I haven’t talked to Tucker in…months. If I’m being honest, I don’t even know if he would answer if I called. Or better yet, if he wouldn’t laugh and hang up if I asked him to come get me. But I would try.
The silence is pulsing with all the things left unsaid between us. When I finally pull my eyes back to his, he’s already looking at me. Dull, shuttered. None of the intensity from earlier is left in their depths. He’s got it all locked up where I can’t see it. But he swallows once, and his jaw flexes with gritted teeth.
I can’t help but wonder what words he’s biting back. And is he holding back for my sake, or his? I want to tell him to just spit it out, but he lets go of his mug with one hand to push the other on the counter closer to me.
He takes a sip and looks away from me, towards the living room. The window that shows the rain is still going strong outside. I can hear it pinging off the windows.
“What do you want?” he finally asks. It's not sharp. It’s quiet. Careful, even. Like he doesn’t know if he really wants to hear my answer.
You.
“I don’t think what I want really matters in this situation, does it?” I rub the back of my neck, then reach for the mug with clammy hands. Brett used to say there was nothing a mug of hot chocolate couldn’t fix.
I think you were wrong about that, Brett-man.
Bowen levels me with an unimpressed glare. Now is not the time for me to be difficult.
I take a sip of the hot chocolate but barely taste it. The mug makes a soft thunk when I set it back down. I shrug. “I don’t think I can… I don’t know that I want to go back to that house if no one else is there. I don’t…” My eyes slide off him and around the kitchen. It's hard to admit my demons out loud, even if this man knows every one of them personally. Most of them, anyway. It's one thing for someone to know your weaknesses, and another to admit them out loud. To feel the words on your tongue and feel the way they sound in the air. Verbalizing things makes themreal.Not just unspoken truths.
My eyes land on four bottles. All lined up against the back of the counter under the cupboards. They’re varying levels of full. A pit of want and shame and that ever present regret shoot through my system. My face heats, just looking at them. I’m not so much of a fiend that I want to run across the short space and take a bottle to the face…
But I remember the numbness. The way all my worries would float away, just out of reach. If our strength can be measured by those bottles, he wins every time. It probably says something about us as people. The fact that he can seek pockets of escape while I flung myself full force into the blissfuldetachment for years. Even to the detriment of every relationship in my life.
The pain I self-inflicted is a pain I don’t know will ever go away. I don’t know if time will dull the sharp edges that cut, or even if I want it to. Ican’tforget. I can’t ever allow myself to become complacent in healing. I can’t forget the comforts that overtook my life and tore down the pillars of my morals and beliefs and fuckinglove.I cannoteverallow myself to forget the poison that allowed me to hurt the people who care.
I take the mug back in my hands and look out the small kitchen window over the sink. I can just make out the rain hitting the surface of the lake in the distance. The worst of the storm seems to have passed, just a steady rain left behind.
Bowen tips back the rest of his drink and steps over to place the mug in the sink. He braces his hands on the edge of the counter for a second, rolls his head between his shoulders like he’s trying to loosen tense muscles. Then he pushes off the counter and turns, and when his blue eyes meet mine, something that’s been on the cusp of panic settles. Just enough.
“Then I’ll see you in the morning.”
He leaves me in the kitchen. I stare at the four bottles until my hot chocolate goes cold.
Kit
Dear B,
I almost forgot how hard the hard days could be. Weeks go by between really rough days anymore. I’ve grown used to the mild suck of life, I guess. The constant hum of homesickness calling me back was replaced with the borderline intolerable pain of coming face to face with what I’ve missed. The then and the now sent me straight over the edge.
I don’t know how to fix what I broke, or even if I can. If there is even a sliver of a chance that one day Bowen can look at me with even a fraction of the care he used to… I have to try. I miss my best friend. And he didn’t kick me out, so I guess that's a start?
I miss him, and he’s just across the hall.
Wish me luck, B.
The thought of putting on my shoes made me want to cry real, actual tears. I have a blister the size of a grape on the side of both big toes and more on the bottoms of my feet. I guess that's what I get for running around in crap shoes for hours. I had to gingerly get out of bed and waddle like a penguin out of the room and cross the hall to the bathroom.
The pain was a solid distraction, though, I’ll give it that. There was no denying my heart's anxious rhythm when full consciousness came to me, before I even opened my eyes. I smelled him before I remembered where I was. I hugged the pillow tighter to my chest and opened my eyes slowly. Yep, I was in the cabin. My eyes were sore from the shit show that was yesterday. My body was sore from the hell I put it through.
I was a mess from the inside out.
I need to shower. I need to eat something that’s not a Pop-Tart or protein bar. I could use water and perhaps a full lobotomy to scramble the memories of yesterday from my brain.
I settled for scribbling a letter to Brett on a piece of paper I found in the side table and enjoyed being in an actual bed.
I haven’t slept in a bed in two years.
Who would have thought that the first bed I sleep in would be a shout away from Bowen? After a night that we yelled at each other, after I criedandsnotted in front of him.
