"You can love someone so much…but you can never love someone as much as you can miss them."-John Green
The leaves crunch below my combat boots and the rain falls against the black leather of my jacket. I make my way through the cemetery, seeing a few names I recognize and a lot that I don't. I dread the day when the number of people I know is more than the number I don't. I've had enough people leave me and I don't know how many more I can lose before it breaks me completely.
I walk up the hill and take a right turn and there it is, her grave. I walk over to her headstone and see that someone has put flowers out. They're the wrong color though, pale yellow, a color she hated. I touch her headstone as if she'll somehow feel it and know that I'm here for her. My heart aches because I love her so much but she's not here and I didn't get a chance to tell her. I sit down and put my back against the head stone. It hurts too much to read her name and the line that her life is summed up in on a gravestone.
"It's raining today. I know how much you liked the rain. Uhm, I got a new band to sign at the record studio, well Haley did, I haven't been in the office much." I sigh and run my hair through my curls. "Everything is hard without you Brooke, it just hurts all the time. I know that when people say it'll get better or it won't hurt as bad in a little while they just mean well. I feel like they're trying to make me forget you. Like I should move on from you because you're gone and that makes me mad because I don't want to move on from you. I just want you back here."
I stand up and look up at the sky, where people say God is.
"Do you hear me? I want her back! It isn't fair! I need her! And you took her from me! Are you there, God? Do you hear me? Do you care?" I'm screaming and I don't care. I can feel the tears staining my face with run down mascara and I can feel the hoarseness starting to creep up in my throat. "I just want her back!" I kick her head stone and scream. I look back up at the sky where people say God is and I see nothing. There's no God in my sky and if there was I have a hard time believing he would have taken her from me, knowing how much she meant to me. I look back down at her flowers, pale yellow, wrong.
I pick up the vase and throw it. It shatters against the wing of an angel a few headstones away and the flowers fall limply on the ground.
"Those aren't right! Nothing is right. Brooke do you hear me? I love you so much and I'm so sorry I didn't get the chance to say it to you. Can you forgive me? I just, God, I would do anything to take it all back. I'm so sorry. I love you." My head is resting against her head stone and I just want to see her dimpled smile one more time or have her hug me too tight or listen to her complain about my music. I would take anything from Brooke Davis if it meant I got to see her one last time. I feel my blood pressure get back down to a normal rate and I turn back around, resting my back against the grave once more. I'm crying too hard to talk. I pull my jacket tighter around me and I just sit there, letting the rain pour down on me.
I think about how unfair it is that Brooke died at twenty-two. I think about how unfair it is that Brooke will never know what's it like to have children or to love someone that won't hurt her. I think about it isn't fair that I didn't get to tell Brooke that I loved her more than a friend and that I wanted to spend forever with her. I think about all of this every day when I come here. I think about how we could have been something great but a stupid bastard decided to drive drunk. He took all of Brooke's dreams and he took mine with her.
"Brooke, I'm sorry, I should have told you. I shouldn't have waited, I shouldn't have been so afraid. I just want you to know that I'm not going to forget you and I'm not going to ever stop thinking about you, I love you and I'm so sorry that we never got to try." I wipe my eyes and stand up. I place my hand on the top of her grave once more. It never gets easier. I thought that eventually I would stop being so angry but it's been seven months and I'm still just as angry as soon as my eyes open as I was on the first day after the accident.
"I brought something today, something for you." I reach into my pocket and pull out two wedding rings. They're silver and the insides are engraved with P&B Forever and Always. "I know in my heart that I would have needed these if things would have went differently in the hospital. I know that if you were still here these would be on our fingers because I have no doubt in my mind that you loved me the way I loved you. So I just thought you should have them. This is where they belong." I sit the rings down and turn away before I lose it again and turn left and walk down the hill.
I know Brooke would want me to be strong and happy and realize that it will all be okay. And I wish that I believed that I could be strong for Brooke but she was always the one who was there for me. She held me up when I couldn't do it myself and now without her I just feel like falling.