Fourteen #3
Thomas runs a hand through his hair, takes a sip of his Coke, and begins: “After I woke up from the coma, I stayed in the hospital for a little over a month. My mother never once came to visit me.”
His confession makes me shudder, and I wonder how that could be possible. She had lost a son, true, and she must have been in excruciating pain, but there was still another son who needed her. That son was alive; he survived and was lying in a hospital bed. He didn’t deserve to be there alone.
“The only good thing about that time was that my body was forced to go through a kind of detox,” he continues, pulling me back from my sad thoughts.
“By the time I was discharged, I was clean. I made myself a promise when I left that hospital. I was going to take the second chance I’d been given, and I’d go straight.
I had to do it, not just for myself but for my brother, who was gone.
But more than anything else, I felt like I owed it to my mother.
It was the least I could do after what she went through.
After what she’d lost. But when I got home, the situation was even worse than I expected.
“Leila said something to me, but it wasn’t until I got back that I realized my mother had fallen into an intense depression.
She spent days in my brother’s room. Lying on his bed with his clothes in her hands, just staring at the wall.
She refused to eat or speak. She didn’t even go to parent meetings at Leila’s school.
All she did was sleep, doped up on psych meds.
I could see this woman who looked just like my mother, but there was no real trace of her left.
There was just emptiness in her eyes.” He hesitates a moment before starting to talk again as I feel a stab of pain in my gut.
“I tried everything I could to get close to her, because I needed it. I needed her desperately. But the harder I tried, the more I saw nothing but an accusation in her face. She never said it, but it was as clear as day when she looked at me. The only thing she saw was the boy who had taken her son’s life.
The better son, who deserved to live much more than I did. ”
“Thomas…I–I don’t think she…” My voice is shaking so hard that I can’t finish the sentence.
“That’s how it was. Believe me. She couldn’t stand to see me in that house anymore…
or maybe she did want me around but couldn’t find the strength to forgive me.
That was when I realized that I had to back off.
I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t go anywhere for two years because of my sentence, so—”
“Wait, what? Your sentence?” I interrupt to ask, my head snapping up in surprise.
He nods. “I was charged with manslaughter.”
My eyes widen as I sit up straight. “But it was the driver of the truck who ran you off the road!” I insist, my voice anguished.
He sighs, running a hand over his face, and looks at me.
“I was driving the bike while intoxicated, and the accident resulted in the death of a person. The driver of the truck didn’t stop, so…
” He leaves the sentence hanging there, trusting that I’d be able to intuit how it ends. I rub my forehead, my heart thumping.
“My God! So you’ve…have you been to prison?” I shudder just thinking about it.
He gives a weak shake of his head, and I let out my held breath.
“That would have been the right sentence, but no. During the trial, my lawyer made a big deal about how young I was, telling the jury that I was definitely a troubled boy but not irredeemable. He argued that there was no need to send me to prison, because my prison would be the burden of living the rest of my life without my brother, drowning in grief and guilt. I guess that made them feel some kind of pity for me, because they lowered the charge to involuntary manslaughter. I got two years of community service and probation for driving under the influence, plus some of the fights I’d gotten into in the past. Then I had to make up the year of high school that I’d missed because I had to prove I was a ‘good citizen,’ or they’d have sent me to jail.
I went straight until my sentence was over. ”
I stare at him in shock. “And then what happened?” I ask, guessing from the dark tone of his voice and the tense expression on his face, that the story didn’t end there.
“What happened was that, despite all my efforts to keep my nose clean, the situation escalated again. Things at home were out of control. My father always blamed me for my brother’s death.
For how my mother was, for the failure of our whole family.
After the accident, he actually started drinking more, if that was even possible.
He still hit my mother; the only difference was that now she didn’t react.
She was basically catatonic at that point.
“In the end, it was just like it always was: that bastard and me coming to blows. After a few months, I’d completely fallen back into my old habits.
That house…that life…it had become this vicious circle that was impossible to escape.
Leila found herself forced to take care of all of us.
She tried to fill my mother’s shoes…but she was still just a teenager.
The life she was living wasn’t right for her.
She should have been going out with friends, pining for some douchebag who broke her heart…
certainly not looking after a couple of alcoholics and a severely depressed woman. ”
“And you’d started drinking heavily again?” I guess.
“I’d also started using hard drugs again.
” A glacial silence settles over us; then he rubs his hand along my thigh and says, “Listen, what I just told you…I’m not saying this to justify what I did.
But when you live a certain kind of life and you hang out with a certain kind of people in an unhealthy situation like mine, it becomes really difficult to resist temptation.
Especially if you don’t want to resist temptation.
My brother was dead; my sister was miserable; my mother…
she… I had lost her for good. And it was all my fault.
