He didn’t want to go to the funeral.

He shouldn’t have been so reluctant to pay his respects, but the guilt that clung to his skin after he got the phone call had him feeling heavy and cold. 

They don’t make a manual for how to cope with the death of your first love.

Well, not his first love, but the first person who was ever in love with him.

Even ten years later, he still wasn’t sure if he actually had any feelings for Ellis at all. But Ellis was dead, so what did it matter? 

Maybe it was his tendency to think too much of himself, but something had him convinced that Ellis was dead because of him. Even though he couldn’t have been less responsible for any of it—he didn’t give her the drugs, he didn’t get her kicked out of her house, he didn’t even know she was having such a rough time.

Only he could find a way to make this about himself.

James was the one who’d called him to tell him the news. It was a quick phone call.

“Grayson, it’s James. How you been? Listen, you know Ellis Tanner? I just wanted to let you know she passed away last night. Overdose, man. They’re having the funeral on Wednesday, if you wanna come by.”

He didn’t know James knew Ellis like that. That fact surprised him more than the news itself. How had James heard? Did James know her family somehow? Did James know that Ellis would leave notes in Grayson’s locker every Friday throughout the entirety of middle school? 

Did any of that even matter?

Despite the dread hanging on his shoulders and the chill he still couldn’t seem to shake, he put on some dress pants and a black shirt and drove himself to the services. 

The priest talked a lot about forgiveness—he didn’t know Ellis was religious—before promising that she was living in eternal paradise. He couldn’t tell if he wanted to vomit or cry or both. He hated himself for not saving her from this. He also hated himself for thinking he could’ve saved her from it, or that Ellis would’ve wanted his saving.

He also wished that he could’ve loved her—really loved her, like she wanted him to.

Maybe she still would have wound up in a coffin at the front of a half-empty church while some old guy who barely knew her talked about her everlasting peace like it was something that could be guaranteed. 

But maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe they would’ve been happy together. Despite what others thought, they loved each other. They really did. His feelings for Ellis were complicated, but he always loved her.

He desperately wanted to be realistic; love can’t save people. But the idea of it keeping her safe for even a little bit longer was calming enough to ease the ache pressing down on his chest when he went to sleep that night.