One Day

Part 1 - Death

It's dark. There are cars everywhere – some parked haphazardly around the cul-de-sac, in the yard, at the neighbors' houses.

Jace is outside my mom's house but I'm not sure how he knows to be there. Did I call him? Did my best friend call him? I'm still wearing the jeans and t-shirt I chaotically threw on in the early hours of the morning when my mom called me in a frantic, screaming about my dad. Little did I know that this would be the outfit I would be wearing when I arrived at my mom's to find several EMTs trying to breathe life back into my father; the outfit that I would be wearing as we wait in the hospital for the bad news; and the outfit that I would be wearing when the doctor came out to say four little words that forever changed our lives, "He didn't make it."

On a day that my heart is broken in a million pieces, I find hope as I walk towards the boy that I may be falling for. This redheaded boy, who although we had known each other for six years, first meeting in the homeroom class we would share throughout high school, had somehow slowly crept into my life over the past couple of months and was standing outside my mother's house – in the middle of the road – holding out his arms.

I fall into his arms and tell him thank you for being there without ever saying the first word. I can feel his muscles tense as he holds me in his arms and whispers in my ear, "Are you okay?"

I lean back so I can see his face but he keeps his arms wrapped around me. "No," is all I can manage before I bury my face in his chest. He gently caresses my hair as he lets me cry into his shirt.

"I'm so sorry, Lay," he says so quietly that it gets lost in the wind.

"Thanks for coming by," I manage to say through my tears. He never met my dad, or any of my family for that matter.

"I can't stay," he says as I lean back to look at his face again. "I just wanted to run by and check on you to make sure you didn't need anything. I'll text you later, though. But call me if you need anything at all." He looks at me so serious and all I can do is nod. His hands fall from my back as he grabs both of my hands and squeezes them. "As soon as you know arrangements, let me know." I nod again, still not able to find my voice. He releases my hands but I can still feel the warmth of where his hands once were. I want him to wrap me in his arms again, I want to climb in his Jeep and let him take me away from this place, I want to be wherever he is.

"Bye," I say as he climbs into his Jeep and pulls away. I make it a few steps into my mother's front yard before my legs give way and I sit down in the grass and cry.

Thanks for reading One Day! I try to post each weekday and look forward to where this story takes us as it is a work in progress.

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