Getting high was the only way I could just not think about it all for a while. ”
“And you haven’t heard from your mother since you left?” I ask, testing the waters.
He nods.
“Did you ever try calling her?”
“And tell her what? Her silence since I left speaks loud enough. She has no interest in knowing where I am or what I’m doing or how I’m doing.
I probably did her a favor when I walked out.
Apparently things are better at home now, which just proves that my leaving freed her from another burden that was weighing her down for too long. ”
“He hasn’t hit her since you left?”
Thomas shakes his head no.
“How do you know that?” I ask.
“My sister kept in contact with Mom, and she reassured Leila about it.”
So this is why Thomas refuses to show hide nor hair at home…he’s afraid that going back would light the fuse, and everything would explode again.
“Do you know what I think? I think that, despite everything, she still loves you with her whole heart. A terrible thing happened to all of you, but I bet that she’s been thinking about you all this time,” I say, drawing on the information that Leila entrusted to me.
He answers with a derisive snort, staring down at the bandanna on his wrist. Still, despite all the resentment he clearly feels, I can detect a little bit of agony in him as well.
“What made you decide to start over?” I asked, trying to step back a bit.
“This one night…” He stops. “One night, I almost OD’d.
” He turns to look at me with shame in his eyes.
“Leila found me passed out in my room. When I woke up in the hospital, she was there and she was terrified. She was crying, and she begged me to stop because she couldn’t stand the thought of losing another brother.
Three days later, I decided to check myself into a facility. ”
It takes me a second to digest this information. “You went to rehab?”
He nods. “I was there for six months. It was hard, but I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.
As soon as I got clean, I left Portland.
But the temptation is always there. I still drink—I just can’t help it—and I smoke lots and lots of cigarettes.
They help curb the impulse to get high. A cigarette for every bump of coke I’d like to do. ”
I stay silent and motionless as I stare at him.
And then a memory pops into my head: “Nicotine keeps a lot of my impulses at bay. Things I wouldn’t be able to control otherwise.
” He told me that the first night we talked outside the gym on campus.
At the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. I couldn’t have imagined.
“But the night you came to the Marsy, you were drunk on Jack Daniels…and you spent the next morning drinking and smoking pot…”
Thomas lets out a sigh. “That was the anniversary of my brother’s death.
That night I…I wasn’t thinking straight.
I’d brought you here in the afternoon, away from everyone and everything, because I wanted you to be with me.
To be just for me. And I don’t even know how you did it, but you somehow managed to ease some of that sadness that was fucking with my head.
You were good for me, Ness. So good that I didn’t want to be without you.
You turned out to be the perfect antidote to all the poisons my body craved.
But then I went to the Marsy and saw you with Logan, and I don’t know what happened.
I wanted you to be with me, and you were with him instead.
I was feeling so many different things, this frustration mixed with anger, and all I wanted to do was drown myself in alcohol and loneliness.
The next day, I saw you slipping through my fingers with so much disappointment in your eyes, and I realized that I was fucking everything up again. ”
I’m overwhelmed by these revelations, by a power over him that I never knew I had.
“I…I didn’t want to make you feel bad…” I say regretfully. If only I’d known that night…
“You weren’t the problem. I was angry at myself.
For everything I’d done and what I was continuing to do.
You showed up at my dorm that morning, and damn it if you weren’t the last person who should have been there.
Because I knew that I was going to say or do something to hurt you.
But despite all that, you were also the only person I actually wanted to see. ”
I stare into his eyes, and all my stupid drama with my mother seems so trifling. I feel like an idiot for complaining to him about it. I lower my head, but he puts a finger under my chin and lifts it up. “I was right, wasn’t I?” he asks, with a hint of sadness in his voice.
I blink confusedly. “About what?”
“About how you’d never look at me the same again. I don’t blame you if all you see now is a guy who doesn’t deserve your respect. I know I don’t deserve it, I know I’m a bad person, but…”
“You have my respect, Thomas. Because, despite all the ugliness that surrounded you, you found the strength to pull yourself out of it.” I take his face in my hands and bring my lips to his.
I brush them with my own, close my eyes, and kiss him.
When our mouths pull apart, I rest my forehead against his.
“The first time we talked, that night outside the rec center, I told you something. I said you’re human and humans all make mistakes.
What matters is that you find the strength to overcome them.
And that’s what you’re doing. You should be proud of yourself. ”
I kiss him again, harder this time, and I feel a tear run down my face, which he quickly wipes away.
Now that I know about everything he went through, everything that happened to him and how much it cost him, I’m amazed he found the strength to tell me about it.
And I know that, despite everything, my heart belongs to him, and I will do everything in my power to help him find the peace he deserves.