“And I don’t need anyone telling me how to handle it. I don’t need someone watching every time I sit in the dark, or skip a meal, or sleep like shit. I just need to get through this without becoming someone else’s problem.”
“Lance…”
A tremor runs through me, and then the tears erupt. The cap finally pops off everything I’ve been bottling up. My face slams into his shoulder and my hands grip his shirt so tight it hurts. I can’t master the sound that comes out of me anymore. They’re all breaks and stutters catching in my throat, intense enough that they’re not stopping anytime soon. I can’t breathe properly around it. I just cry and shake against him.
Marcus holds me tighter, not saying a word. I keep talking, speaking in fragments and half sentences, some of them not even making sense. He doesn’t try to follow it. He just holds me.
When it eases, I feel embarrassed and tired. Marcus exhales and steps back.
He hesitates for a second, jaw working like he’s deciding how much to say.
“Lance, I’m sorry…for my part in how all this went down. I know I didn’t make it easier for you.”
He holds my face for a second firmly, grounding me—an older brother’s grip more than anything gentle. It’s like he’s making sure I stay in one piece while he says it.
“And I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to stand here pretending this doesn’t hurt you. It does. And it’s going to, for a while.”
He pauses, like he’s digging for deeper than advice.
“And don’t try to outrun it,” he says finally, sounding like it came from a place he doesn’t visit often. “That’s the mistake people make. They think if they stay busy enough, tired enough, distracted enough, it’ll stop hurting. Most of the time, it fucking doesn’t. It just follows you around, even after many years. It waits until you finally stop moving.”
His lips press into a tight half-smile, eyes sympathetic but carrying their own pain.
“You get through it by letting it hurt. Even when it doesn’t feel like it’s getting any better. You just don’t let it decide who you become. And maybe one day, the pain will stop.”
He reaches behind him on the counter, picks up what looks like a cassette player with a tape inside, and sets it down within my reach.
“This arrived in my mail a week after you came home,” he says. “No return address, just your name on it. The note said I could give it to you in a year, or it’s probably better if I forgot I ever got it.”
I stay silent, my heart thudding hard against my ribs.
“You know where I am if anything changes,” he adds. “Whatever you need, even if it’s just me staying out of it, you say the word.”
I pick up the cassette tape player and just stand there for a while, frozen in place. My fingers grip around it. I look at Marcus, my eyes swollen, but somehow the tears stop coming. It’s like my body’s decided it’s done for now.
I manage to move and walk slowly down the hall and into my room, closing the door behind me. I lower myself onto the middle of the bed.
The tape inside is wound tight, old-school black plastic. My name is written across it in George’s blocky handwriting.
It’s an ordinary cassette player, one that probably belonged in any household from the late eighties through the early two thousands. Here, it feels completely out of place, like it shouldn’t exist in this version of my life at all, and somehow also exactly like it was always going to end up here.
I press play.
The tape clicks, the mechanism catching for a second before the first song comes through. It’s “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol—that fragile, breath-caught voice sliding into the room. It starts pulling everything in, knowing where it’s going to hurt.
I lie back on the bed without really meaning to. The ceiling blurs.
I end up mouthing along, then actually singing under my breath. Didn’t know this same song I heard for the first time during one of our road trips would end up on a playlist I wasn’t supposed to hear this way.
I smile a little as it drags me through memories of small moments I told myself I’d left behind but never really did.
The playlist keeps going after that, rolling into the next road trip songs I also know by heart because of him. It goes on until the last track fades out.
A rough, crackling sound cuts through.
Some static. A cough.
And then him.
