I went into her room and froze in the doorway: I wasn’t able to take another step. I was completely paralyzed. Alex was covered in needles, tubes, electrodes…I felt the earth open up under my feet and swallow me up.
It was a situation that I knew very well. One which I had lived through the last few years at my house and one I wasn’t willing to go through again.
She turned to me with her pale, drawn face and looked at me a few seconds and I was able to read in her expression what my eyes were telling her.
“Go away Jason. You can’t stay here. I can’t have you next to me. You’re dangerous…for me. We can’t…” she sighed, barely holding back the tears. “We can’t be anything. There can be no me and you. Ever again.”
My heart shattered in a million pieces that day.
It wasn’t just her words that did it, but her eyes, the way they communicated that there would never be anus.
She didn’t need me, a hurt boyfriend that wasn’t able to be by her side. She knew better than I did that I wouldn’t have been able to bear it.
I turned and left her room.
I didn’t go back. I didn’t call. I didn’t go to visit her at her house.
I turned away and left her life.
From that point onwards everything went to hell.
My father was always absent and depressed, inconsolable, quiet and solitary. Angry, like me, angry with everything. We lived with anger and regret and we nurtured the darkest thoughts that can only come from damned souls.
We’re just the same he and I.
We love and provoke death.
We are destined to remain alone.
I was resigned never to let myself be touched by anyone and to not get caught up in any relationships.
To not love.
Ever.
Then I saw her again and that melancholy veil she wears in her eyes was enough to bring me back to the boy I was, the boy who was about to kill her. Back to the insecure, lonely kid that was trying to find consolation in his best friend, my saving anchor. Someone to pull him out of his shitty life. But instead of pulling me out, I dragged her down, risking everything.
It can’t happen again.
—
ALEX
“So, will you come?”
Rain was calling me to invite me to the pub tonight. The guys are going to play live as they apparently do a few times a week.
“I don’t know…”
“Please…I hate to always see you alone at home.”
Rain always knows how to convince me.
“Who’s going to be working at the pub if you’re all busy?”
“There are some guys that give us a hand and we’ve called them all in tonight. There are three of them and then we’ve also got Erin, who keeps everyone in line with just a glance.”
“I don’t know, I’m not ready to see him,” I confess.
