“Are you sure you want to come to this?” Leighanne asked delicately, brushing her long blonde hair over her shoulder as she studied her husband’s weary face.

“I definitely don’t want to but I feel like I have to,” Brian explained, playing with the wedding band on his finger out of habit. 

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“The other guys are expecting me there. I can’t let them down. They’ve been there for me this whole time so I can’t very well stop being there for them just because I don’t think what they’re doing is right,” the blonde man shrugged and reached for the door handle, “If I don’t go now I never will.”

Leighanne nodded and watched as Brian got out then grabbed the cooler full of drinks from the back (his contribution to this soon to be annual get together).

Brian balanced the cooler delicately in his hands as he made his way down the beach, over rocks and driftwood, barely able to see over the tower of food and drinks he was holding. 

“Hurry up!” AJ chastised him, waving the couple down the beach towards their circle of lawn chairs. 

Brian rolled his eyes and didn’t change his pace at all, “I’m coming, hold your horses.” As he reached their small bonfire he could smell hot dogs and roasting marshmallows and smiled at the normalcy of it all. He put down the cooler and looked at all of his friends sitting in a circle around the fire and couldn’t help but feel sad when he noticed they’d left a spot for the friend that would never join them. 

“Took you long enough, I’m going gray over here!” AJ teased, grabbing a coke from the cooler full of ice. 

Brian smiled a strained smile and took his seat next to his wife, kissing her cheek quickly, “You have to have hair for it to go grey,” he teased AJ before becoming more serious, “Well I’m here I guess we can start.”

“I’ll go first!” Leighanne offered and everyone looked at her in surprise. When they’d come up with the idea to make the anniversary of their friend’s death a happy occasion, to remember the good times, they had assumed that one person who would not find it in them to contribute would be Brian’s wife. 

Leighanne took a moment to think, brushing her long blonde hair away from her face, “First of all I have to say I can’t believe it’s been a year. A year seems like such a long time. I know you are all well aware of the fact that he and I never really saw eye to eye on a lot of things but... I did love him. Now that he’s gone I feel like I see him everywhere I go. I can’t count the number of times I’ve done a double take thinking he was walking past me on the street…but…this is supposed to be happy so, here’s my happy memory. When Baylee was born he was a complete wreck; I think he was even more nervous than Brian was. The first time he held him it was like you could see he’d just fallen in love despite the fact that he was incredibly worried about dropping him, or doing wrong by him. I’ve never seen him look as perfectly happy as I did at that very moment, and I think it made Brian wonder whether he really was Bay’s father,” she laughed and everyone smiled, determined to get through the whole night without crying, “that’s my story. I will always think of how he looked that day.”

The older blonde woman looked to the person on her left, keeping the stories flowing around the circle but Brian couldn’t bear to listen. He kept looking at that empty spot across from him, wondering what could have been. The stories everyone was sharing were heart warming, funny, embarrassing at times and most definitely had been thought about in the days before their gathering to make sure they weren’t depressing. 

“I can’t do this!” Brian suddenly burst, interrupting Howie’s silly story, “How can you all just sit there and tell happy stories and pretend like everything is okay?! It’s not okay!” 

“Brian…” Howie soothed with a sigh, feeling for his friend. He had taken everything the hardest, and when they’d decided to have a positive gathering for this first year anniversary. 

“No Howie, don’t,” Brian wiped at his eyes, unable to keep himself from crying, “We’re all sitting here having a party on the very spot the police found his body, on the anniversary of his death! He’s dead and we’re roasting hot dogs and drinking beer and saying it’s in his honour!” 

“I only have a coke,”

“Shut up AJ!” Brian snapped, shaking his head angrily, “It’s not funny! You’re all sitting here talking about the funny times we had and whatever bullshit you can think of when we don’t even know what really happened to him! It’s not fair to him! It’s not fair!”

“How is it not fair?” Howie questioned gently.

“We should be out there looking for the person who took him from us not accepting the fact that he’s gone!”

“Brian, his case is still open, we haven’t given up hope that we’ll find the person responsible but there’s nothing we can do. We’re just regular people, not the police or the FBI, or whomever else. It’s not up to us to do the investigating. We need to accept the fact that he’s gone so we can move on.”

“If we move on then we’re letting his murderer go unpunished,” Brian said softly, looking out to the sea, watching the waves rolling in. 

“What can we do though?”

“I don’t know,” Brian sighed, not tearing his eyes away from the water, “But I know in my heart he would want us out there trying to find him some justice.”

AJ knew that in their small circle of friends no one was hurting quite like Brian, and he pained him to see his friend so torn up over something that happened a year ago, “It’s time to move on, he would want you to be happy,” he said as nicely as he could without downright telling him it was time to get over it. 

Brian shook his head forcefully, “I can’t move on, I can’t be happy until I know what happened that night. I just can’t sit here with all of you and pretend everything is okay because it’s really not okay. Nick is dead, do you get that? He’s dead! Someone took him from us, stole his life from him, and he’s never coming back. There has got to be a person out there that knows what happened on this beach. People don’t just show up dead! There has to be something the police are missing! I will not let him go until I know what happened to him. Come hell or high water I’ll make the person who took our brother from us pay.”