They Left Me Out of Their Group, So I'll Leave Them Out of My Life novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Dock

I read the second line the same way, slowly, into the microphone.

"I have asked Santino twice to bring you up to see me. He says you are busy with school. I am too old to be hurt by that, but I am not too old to write it down."

Nobody on the lawn moved.

By the drinks table, Santino's mother had put her hand flat against her chest.

"My sapphire is in the china dish on my dresser," I read. "It was my mother's. It is yours. Wear it when you are ready, and not before."

I lowered the page.

"That ring," I said, "is not in the china dish."

"Tegan," Santino said beside me, soft and hurried. "Tegan, don't."

I held up my hand to stop him, still facing the crowd.

"Beckett," I said. "Whenever you're ready."

Beckett crouched at the laptop under the tent.

The slideshow screen went white.

Then the ledger came up, enormous, in plain black type on forty feet of canvas.

Thirty-four weekends. Six names. A total at the bottom.

Someone near the front said, "Is that real?"

"Every line is," said the woman from the couple. "I'm in it."

The man with the beard took a step forward and said, loud enough to carry, "That's my card. That's my two weekends."

Another slide came up.

It was the pinned photo of the dock with the canoe in it, and then the first message, in a gray bubble across the whole canvas.

Funeral is at noon. Bring beer to mine at three. She'll be with the old ladies till dark.

I watched the crowd read it.

A man near the back said, "Oh, come on," quietly, to nobody.

"That was a joke," Bailey said from the foot of the riser. Her voice was thin and shaking. "It was a private joke. Everyone has them."

"Then read the rest," I said.

Beckett clicked.

She likes feeling useful.

Tegan would cry if she saw how much we drink.

Tegan would alphabetize the beer.

A woman near the front took out her phone and filmed the screen.

← Chapter 18 · All chapters · Chapter 20 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend