Our bellies full from dinner, pizza that he picked up on his way over, and Grams settled into the sofa with her favorite show, Luke and I sit together on the floor at the foot of Casey's bed.

We haven't said a word for the past ten minutes, both of us quietly peering around the room, the things left behind, untouched for years.

Well, Luke is looking around - a layer of thin dust coating everything even though I know Grams tries to keep it clean. It's just what happens when no one uses a space anymore.

I'm mostly staring at my torn cuticles, reminding myself how to breathe every few seconds when I suddenly realize I've held my breath for too long.

But every inhale burns with another memory, each breath tearing my chest apart. It smells so much like Casey in here, there's no escaping it.

It's everything, everything, everything. Casey, Casey, Casey.

The thought of ripping through this room, ruining that - that perfect memorial of him, makes me want to scream. My chest rises and falls quicker and quicker.

Casey Casey Casey.

As if he can read my mind, Luke rests his hand on mine, squeezing tightly as our interlocked fingers settle on my thigh.

"How're you doing?" He whispers.

All I can do is nod my head. What I'm nodding to convey, I don't really know. I'm not OK. Not OK at all.

But I'm here, I'm not running away. I want to scream until my throat burns and cry until my eyes dry out, but I haven't left yet.

His thumb draws soothing fingers over the back of my hand. "We can start tomorrow."

"No." I say then, hurt pounding against my rib cage with every heartbeat, "No, I want to do this." Sort of a half-truth. "For Casey, at least." The whole truth.

Luke squeezes my hand again, a soft, somber, encouraging smile on his lips. "Let's do it, then. You tell me what to do. And tomorrow, once we've gone through some of this, I'll take you surfing after work. Okay?"

I nod frantically, hanging onto his words. Surfing with Luke, tomorrow after work. After I get through this.

Feeling his eyes on me, I scan the room.

If I get through this.

Posters are still plastered to the walls, strings and strings and strings of photos hung with push-pins criss-crossed over them in haphazard patterns. Photos of our young, smiling faces that hurt to look at.

Clothes, clean in a laundry basket by his desk chair, a few shirts strewn over the desk itself, like he was choosing an outfit before he left for the party that night. My heart thumps painfully knowing that's exactly what he was doing. He'd planned on putting it all away again when he was home.

A surfboard hangs on its rack on the far wall. I know several skateboards are stacked under the bed. So are his shoes - more pairs of sneakers than anyone ever needed, all in pristine condition still. Where I always hated sneakers, Casey collected them just as fervently as his photos.

His TV and gaming consoles sit atop his dresser, an extra controller discarded on the floor. Games to be resumed later, the fact that there will be a later to play them just a given.

There's a whooshing in my ears as I take it all in, the pieces of my brother that I have left. It all feels like the wrong place to start.

Where do you begin deconstructing someone else's life?

My fingers tremble in Luke's and my throat tightens.

"Dyl?" His voice is patient, his fingers grounding as he rubs circles into my skin. "How about we start with the clothes? Maybe get it all taken out, sorted and washed and... and then we can put it into boxes once it's clean? To save or... or to donate, or something?"

I stare at him, holding back the tears.

Boxes. Donation bags.

That's all that Casey's life amounts to. Some boxes in storage, a grave site we rarely visit, and a cross stuck in the ground.

It's not fucking fair.

A pitiful, furious scoff is forced from my lips.

"Or we can figure out what to do once it's clean later. But we can start with getting it off the floor, into the laundry." Luke mistakenly backtracks to not upset me, avoiding looking at any one thing too long or too closely. "Or we can start somewhere else. You just tell me what you need me to do and I'll do it. Whatever you need."

I meet his eyes finally, see the pleading look he's giving me. Doing his best to figure out how to help me through this, so I hurt as little as possible, even though he's hurting too.

Even though it's not possible to keep either of us from the pain going through all of Casey's stuff will cause.

"Laundry." I answer finally, all that I'm able to say without crying, and rise to my feet slowly. "Let's start with the laundry."

"Laundry, good. Okay." Luke nods, giving me a careful once-over before getting to work.

He begins working on the closet, looking through without removing anything yet. I know he's waiting for me to make the first move, for me to be the first to destroy Casey's peaceful little memorial.

I approach the desk, trailing my fingers over the wires of his earbuds, the stack of Polaroids he was going through. Grabbing one of the shirts, a pale pink polo that always brought out his tan, I hold it to my nose and inhale deeply.

Somehow, maybe only in my mind, I still smell him, the Casey-scent still ingrained in the fabric of the shirt and my brain.

"Dyl?"

Luke's voice forces me to realize I've closed my eyes, the tears silently falling down my cheeks. I shake my head, using the back of my hand to dry my face. Grabbing the empty hamper from the corner, I shrug my shoulders.

