecta

ACT III: Chapter Nine - Weak and Powerless (February, 2006)

Author's Note: NSFW Warning

"Everyone will understand if you don't want to go," Alex said, her voice soft and sympathetic as she watched me sit motionless on my bed from where she leaned against the door frame. "No one will judge you."

If only that were true... I thought with a wistful sigh before I shook my head.

"No," I said with a sharp bite to my exhausted voice. "I have to go."

Alex stared at me for several long seconds before she let out a sigh and tapped the door frame twice. "I'll be waiting for you downstairs then."

I waited until the sound of Alex's footsteps faded away before I ran my fingers through my hair and let out a rough exhale. "Okay, Denning. You can do this. You've got this," I muttered to myself and tried my best to believe what I was saying. It wasn't going very well but even as I stood up from where I had been sitting for the last two hours, I continued to hope.

Today was the day when we would finally put Lilah in the ground.

There was a piece of me that wanted to take Alex's advice and stay in bed for the rest of the day, but I knew I couldn't stay in my own sea of sorrow and self-despair forever. I had to keep putting on my pants and living life each day. I could do that for Lilah's sake even if I seemed incapable of accomplishing anything else.

It was hard to believe that it had already been three weeks since Lilah had passed. Every day seemed to go by in a haze until they all melded together into one jumbled memory that I was likely to repress.

If I thought that I was becoming useless when Lilah was sick, I had no idea what was going to happen to me when she actually passed. I believed so much that everything was going to work out but in the end I really should have taken Alex's advice and thought about my contingency plan more.

She couldn't have been more right about me being caught off guard...

I opted for my beat-up old glasses over the usual contacts today before I made the trek downstairs to meet Alex. She didn't say anything when she saw me, she only held out a hand that I took before leading me out to my car. Alex had been staying in the guest room for the past couple of weeks, helping me keep my pieces together since things fell apart and I found that she had the same soothing effect on me that Lilah once had. It was a catch twenty-two though, and I knew it. Alex may have made me feel better by being around to take care of me, but in the end she was just a replacement for Lilah. A rebound girlfriend, ironic as it was.

These things passed through my thoughts in a dreamy haze as I watched the world whip by me at sixty-five miles an hour. Even when Alex parked, the thoughts didn't stop spinning. In fact, they were almost worse now that we were here, in the town that Lilah and the rest of them grew up in. Especially since this was the first time I had been here with Alex since we were teenagers.

Alex could sense my stalling and with shuffling feet she looked over at me before mumbling, "I can give you a few minutes if you need."

For the second time today I fiercely shook my head in objection to her question and said, "No, I'm ready," before I let out a big, heaving sigh and stepped out of the car.

There were plenty of people already waiting around for the service to start when Alex and I made our way into the building, despite the fact that we were early. They stuck in small groups, either mingling or grieving in their own individual ways. I looked around at the variety of people that had come to grieve over Lilah and was unsurprised to see a mix of familiar faces and complete strangers. Lilah was the kind of person that seemed to influence folks wherever she went so having such a crowd seemed more than fitting.