Magcon BoyxBoy

Black and White // Cash

nash
_______

I didn't go to the funeral.

It didn't matter to me that it was a closed-casket service, I couldn't face my mom as she cried over her youngest son. I couldn't face my dad, who would try to keep himself together for the sake of my mother and sister, or my other brother, who didn't actually know Hayes that well.

I couldn't face Cam, and the fact that he'd be so disappointed I'd left Hayes home that night. I couldn't face myself in the mirror, knowing that this was going to rot me from the inside.

So I stood in my clean, pressed suit on the boardwalk, a light rain tapping onto the wood and spraying my shoes. The darkness of the sky suited my mood the way carnations suited Mother's Day, and gave me another reason to be glum.

If only, if only. I could've stayed home that night. I didn't have to see that movie, and come to think of it, I don't even remember the name of the film. Somewhere along the line I had missed where Hayes' life was sent in a downward spiral. I don't know if he ever meant to lay this guilt on my shoulders, but it had happened. I didn't even know that much rope existed in our house.

I was going to be asking myself those same two questions for the rest of my life. Why did I insist on going? What if I hadn't? What if, what if, what if.

"Your mother's worried," a voice said from behind me, and I turned to find Cameron in his suit, hands in his pockets and thin tie shifted to the side.

"Let her be," I replied, looking back towards the water.

"You should be there, Nash. They don't blame you, so stop blaming yourself."

"That's never going to happen, Cameron. You know and I know that we never should've left the house that night."

"If you're going to blame someone, blame me. I forced you to come," Cameron said, coming up to stand next to me.

"But I let you," I said, turning to face him. "Whatever, I'm not going back."

"Then I guess I'm not either," he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. We stood there for minutes on end, the ocean spray colliding with the rain and dampening my clothes even more.

"I know how you feel," Cameron said with a sigh after a while. "My grandma and I were really close, and one time, a couple days before she died, she was carrying a box to build this little toy wooden house for when Sierra, her, and I played. The box was really heavy, and I asked to help, but she didn't want me to, and the box wasn't that big anyways. A few days later, she died, but people didn't tell me for years why she did, and so I thought that making her carry the box killed her."

"I just feel so dumb," I said, my voice cracking as I leaned back on the lamppost. "I don't want to live with this. I don't want to live at all."

"Hey, hey, hey, you're okay. It's okay," Cameron said, pulling me in to hug me.

"It's not going to be okay, Cam," I mumbled into his shoulder, pressing my tongue to the back of my teeth to keep from crying. "I'm never going to be okay."

Suddenly his phone started to ring, and he pulled away to see who it was. After viewing the screen, he slid across it, holding up one finger to tell me it would just be a moment.

"But Shawnie, baby, you know I had to be with Nash today," he said into the phone after listening to the person for a moment, turning away from me. "Okay, we can do that later. We can do all of those things later." I huffed and started walking away, my coat thrown over my shoulder and rain droplets getting stuck on my eyelashes.

"I gotta go. Okay, love you, see you soon," I heard Cameron say, and then I heard him running to catch up to me as I walked back onto the pavement at the end of the boardwalk that stood in the ocean.