Chapter Twenty-One Travis
Chapter Twenty-One
Travis
I don’t understand the point of brownies. I look at the plate and see a brown glob of gluten, sugar, and fat that is only going to disrupt my perfectly coded digestive system.
Sage approaches me with a small plate with a brownie on it. I look at it and shake my head. “I’ve already told you I have no interest in eating that.”
“Come on,” she continues, looking up at me and batting her eyelashes as if she is going to seduce me into eating a superfluous treat. “I worked hard to make these. Just a couple of bites is all I’m asking.”
“You followed instructions on the back of the box. A five-year-old could do the same thing. I wouldn’t exactly call that working hard.”
Sage rolls her eyes and inches closer, biting her lower lip seductively. Clearly, she thinks sex is going to sell this brownie, and that won’t work.
“I made them for you. You have to try them.” Her finger lands in the center of my chest, and she traces a small circle around it. I raise my eyebrows and shake my head again.
“A single brownie averages around two hundred calories and has excessive sugar. They provide no value in terms of nutritional value or micronutrient density.” I push the plate away, but she still doesn’t take the hint.
“Okay, you’re built like a marble statue.
I think you can afford a few empty calories every now and then.
” She holds the plate out to me once again, this time losing the seductive edge she had before and focusing more on being annoying.
“Sure, these may not be good for you nutritionally. But brownies are good for the soul. They’re warm, with ooey, gooey chocolate that provides immeasurable joy. ”
I stare at the brownie like it might explode. Lowering my face, I sniff it. It doesn’t smell bad. Quite the opposite, actually. Still, I’m not convinced.
“Joy isn’t a dietary category. I eat for function, not pleasure.
My daily caloric intake is specifically calculated to my dietary needs, and consuming that much sugar will cause a spike in my blood glucose levels, disrupting my insulin regulation and interrupting the metabolic rate I’ve maintained for the past ten years. ”
Sage’s face does not change when I explain my reasoning. She simply doesn’t care. She might be a heathen who eats whatever she wants, whenever she wants, but I’m not. I have my schedule, and that doesn’t apply only to time—it applies to every aspect of my life.
“Believe it or not, life is about more than data points and spreadsheets.”
“This has nothing to do with spreadsheets—”
“Just try one bite! That’s all I’m asking.” Sage shakes her head in exasperation as she holds the plate closer.
I roll my eyes. “You’re not going to shut up about this until I eat it, are you?”
“Of course not.” She smiles innocently as she nudges the plate closer.
Sometimes in life, you have to choose your battles. And right now I’m exasperated. Only to make her leave me alone, I sigh and nod. The smile on her face grows as I take the plate and hold the fork over the brownie before stabbing it in and loading a bite onto it.
She watches intently as I bring it to my mouth and let the flavors explode on my tongue.
My normal diet consists of organic, whole foods with a myriad of protein vegetables and healthy carbs.
I very rarely have sugary treats like this.
The taste is incredible, and Sage can read that on my face even though I try to hide my enjoyment.
“Are you happy now?” I ask, handing the plate to her after only one bite.
She pushes it back against me with another eye roll. “Come on. I can see that you like it. Just live a little.”
I do as she says and eat the rest of the brownie. She smiles and happily eats her own as we take a seat on the couch in the living room. It’s 5:00 p.m., which means it’s time for the evening news, so I turn it on to watch.
The brownie leaves a strange aftertaste in my mouth that I don’t understand, and I think back to Sage in the store talking about the different brands. I see what she means now. I drink some water to force it away, but I can’t seem to drink enough.
After a while, my throat starts to feel dry, and I drink more water to quench it. My head feels light, as if I am floating in a pool on a sunny day with my eyes closed, letting life pass me by.
Sage leans against me, and I rest my arms on her, running my fingers through her soft hair as our gazes are glued to the TV. The evening news ends, and I realize I didn’t pay attention to a word they said. A nuclear bomb could be coming directly to Lake Lure, and I would be none the wiser.
A sitcom I’ve never seen before comes on, and I can’t help but laugh at the countless faux pas the main characters find themselves in.
Sage and I both laugh uncontrollably as one of the characters gets locked out of their apartment and gets caught by the police while trying to sneak in through a window.
