Introduction

When Robin Matheson’s husband is killed in Afghanistan, she cuts ties with his obnoxious best friend, Cyril—a 500-pound hacker who didn’t even bother to come to the funeral. Unfortunately, her three-year-old latches on to him, and Robin can’t bear to take anything else away from her son.

As Robin grudgingly arranges playdates, she begins to realize that Cyril is the one person who truly understands the magnitude of her loss. He also knows far more about her husband’s death than he’s been letting on.

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Excerpt

Chapter One

ROBIN’S HAND CLOSED TIGHT around the bottle of pills when she saw him standing there, a big black thumbprint smudge on the fresh-cut field of green.

She probably wouldn’t have gone through with it anyway. She’d survived the funeral, and the day after, and the day after that. Odds were, she wasn’t going to work up the nerve.

Still. This was her place. Her time. His presence denied her even the small comfort of an imagined end.

She shoved the bottle into her low-slung canvas purse and started to get back in the truck, belatedly recognizing his geriatric gray Datsun at the other end of the lot. But then he glanced up and she knew he’d seen her there, in her ragged cutoffs and no bra and her hair sticking out at all angles in a huge, unkempt fro. There was no retreat, after that, because she wasn’t a coward.

Cyril would have dwarfed her even if he hadn’t tipped the scales somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred pounds, but when she stopped next to him she found herself fully in his shadow. The armpits of his black t-shirt were ringed with sweat, and the flesh of his bare feet sagged over the edges of his ever-present flip flops.

He didn’t look up. Didn’t say anything, though he had to know she was there. The only sound was the distant drone of an air tanker and his heavy, labored breath. At his size, standing in one place for any period of time was an effort. And it was fire season in Camarillo. Even at eight on a September Sunday morning, the sun was scorching.

Let him stand, then. He was the one who owed her an explanation, not the other way around.

And so they stood, staring at a newly cut stone ringed with wilting flowers.

Tavis would have known exactly what to say.

Eventually Cyril shifted, letting out a heavy puff of air, and hiked up the waistband of his baggy black sweatpants. “Jesus,” he muttered. “You couldn’t’ve sprung for a spot under the trees?”

He excelled at nothing so much as getting under her skin. It was a sport, for him, even in the face of death. But he would not get the better of her. Not today. Not ever again. “Not if I wanted Seth to have a college fund,” she said, with a kind of cool, dangerous calm.

That was a lie, mostly. Within twenty-four hours of delivering the news, ten interminable days ago now, the Casualty Assistance Calls Officer had handed her a check for a hundred thousand dollars. No strings attached. She could have blown every last cent on a spot back in the grove, with a proper headstone to match. Except that she had Seth. And a hundred grand would barely last them the year, here in California. So she couldn’t just go crazy with grief. Couldn’t down a bottle of pills and lay on the loamy sod they’d rolled out on top of her husband’s body and breathe her last.

He grunted. “Where is he, anyway? School?”

“Why do you care?” Seth was staying with her mom, up in Santa Barbara, ostensibly until Robin pulled herself together. As if that were even possible. She looked at Cyril, her eyes level with the text on his stupid shirt that proclaimed, ‘I read your email’ in pixilated white letters. “What are you even doing here?”

He thrust a hand at the rectangle of granite on the ground. His skin was so pasty even the little half-moons under his fingernails were white. “What’s it look like?”

“If you were here for him, you’d have shown up at the funeral.”

“What, so I could watch a bunch of faceless drones shoot guns and play taps? Pass.”

As if Robin had been eager to sit through three hours of ritualized mourning. Cyril’s face made her want to punch him, but she thrust her clenched fist deep into her purse instead. Though she hadn’t touched the pills, the sudden movement made them rattle.

Cyril looked down, eyes darting to her purse, and Robin could have sworn she saw the ghost of a smirk.

He knew.

Not only what she’d been contemplating, but that she’d never follow through.

She would have. In a heartbeat. If not for Seth. Parental love was the worst kind of impotence.

Robin imagined pulling out the pills—left over, ironically, from Seth’s birth—and seeing how many she could choke down before Cyril stopped her. If he even bothered to try.

She turned and walked away.

“Hey. Wait.”

“What? What do you want from me?” Whatever it was, she wanted it over, fast—so she could move on to never seeing him again.

He leaned to one side, fumbling in one baggy pocket, and held out a hand.

Robin didn’t have to look to know her name was scrawled on the slightly-crumpled envelope, or that there was a handwritten letter inside. “Seriously?” Tavis knew how she felt about Cyril. He had about fifty best friends on the base. And still— “He left this with you?” Her voice whined upward at the end, threatening tears, but she choked down the golf ball in her throat.

“Yeah, me. Look, sorry, okay? Sorry for not—you know what? No, actually. I’m not fucking sorry.” Cyril made a motion as if to fling the letter at her feet, but it didn’t leave his hand. “Take it.”

Robin looked at him, finally—really looked at him, and saw that maybe not all the glistening droplets on his face were the product of perspiration. She wanted to scream obscenities in his face. This was hers—her husband, her grief. Not his. And yet she couldn’t deny that, partly, it was.

She snatched the envelope from his trembling hand and shoved it into her purse. “Okay. Duty fulfilled.” She gave him a mock salute and turned once again for the truck.

“Are you—”

She whirled. “What?”

