Kora giggles when I tap her nose. Her brown eyes widen when she sees my finger coming. She stills herself and tries to grab at my hand, to change its course and maybe this time prevent it from touching her nose. But I outmaneuver her and she laughs.

"Maybe you go after the spreading of the ashes, or in a month, when things settle a bit?" Amelie's advice is something I treasure, but her words don't feel right. "Let yourself grieve." She puts her hand on my shoulder and it's too much. All the big feelings around me and the unclear expectations of me are too much. I shrug her hand off.

"I'm going." I lower myself on my side next to Kora and try to encourage her to roll over. "Trust me. I need to take care of it now." My attention focuses on Kora. She's the only person who's unaware that what I'm doing is not up to some arbitrary standard. Doing the best I can means not changing my plans, not breaking my promises, altering as little as possible.

Mom, Amelie, pretty much everyone I talk to keep saying grief feels different for everyone, but they are shocked I'm still going to meet with Mo. They don't think grief and flying to New York go together. They do not see the contradiction. I fell apart at the hospital and even after the meaning of the words sunk in, I couldn't talk for the rest of the day. Words were in my head forming and changing, but they were refusing to come out. Mom was right to take me to their place, but not because I needed them, because they needed me. Tall was their friend and they've seen him every week for the last ten years.

Their reactions fit within a template, and I want it—a way to know that what I'm feeling or not feeling doesn't make me an evil person.

"At my age," Mom tells me, "every time a person I love dies, a piece of me disappears with them. The years of them knowing me are gone with them and there is a little less of me left in this world." Her grief is loud and full of tears, her days are at a standstill, her reactions do not raise eyebrows.

"Tall will be missed," Dad tells me. He turns on the day-long golf tournaments on low and reads through weeks' worth of newspapers. He's more silent, and he holds Mom when she leaves her room to join him on the couch. His withdrawal is within the allowed grieving script. No matter how many times I hear grieving is individual, there is a script, one I'm not privy to.

"With every death I think: this time it's going to be easier. I know how it goes. I'll do better," Amelie tells me. "And it's a lie. It's hard and I'm in pieces." She hugs everyone, and I let her hug me once, but no more. Her hugs are welcomed by tthe rest of the people in the apartment.

Mike doesn't say anything about Tall. He holds Angie when she cries. He shuttles Kora between their apartment and that of her grandparents and spends every spare minute between the two Dojang locations and he's the only one who tells me, "Keep busy, man. Fuck the propriety if keeping busy keeps you sane." His keeping busy is acceptable.

Angie writes a song for Tall and she sings us a line. "I etched words never written on my heart—the tattoo of your life on mine." I can't say that I get it, but Linda says Angie should try poetry. Everyone's eyes tear up. They are experiencing the grief together.

Linda avoids any conversations about Tall or her feelings. She'll probably write a poem about it, but she's somewhere between Dad's withdrawal and Mike's business. Amelie gives her a hug as well, before she leaves, and they don't let go of each other for a minute. And a minute-long hug is a very long.

I've timed hugs before, trying to find an appropriate length for different occasions. According to researches, an average hug is about three seconds long. My experience with hugs is mostly with family and the people I date, and range between five and ten seconds. Amelie's hugs have always been longer and I usually let her linger until she lets go, but not today.

What I need most today, instead of my family, friends' and girls-friend's words and presence, is to be alone, to not hear Mom cry in the room next door when I haven't shed a tear, to not look at their swollen eyes and wonder if I'm ever going to cry about Tall's death, not to count until three before I lean away from the touches, and maintaining eye-contact when they confess their emotions to me.

I need to be alone and to process the information, to look into pulmonary edema and how a person dies from it, research what his last hour of life would've been like. I wasn't there, didn't witness it, but I recreated the steps in my head and walked through them with Tall. I went to the hospital and took Tall's belongings and talked to the doctors about as much details as they'd let me. I knew in no uncertain terms there was nothing they or I could do. Even if I were the one calling the ambulance, even if I were in the room with him, even if I were more insistent on walking. Research helps. Knowing what went on with Tall—even more so.

"It's one of those things," the doctor said. His tennis shoes were tapping on the gray linoleum tiles and the moment I thanked him for the information, he bolted.

Back at my apartment, I'm in research mode. What is grief supposed to look like? What is it supposed to feel like? I go to the library and check out several books on grieving. My anger at Tall for not being there to tell me what he thinks I should do is part of the grief process. The rage I woke up with today and that my ten-mile run didn't quite get rid of is part of the grief process. The calmness I seem to portray is deceptive. It might not be on my face or in my words, but the pain is a constant in me. I spent the first night staring at the ceiling of my parents' guest room that once used to be my bedroom. Tonight, after my visit to the hospital, I replay what Tall's last hour of life was, making sense of what happened. During the day I'm in motion, not always accomplishing things but filling my day with next, next, next and when there is nothing on my chore list, I find new things to do, like baking a cake on Saturday morning, or submitting a work order for the leaky faucet Mom hadn't taken care of in weeks.

