It has officially been forever since I updated this! But I was recently struck with a fresh idea and had the urge to write... Does anybody even remember this story? Haha oh well.
As much as I wished I owned The O.C, I don't. It would still be on air somewhere if I did.
Chapter 9 - The One with the Funeral.
I looked straight ahead as I heard the soft music begin to play and everybody around me turned to watch my husband's casket being walked down the aisle. I saw my sons out of the corner of my eye, carrying the front of the casket. I had no idea who else would be carrying it, Paul would be, he was Sandy's brother after all. I didn't know who else the boys would have thought of since I was no help in the preparation of this funeral. The tears that had begun to well in my eyes stared to fall as I felt Summer take my hand in hers. I smiled sadly at her, she had been through so much in the last few days and yet she was still here trying to help me through this.
Seth and Ryan had appeared on either side of me moments later, meaning Sandy's coffin had been set down in order for the service to begin. Seth had sat between Summer and myself, he put his arm around me and I wondered if Summer had told Seth that she had thought she was pregnant, she wasn't thankfully. I had bought her a home pregnancy test, five actually and I made her take each of them. When they had all came out negative I could breathe. As much as I told myself I was relieved that Summer wasn't pregnant so that she could sort herself out now that she wasn't going to Brown, it was truly selfish reason to why I was relieved. I loved Summer as if she were my own daughter, but honestly I couldn't be a grandmother, especially not with being pregnant myself right now.
I let out a sob as I thought of the child I would be raising alone. Alone. That's what I was. I had nobody with me, as much as Seth and Ryan would want to help, they had their own lives. I didn't want to drag them through more than what they've already had to deal with. I had to get through this myself. I mean, I would always have people around me, always have people who wanted to help. I knew I could never shake Julie Cooper even if I wanted to. But I would be alone, just me and the embryo that was clinging to the walls of my uterus. We were alone in this together. I had to raise this poor child by myself, and it had to be raise by me alone.
Being stuck in my own thoughts, I didn't realise that the service was over. It seemed to go rather quickly to be but then again I hadn't paid any attention, so maybe it had dragged on forever. I stood in line between Sophie and Seth, each of them were thanking the people who came over and offered their condolences. I didn't see any of the faces of people who said anything, if my father had been here he would have told me how rude I was being. I said nothing. I was attempting to stop the unavoidable tears that were still silently falling down my face. A few people hugged me; I couldn't tell you who they were. It seemed to be an endless line of people coming up to us, my tears eventually running dry due to the length of time I had stood there silently.
I was led outside soon after by Ryan, we all stood silently as we watched Sandy's coffin being lowered into the freshly dug grave. My tears begun to fall yet again as I looked down at the final resting place of my loving husband, as much as I had accepted this over the last few days, I think it was only just hitting me that he was really truly gone. Yet again I thought of how alone I was now. Of the child growing inside of me that would be fatherless; I vowed that this child would know their father though. I was never going to forget Sandy. I was also never going to love anybody the way I loved him. It was going to slowly kill me every day that I woke up without him.
"I never want to wake up without you beside me," Sandy said running his fingers through my hair as we sprawled across the mattress in the back of the mail truck, spending our one day off together doing absolutely nothing.
"You've said that before," I teased, even though I knew how much he meant this and how I much I agreed with him. The few days that I had been forced to wake up alone were torture.
"Just because I've said it before doesn't make it any less true, I love you more than you know Kirsten." He leaned in and kissed me, it wasn't a passionate kiss. Not in the slightest. It was like your first kiss with someone, it was soft and timid. Which was weird, even our first kiss had never been like that, we had been a passionate couple straight off the bat.
He pulled back after a second and simply looked at me, not just looked but stared. "You know I hate it when you stare."
"Oh baby, I can't help it!" He laughed as he said this, he always comes up with some stupid reason as to why he stares at me. Last time he had claimed that he wanted my face memorised in case he ever lost his vision. "Have you ever tried to look at yourself and not stare?"
I frowned at him; he was so full of it. "Yes, it's remarkably easy."
"Please," he scoffed, pushing me away from him, sitting up on his elbows and giving me a once over. "You spend hours in front of that mirror."
