Free Pieces of Him by Alice Tribue Page B

put much thought or effort into finding the one. That doesn’t interest me at all, especially now in the middle of the shit storm I’m in.
    Now, that Emelia chick … she was a fucking spitfire. She’d known me all of five minutes before she was giving me grief for shit she had no clue about. She had no problem getting in my face and telling me exactly what she thought of me. I underestimated her, that’s for sure. At first glance, she seemed timid, unsure of herself, afraid even, but once she got angry, it was like a whole different girl. Her looks only help to sweeten the deal. Yeah, I noticed, I’m a guy. What do you expect? She was wearing just a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but she could have been wearing a trash bag for all I’d care. She was, by far, one of the prettiest women I’d ever seen. Her lips caught my attention first. The gloss on them made them appear pink, full, and completely fuckable. Her eyes were a deep, dark blue, like the color of the sky just before a storm rolls in. The kind of eyes you could get lost in, be hypnotized by them. The way her wavy brown hair fell wildly over her shoulder made me want to reach out and grab it. She was definitely sweet from head to toe, but I can’t let myself go there. First off because I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with the kid. I know I told her I was putting him up for adoption, but I was still pissed from my lack of sleep last night. Second, after the run-in we just had, I’m sure she hates my guts. Whatever, you shouldn’t shit where you sleep anyway, and she’s a little too close to home for comfort.
    I pull into the almost empty parking lot of the crematorium taking the spot closest to the front door and shutting off the ignition. I angle out of the car and make quick work of getting Xander and heading inside. The owner greets me at the door, fills me in on how the service will work, and then leads me to the room where Keri is. Jack and Rachel are there, as well as some of Keri’s co-workers and her roommates. It hits me that this is the first time I’ll see her since the moment they kicked me out of her delivery room. It then hits me that this is the last time I’ll ever see her, and more importantly, it hits me that this is the last time Xander will ever be in his mother’s presence. There’s something stifling about that fact, the thought of it almost unbearable. He’ll never know what it’s like to be held in her arms, to be loved by her the way only a mother can love a child.
    I’m given a wide berth as I place the carrier down and unbuckle it, slowly picking Xander up and holding him against my chest. All eyes are on me, I can feel them, but I don’t care as I walk up to the open casket. It takes me a second to find the courage to do it, but I finally look down at her. I feel an overwhelming amount of pain in my chest as I take her in, a desperation that I can’t tamp down. A desire to watch her beautiful eyes flutter with signs of life fills me, a need to see her open her mouth to tell me about what’s going on in her world. It kills me. Fucking. Kills. Me that she can’t do that, that she’s never going to be able to do that. I hate it that she’s gone, that all that’s left of her is this cold, pale, lifeless body that doesn’t even come close to the stunning girl she really was.
    I breathe through the stinging in my eyes and through the mixture of sadness and anger that I feel. I graze her cheek with the back of my hand, and at the coldness of it, I lose my battle with control. I feel the tear fall, not caring if it makes me appear as any less of a man. This shit is brutal, and I’ve held myself together as long as I possibly could.
    “I’m so sorry, baby,” I tell her in a cracked whisper. I hold Xander close, looking down at him and then back at her. “This is him, this is Xander. You did good, baby. You did so good. He’s doing great.”
    I wait for something; I don’t know what it is …