CHAPTER 99 #2
“I just didn’t mean to put more pressure on you, but I kind of um, panicked because,” I pause while she looks at me thoughtfully.
Knowing coming here must not have been easy for her, despite my family’s sworn secrecy around my mother’s death, I decide that Ana is an important exception. I want her to be the exception.
“Because,” I repeat, “I didn’t—I couldn’t lose you too.”
Her brows pull together in confusion like nothing I just said made any sense.
“My mom didn’t die from an allergic reaction to a medicine,” I explain. “She had an overdose.”
_________
Ana
I watch as Troy shares the news about his mom with me, the truth about what happened to her, and while all these years I had the suspicion something else had happened, knowing just what happened now makes me wish I had been wrong.
I lean into him a bit more just to give him a level of comfort while he speaks about something that—from his tensed jaw and raised shoulders—is extremely uncomfortable for him.
“I came home from school one day,” he continues, his voice dipped in such an eerie pain, it leads me to believe this might be the first time he’s sharing this out loud, “my mom wouldn’t answer her phone, so my dad told me to go upstairs to see if she was there, and the bathroom door was popped open.
When I got inside, she was in the bathtub, still in her clothes, with a bottle of pills resting over her stomach. ”
Troy’s face twists so abruptly, like he’s forcing himself not to cry, and I reach my hand over his shoulder, feeling him exhale at the touch.
I give him a little nod, the signal that he can stop this story at any moment, at his own discretion.
He chews the corner of his lips, his nerves palpable before he eventually proceeds, “It was a mix of a whole bunch of stuff, the doctors told us. Antidepressants, a lot of them, cocaine, some drugs I don’t even remember the names of.
We found out, or at least my older brother and I found out later that she had been taking depression medication for almost five years at that point.
My dad knew about her prescriptions two years in, I found out later, and he had never told us. He never fucking told us.”
Troy runs a hand through his hair with a deeply cold rage.
“My mother was always the happiest person in the room,” he reminisces. “Full of sunshine and everything good in this world.”
“I remember,” I offer.
“It wasn’t fucking fair,” he says, his voice cutting in frustration. “And my dad, I never once saw him ask her if she was okay. My brothers didn’t. I didn’t. No one did.” He drops his gaze from my face and into his lap. “I should’ve asked her if she was okay.”
Are you okay?
He was sending me an SOS. A lifeline to latch onto. And I just snapped at him.
My stomach twists in disgust.
“When she died, I started getting these panic attacks,” he says, flicking his eyes back at mine.
“I’d never had one before. There were days where I’d just sit in silence, not knowing what to do with myself.
My friends told me to go to therapy. How could I go when I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone the truth? ”
“Troy, that’s awful.”
“I think it would have really helped. Talking to someone. The only person I could talk to about it was Dimitri, though. He was really there for me. He took Mom’s death way better than I did.”
“Well, you were there with her when it had just happened.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s why.” He sighs. “I think I was walking without a heartbeat for a good three years, then I was just mad as hell, lashing out any chance I could. I couldn’t feel my pulse even when I’d skate.
But then you would show up. Anywhere. And piss me off.
No one could piss me off the way you could. ”
I roll my eyes, happy to see his lips curve again. “You’re welcome, asshole.”
“I never told you thank you for that.”
My smile fades, suddenly having the overwhelming urge to push my lips onto his, my stomach dipping in regret, knowing I can’t.
“Maybe it sounds fucked up,” he says, “but fighting with you every day, it was the only time I felt alive. Like I still had a pulse.” He leans in closer, I know this because my heartbeat starts to flicker.
“Please forgive me for being a massive dick to you. At the diner. At school. At the rink. I didn’t ever mean to hurt you, but if I did, I’m so sorry, Ana. ”
My lips curve into a pout that lifts my whole cheeks with an intense strike of emotion.
There is no more hate left in my heart for this guy, and this I know because I didn’t need the apology to forgive him.
“I forgive you,” I say. “For all of it.” When his chest relaxes, I take the moment to add, “And thank you for telling me about your mom.” He nods, his shoulders tensing again.
“You’re right. What happened to her isn’t fair.
And there’s no way to twist around that fact.
But she would have been so proud of you.
You’re a really, really good person, unfortunately. ”
He laughs.
“Really unfortunately. But you know, life is unfair, right?”
“Yeah, it fucking is.”
“Something we can agree on.”
He nods. “I wish I knew how to let go.”
“Me too.”
“It’s been over ten years, and sometimes, I still miss her so much it feels like I can’t even breathe—”
Troy’s voice cuts off into a halt, his fingers pressed over his eyes like he wants to hide himself from me, and before it hits me, the shivers along his neck have him rocking back and forth. By instinct, I grab hold of his hands, bringing his weight over to me.
Not knowing what to do, feeling incredibly helpless suddenly, I hold him steady, while he gapes across the room in vacancy.
It seems as though I’m unrecognizable to him in this moment, but something about the way he’s coiled over my thighs, tears dripping all over my skin, makes him unrecognizable to me.
He looks like the young teenage boy who tragically lost his mom. And I have to apply more pressure over the strokes I’m caressing over his lower back to stop myself from bawling along with him.
Because the jagged way he’s gasping, the sharp wrinkle of his facial features rubbing across my knees, it tells me he never had a chance to release any of his grief.
You’re broken. You’re falling apart. How can you help him?
Snap out of it, Ana.