27. Drowning Man
When we arrived at Ben’s house, Dad and Uncle Henry busied themselves with phone calls to lawyers. I didn’t want to hear another word about the whole situation, so I wordlessly took Ben’s hand and dragged him down the stairs to his bedroom.
At the base of the stairs, I dropped Ben’s hand and took refuge in his room. I heaved a mental sigh of relief at the lack of windows—no windows was now an essential necessity for every bedroom.
Wordlessly, I unbuckled my jeans and dropped them to the floor. After kicking them off my socked feet, I crawled into Ben’s bed. I snuggled under the Irish Spring-scented blankets, burying myself beneath the thick material, and hid there. Part of me wanted Ben to join me in my makeshift blanket fort, but a piece of me secretly wished he would leave me alone.
He seemed just as unsure, and after I lay alone for several long minutes, the blankets shifted as the mattress depressed behind me.
“Do you—um, I mean—is it okay…” He stumbled over his words, his tone filled with heart-crushing insecurity. “Do you mind if I join you?”
I shook my head as I burrowed ever deeper into his chlorine-scented sheets. His warmth quickly permeated the space behind me as he lay down at my back. He left enough space between us to ensure we didn’t actually touch. Impossibly, the lack of contact stung.
I didn’t want him, yet I was bereft without him. I was a contradictory mess.
At long last, he scooted closer, still not touching but closing the distance somewhat. His breath tickled the back of my neck as the mattress absorbed his body heat and used it to thaw my frozen limbs.
After another immeasurable amount of time, his fingers tentatively traced my spine. It was a hesitant touch, timid and unsure. When I didn’t rebuff his advances, he scooched closer and cautiously, carefully slipped an arm around my waist. Spooning me, he released a long, relieved breath.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
After a moment of mental deliberation, I nodded. My agreement fueled his confidence, and he fit his body to mine until we were pressed together like sardines.
Melting into me, he relaxed, and his sigh moistened the back of my neck. He needed the comforting touch, so I allowed him to hold me even though I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. I should have been holding him, whispering words of comfort and assurance, but the most I could accomplish was lying cold and immobile in his arms.
I stared blankly at the wall until I had every scratch and imperfection of the drywall memorized. Ben clung to me like a rescue buoy, his fingers tangled in the front of my shirt.
Hours passed and I waited, anticipating the moment my emotions would come seeping back in. I expected there to be a pivotal moment when I would feel something, anything, but it never came. I was numb, empty, and cold.
Eventually, Ben shifted behind me, his hand pressing to my abdomen as he buried his face against the back of my neck. He inhaled one long, steady breath, and I prepared myself for him to speak.
“Silas?”
I didn’t respond, but he knew I was awake.
“Si?” His lips traced the skin of my neck, and when I remained silent, he swallowed audibly. “Are you mad at me?”
It wasn’t what I expected, and it took me a moment to comprehend his question. Mad? Was I mad? I wasn’t not mad, but I also wasn’t actively angry. Anger was a human emotion, and I felt far from human.
Slowly, I shook my head, but he wasn’t placated. “Do you hate me?”
Did I? I didn’t think I did, so I shook my head again.
“Do you… do you still love me?”
His voice broke, and the depressing sound stirred some deep-seated emotion in my chest. I recoiled from the feeling, not wanting to relinquish my peaceful numbness, but to salvage whatever remained unsoiled between us, I would need to.
There wasn’t much that wasn’t sullied from the events of the day, but there had to be something, right? We couldn’t be completely broken. Could we?
I turned over, my exhausted body creaking after hours of lying immobile. As I faced Ben, the small spark of emotion flared, erupting into a tiny flame. I cringed at the lifelessness in his eyes. Lines of agony carved into his forehead and around his dull eyes, his skin a sickly pallor.
Oh, Ben, my Ben. He shouldn’t have looked like this.
Like it had a mind of its own, my hand reached for him, my fingers trailing over his cheek. They paused at the spot near his mouth where his dimple should have been, then continued their journey over his jaw until I traced a small scar hidden near his ear. Briefly, I wondered how he received it.
Had he fallen off his bike as a child? Did he slip at the pool, cracking his jaw against the tile floor? Was his father to blame for the blemish?
I drew my fingertip down his neck as goosebumps rose along his skin. I circled his Adam’s apple before sliding my finger over the hollow of his throat. His pulse pounded against my index finger. My hand lowered, my palm coming to rest over his racing heart.
“Why wouldn’t I still love you?” I said hoarsely.
His hand blanketed mine over his chest, and his expression pinched as he studied my blank face. “You’re shutting me out.”
Yeah, I guess I was. I didn’t know how to remedy that, so I opted for apologizing instead. Maybe that was what he wanted to hear. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” he snapped, his mouth pursing into a thin line of displeasure.
