Not Your Fault

His head rolls to the side and gives me a pained smile. “I’ll leave if you need me to.”

I shake my head. “Screw this place. Let’s go somewhere.”

Kris drives and I ride. We don’t talk much but that’s okay because I know we’re both waiting until we reach our destination. The silence is exactly what we need right now. He takes us down the back roads so far out from the city limits that I think we end up on the back roads that lead to the back roads. There are no streetlights this far out, so the only visibility comes from the truck’s headlights, the moon in the sky and the occasional firefly.

He pulls off a gravel road, steering the truck into a grassy pathway that leads to the sand. We’re on the beach across from the west side of Sterling Island. I only know this because the island shimmers across the water from us, the tiny lights of downtown glowing in the sky.

We park on the sand and he lowers the tailgate again. He pulls out two massive beach towels and spreads them out in the bed of the truck. He lies back, using a balled up hoodie as a pillow and I join him, lying on his chest. I try not to think about how the black and white towels have a hot pink damask print on them and that’s the sort of towel only a woman would buy. Is he lying under the stars with me on a pair of towels his ex-girlfriend picked out?

“These are nice towels,” I say. I hate myself for bringing it up. He’s with me and I should just accept that and get over it. I’m the one who had a boyfriend not long ago—it’s not like I have any room to talk.

“My mom gave them to me. She had a coupon and got them on sale and bragged to me for like ten minutes about how much they originally cost and how cheap she got them.”

Ugh. I’m an idiot.

Also, this conversation is going nowhere.

“Kris, we have to talk about what just happened. I’m so sorry my mother said those things.”

He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. “No, you don’t need to apologize. I deserved what she said.”

“She’s just angry,” I say, pulling up on my elbows. He stares at the sky but I kiss his cheek and he turns toward me. “I’ll tell her about the letter and she’ll realize you didn’t mean to hurt me.”

“And what about Tyler? What will she realize about that?”

I swallow.

Kris sits up, sliding to the end of the tailgate and swinging his legs off the side. He runs his hands through his hair in frustration and then his shoulders slump as he stares at the ground. I crawl to the tailgate and sit next to him. I can’t think of a single fucking thing to say that would be appropriate so I stay quiet and lean my hea

d against his shoulder.

Kris clears his throat. “She’ll never forgive me, Del. And you shouldn’t expect her to.”

“That’s—” I begin but he cuts me off.

“You wouldn’t have forgiven me either if we weren’t in love.”

I stiffen my jaw but I don’t respond. He continues, “If we weren’t dating back then and I was just some guy who accidently killed your brother, you would hate me. That’s how your mom feels and she should feel that way. It’s my fault. I hate myself every day for it, but that doesn’t make it any less my fault.”

“I don’t care, Kris. You’re right, I do love you. I loved you before Tyler and I love you after him. I don’t care how I would feel if things were different between us, because they aren’t.” I put my hand on his heart and he covers it with his own hand. “You’re my missing piece, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

He lifts my hand to his lips and kisses it. “Tyler was my best friend. Hell, I loved him even more because he introduced me to you. I miss him just as much as everyone else does.”

I smile at the memories of Ty and Kris playing football in the backyard before I had been officially introduced to Kris. I’d sit on my bed watching him out the window as I developed the biggest crush ever. “I talked to Tyler the other day,” I say. A cool breeze sweeps across my face and I glance to the heavens, almost expecting to see my brother sitting on a cloud. “I don’t know why I look for him up here,” I say as I stare at the stars. “I know I won’t see him, but that’s okay because I can feel him.”

“You talk to him too?” Kris asks.

I shrug. “It was the other day after we had kissed and I felt so guilty about it I drove all the way to his grave and just sat there and poured my heart out.”

Kris studies me with a look of…appreciation? …adoration? I continue, “I asked him to give me a sign if it was okay for me to like you.”

Kris laughs and shakes his head as he looks at the sky, as if he can’t believe what I just said. “Hey!” I slap his arm. “Don’t make fun of me! I was having a crisis of conscious.”

“That’s not why I was laughing,” he says. He pinches the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb, and then drags his hand across his face. “I was laughing because I did the same thing. I even brought him a sort of peace offering of Mountain Dew and beef jerky.”

“That was you?” I ask. My heart fills with warm fuzzies at the realization that Kris had been to the cemetery just hours before me.

He nods. “I didn’t ask him for a sign, but I did talk to him, just hoping I would know in my heart what I should do.”