Chapter 23
That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.
Brooks
I’m losing it here
My hands shook as I reached for my toothbrush. It was a mistake to try eating. I’d barely touched anything in four days. Not since Sunday.
I thought I might throw up again, but I just wanted to lay down. The sleeping pills were calling my name. Otherwise, I’d close my eyes and see all of the things I didn’t want to. The memory of… her.
My toothbrush fell from my hand. It was loud when it hit the sink, which didn’t help the pounding in my skull. I gripped the edge of the counter and stepped back, hanging my head.
I’d never hated myself this much. It always fluctuated, but right now, it was unbearable. I should’ve gone numb by now. Why wasn’t I fucking numb yet?
After finishing up, I threw the door open and stepped into my room. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw someone sitting on the bed. Quickly, I adjusted my expression so he wouldn’t see what lurked inside of me.
“Why the fuck are you in my room?” I demanded with more venom than I’d intended.
Dean tapped his fingers on the blanket. “Checking on you. Tilian is worried, but he won’t come here for some reason.”
“Text me instead of trespassing. How’d you even get in here?”
“My skill tree is broad.”
I rolled my eyes. “Go away. I’m busy.”
“Are you sick?” he asked, keeping his gaze locked on my face.
“No.”
He was studying me too intently. I held my chin high while I maintained my expression. Smooth. Emotionless.
He stood and approached me. I watched casually as if I didn’t have a care in the world.
“I haven’t seen you since Sunday,” he went on, still moving closer. I took a step back, which made him cock his head.
“It’s my weekend,” I said simply. “I have no obligation to see you or anyone.”
“What about the last few days?”
He was only a few steps from me now. I’d steadily been inching backward with small movements, but he obviously wasn’t going to relent.
“Didn’t feel good.” My voice wavered, making me clench my teeth.
“You said you weren’t sick.”
“Just fuck off, Dean.”
He closed the distance and grabbed onto my shoulders. When he pressed me against the wall, I dropped my head back to rest on it.
“Just talk to me.”
I shook my head. “If Tilian has a problem, he can talk to me himself.”
“He’s part of the reason I’m here, but I’m also concerned. You seem off. Really off.”
I shoved his chest so that I could move away from him. Wrapping my arms around myself, I rotated my neck and lifted my shoulders, trying to get rid of his touch. I wanted to scrub it off of my skin.
“I’m trying to help,” he insisted.
I met his eyes and felt my anger rise with blazing intensity. “I don’t need help! I’m the one who helps. I’ve done all these things for you, but you can’t let me be alone for a few fucking days?”
“Uh, what have you done?”
“Go start your fucking car.”
“My car…”
“It works now.”
His mouth fell open. “How… what?”
“Doesn’t matter. I should’ve just left you the fuck alone. I don’t want to be your friend.”
“I’m so goddamn confused,” he groaned.
“I said I don’t want to be your friend. Get the fuck out of my place.”
“Dude, fuck off with that shit. What is your deal?”
“My deal?” I scoffed. “I’m fine. I’m on my shit. Everything is in perfect order. Fucking perfect .”
My lips started to tremble, so I rolled them inward. He probably noticed anyway, but whatever.
“Get out of my room,” I said. “I don’t want to see you.”
“Hm. Pretty sure that’s not true. You put in all this effort. We went to a movie and hung out over the weekend. Don’t try to convince me you don’t want to be friends.”
“Moments of weakness,” I replied coolly. “I have enough friends. Really, it was more about the game, figuring out if I could make you crack. It wasn’t very hard.”
His eyes narrowed. “And what about Tilian? Is he part of this game?”
I shrugged, which made anger twist his expression.
“Were you just gonna lead him on? Fuck him, then ditch him?”
“I wouldn’t fuck Tilian.”
“That’s believable.”
“Tilian would fall for me in point-two seconds. I don’t want the complication.”
“Then make that fucking clear to him. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s put in more of his time with you than he has anyone else. That’s not a small thing for him.”
I crossed my arms and looked past him. “What either of us does is none of your business. Even if we did fuck, it’s none of your business . It’s a pastime and a relief from life. Sex is a universal language. I don’t see any reason to deny myself something humans naturally crave, so if I want to use it to quiet my head, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Do it somewhere else.”
“Unless you’re going to be useful and throw me onto that bed, I suggest you leave.”
Shaking his head, he stepped backward toward the door and threw his arms wide. “Congratulations, Brooks. You won the game. I hope it feels really good when you go to sleep and wake up alone every day.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you too.”
When the front door slammed closed, I dropped to my knees and clutched my head.
Silence. So much fucking silence, yet chaos in my mind. I didn’t want to listen to my own silence anymore.
I pulled out my phone and looked at the messages from Tilian. He hadn’t started sending them until Tuesday when I didn’t go to class. I hadn’t been able to bear the thought of stepping foot on campus. After I missed it again today, he got more frantic.