“What do you want me to be?” I asked.
He scowled. “I don’t care. Be sad, be angry, be something! Anything’s better than this—this apathy.”
Having no idea how to respond, I chewed on my bottom lip and shrugged. “Sorry.”
Apparently, that wasn’t what he wanted. Grunting in frustration, he shoved my hand away and rolled onto his back to glare at the ceiling above.
His aggravation caused a trickle of something to slide through my veins. It wasn’t a pleasant emotion. Annoyance, I finally named it. I was annoyed.
“I don’t feel any of those things, Ben.” I focused on the tick in his jaw, my hands lying limp on the mattress between us. “Or maybe I feel all of them. I’m not sure. I just feel numb.”
He angled his head to the side, his teeth grinding as he met my gaze. “I’m angry.”
I dropped my gaze, the small sliver of annoyance giving way to guilt. “Sorry.”
“Stop—” He clenched his jaw shut as he took a deep breath, blowing it out between pursed lips as he fought for control. “Please, stop apologizing.”
“Okay.”
He was the one who wanted to talk, but everything I said upset him. How was that fair?
Like my responses mystified him, he stared at me in bafflement. After half a beat, something clicked in his eyes, and he grimaced. “I’m not angry with you , you idiot!”
“Then why are you yelling at me?”
“I’m not—”
He scrambled from the bed, thrusting his hands into his messy blond curls as his chest heaved with emotion. He visibly trembled, and I sat up, wrapping the blanket around my shoulders as I watched him warily.
Pacing before the bed, he tugged at his hair, his face wild and deranged before it solidified to petrifying ice. He spun with a roar and smashed his fist through the wall, plaster and drywall giving beneath the force. I scrambled back with a cry of alarm, his violence frightening me.
Gingerly, he removed his fist from the wall, leaving a gaping hole behind. As a strangled moan scraped his throat, his fury dissolved into anguish. Burying his face in his hands, he collapsed to his knees as his shoulders shook.
He was crying; Ben was crying.
His sorrow hit me like a freight train, shocking my system from its robotic slumber. I stumbled out of the bed, tripping over the carpet as I knelt before him. My eyes watered, and I threw myself at him, covering as much of his body with mine as I could manage.
Bawling like a baby, I held Ben’s quivering form. I didn’t know how to help him, so I simply held him as we wept.
We grieved the loss of something precious and innocent. We mourned the defiling theft of what was meant to be sacred. We had been robbed of something holy and irreplaceable, something that I wasn’t sure we could ever recover. The misery smothered us until I couldn’t breathe.
At long last, our tears finally dried, and a somber silence settled around us. Gently retrieving Ben’s damaged hand, I utilized my best doctoring skills and deduced it most likely wasn’t broken, though he winced as I conducted my investigation. Maybe a knuckle or two were cracked, but he didn’t seem too concerned.
Helping him to his feet, I led him to the bathroom, and he followed like a docile child. I cleaned the blood from his tattered flesh. The water in the sink ran red before turning a rosy pink color. Ben barely flinched as the cool water cleansed his wound.
When his hand looked less like he had stuck it through a wood chipper, I splashed my face to wash away the dried salt on my cheeks. Ben copied me, then dragged me back to his bed.
We crawled under the blankets in our shirts and boxers, and he finagled me the way he wanted until we faced each other on our sides. Our legs tangled, noses almost touching. He surrounded my body with his arms, hands pressing to my spine as I curled my arms between our chests.
I didn’t feel better—better was still a long way off—but I felt different. I was no longer numb, but I wasn’t drowning either, which was an improvement of sorts.
“Don’t give up on me, Silas,” Ben whispered, his lips too close, yet not close enough. “I’m not giving up on you, so don’t you dare give up on me. I love you, okay? I love you.”
Our foreheads met, and I trembled at the intensity in his eyes.
“I love you too,” I said, hoping with every fiber of my being that it wasn’t a lie.
Because I did love him. I did! But in the deepest, darkest parts of my soul, I hated him too. He may not have put a gun to my head, but he had still forced my hand. Or maybe I just needed someone to blame.
Even as we clung to each other, entwined in every physical way possible, I still felt the space growing between us. We were two buoys drifting in a vast ocean. Where we had once been tethered, we were now detached, left to the will of the tide as we floated farther and farther apart.
Lost in an unforgiving sea, we swam toward each other but could never close the distance. The waves pushed us apart, beating against our determination until Ben was nothing but a speck on the horizon, screaming my name.
At some point, I stopped fighting the angry sea. What was the point? We were both sinking, and I didn’t think it was possible for us to save each other this time.
After all, a drowning man was impossible to rescue. He always took someone down with him.
The only question remaining: was I the drowning man or was Ben? And which one of us would be dragged beneath the surface to suffocate under the flood?