7. Seven
Seven
Sara
Ispent the better part of two hours convinced I’d die of embarrassment if someone caught me sitting at their doorstep, but it turns out, embarrassment is the least of how I feel from Joe’s silent treatment.
I keep flicking my phone screen as if any second now I’ll see his name pop up. It doesn’t. I even tried calling again. Voicemail. I hung up before his greeting finished because the sound of his voice made me want to scream.
I wait; what else am I supposed to do? My stomach keeps trying to crawl up my throat, and the more I try to slow my breathing, the faster it gets.
Headlights sweep the street, and I tense, mixed with a slap of relief when I see their Jeep turning the corner. Finally.
I jump to my feet and nearly lose balance. For a split second, hope flares but then I see who’s driving when the car pulls in.
It’s Liam.
It’s fucking Liam.
He slams the car door so hard the entire frame shudders, and I flinch. He stalks up the driveway with the energy of someone who’s about to punch through concrete and doesn’t pay attention to my existence whatsoever. What else is new?
I call out, “Hey.” But the sound comes out tiny compared to the energy he emits.
He doesn’t even look at me. Not one glance.
He unlocks the front door, pushes it open, and strides into the house, leaving the door gaping like an invitation or a threat.
I guess I’ll find out and take the bait.
My legs are on autopilot, and I follow him inside, moving as quietly as I can, catching sight of Liam’s silhouette in the living room, shoulders hunched, fists balled so tight his arms tremble as he drops his keys on the counter with a sharp clatter and stands there breathing heavily.
“Liam?” My voice barely makes it past my lips. It’s a whisper bathing in heaviness.
He doesn’t turn or even flinch.
I stand, unable to move, waiting for him to acknowledge me as he walks across the room to the backyard like a fierce storm and grabs some gloves.
He rips the cover off the heavy bag hanging from the tree and starts pounding it with animal force.
Hard. Brutal. Like he’s trying to erase something from his bones.
Each punch sounds like flesh against meat, like rage turned physical.
It fills the surrounding space with violence, and worse than the sound is the silence that follows every hit.
That awful, stretching silence.
I’m frozen in place in the doorway, not knowing if I should move closer or disappear altogether. He goes at it for a full minute, my heart matching the hits and my throat constricting before he finally speaks.
“Why are you here?” His voice is hoarse, cracked open, and it shatters me out of a daze of concerns I have growing inside me.
“I was—waiting for Joe.” The words sound so small, so hollow in the air, and suddenly I hate them.
He lets out a bitter, humorless laugh. “You sure about that?”
My pulse skips. My hands won’t stop shaking and a tingly feeling creeps up my face, fear.
“Did he—did Joe say something? Is he mad at me? Because I—” I can’t finish. “I just want to talk to him. That’s all.”
Liam doesn’t answer. He keeps going.
Hit. Hit. Hit.
His body coiled tight like a weapon unsheathed.
Something’s wrong. More wrong than usual.
I take a step closer, needing to see his face, needing to witness whatever’s unraveling in his eyes.
And when I finally catch them, I know.
He’s not angry. He’s wrecked, as if he barely holds it together.
“If you see him—” I take another step closer.
The thought that he could hurt me crosses my mind, but I don’t care.
With tight composure, he looks like he’s about to snap and, in an instant, he stops punching the bag, rips the gloves off, and turns his back on me.
“You’re not seeing him anytime soon, neither am I. ”
“What? Why would you say that?” I say with panic. I’ve held it together, but now I’m unraveling.
He doesn't respond. “Why Liam? What is going on?”
He turns to me, unreadable chaos.
“He’s dead.” He chokes the word up, annihilating both of us with its passage from his throat.
“What?” The words don’t land. My gut drops, my heart thunders.
No.
No. No. No.
“He’s dead, Sara. Last night. On his bike.”
“No—no, wh—? I don’t understand Liam.”
Tears are surging, my breath halts, my existence feels stolen into a ripping current burning me down. Pain plasters Liam’s face as he shuts his eyes and curls his hands into fists.
“Liam, pl—ease, tell me this is not true. Please.”
“He’s gone, Sara. His bike burned to the ground and with him on it. He’s fucking gone.” His voice breaks, pain laced with simmering madness, and my heart, my goodness, my heart breaks with it.
My heart, who will pick it up? It lies shattered on the ground as my tears drown the barely pulsing pieces left of it. I can't move. I can't breathe.
“No—”
My body folds to the ground. As if my bones forgot what they were for, my knees give out and hit the tile so hard I want to hurl from the impact. The pain alters my soul, but it doesn’t leave my body; it magnifies until I scream.
And I scream.
The bloodcurdling sound pierces my own ears, a brutal reminder that I am still alive when all I want to do is die.
Everything around me becomes a cacophony of white noise. My lungs feel heavy, useless, as the world tilts and sways beneath me.
“No,” I choke out repeatedly, each utterance a desperate plea.
“You’re wrong. You’re lying.” But even as those words leave my lips, the truth burrows deeper inside me, carving a jagged path through my heart.
“Last I heard,” he mutters as he watches me, his eyes bloodshot, his voice like ground glass. “He was trying to come talk to you. So, what the fuck happened?”
The words hit harder than death itself.
My brain can’t even comprehend it. It’s too big. Too cruel.
His stare catches mine, his icy blue eyes like Joe’s, but his hide no mercy, and it’s like I’m faced with a monster.
The way he stands there, distant. Detached. As if I might’ve been the reason his brother is now gone.
And that hurts because Liam who’s always hated me in his cold way, now looks at me like maybe I am the problem, like maybe he was right all along and that I should never have been in his brother’s life.
