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“Man, if your dads are offering, they can definitely have ice cream. They can have an entire Dairy Queen if it makes them happy. Anything to keep them from crying…” I trail off as Dean settles on the couch next to me, tapping his knee against my injured one.

I’m fucking up. Feeding the girls ice cream won’t hide them from their grief.

The twins don’t fully understand what’s happened yet, and it feels like all they do is cry while they try to process the unthinkable fact that their mommy is gone forever.

Hell, all I do is cry, too. I can’t blame them. But I can try to soothe them with ice cream, I guess.

“You’re not a bad guardian, Luke. It’s okay to give them a little leeway while you all transition,” Dean says, reading my mind.

“Exactly. Let them have the ice cream. You won’t have to deal with the sugar crash because I’m keeping the little snuggle bugs overnight,” Kira says, pushing off the arm of the chair and to her feet.

“And don’t worry, I’ll make sure they eat at least one bite of vegetables and brush their teeth before bed, too. ”

I close my eyes, unable to tamp down the overwhelming gratitude coursing through me.

It was a total fluke that Gigi and I both became intertwined with the McKenna clan.

The first time me and Dean met off the field at a charity for LGBTQIA+ youth in sports back in college, we clicked.

When we spent two seasons playing on the same team—me as his proverbial understudy—we became inseparable.

We played each other often while we were both in the league, but even though we were rivals on the field, we’ve been best friends in life for years.

We have the same sense of humor, the same interest in hobbies and the same passion for the game.

Our ‘bromance’, as the media likes to call it, has been well documented by football fans on social media over the years, and friendships like ours are always good for league morale.

It helps that we’re both queer dudes in the sport—even if we’re both retired now .

We should have played against each other in Dean’s last Big Game before his retirement. It would have been an epic chapter in our bromance story, but fate had other fucked-up ideas.

It was only serendipitous that Gigi wound up moving in right next door to Dean’s younger sister. Kira’s daughter, Cami, and the twins are around the same age and the best of friends. If I had to guess, Ollie is going to grow up to be besties with the new McKenna-Yates baby, too.

I don’t know how I would have survived my injury, let alone the last few days, if it weren’t for Dean, Kira, and their parents. Even so, I feel like it hasn't even been a week and I’m already jumping at the opportunity to pawn my nieces off on someone else.

“Are you sure a sleepover is a good idea? Shouldn’t I…you know. Should I be talking to them? What if they ask about their mom again?” I ask as I walk Kira to the door. She gives me a soft smile and cups my cheek.

“They’re five-years-old, hon. They will ask about their mom again, and you’ll have to explain to them again that Mommy isn’t coming back.

But tonight? Tonight, those girls are going to eat ice cream and watch movies at my house.

If they ask about their mama, I’ll be there to answer their questions.

You are going to stay here and try to get some rest, knowing that your girls are content and safe, okay? ”

“Luke, man, you’ve had a long fucking day.” Dean claps me on my shoulder. “Let Keeks take care of the girls, and I’ll stay here to help take care of you.”

The thought of having to have the same gut-wrenching conversation with Lemmie and Mellie about their mother more than once stabs me in the gut, so I stop fighting and let Kira keep the kids overnight.

If I’m going to do this–if I’m going to honor Gigi’s memory and raise her girls for her–I’m going to need to keep myself as strong as possible.

Kira is part of Gigi’s village— my village, now—and I need to learn to lean on her.

And tonight, being a strong guardian and a strong brother means letting someone else take over.

“I’m just going to walk Kira next door. I’ll be right back, okay?” Dean says, his voice low and soft.

“Yeah, no problem. I’m going to get started cleaning all this shit up.

” I turn and toward one of the end tables to gather some discarded napkins before Dean can stop me.

I know he’ll tell me to slow down, to sit down, to let him handle it.

But he knows me well enough to know that I’ve got to do something.

I can’t have another moment like this morning at the funeral home.

I don’t have the luxury of succumbing to grief anymore.

I hear a dejected sigh before the door closes quietly, and I busy myself with more napkins and the odd empty cup. It’s not actually that messy in this place. I’m used to having to bring in a cleaning crew after having a house full of people.

