Page 1 of Best Man Speaking
Prologue
Hallie - 18 Years Old
Marcus finds me in my gran’s attic, back flat on the bare floorboards, eyes red and trained on the vaulted ceiling. He lies down next to me, our shoulders brushing, his pinkie finger finding my own to hook around. Only with the touch of his warm skin do I notice the chill of my own, this fall being unusually cool.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, turning to look at him.
I don’t care about the dried tear tracks that are most likely permanent fixtures on my face at this point. I let him see.
“I’m here to make sure you shower, eat, and at least consider sleeping,” he replies with a gentle bump of his shoulder to mine.
Of course, he knew my parents were at the will reading this afternoon, not that they were likely to show their less-than-attentive faces here.
I try to smile at this boy whom I love, but instead, my eyes well, a sob making its way out of my mouth.
It’d taken me an hour to calm myself down after I’d watched a professional removals team make their way throughmy grandmother’s house and pack her belongings, completely detached from the fact this had been a person’s home. That until three days ago, it’d been warm and full of life, my place of refuge. But in a single, piercing moment, my world had stopped and was suddenly devoid of the woman who’d loved me most in this world.
My throat aches, perpetually parched because of my unending tears, and my heart? It’s never known pain like this. A deep wrenching that eases in one moment only to show back up tenfold, stripping me of my breath in the next.
It is relentless, unbearable.
I don’t know how people deal with loss so great, how they manage to move on.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I gasp through my tears.
I know I’m not making it easy to be my person. To be the one who looks after me, who looks out for me.
But Marcus is trying. He’s here, still dressed in his work gear, steel-cap boots and all. I’m grateful for the navy sweatshirt his boss gave him when he started; it’s well-worn now and dark enough that my tears won’t leave obvious marks.
Marcus sits up, pulling me into his lap, his back pressed up against the attic wall.
We’d cleared this space out about a year ago, a place where we could go to just hang out, my gran’s only condition being we ate dinner at her table before we left for the evening. It had been the sweetest deal there ever was.
“Shh, it’s okay. I promise it’ll be okay.”
“How? I’m alone now. I’m?—”
I’m unable to continue my thought.
That I’m alone now. That my parents are divorcing and selling their house to flee to opposite ends of the country, far away from each other and the child they wish they’d never had.
I’ll go to college and have no family to visit.
I’ll have no home to come back to.
It’ll just be me.
“You have me, and you have Jules,” he says, naming his brother and my best friend.
“I know.”
But it’s not the same. Not really.
Gently and ever so soothingly, Marcus traces his fingertips along the skin of my arm, touching me until my tears slow and my breathing settles. We sit quietly even as the big window at the back of the room shows the late-afternoon sun giving way to early evening.
“You know, she’d wanted to renovate this space, to put skylights in so we could see the stars from inside,” I say when I can finally put words together again.
“Sounds like a good idea,” he replies, still soothing me with his touch. I let myself melt a little farther into his body, secure in his ability to hold me.
