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The day we buried Jr was the worst day to memory.

When his casket was lowered into the ground, it hit me that he was actually gone. I was the last person to leave the grave site, telling him again how much I loved him.

Too bad it was too late.

"Have you eaten today?" Jaxon asked from the doorway.

"No." I mumbled with my head still under the comforter.

He walked over to sit on the bed, tugging them down, "You need to eat, Kyser."

My appetite was nonexistent, only eating the bare minimum because I knew I needed to. Everything tasted bland, not the same.

"I'm fine."

I wouldn't necessarily say I was depressed, just extremely sad, guilty, and possibly every other negative emotion that there was.

My grandma still had yet to wake up from the coma she was currently in, caused by the stroke Doctors say was likely due to a mixture of high blood pressure and stress.

Gee, I wonder what was stressing her out?

If she didn't wake up, that makes two people Paisley had a hand in killing.

She had turned herself in to the police on hindering prosecution charges, as well as endangering the welfare of a child. I'm assuming it was because Nas told me that everyone in the neighborhood had heard that Demetrius was looking for her. Drew still hadn't been heard from though, crawling into whatever hole he was hiding in.

"I made you a sandwich." Jaxon said, bringing me back to the present.

I didn't even have the needed materials to make a sandwich, so I'm not sure what it consisted of.

When he placed the plate in front of me, I saw it was an egg sandwich.

The laugh that came from me was loud, surprising both myself and Jaxon. He looked at me strangely, which turned to sympathy when my laugh turned into a full-on cry.

He moved the plate before wrapping his arms around me, allowing me to cry into his chest. Not a word was uttered, yet the sense of peacefulness I felt while he held me spoke volumes.

"You can't blame yourself." He said as he rubbed my back, "You did all that you could've done as an aunt."

"I could've done so much more."

My face was lifted towards his as he questioned, "At what expense? The living situation was unhealthy and you needed to leave. There's no way you could've known your sister would go so far as to let her son lose his life."

I knew his words were true, but the nagging voice in my head wouldn't go away.

Pressing my face back in his shirt, I mumbled, "Tell me a story."

There was a moment of quietness as he considered which story to tell, "I found my mother dead when I was 6."

"Fuck Jaxon, can you tell me something less depressing?"

He laughed slightly, "I try to tell you things that relate to what you're going through."

I considered if I had the emotional capacity to hear his story. He'd never mentioned his actual mom, so I might as well hear the story while he's in the mood.

"Okay, tell me."

He shifted so that he was completely on the bed, lying us so that we were facing each other, "She was a drug addict so looking back, I guess I should've expected it to happen."

"You don't think like that when you're 6 though." I pointed out.

"So yeah, I came home from school and she was dead on the bathroom floor."

"It wasn't nearly as traumatic as yours." He continued, "She had probably only been dead for a few hours."

"That's still traumatic Jaxon."

I couldn't imagine coming home and finding- nevermind.

"I tried to wake her up for while actually. A dumb ass child shaking her as if she would just magically get up."

There was tension in the air and I found myself wishing I hadn't asked him to tell me anything.

"I'm not sure why I was so upset really, she was the shittiest mother anyone could've had."

Surprise registered on my face, "You don't mean that."

He rubbed a spot above his eyebrow that had a small scar, "Do you see this?"

I nodded. I'd wondered where he got it from before, even asking him about it, though he changed the subject to something else.

"That same summer before she died, she left me at home for about a week, telling me not to leave until she got back."

He liked to build up to his stories so I sat quietly, not interrupting until I felt he wanted a response.

"It wasn't shit there to eat but Ramen noodles. Which I ate within the first 2 or 3 days, so by the sixth day I was starving."

His voice was growing lower as the story continued, "So I went to my neighbor's house and she fed me. Pork chops with rice and gravy."

"I thought you hated pork chops." I said in confusion.

"Yes, because they remind me of when I went home and she beat the shit out of me with an iron because I left the house."

"I'm sorry." I said, not knowing how else to respond.

He sighed, "Don't be."

We sat quietly as I played with the strings on his sweat pants.

I was waiting for the part where he explains what the purpose of him telling me the story was when he said, "I don't have a reason for telling you this, other than the fact that I wanted you to know."

It was closer to my situation than any other story he'd told me.

"Thank you for telling me."

"You're the first person to ever know why I have this scar."

For the first time since the conversation began, I looked into his eyes, and there was sadness.

The words I wanted to say to him were on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them down, choosing instead to move closer to him so that he could bury his head into my chest just as he had done for me.

In that moment, I knew I was fucked.

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