Seeing Shane Gray ✓

thirty seven | goodbye

November 30

*.*.*.*.*.*

My cheek pressed firmly against the cool, wooden floorboard, I slowly open my eyes. The first sight I see as I drift from sleep into wakefulness is the dull beams of light flooding in through the gap in the curtains and leaving streaks of orange across the perfectly-made bed. I can almost see him sitting there, watching me with a teasing smile on his face.

"Sleeping on the floor again, Tay?" he asks, his voice so distant.

I close my eyes slowly and inhale deeply.

"You're not real," I whisper, opening my eyes to find that he's no longer there.

Carter's absence hurts.

Groaning, I sit up and push my hair out of my face. My neck is stiff from having fallen asleep in a fetal position on Carter's bedroom floor. I dreamed about him, though, and talked to him for a long time.

I almost didn't want to wake up.

Exhaling a deep breath, I stretch my neck both ways and push myself to my feet. My right knee pops when I straighten my leg and I wince. I probably had it twisted at an odd angle all night. Nonetheless, I propel myself forward and pull open the door, walking into the narrow hallway and looking toward the quiet stairs. For a few moments, I stand there, trying to detect the slightest of sounds.

Nothing hums and nothing creaks, and I make my way to my room. Closing the door behind me in the semi-darkness, I trudge toward the bed and wiggle under the covers. Once I'm in a comfortable spot, I reach for my phone and frown at the screen when I see seven missed calls and three voice messages aside from the eleven text ones. I open the text chat first and read the array of messages.

From Shane.

It's not like I had expected it to be him. He's never texted me and only called me twice when he wanted to see me at ungodly hours. But I hadn't expected anyone to be texting or calling me at all. Not only do my friends know I'm not much of a phone person and will probably ignore them for weeks unless I'm truly interested, they also know I'm not going to appreciate birthday wishes this year. It's not a happy occasion for me anymore and I'd rather sleep through today than wake up and find myself alone in the world.

Carter's death has done that to me.

It's strange how close I now realize my brother and I were. When he had been alive, I'd barely paid him much attention. We'd shared the same roof, talked about everything, and fought every day. He'd always know how to cheer me up and I knew what bothered him about Mom and Dad. And yet, we just just existed. We were together but we weren't inseparable.

Now, I realize how much he meant to me.

I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. I've heard and read that people mostly appreciate things after they're lost. That's human nature, they say. I think we all just take for granted what we have. We become secure, so sure that what we have will always stay.

It isn't until that very important but frequently ignored part of us is ripped away that we realize how helpless and weak we truly are in the face of fate.

I never believed in fate. I always told Carter, argued really, that we can make whatever we want of our life. We can choose who we want to be with, what we want to do, how an event will play out. It was always him who said I'm wrong.

'Sometimes you can't control life,' he'd once said. 'It slips out from between your fingers and you can't stop it. In the end, you're just left wishing you'd done something differently. Wishing you could turn back time.'