Sen, Kai, and West were messaging me too. Kai showed up here, but I didn’t answer the call box. I didn’t know how Dean managed to get up here, but I was certain he wouldn’t do it again.
When I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, I saw blue and gold. They were the colors of my best dreams and worst nightmares.
I wanted to see him. Some part of me knew that he’d make it better. I was too damn tired right now, but maybe tomorrow. Hopefully, I’d come out of this spiral so that I could make the better decision and stay away from him. If I couldn’t do that, I’d convince him to stay away from me.
How disgusted would he be if he knew who I was? What I’d done?
There was only one text I was going to send tonight, then I’d force myself to sleep.
Brooks: I fixed things with Ms. Whitlock on Monday. Hope that makes you happy, Mom.
*****
Searching for him, even though I shouldn’t
As soon as I woke up, I knew it wasn’t going to be a good day. I felt myself crumbling. I fought for control of my emotions. I fought tooth and fucking nail, but they wouldn’t go away. The box I kept them in was locked or maybe it had splintered, leaving no place for all of this shit in my head to go.
I was fucking losing it.
I held the sides of my head as I walked through the courtyard. It was already dark and I couldn’t even remember what I’d done with the day.
My hair was tied back and I thought about taking it down since it was cold out, but that was another level to add to the mounting chaos inside of me.
It’s unprofessional.
We have an image to maintain.
This affects us too.
Nausea rolled through me, forcing me to stop. I closed my eyes and Holly’s voice came back.
“I knew you wanted me, Brooks.”
I could feel her nails digging into my shoulders when I shoved her skirt up. I tasted her all over again and it made me gag. Her voice when I tried to back out… the threats to my academic career…
Her opinion and recommendations mattered too much at Harmon law. I didn’t have a choice. I kept saying that, but wasn’t there a choice? If I was a better person, maybe I would’ve left, but instead, I’d stared at the ceiling the whole time, fighting the way my eyes burned. Fear and desperation had never attacked me so fiercely, but I stayed, trying to let everything go so that it would be finished and I could leave.
My ass hit one of the benches not far from Marshall Hall. I looked around, unsure how I’d gotten here.
With shaky fingers, I pulled out my phone and navigated to my gallery. I didn’t know why I’d wedged it into the cushion of the chair across from the couch. Leverage, I guess. It had been automatic and was a move worthy of someone as conniving as that bitch and it gave me back some of my power.
Someone like her was likely to hold this shit over me. She’d probably come back for more with the threat that her approval could be rescinded with the snap of her fingers. But not if I had this. I wouldn’t touch her again. I couldn’t . I’d rather die.
As the guy in the situation, plenty of people wouldn’t give a shit that I hated it. I fucked a hot faculty member. Why would I be having an entire mental breakdown over it? Maybe I was weak. It just didn’t matter anymore.
The sex disgusted me and I still wanted to claw off my skin, even after all of the showers I’d taken, but maintaining my power over the situation gave me the barest semblance of peace.
Not enough peace. Right now, it wasn’t fucking enough because she wasn’t the only problem.
When I’d been with Holly, I thought about Tilian. Somehow, that kept me sane. The way he laughed and the look in his eyes when he was on the ice. His adorable awkwardness and timid smiles, which were becoming bigger and appeared more often. Those fingers in my hair. Soft lips that begged to be touched.
He wanted me. I could tell he saw I was some variety of screwed up but he kept trying until Saturday when I shoved him away so forcefully. He texted me, though. He was worried about me.
It didn’t mean anything. I was a pathetic mess, trying to latch onto subtleties. I shouldn’t be trying to twist his actions into something that wasn’t real to comfort myself. All he’d done was put me on a pedestal, turned me into this ideal that was a fucking lie, just like everything about me.
Lies, lies, lies.
What was perfection if it wasn’t real?
I wanted to break things. It hadn’t helped before and only made the cleaner look at me with concern. I hated him so fucking much, but every time I tried to tell him not to come back, he showed up at his scheduled time. My parents paid him, so he didn’t listen to me. Now, I just made sure not to be home when he came, otherwise I might consider tossing him off the balcony if it was a particularly bad day.
I thought about continuing the crescent moon on my thigh. It was big and I’d been working on it for a while now, slowly, bit by bit. I wanted it to be done. Maybe if I finished it, something would happen. It was like a metaphor. It represented a lunar phase and once that passed, we moved into the next.
What if the new phase was worse?
The silence weighed on me, clouding my head as I stared up at the sky. It was like the air was full of that shit and it was all converging into a giant mass that would wrap itself around me like a boa constrictor.
I was alone here. Everything was in perfect order and the world was going on as it always did.
The quiet was all around me. I was left with only myself everywhere I went, trapped in empty space that didn’t feel empty- not from all of the things inside my head that scratched at the surface. There was never any escape. I was trapped in the silence that was too fucking loud to ever bring me peace.