What the grief books don't tell me but what I know is, this is the calm before the storm and I have no idea when the storm will happen, but it will. It may be a couple of weeks, it may be a month, but I know the breaking point is inevitable. Tall's death is too huge of a change for me to dissolve it with running or stim it away or to talk it out with a therapist. I have to deal with Mo now, because the worst thing would be for me to fall apart in front of my future boss. Falling apart in front of anyone is embarrassing, but this is a new person who doesn't need to see what he would likely not understand.

On Monday on the plane Martha and Linda sit together, and I'm by myself with an empty seat next to me. I re-read the contract we signed on Sunday afternoon in Martha's empty office that she opened up to make sure we had everything ready for this trip. Mo's emails and the expanded proposal his office sent this morning, when we were waiting to board the plane, is next.

***

Wednesday evening when we get back to Chicago, the shell of the calm that has been holding me together cracks open. I turn off my phone and leave it to charge in the kitchen, shed my clothes, wash the layer of stares and people's touches off my skin and sleep. The unintelligible color greets me when I wake up and it must be morning, because my bones no longer ache. I'm in my bed, in my house, but the disorientation remains, and I have no plan. Getting to New York was part of the plan, following the agenda Mo's assistant put together for our three days there was easy, surviving introductions to new people, the questions, the meetings was hard, but I doubled up on the runs and spent any minute I could alone in my room. There was no space in the schedule or my mind to think. I don't have that luxury anymore. The non-scheduled empty hours are ahead of me and I'm scared to face them.

The overcast sky promises rain, but not before I finish my ten-mile circuit. The street below my feet pixelizes and the houses I pass might be better suited for Minecraft than real life. The world around me is out of focus and if I could run with my eyes closed—I would. I let the cool spray of the shower clear the sweat. The drops multiply and when I'm back in the room, tugging my boxers and pants on, the sound of water continues to follow me. I open the blinds and see the rain, pelting the yellowing grass of my back yard. Even the world is crying. Why can't I? I lie on the carpet by the bed, where I can still see the window and watch the bubbles of water hit the glass, then slide down and make room for the new ones.

My stomach growls and I comb back through yesterday, looking for the last meal I had. Must've been lunch with Mo at his flagship in New York. I pad downstairs and see my phone on the charging station. When the screen comes alive, I see it's twelve forty-six. At least twenty-four-hours since I last ate. The notifications come in and the dings and buzzes hurt my brain. I can't deal with any of it. I put the phone face down and rummage through the pantry. I open up a can of tuna and eat the fish with a fork straight out of the tin at the kitchen counter. What would my so-called fans think of me now? I'm still hungry and I get another can, ignoring the smell and the oily texture of it. I down two glasses of water and clean up. I consider turning on the light but decide against it.

The black rectangle of my phone reminds me I have people who are probably worried, wondering where I am. With no plans, responding to the messages as good as any other thing for me to do. I stretch on the white leather of the couch and read.

Amelie: hope you got home safely.call me in the morning?

Amelie: good morning. i'm teaching till five thirty today but text me what's going on. I can come to your place after work.

Amelie: finishing up my lunch. still haven't heard from you. linda said they dropped you off at home. call me.

Mom's messages are not much different. The group chat discussed Angie picking up and storing Tall's ashes until the boat ash-spreading ceremony. Jaimie was making sure I don't want to take the next week off. Life went on and I have to figure out what mine is going to be. I throw the phone on the carpet under the coffee table, turn on my side, so I can see the French door leading to the patio and stare at the nature grieving about Tall in my stead.

4.6.21

Not the last sad chapter,  but getting closer. I'm going to work on these last chapters on editing a lot, tightening it all up. 

Let me know what held your attnetion and what was unnesessary. What you liked and what you could go without. What you want to know and what I could've skipped. 

Gotta love editing,  the messiness of this first draft will be erased, and a beautiful more clear picture will emerge. 

On an exciting note--I've started writing the last chapter. At least I think this is the last chapter. And I have the epilogue already written, so I should be done with the first draft this week. I can't belive it's possible (only about a month later than planned).

Fingers crossed I'll get to mark Love Graduate "completed" on Wattpad.

Thank you so-so much for sticking with me and for your support. Seeing the reads, the votes and the comments (love, love, love the comments) is what helps me get the words out.