Sapphire
I’ve been to funerals before, and wakes held in this very clubhouse. Half a dozen, at least, probably more, some of them too far back for me to remember.
I’ve stood around caskets, just like this, with the surviving old ladies and club kids around me. Family, friends, all of us sharing in our common grief.
But this time, I feel alone.
It doesn’t matter that Zade is standing right beside me, so close I can feel his heat radiating against my cold skin, or that I’m surrounded by the same people I grew up with, the people I’ve laughed with, loved with, cried with.
I’m alone with a kind of grief that none of these people can understand. It rises like walls all around me, isolating and impenetrable.
None of the people here turned their backs on Rafe when he started dealing drugs o
