Best Friend's Brother Read Online Free PDF

we go on living
or not, life is going to go on around us.”
    “I have a fight tomorrow night. I wasn’t sure if I should
go. I know this doesn’t make sense, but sometimes just walking out of this
house and noticing that it’s a nice day outside seems wrong.”
    “It’s hard to go on living when we lose someone we
love. But you have to remember your sister. Emma wouldn’t want you to feel that
way. She was crazy about you, you know? She really looked up to you and every
time I talked to her she would tell me how well you were doing with your
fights. She would want you to go and live your life.”
    I had to chuckle at that, “She wouldn’t come to any
of them. She didn’t watch me fight a single time. I used to really get upset
about it. It hurt my feelings. I wanted her to see how good I was and be proud
of me.”
    “She was proud of you…but she also was your little
sister. She couldn’t stand the thought of watching someone hit you or kick you
or…whatever you do in that cage.”
    “I win,” I told her with a grin.
    She smiled back and said, “There’s my cocky nephew.
Emma loved you and she was proud of how you lived your life honey…so go, live
it.”
    I got up and kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks Aunt
Karen.”
    “Sure honey. Where are you going?”
    “To the gym,” I told her. I need to get ready for
that fight tomorrow.”
    She winked at me and said, “Good boy.”
    I went to the gym that I loved with the intentions
of working my normal routine. Just getting out of that house and not having to
breathe in the sadness and despair made me feel better as I drove across town
to the gym. I walked inside with my bag and suddenly, all activity in the place
seemed to stop. My very presence seemed to cast a pall across the place and
before I could even get to my station I was approached by three “very sorry”
people. I accepted their condolences and thanked them and then I left. I
couldn’t work-out while people were staring at me with sorrow in their eyes.
    I went back to my parent’s home and spent another
day in the silence of a house that had suddenly lost its hope. I sent Aunt
Karen home, telling her she needed to go take care of her family and I would
handle things here. She argued with me, but I knew she missed her family. I had
been staying here instead of my apartment since that first night anyways. There
was no reason for her to stay.
      I did three
loads of laundry and cleaned the food from the funeral out of the refrigerator.
That left it empty almost, so I went grocery shopping. We lived in a small
town, so everywhere I went, people looked at me sadly.
Some of them asked how my parents were doing and some of them offered
condolences…and some only stared. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
    When I got back to the house, I made dinner for my
mom. She cried and told me that I was amazing. She didn’t eat a bite. I left
dinner in the microwave for my dad and heated it for him when he got home from
work. He said, “Thanks buddy, that was real nice of
you.” He didn’t eat it either.
    The only thing I saw that night that indicated just
maybe they were moving towards beginning to heal was that my mom slept in her
own room with my dad again, instead of Emma’s. After they went to bed I went
into my sister’s room. I found a stack of photo albums and I lay on her bed and
looked through them. I flipped through the, page after page of my sister’s
pretty smiling face, watching her grow up again right there on the pages. There
were a lot of photos of her and Alexa and it made me start thinking about her
again. I wondered how she was doing and if this was getting any easier for her
yet. I stretched out and thought about how nice it had been talking to her and
being able to laugh and smile about the things we remembered about Emma,
instead of so many tears. I fell asleep sometime in the early morning hours and
that was how Mom found me the next day.
    “Ian honey? Are you okay?”
    I