Picking up where I left off...

The night of the funeral, the Kempers had invited some family and friends over in honor of Rob. I asked Brad if I could come over a little early, and he said sure. I walked down to his house, hoping to get a little bit of alone time with him. I walked in and said hey to the family. I handed his mom some flowers and she told me everyone was upstairs. So it turns out, I wasn't the first to arrive. I heard some laughing coming from his room. That was ok. He needed to be with people that cared about him. I was totally cool with the whole thing and slightly excited to finally meet some of his other friends.

That feeling quickly faded as soon as I opened his door. All the lights were out, except for 3 lit candles. A couple of people were sitting in chairs around his room, but my attention was totally on what was in front of me. There was Brad lying on his bed in the middle of three girls, one of them being Katie.

The whole room stopped.

They all stared at me not sure what they were supposed to do. Brad, being who he is, made light of the situation and said, "Hey Hailey! Wanna join in?" I answered disgustedly, "Yeah, where?" and calmly walked over to his desk and sat down. Not being a total idiot, he realized this looked bad and he got up and turned the lights on. To make matters worse, it was obvious Katie had gone straight from church to his house, because she was wearing a pair of his pajama pants. Not something I wanted to see. It was getting to be apparant who my competition was going to be.

I always get annoyed at those Bachelor type shows where seemingly intelligent girls are fighting over some guy. However, I don't have much room to judge. I'm very competitive, and I don't like to lose. I'd waited seven freakin years for him to really start falling in love with me. I wasn't about to lose him now to some girl I'd only heard him mention like twice.

I sat at that desk fuming over what I just witnessed, trying to compose myself in order to keep from making Brad's day worse.
A few minutes later, his sister Lia peeked in his room. "Hey Brad, can I... Oh, hey Hailey!!" I said hi back, and she left with one of the obviously abandoned chairs. Not long after that, Brad's dad came up to check on us. "Hey Hailey! Hey guys." Brad thought it was hilarious that his family was so happy to see me and kind of whatever-ish with everyone else.
We all went downstairs and watched a video compilation of Rob's life. Very sad. Brad came up to me during it and put his arm around me (HA. I hope Katie saw that). Chase came not long after that to hang out with us. He gave me a big hug and then we all went outside to talk. I'm not sure why, because it was freezing out there.

While we were outside, I saw Brad walk away towards the house. He looked back at me and nodded for me to follow him. We went up to his room and he told me he just needed to get away from everyone. We sat and talked. He finally opened up about Rob and how he was doing. Brad was one of the toughest kids I knew, so when I saw him start to cry, it broke my heart. I held him and played with his hair while he broke down. Even though it was really sad, that's still one of my favorite moments with him. It was the first time he was actually vulnerable with me and the first time I got to be the strong one for him.