"I do not," I gasped out in overdramatic shock as I pushed myself into an upright position. "You take longer than me, with all that gel that you put in your hair, making sure your stupid and totally out of place surfer look is intact."
"I do not have a stupid surfer look thank you very much!"
"You do so," I laughed as he stole a glance at the small mirror that was hanging on the left-hand side of the truck.
"I may surf, but I do not have a surfer 'look', I simply like to put a bit of product in my hair so that it isn't all over the place like usual." He said while frowning at me for a minute before giving me a small smile. "Plus you love it."
"Admit it," I said in a defiant tone, ignoring his last comment because it was true. "You're high maintenance."
"I'll admit I'm high maintenance when you admit that you love living in a mail truck." He barely got the sentence out he was laughing so much.
"You'll be waiting until the day I die for that one," I told him sternly. I hated his mail truck. When I agreed to move in with him I thought he meant we would look for a place together, not stay in the tragic mess of a truck that he had taken to calling home.
"Well that's not going to happen because I'll be the first one to go, I couldn't live a day without you." Sandy had suddenly turned serious and I knew that he meant every word that he had said. "So therefore I get to die first and you can do whatever you wish."
"Oh right, so I can't leave you but you're allowed to leave me?" I asked him with best attempt at an attitude on, even though I was failing miserably and just sound like I was trying not to laugh.
"Someone needs to take care of all our kids," he said, once again laughing. "There are going to be ten of them after all."
"Urgh, we've had this discussion," I moaned while rolling my eyes at him, basically since we met he had been telling me that we were going to have ten children together. "If we have ten kids, you're pushing out nine of them!"
"As long as I get to wake up to you every morning knowing that you're beside me, I think I could manage that."
I just laughed at him, "You're an idiot."
"Ah, but clearly a lovable one," he muttered before pushing me back onto the makeshift bed and attempting to ravish me while still letting out his howl of a laugh.
"Sadly that is true," I agreed laughing right back at him before meeting his lips with my own. "We're not having ten kids though."
"We'll see," he whispered into my ear, before gently taking my earlobe between his teeth and pulling. Times like this; I didn't mind the mail truck so much.
"Mum?" I heard Seth say a few times. It didn't really register that he was talking to me. "Mum!"
I looked around before answering him, I was in the backseat of the car. "Yes Seth?"
"Did you want to go to the yacht club for the wake?" He asked me cautiously, twisting his hands around on the steering wheel. "Or do you just want to go home?"
I hadn't even thought about the wake. I hadn't thought about anything, it had just happened yet I couldn't remember a single thing about the day. I had no idea how I had been woken, or how I had gotten dressed or how I got to my seat. "I just want to go home," I said as I looked down at myself, I was wearing a plain black dress that I had never worn before and a pair of my favourite shoes. Surely I didn't put these shoes on? Why would I ever want to associate these shoes with Sandy's funeral?
"Okay then," he said as he turned the car on and drove off as soon as he knew what I wanted to do. He hadn't done anything without thinking of me since this whole mess started.
"You're all still going to go though, right?" I asked them. I didn't want them to miss out on anything because they thought I needed company or babysitting. I was going to be alone right, so I might as well start getting used to it.
"Well we thought we might just stay in with you," it was Ryan who spoke this time. I struggled to look into his steel blue eyes that were currently bloodshot and extremely swollen.
"I don't want to make you miss out on anything, I'm fine by myself" I said as I looked away from him. I looked around the car, Seth and Ryan were in the front seats and Summer was occupying the back with me. "Seth, where's the Nana?"
"She's driving to the wake with Sarah and the kids" He explained to me, looking at my face in the revision mirror. I saw that his eyes too were swollen and red. "She thought you might want to be alone."
I nodded slowly, not really having anything to say. I didn't want to be around people right now, especially not people who would be drinking and celebrating Sandy's life. I just wanted to be alone.
If anybody has, by some miracle, actually just read this, I apologise. I'm sure things don't line up, when I started writing again I didn't check back to the other chapters to see what I had written, the inspiration struck and I'm lazy. Haha but I will be updating this sometime soon, I kept writing another chapter which is coming along nicely :)
