Chapter 13
Play crash by EDEN
“Did you know?” I ask Saint as I sit on the edge of his bed. We dropped Luke off at home, and without another word Saint brought us here. He had left me in the living room before disappearing into the bathroom. It wasn’t until I heard the shower running that I knew I would be waiting for a while.
All my time consisted of staring blankly at his bedroom wall.
Her face kept flashing in my mind. The sound of her wails consuming any independent thought I had tried to create.
All I could think about was her. Her grief.
It had been splayed out so devastatingly beautiful, and like emotional vultures, none of us could look away.
“Did I know what?” He asks back with a sigh. He looks so tired.
“That Luke was dealing?”
He crosses the room, opening a drawer and pulling out a pair of sweatpants. He keeps his back turned to me as he responds. “Yes.”
“That’s it?”
I watch as his bare shoulder muscles tighten with unease. The black lines of his tattoos pull with the tension. “We all have our vices. Luke supplies mine.” Saint drops the towel, making quick work of getting the pants on. "There's nothing else to say about it."
“What?” I question out of shock. “What vice?”
He huffs an aggressive breath of air from his nose, turning to look at me with a glare. The sight reminds me of when I first got home, all the harbored anger pouring out of him. It makes me feel small, admissible.
“Fentanyl.” He states it so bluntly it takes me a moment to digest his answer.
“You’re not serious?”
“I am.”
“Saint…” the pleas for him to stop rise up my throat so quickly I can barely contain the need to hold a single person intervention.
Jasmine, her dad, the couple at the concert.
All the deaths before them and the ones to come after.
Saint can’t become another statistic. Not when he has finally found me again.
“Don’t.” He barks out, fully spinning his body to look at me. “You don’t get to tell me what’s right or wrong for me.”
Out of instinct I scoot to the top of the bed, squeezing myself against the wall to create more distance between us.
“Jesus Christ, Nova,” he begins as he walks over the bedroom door. “I’m not going to hurt you. Not everyone is out to get you.”
Shame coats me as I watch the pain on his face blossom. “I know.” I whisper back.
“Look, I think you should go home. I can give you a ride if you’d like.”
“What? Why?”
Saint stares at me almost blankly. The flip flop in his emotions rattles me.
“Because this isn’t going to work. It never was going to.
Two broken people can’t fix each other.” He opens the door, stepping to the side to make room for me to walk through.
“We’ll be each other's demise, Nova. It’s pointless to keep pushing forward.
We’re heading towards a cliff, and it’s not one I want to see us jump from. ”
Fear bursts through me as I take in his words. “But I just got you back,” I whimper out, looking at him through the disfiguring liquid building along my water line. “I won’t say anything about the drugs. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not listening. Nova, I am too broken to be good for you. Tonight proved that. That man could’ve been you.” He turns away from me, leaving no room for argument. “I love you too much to be what breaks you.”
I choke on a sob as he leaves the room without another word. My hands shake as the feeling crashes down on me. “Saint please!”
I race down the hall after him, my unsteady footing leaving me to stumble like a baby deer. “Please, I love you too. We can make this work. Please don’t do this.”
He silently opens the door, unwilling to look at me. The silence slowly cuts away at the strings holding us together, each second stabbing into my chest. “Please just go. I can’t do this.” He finally whispers.
The happiness I had finally begun to build slips rapidly through my fingers.
Each step towards the door slices me open further, leaving my open wounds visible for the world to witness.
I take one step out into the hallway before Saint shuts the door behind him.
The click of the lock sends me to my knees, and I’m left unable to breathe.
How could he just rip everything away from me?
Play Mind Over Matter (Acoustic) by PVRIS
Days pass, each one resembling the one before.
Slight differences in temperature or mom’s tactics to get me to leave the house, but nothing else feels different.
It’s as though I’ve been trapped in a haunting loop.
I wake up, I get dressed, I rot. Over and over again.
The little glimpses of a promising future turn duller every single day.
The hopelessness consumes me. I had been so close to mattering to someone.
To have someone I could care about with selfishness. Someone that could make me happy.
All my eggs had been placed into one small basket. The wicker had done nothing but push against the shells until everything cracked, spilling out around me. I had become a weapon of self destruction, tearing myself apart limb by limb until all that was left was a lifeless corpse.
Mom thought I would be able to find my reasons to live buried somewhere inside this town. Her hope had spread like a disease from the moment she picked me up. It whispered in my ear so many positives that for once I thought I would’ve finally been able to drown out the darkness.
I pull up mine and Saint’s message thread, staring at the row of unread texts.
me: Please just talk to me
me: Saint please
me: I can’t do this
Me: you said you loved me
It’s been four days since I sent the last one. The truth that I was nothing more than a pathetic girl being deprived of attention crushed me.
Saint had been nothing but another attempt at getting better. Another failure. I curl up in bed, pulling the comforter closer to my chin. At least here I can keep myself hidden away, unable to be hurt or to wound anyone else.
I scroll up through the messages, rereading all of our happiness from the days prior.
Everything had been doomed from the start, I was not meant for good things.
Yet I had held on to the moments, tighter than I should’ve, wishing that would last at least just a little longer.
In the end, like everything else, it was all stripped from me.
“Hey SuperNova,” Mom coos as she opens the bedroom door. I don’t respond, hoping that if I stay still enough she’ll think I’m sleeping and leave me to fixate on my downfall. “Don’t be mad, but someone’s here to see you. I’m going to send her in, okay?”
I tilt my head down to glance at the door, watching as mom gives me a sad smile before disappearing back down the hall. Her position is quickly replaced by the last person I had expected to see. Abigail looks at me, with her cheesy smile right where it always is.
“I brought ice cream,” She begins. “I wasn’t sure if you were a vanilla or chocolate kind of girl, so I have both.”
A small laugh leaves me as I pull my aching body to a sitting position. She walks over, crawling onto the bed until she’s able to sit down next to me.
“What’s going on?” She asks.
The grief of losing Saint overpowers any guilt I could feel in this moment, so for once I let my honesty free. “Saint and I have been seeing each other.” I look over to her just as she nods her head slowly, pursing her lips.
“I know. But that’s not what I asked, Nova.”
“You know?”
She turns her head to look at me, letting her red hair fall behind her shoulder. “Saint was never meant to be mine. Although I wished I would’ve had more time with him, the moment your mom told us you were coming home, I knew it was coming to an end.”
I begin to fidget with the skin around my thumbnail, my addictive habit I’m sure will stick with me forever. “I’m sorry.” I quietly announce, unwilling to break eye contact. She deserves my respect, more than anyone.
“I know that too.”
My palms rise up to cover my face, the shame breaking through the sadness. “God Abby, I’m so sorry.” I hold back a cry, the skin around my eyes too raw to handle the pain from the salt.
She nudges my shoulder to gain my attention, and once my hand drops, motions at the plastic bag she had brought in. “I’m not going to lie, I’m more of a chocolate girl. But since you’re so sad, I’ll still let you pick first.”
An almost hysterical giggle spills out of me as I watch her with bewilderment. “How are you so nice?”
“The world hasn’t hardened me yet.” She reaches forward, bringing both tubs to the front of us and allowing the plastic bag to fall off the edge of the bed. “If I’m lucky, maybe it never will.”