But I suppose a bunch of adults mourning a life gone too soon are more respectful and tidier than professional athletes at a post-game house party.

I push the swinging door to the kitchen with my hip, my hands full of the odds and ends I’ve gathered in the name of staying busy. The wooden door swings with the force of my hip bump, slamming against the opposite wall and causing a frame to shift and hit the ground.

“Fuck,” I grumble as I drop the shit in my hands on to the nearby kitchen island.

This is the third time this week I’ve hit that damned door too hard and swung it straight into the wall.

I have to remember that, unlike my penthouse over in Pacific Heights, my sister’s peach-colored Victorian was built in the early twentieth century and hasn’t been updated much since.

I need to reign in my professional quarterback strength and be gentler with this old painted lady.

In all my stumbling, I must have dropped a napkin on the ground because when I turn to retrieve the felled frame, I slip and fall right down on the tiled kitchen floor. I throw my hands out in front of me and hit the ground, my injured knee taking the brunt of the impact.

Of course, it fucking does. A shock of pain shoots through me, the throb in my knee so intense that I don’t immediately notice the broken glass that is now impaled in my hand.

Blood drips from my hand onto the floor and I hiss through my teeth as the ache in my knee radiates up my leg.

I spot the broken frame. A picture of Gigi smiling from a hospital bed, baby Ollie on her chest and Lemmie and Mellie on either side of her sits behind the shattered glass.

I took this picture the day that Ollie was born, minutes after bringing the twins to the room to meet their new sister.

The three of us had been so excited, pacing the waiting room like husbands in the fifties. We ate pink candy and laughed while we wondered if Gigi would actually follow through on her threat and name their baby sister Jellie Jam.

A sob wracks through me, catching me off guard with the force of the emotions.

The picture itself is fine. It’s safe even though the frame is now trash.

Even if I’d ruined the print, the digital version still lives on my phone and in the cloud.

But the logical part of my brain that knows and understands those truths has gone offline.

Instead, I fixate on the mess, on what the broken frame represents.

My family is broken. It’s shattered into a million pieces, and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to glue the fragments back together.

And so, I stop trying, if just for now. I slowly maneuver myself so that I’m on my butt and leaning against the island, wincing as the release of pressure on my knee sends another lightning bolt of pain through my leg.

Placing my hands palms up in my lap, I let my head roll back, squeezing my eyes shut as tears slip past my eyelids and roll down my cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Gigi. I’m already fucking this up. I’m not as strong as you. I’m not as brave as you. It should’ve been me. I should be the one in the ground, not you. I’m so fucking sorry.”

I continue to mutter broken apologies to my sister, hoping that wherever she is, she can hear me and try to forgive me. Forgive me for not being strong like her. Forgive me for not knowing how the hell I’m going to raise her kids all by myself.

I hear glass crunching under feet, smell the familiar vanilla and burnt orange scent of Dean’s cologne, and I can’t decide if I’m happy that he’s here to help me stand up or embarrassed to need him to help me to my feet twice in one day.

Though this seems to be our thing. I fall down, and Dean McKenna swoops in to pick me up.

Before I can make up my mind, I’m scooped up off the floor, bridal style.

Dean hugs me to his chest as he lifts me off the ground and sets me on the countertop.

My breath is shaky, but when I open my eyes, the tears slowly trickle to a stop.

I watch as Dean maneuvers around the kitchen, opening cabinets and draws until he finds whatever it is he’s looking for.

Wordlessly, he stands back in front of me and sets down a package of unicorn bandages, pink tweezers, and a tube of antibiotic ointment.

He cups my cheek in one of his rough, calloused hands and I lean into the touch.

He tilts his head, asking a silent question.

Will you let me take care of you?

It’s a move I learned after my injury, when I was bed-bound and Dean refused to leave my side. Even when I was pissed off at the world and lashing out, all my best friend has ever wanted to do was hold my hand through it.

So I nod, and Dean gets to work quietly removing the few shards of glass from my palms, blotting the bleeding wounds and then applying ointment. Only the deepest cut on the heel of my left palm needs a bandage, and when the glittery purple unicorn is adhered to my skin, I let out a long sigh.