The houses were all lined up next to each other and most of our parents had lived there since their childhoods in similar conditions. We were often unhappy, and we helped one another and built each other up. We gathered strength in our comradeship and encouraged each other.
And that’s what we did, the guys and I.
Aaron and Rain, Liam and Neil, Patrick. And Alex.
“Now things are going well, right?” she asks, shooting me a quick glance.
“The pub is going well and the music is still…a maybe. Patrick fell in love with Erin, I’m still not quite sure I believe it. And they have a splendid little girl. Who would have ever expected something like that from someone like him?”
“It was a shock for me.” She smiles.
“Rain and Liam are now inseparable and Aaron, well, you know, he’s a rock and always finds a way to make it.”
“And you?” she asks nervously, biting her lip.
“And I crawl along, Alex,” I confess for the first time out loud. “I’m missing something. I will always be missing something.”
—
ALEX
“Jason.” I block him before he can say anything more.
“It’s the truth.”
“I’m sorry for all of the things that happened to you all and I will always be sorry that I wasn’t there, to not have been there to help Rain with the most difficult time in her life. She needed me and and I wasn’t here for her and now we’re starting to make up for lost time. I’m trying to not let it weigh on her that she doesn’t remember most of our friendship and to not think about what happened with Neil and Liam and you all. And I’m sorry not to have been close to you.”
“You’re here now.”
It’s true. I’m here now. I came back and I didn’t know what would be waiting for me once I set foot back in Dublin. Certainly, I wasn’t expecting all these changes in their lives and I didn’t expect to findthisJason, that reminds me vaguely of a person I used to know a long time ago but who lost himself at a certain point in a place very far from here.
Jason is not the same. He’s not the brazen, full-of-life boy that I fell in love with as a kid. He’s become a man, with a lot of responsibility on his shoulders, with a hollow, arid heart and a veil of sadness that shadows his limpid, brilliant eyes.
He’s no longermyJason. At this point I ask myself if he ever really was. But he’s not the only one to have changed.
I’m also not the same person I used to be. My life has been completely turned upside down. I am not able to do all of the things I enjoyed doing. To tell the truth, I don’t do much of anything. And it’s not like I’ve been prohibited from doing it. In the end, I can live a life like most people, just slower, with less stress and without big shocks and surely with less emotions.
And that’s my biggest problem. I’m able to manage physical exertions, I can avoid wearing myself out and avoid useless stress. I’ve been able to study, graduate, find a job I like and I’ll probably do a bunch of other non-lethal things over the course of my life, all those things that I’ve conceded myself to have an ordinary existence and that permit me to remain here for all the time I’ve been allocated.
Because it’s what I have to do.
Continue to be there, for my family, for those who love me, without involving anyone else. There are already too many people in my life who pray that every day I’ll open my eyes.
I have to deny myself what could make me give in, to that which would lead me to commit an unforgivable mistake—that I could destroy someone else’s life.
And until now, I’ve been able to work it out just fine, until his closeness brought everything out into the light and now, I can’t ignore what I’m feeling being here so close to him.
The emotions that are coming to the surface, the desire to touch him, to feel his scent on my skin, to let myself be wrapped in his warmth.
Emotions that accelerate my heartbeat out of control and provoke a familiar sense of suffocating, anxiety and fear.
They are emotions that cannot be controlled and that I have to avoid, I have to absolutely stay away from him.
I can’t let myself get so close to him because these feelings start from being around him, he’s the only one who makes me feel this way.
Because with Jason it can only be all or nothing. But my all would be too big for the both of us.
I’ve never felt in so much danger as I do now, being next to Jason.