"I don't know how it will ever hurt any less, Luke."

An aqua blue button-up in his hands, Luke frowns at me knowingly. Looking to the shirt and back to me again, he seems to ignore what I've said as he lifts the fabric to me.

"You know how much Case loved this stupid shirt?"

"What?"

"Yeah," Luke nods, tossing it into the hamper with an exaggerated swoosh. "He said it made his arms look good. I hated being the one to tell him he probably just got the damn thing too small to begin with."

Laughter bubbles from within me, the memory suddenly clear as day. The shirt always stretched too tight over his biceps, Luke is right, it was too small. Casey was always more filled out where Luke was taller, leaner. Something tells me Luke didn't really hate being the one to tell him.

"He wore it a lot on dates with Maya." I chuckle, "Sometimes with the top button undone."

Luke is laughing then too, and we're making fun of Casey but not really, because it's all that keeps us from breaking down.

As the laughter fades, replaced by my remaining sniffles, Luke jerks his chin towards me. "Hey, do me a favor while we do this, okay?"

I narrow my eyes at him. "Depends on the favor."

"When we go through all this," He gestures to the room around us, "It'll bring back a lot of stuff and it'll hurt to think about. But there's more than that, Dyl, and I don't want us to lose it." He inhales deeply and when he exhales, a large smile takes place on his lips. "So, I'm asking you, as we go through all of Casey's stuff, will you please remind me of some of the good things you remember about him, too?"

The look in his eyes... He's doing it for me, but Luke needs it, too. He needs someone to remember his best friend with.

So I do. I continue sorting through Casey's rejected party outfits, each whiff of his cologne bringing a new wave of tears and a new cascade of memories.

I tell Luke about the time during sophomore Geometry when Casey overheard Mom getting on me about a D. No questions asked, the next night Casey was sitting beside me at the table when it came time to do homework and he never even asked, he just started explaining mathematical principles like we were talking about an upcoming party, not leaving until I finished my entire assignment. He spent the rest of the term doing his homework beside me, working through every problem until I understood.

I join Luke at the closet, the top shelf mostly empty now, and pull several wet suits from another. They smell like salt and a hint of seaweed and it makes me sick to think of someone healthy and strong like Casey or Luke unable to glide over the waves anymore so I tell Luke another story. I remind him of the day - before Casey belonged to Maya and she to him and I belonged to Luke and he to me - that they were trying to impress girls at the pier with Luke's golden retriever. One burst of seagulls across the sky and the dog had dragged them both through the sand. Covered head to toe, the sand was the only thing covering their crimson faces as the girls giggled at them instead.

And there was that Summer Bash when Casey won the winning raffle ticket but lost it jumping over the pier. To impress Maya, that time, I think? And the year he finally got his license - he always insisted on driving and controlling the radio. Or the small things, like how he never drank orange juice without the pulp and how he could make anyone laugh, no matter the time or mood.

It's this and that and it's everything. It's Casey.

And it's not until Luke's telling me about how Casey punched him in the face when he asked to take me out a date, that I realize the closet is completely empty, piles sorted on the floor at our feet. My cheeks are lined in salt stains, tears from laughing and crying both marking my skin.

"He didn't really hit you, did he?" I ask, removing the top drawer from Casey's dresser. Setting it on the floor, I kneel before it and begin removing several pairs of shorts.

Luke sits beside me, nodding his head. "He hit me, alright, right in the mouth. He said I had a lot of nerve asking to sleep with his sister."

I raise a brow.

"I told him I asked to date his sister, not sleep with her." Luke's grin is sheepish.

"And?"

"And he told me that as long as he'd known me, those two things meant exactly the same thing. So the answer was no."

"And somehow the charming Luke Henson won him over eventually?" I tease, setting the shorts aside.

"Not exactly." A dimple creases Luke's cheek, "I think he just got tired of listening to me talk about you."

I smile, knowing that wasn't it. Casey and I had our own conversations about dating Luke. He wouldn't have given me the OK if he didn't think Luke meant what he said about our relationship being different than the rest.

What would he think of us now? I can't help but ask Luke as much. "Do you think he's really out there, somewhere, watching us? Do you think he's mad at us?"

At me?

Guilt - always there, never relenting, guilt - rises like bile in my throat.

"I do think he's out there." Luke murmurs, brows furrowed. At my curious expression, he continues, a sad flicker in his hazel eyes. "My best friend in the entire world died absolutely hating me, Dylan. I have to believe there's somewhere out there after this where I get to see him again... To make that right."

His voice trails off as my heart cracks.

Oh, Luke.

Before I can speak, he does.

"As for him being mad at us..." Luke gazes at me before finally breaking into a bright smile, the heaviness of just moments before gone completely. "Case could never stay mad at you, Dyl. Not ever."

