Every Little Thing by Chad Pelley

outjutting where her nipples poked at her shirt. The cold, the rain.
    There was a divot, where her black tank top, wet, had sunk into her belly button. There was skin exposed between her tank top and her skirt, and there was nothing in the world like her.
    He took his eyes back up off her. She rolled over, facing him, and closed her eyes. “That was really cute, what your brother said, I mean. About the stars. And that you’ve always remembered it.”
    They lay there on that shingled roof, two or three feet apart, and that distance was too much.
    ALLIE SAT WITH him at the funeral service.
    He was sitting in the very back of the church with four rows of empty pews between him and the nearest person. A smell of cedar or incense. A dead wasp at his feet. His father occasionally peered back at him, over his shoulder, with a look on his face somewhere between being perplexed and embarrassed. What are you doing back there?
    He heard the chunky church door creak open—a splash of light on his right shoe—and he looked over his shoulder to see Matt and Allie poking their heads in; mild looks of guilt on their faces for being a little late. Allie’s eyes were two flies buzzing around until they found Cohen. She sat with him; her hand tapping his knee, twice, as a silent greeting. And then she let it rest there. Matt kept on walking, up the aisle.
    Sitting in the back of the church made the priest’s words sound distant, and that made them more surreal. He’d never been around that much of his family without Ryan being there too.
    At the graveyard, Allie had put her hand on his back the very second his breathing changed. Just barely, her fingers, tracing the outline of his shoulder blade. He had a dry, tight throat, indicative of impending tears. But when the priest started talking about God’s plan for young men like Ryan, it all turned to anger. He wanted to break the man’s jaw to shut him up about it. Ryan had fucking died , at eighteen, and the priest was putting a positive spin on it, and he saw his grandmother nod her head, like yes there’s a God, and yes, he saw it fit to hold Ryan’s head under water while Ryan choked and gasped and panicked and died. And he pictured himself in Ryan’s body, under water: his lungs exploding or his brain shorting out or his heart popping like a balloon, exactly like a balloon.
    Allie leaned in, whispered into his ear. “Some people need to believe that. In something more, in divine reasons for things. In gods that have plans.”Her voice soft and warm enough on his ear to calm him.
    THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND, there were plans for supper at his parents’ place, and he wanted Allie to come. He wanted to put something between him and his parents. A distraction. Something to fill the empty space of Ryan’s seat or something to fill the silence, and Allie could have been that thing. But he never asked her to come. They ate lasagna, and there was too much quietness between the forced conversation: clicks of forks off teeth, knives against dishes. Gulps of wine or water. A comment about the weather, maybe. Three sets of eyes like empty glasses.
    He’d let himself in. He’d come over a little earlier than they were expecting him, maybe, and he’d let himself in. His father was sitting on the couch—hands behind his head, elbows pointed left and right—staring at a TV that wasn’t on. “Supper’s in the oven,” he said. “Be another hour though. Beer in the fridge if you want one.”
    Cohen pulled a sweater off, laid it on the couch, and headed for the washroom. It was like he’d caught his father off guard and his father needed a minute, so Cohen pretended he had to go to the washroom, to give him that minute. He walked passed Ryan’s bedroom, and the door had been open, and he felt like it should’ve been closed. He stuck his head in, looked around. Why or what for, he didn’t know.