He drew in a breath. Pressed his lips together. “You’re not gonna…”

She followed his eyes to her purse. “Oh, I’m sorry, did you want me to share? Read it out loud, maybe?”

“Depends,” he shot back. “Got any popcorn?”

Didn’t matter what she said; he could always one-up her for snark. “Screw you, Cyril.” She started to turn away, for the last time, and abruptly changed her mind. She strode back to the fresh patch of grass, stepped into the ring of flowers, and seated herself on Tav’s stone. This was her place. “Leave.”

He opened his mouth, but she wasn’t going to let him have the last word.

“Leave.”

Cyril made do with a sharp gesture, as if swatting an insect with the back of his hand. He said something else as he lumbered off—it might have been bitch—but a sudden breeze snatched the word away.

Robin followed him with a glare. Only when his car was out of sight did she dip a hand back into her purse. She traced her name with a finger, and then held the edge of the envelope against her upper lip. The paper didn’t smell like Tavis.

She closed her eyes and sighed. “You jerk.”

Cyril had been the one who brought them together, in his usual backhanded way, so having the final hand-off come from him was probably Tav’s idea of a joke—at least, from the vantage point of planning for the worst without seriously considering it might happen.

“All of a sudden.”

That’s what he’d said to her. Spring in San Luis Obispo, her freshman year. She’d been in the big study hall on the bottom floor of the library, rehearsing her part of the philosophy presentation in front of her group—two guys and another girl, all jaded seniors just trying to get their last GE credits out of the way. She’d been fresh and new and trying too hard, but she couldn’t help it that she cared.

Cyril? Cyril had been sitting a few empty chairs down, by himself, an honest-to-god astrophysics textbook propped open on the table as he dumped a snack-sized bag of Cheetos directly into his mouth. He’d been merely overweight then; cute, even, in a soft, baby-faced way. At least until he opened his mouth.

“I’m sorry?” she’d said, because it was quite clear to everyone that he’d been addressing her.

“Jesus, you’ve said it like five times. Goddamn nails on a chalkboard. It’s not all of the sudden. It’s all of a sudden. Don’t you even read?”

Later—walking back to the dorms, in the shower, lying in bed that night—she’d composed a dozen scathing comebacks. But there, in the moment, she’d glanced at her group and seen that at least one of them had been thinking the same thing, just too polite to say. “None of your business,” she’d snapped, or something like that, and managed to muster enough dignity to finish her speech.

Cyril had polished off his Cheetos and continued to flip through his textbook as the guy across from her took his turn presenting.

That was when Tavis had arrived: tall and slim and unquestionably military even in civilian clothes. He was fresh out of boot camp, quite literally having jumped on a northbound bus the moment graduation ended. The gaze of every girl within a hundred meters, and some guys too, swiveled to take in that sharp-cut flame of red hair. He dropped his canvas seabag on an empty chair and sat down. Next to Cyril.

Robin scowled.

Tavis cocked his head at her in a silent query as he clapped an arm around Cyril’s shoulders. He was obviously the kind of guy who didn’t get many scowls from women.

She’d turned her attention, pointedly, back to her group. Later, when she snuck another glance, he was hunched over next to Cyril, both of them talking fast and low.

“He’s sorry.”

That’s what Tavis had said to her, when he’d caught up with her outside the library.

She snorted. “No he’s not.”

Tavis had opened his mouth, shut it again, and frowned. Clearly that was not the answer he’d expected. “How do you know… that?”

She’d thrust her palms toward him. “Because you’re standing here. Did he actually send you, or do you run around cleaning up his messes on your own initiative?”

He’d held the frown for another moment. Then the corner of his mouth quirked up, and he’d grinned—oh God, that grin—as he held his hands up in surrender. “He’s not all bad, I swear. He just gets really into stuff—right now it’s rockets—and forgets that people are, you know, people.” He lifted his shoulders, a kind of helpless gesture, and let his arms drop. “Sorry. From me this time.”

“Apology accepted.” And without waiting for more, she’d turned on a heel and walked away.

As a first meeting, it wasn’t much. Tavis had seemed nice enough, but no different from any of the other earnest, gung-ho squids she’d met over the course of her father’s Naval career. No sparks had flown, and she’d mostly been irritated with Cyril.

And so, apparently, that was how it was to end.

She shifted, relieving the pressure on her tailbone, and slipped a thumb under the edge of the envelope seal.

As if. Who did she think she was kidding? She wasn’t going to read it. Not today, not tomorrow. Maybe at some distant, hypothetical point in the future when even the thought of Tav’s white-toothed grin didn’t make her want to weep.

She put a hand on the tombstone. “I don’t get it,” she said. “You and him. I never have.” And now she never would.

It was the first time she’d spoken to him. Tavis. Like this.

She knew her mother still spoke to her father, and found comfort in it. But Robin’s words dropped from her lips like stones. What was the point, if there was no reply?

She stood—and only then discovered the two deep oval impressions Cyril had left in Tav’s fresh blanket of sod. She used a toe to try to brush the grass back into place, but the damage had already been done. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Who is the most important person in Robin's life? How does this compare with who (or what) other major characters prioritize? What does each character's priority say about his or her outlook on life?

2. Later in the narrative, Robin realizes her grief has blinded her to the struggles of others. What are some things she fails to notice? Is she truly alone in her grief?

3. Identify some of the moments where Robin or Cyril could have avoided a great deal of pain "if only" they had chosen to say or do something slightly different. Have there been any "if only" moments in your own life?

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