The Last Wish of Sasha Cade

I shake my head, then pull my hand reluctantly from his so I can pick up the note and read the final line. “‘I love you and miss you both, Sasha.’”

Elijah turns around, the tendons in his neck flexing as he gazes up at the church. “A town founded by a freed slave,” he says, looking back at me with a sparkle in his eyes. “I bet he started out with nothing, just like me. I think my ancestors would want me to attend college.”

“They totally would,” I say. It looks like he might say more, but he doesn’t.

“I remember that night,” I say, both because I want him to know and because I don’t want him to leave just yet. There’s still an hour until school starts and I want to spend it with him. “Mrs. Cade called my parents asking if Sasha was at our house, but she wasn’t. Everyone was freaking out and I spent a lot of time praying for her to be okay. I didn’t know Gran had died yet. In the heat of the moment, Mrs. Cade hadn’t even told my parents.”

“Do you think she’s right?” Elijah says, staring at the calluses on his palms. “That everything happens for a reason?”

“I don’t know. I think Sasha believed that, and maybe that’s all that matters.”

“I think we met for a reason.” He says it so quietly, I almost think I imagined it. Then he reaches over and takes my hand in his, my cold, trembling hand in his rough, warm and weathered one.

I go absolutely still, not wanting to ruin a single second of this moment. Elijah’s thumb slides across my palm. He stares at our hands as if they contain all of the answers to life and all of the secrets to mending a broken heart.

“I’ve never had a friend like you,” he says. He shakes his head, looking out at the sunrise. “I’m not sure I ever had a real friend — not until Sasha. And now you.”

“I’m honored to take her place,” I say, squeezing his hand. “I wish it wasn’t under these circumstances, but yeah.” I also wish you didn’t see me as just a friend.

After a tense moment where I’m embarrassingly hoping something might happen, he moves my hand back into my lap and then lets it go, leaving behind a cold ache.

“Well, I guess I should get to work,” he says. He stands and then reaches out a hand to help me up.

I check the time on my phone, then slide it back in my pocket. “I guess I should get to school.”

Our shoes crunching over the gravel is the only sound for a full minute. When I get to my car, I turn to him, my heart beating so hard it might fly out of my chest and knock him out cold. But it needs to be said, so I pull on some courage hidden deep in my subconscious and say, “You’re my best friend, too.”

He grins, his head tilting a little as he looks at me. “Have a good day at school.”

“Have a good day at work.” I look at my car keys, flipping through the keychain until I get to the right key. I’m not sure how I can go to school after a morning like this. When I look up, Elijah is right in front of me, his head blocking the bright sun. He pulls me into a hug, and I wrap my arms around him, letting my cheek press against his shirt. “You’re really good at this hugging thing,” I mumble as he slowly pulls away.

He laughs, a genuine chuckle that resonates from his stomach. I roll my eyes, trying to play off my serious comment like I didn’t really mean it that much. “I wish you could talk more,” I say. “You’re always so hard to get in touch with.”

“Sorry, Raquel.” He grips my elbows for a second and then lowers his hands. “My roommate had a laptop but he pawned it a few months back. I can get online at the library, but they close before I get off work most nights, and only in the rare occasion that my boss is gone can I sneak on his work computer. Believe me, though, I am constantly wishing I could email you.”

“So,” I say as lighthearted as possible because that last thing he said felt heavier than he meant it to be. “I wonder when I’ll see you again?”

His shoulders lift as he takes a step backward, toward his bike. He turns up his palms and gazes at the sky. “Whenever Sasha wants you to.”

Chapter Sixteen

You know that saying, the one about how we only use ten percent of our brains? Not true.

There is simply no way my entire brain isn’t working at full capacity in the days that follow. I’d thought there was no room left to feel anything besides pain, and then the first letter arrived and somehow my brain found more room to feel, love, miss and rejoice.

And then I fell for Elijah.

Suddenly I’m running at one hundred percent brain function.

I’m not sure when it happened, not really. Maybe that first moment I hugged him standing near the fresh grass covering Sasha’s grave, maybe when he took my hand on the steps of Mount Horeb Baptist Church. Maybe it doesn’t even matter when it happened, just that it did.

And now I’m not sure what to do.

Before, my mind was a hurricane of grief, leaving a path of destruction.

This thing with Elijah, it’s a tornado. It fills my every waking thought, always spinning. Scientists don’t know a damn thing about brains when it comes to love.

I am guilty, I am mourning, I am falling for my dead best friend’s brother.