tears filled my eyes as I watched a blurry Rainey fall into her dad’s arms, sobbing. I checked on her every day after that. My only thought was that Garrett would want me to help her. I just kept thinking if it had been me instead, what would Garrett have done? The answer was simple. He would help our mom and dad survive. So, thinking logically, I knew he would add Rainey to his list for me. I would deal with my own loss later, they needed me and I would do what my brother would expect. I wouldn’t let him down.
At the funeral Rainey sat beside me and I could still see the indentations her nails had made on my hand. The pain had been welcome at the time. It helped me to control my own grief, feeling hers. Rainey had loved Garrett, like I did. She knew him inside out, like I did. She was everything to him, and now she was everything I had left of him. I would take care of her for him, and for myself.
Chapter 2
Rainey
I must have fallen asleep during Caitlynn’s visit, or passed out from sheer exhaustion. I hadn’t slept much in the endless days since Garrett died. Either way, I awoke to the ring of my cell phone and answered it expecting to hear his voice. Max’s voice brought me back to reality. How many times over the past week had I temporarily forgotten through sleep or shock, only to be reminded again and again.
“Rainey, are you there?” Max whispered.
“Yeah, I’m here Max. What time is it?” My clock was blinking red, telling me someone must have unplugged it.
“2:30. Sorry, I thought maybe you couldn’t sleep either.”
“It’s okay, I can’t seem to sleep for very long without a nightmare waking me, so I can realize I’m living a nightmare in real life too.”
“It’s not getting any easier, is it Rainey?”
“No, it’s hell. He’s the lucky one Max. At least he isn’t suffering. You and I are the ones suffering. How are your parents?”
“It’s not pretty, that’s for sure. They keep watching me, worrying I will up and die on them too.”
Max was Garrett’s fraternal twin, but the two were nothing alike. Garrett was, as I’ve said before, the happy, outgoing, popular one. Max was like me, introverted, serious, and on the creative side. While Garrett was a football player and lived to be physically active, Max spent his time playing piano and guitar, and singing songs he wrote himself.
Those weren’t their only differences, they also looked nothing alike. If they HAD been identical, if Max had Garrett’s golden blonde hair, or his deep green eyes, I couldn’t have stood it. It would have torn my already broken, bleeding heart from my chest. But no, Max was just Max. Tall, like Garrett, but thin and lanky. His hair was longer and a rich, chocolate color, his eyes a tropical blue, nearly turquoise. Max had taken after their very pretty mother, while Garrett looked like their even more handsome dad. Caitlynn once said the twins were equally hot, it just depended on your type. Did you prefer an athletic, muscled football player or a long haired, sexy musician? I thought she was stereotyping them a bit, but I saw her point.
“What’s going to happen to us Max? How are we going to survive without him?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“We will survive because he’d want us to. He’d want us to go on, and he’d want us to live. Crying, hurting, suffering won’t bring him back. Nothing will.”
I wanted to tell Max it was my fault he was in that car, my fault he left the guys trip early. Twelve of the football players had gone to Arizona. They were staying at Jordan, the quarterback’s condo on the river. He had been there only four of the seven days they had planned to be gone when we got in the fight, a stupid fight about nothing important. I was missing him, angry that he chose to be with them when he could’ve stayed with me. I was jealous about the party I could hear going on in the background, girl’s laughter making me insecure. I had no reason to be, he never so much as looked at other girls. We’d been together since the middle of eighth grade, Christmas Eve to be exact. I had come home from dinner at my grandparent’s house and found a small wrapped present on my porch. Inside