“You think I—” I try to form the words, but they shatter before they leave my mouth.
I’m not even sure what I’m asking. Do you think I killed him?
Do you think I mattered that much? I want to tell him to go fuck himself, but I can’t find the power in me.
Liam’s jaw clenches, eyes rimmed with something I can’t name.
He wipes his face with the back of his arm, and I wonder if he sees on my face that I’m about to lose it on him.
“Don’t,” he snaps, “Just… don’t.”
But I do.
“I didn’t fucking do this, Liam, how dare you? How fucking dare you?” I choke, crying out.
“I told him to stay the fuck away from you. Damn it!” he spits out with so much hate, taking a step closer to my folded body on the ground, and I flinch at his anger.
I am breaking. The tears are far beyond my control.
I try to hold myself together, but my body belongs to someone else.
My hands tremble, and my breath comes in shallow gulps.
All I can do is stare at the floor, blinking back the truth I don’t want to live in.
I want to go home, but I have nowhere else to go.
Nowhere else to hide. Joe was my cave, my refuge, and I still wasn't strong enough to find my place where I was meant to feel the safest. I want to call him again and pretend none of this is real, but my chest refuses to unclench. Until quietly, something shifts.
A shadow falls over me. Liam crouches down in a slow and cautious breath, as if he doesn’t trust himself. His jaw is still tense, his whole body still hard as a wall, but then…
He offers me his hand.
It hangs there between us, calloused and bruised from the bag, open, like part of him hates that he’s showing any type of kindness.
But it’s there, staring back at me. For a second, our eyes meet, and maybe that’s when he sees it that I cared, so much.
How real it was, because something in his expression softens.
A flicker of something human. It vanishes almost as fast as it came, and his hand pulls back, but I reach for it as quickly as I can, because right now, I don’t know how to stand without someone else’s strength.
Even if that someone thinks I might’ve taken their brother. Even if I’m not sure, I didn’t.
That’s when it hits me. I need my mom. For once, I desperately need her.
The front door slams open so hard it bounces off the wall, I don’t even remember running here.
Inside the shadowed tile entryway, my body moves before my mind catches up.
I stagger toward the living room. Everything too bright, windows wide open to the evening sun, no TV noise, no wineglass. Too much life, yet none at all.
Mom’s not home, but my brain keeps screaming her name in my head, looping it louder with every step.
My hands wring together, nails raking over the skin as if I’m trying to draw blood and wake myself up from this nightmare that I have yet to believe is real.
I’m going to wake up, I’m going to run into Joe’s arms and feel his heat on his chest, hear his heartbeat against me.
Please don’t take him away from me, please. I would beg any god for this moment not to be real.
To whom does one earnestly plea and call out on bended knees, begging for another minute, day, or second with someone they love? Do I break a bone or hand off an organ for a chance at rearranging a poorly written path? A devastating, poorly written one… Joe, don’t leave me, please.
There’s the clatter of a car in the driveway and my muscles go rigid.
Mom’s here. She walks through the yard carrying a tote, already on her phone, face set in that exhausted, stoic line that says, don’t even try me, but I run to her.
I don’t even remember crossing the grass.
One second, she’s still a silhouette, and the next I’m in her arms. I feel instant relief.
I’ve hated her so much, but beneath lies a love I’ll always chase, and I’m safe for a little while.
Please wake me, Mom, save me.
My fingers knot in her linen shirt, and my body shakes like I’ve come in from the cold. Her perfume is faint beneath the smell of paper and citrus; it’s hers. And I bury myself in it desperately. Her eyes meet mine, and something slow and raw creeps across her features.
She drops everything.
The bag. The phone. The noise they make hitting the tile feels too loud, like a cup cracking in a quiet church.
And I break. I break in the arms of my mother, but also, someone who has felt the depth of pain I am feeling now.
Her hands slide up into my hair. I feel her breath hitch, feel her stiffen in the way she does when she knows something’s worse than she can fix. Her voice barely makes it out.
“What happened?”
And it’s that voice, that low, grief-stung whisper I’ve only ever heard once before, the night they told us my brother wasn’t coming home — that makes it real.
That’s the moment it all feels real, but I don’t want it to feel real.
Joe is gone. My love is gone.
I’m supposed to say something, but the words tangle in my throat. I can’t say it out loud. My vision tunnels. I see her mouth moving, but no sound gets through my ringing ears.
She grabs me by the shoulders so hard it stings, and for a second, I think she’s angry, maybe she knows what I did, or didn’t do, or said, or should have said to keep Joe from getting on his bike.
But her grip goes limp just as fast, and she pulls me into her arms once more.
I’d do anything to be five again and cry over a toy and not another pillar in my life dying or deserting me.
“Make it stop.” I heave, my chest tight as I fight for air.
My body goes rigid, every muscle trying to fight off the collapse, but it happens anyway and I fold, I buckle, I sob into her shoulder; the sobs screeching into my own ears and I’m shocked at how loud my pain sounds. It hurts, my God, it hurts.
“It hurts. Mom… it hurts.” I tremble.
She says my name over and over, sometimes as a question, sometimes as a command, like maybe if she keeps calling me back, I won’t disappear.
When the worst of it ebbs, I try to stand, to speak and to see if words will come out. My face is hot, eyes swollen, mouth tasting of salt and shame. I look at her and see my pain reflected.
“He’s gone,” I whisper. It takes all my effort to keep my voice from shattering. “Joe’s gone.”
The words float there, terrible words. She gasps, and I know she understands that this is not a breakup…this is death at our door.