The words hit me more than he even realizes and I'm left speechless for several seconds. He checks his phone and curses at the time, saying he has to be home to watch Finn overnight.

"I'll grab you from work and we'll have our first surf lesson tomorrow, right?" He winks, standing tall in the center of the room.

From my spot on the floor, I look up at him and nod, surprisingly even a bit excited for the lesson to come. Maybe it's because I tackled Case's room today that I'm eager to try something new, or maybe it's just the idea of seeing Luke in his bathing suit. Whatever the reason, it feels better than how I've been feeling.

With a kiss on my head, Luke promises to walk Grams up to bed before leaving.

While I wait, I continue to sort through the remaining drawers of clothing, the creaking of the stairs indicating Grams on her way up. I overhear hushed goodbyes with Luke before a gentle knock at the door and the treading of Luke's feet back downstairs.

"Come in," I tell Grams just as I pull out Casey's final drawer. But I don't look up as she enters the room, too confused by what I've found at the bottom of the dresser to be polite.

Beneath a handful of swim trunks, Casey buried several boxes, his handwriting - God, it's like a punch in the gut to see his handwriting up close, to feel the indents of his pen beneath my fingers - scrawled over the tops of them.

"Everything going okay in here?" Grams voice pulls my attention from the strange boxes as she stands in the doorway.

Mind on whatever is inside them, I find myself responding to Grams truthfully anyway. "It sucks but it's... We made some progress."

We made decent progress, actually. With Casey's things and maybe even with me, it seems. Yes there was crying but there was also laughter. That has to count for something.

"I see that," She gestures to the drawer. "Are you about done for tonight?"

Looking back at the boxes, I shrug. "Almost. I want to finish up a couple of things and then I'll get some sleep."

"Good. I'm really proud of you for doing this, Dylan Grace." Grams says slowly, almost like she believes I'll fall apart the second she leaves, "You'll get me if you need anything?"

Again, I nod. But I don't feel like falling apart, not now at least. I just feel like seeing what's in these boxes, whatever it is that Casey felt like hiding.

Once she's out of the room, I look more closely, finding names and dates written across them. Opening the first, one marked "Luke - camping trip," it all makes sense, the photos stacked in piles nearly to the brim.

Casey, always taking photos and changing the ones hanging in his room with every season. These must be his extra photos - the ones waiting for their time on the wall or the ones that simply didn't make the cut. Polaroids and prints of various sizes, some in tact, others creatively cut up.

Warmth spreads through me as I flip through box after box, our summer adventures documented so thoroughly it's almost like watching a movie. Looking at these photos, it's like I can pretend I don't yet know the ending. Just the story he captured.

It's not until I get to a box marked "Maya" that I worry I might be stumbling onto something Grams thought Case wouldn't want his family members to see.

Is it possible he has scandalous pictures of Maya in here?

My cheeks flush at the possibility of finding Case and Maya in any sort of compromising positions.

My fingers fidget with the top, toying with the idea of looking through it all, seeing if I find the missing piece Casey never saw. Seeing if I can point it out - the one thing, the one sign that would've alerted us all of Maya's impending betrayal.

But the photos on the wall, the ones where Casey is watching Maya, his eyes full of so much fucking love that it hurts... That's the real Casey. Not the devastated, betrayed, heartbroken boy who died in that car accident.

If there's any proof in this box that sullies that memory... I don't want to find it. So I shove the box back into the drawer, before finally removing the last one. My breath catches in my throat.

For Dyl - Someday!

This time I can't wait - there's something for me, from Casey and I never knew - my hands tear the top off and I nearly dump the photos out onto the floor, eager to see every last one all at the same time.

When my eyes finally focus, my fingers finally steady enough to hold several up to my gaze, my vision begins to blur again.

Because it's photo after photo of me - at the beach, on the pier, at Summer Bash, in our tree-house, at the dinner table, at our homecoming, laughing, scowling, alone and surrounded by our friends. It's me, all of me - the early teenage years of my life anyway - through Casey's eyes, the protective, loving, sometimes intrusive gaze of an older brother obvious in every single one.

There are sadly too few with him in the frame.  I clutch them to my chest anyways, wishing there were more.

And in the most recent ones, it's like watching Luke watch me, love me, through Casey's eyes. In the background of some, the foreground of others, but he's almost always there - in the summer ones.

Always.

In case I ever doubted Luke's feelings for me, in case I ever needed reassurances that my brother was looking out for me, or ever worried that he could be so mad at me, so disgusted with me...

Casey planned on giving me - has given me - this gift.

And maybe... It's the answer that I need.

eep super long chapter guys! sorry about that, but I didn't want to break it up any other way, it didn't feel right! anyways, another emotional one but I'm so proud of Dylan!! any thoughts or reactions to this chapter? Lemme know! so grateful for you all and for the support you give to Dylan's story!