“That’s something you would do,” I say to her as I try to stop laughing.
It seems like we sit in silence for hours, but I know that can’t be true, because the sun is still up outside, and the show hasn’t ended yet. I don’t know why, but this moment is extending forever.
At one point I find myself staring blankly at the wall, a weird feeling arising in my body. “I can feel my organs getting soft.”
My comment sends Sage into a laughing fit. “I sometimes feel like my eyeballs are shrinking,” she says once she catches her breath.
She sits up and crosses her legs in front of her, looking at me with a warm smile on her face. “You said you were comparing our parents earlier. Why? What was so different about them?”
I open my mouth to reply, surprising myself. I stop, thinking that this is something I wouldn’t normally tell anyone. But I can’t explain it. I want to tell her. Right now I feel like I need to. Sage already knows so much about me; it makes sense that she know everything.
“Does it have something to do with what happened to your sister?” She grabs my hand and traces small circles along my palm as she waits for me to reply.
My heart aches, hearing her mention Leah. I try not to think about her if I don’t have to, but the sudden mention of her brings everything back up. The memory is at the front of my mind as if it happened yesterday. I relive it constantly, and I close my eyes while I try to fight it off.
“It’s all my fault,” I whisper as Sage squeezes my hand tight.
“What is?”
“Leah’s death.” I pause and open my eyes to look at her.
She looks alarmed at my confession, and I feel the same pain I felt the night it happened all over again.
“She was only twelve years old. She had her whole life ahead of her, and it’s all my fault that she was taken.
I was just a kid. I didn’t know what I was doing. ”
“What did you do?”
I can’t tell if there’s fear in her voice or not. Sage already knows who I am, and she has accepted me. Why would this scare her now?
“We were driving home from school, and she was in the front seat next to my dad. I was in the back, angry that I wasn’t allowed to sit up front when she was.
I called shotgun, but because she was older, my dad let her sit there.
I was angry, and I was distracting my dad while he was trying to calm me down.
He didn’t see the deer that walked into the road. ”
Sage gasps and squeezes my hand in hers as she lifts the other to her chest. I can’t bring myself to look at her as I relive the story.
“It’s all my fault she died. I killed her.” I shake my head and close my eyes tight as the emotions swell through my system again. I hate this. I hate retelling the story. I hate the way it makes me feel. I don’t have control over myself, and it makes me feel weak.
“You didn’t kill her,” she says, grabbing my face in her hand to force me to look at her. “It was an accident. You were a child, and you were acting the way children act. Don’t blame yourself.”
“My parents think it’s my fault too. I could always tell they blamed me.
When I would tell them I felt guilty, that I was upset because it was my fault, they never denied it.
” I lean back on the couch and let out a long exhale.
“As soon as I left the house, they stopped reaching out. They lost two children that day.”
When I finally look back at Sage, tears are streaming down her face, and I wrinkle my eyebrows at her. I don’t understand how someone could cry so easily at someone else’s pain. I don’t even cry at my own.
After the accident, I remember being heartbroken.
The crash was scary enough, but the memory of Leah’s death haunts me.
I remember my father rushing out the driver’s-side door to pull her broken body from the car before he collapsed on the ground with her in his arms. He screamed and cried, and he begged God to bring her back.
I stood there in shock, watching. When it finally registered, I started crying too.
I didn’t stop crying for days. Eventually my father kicked the door to my room open and told me I didn’t get to cry.
I didn’t have any business crying because I didn’t get hurt in the accident. I didn’t lose what he lost.
I haven’t shed a tear since then.
Looking back, I know that’s why I’m the way I am now. I couldn’t control my anger before the accident, and I couldn’t control my tears before he told me to stop. Now everything in my life is rigorously controlled. There’s no room for outlying emotions. And I can’t get hurt if I don’t let anyone in.
“Why are you crying?” I ask Sage when I shake off the remnants of the memory.
She shakes her head and dries her eyes before taking a few deep breaths.
“I just can’t imagine letting a child feel that way.
They should have told you it wasn’t your fault.
They shouldn’t have let you bear that weight for so long, and I’m so sorry for all the pain you’ve experienced.
” More tears fall from her face as she tries to choke back sobs.
“I wish I could take it all away from you.”
This is the first time anyone has said anything like that to me. I realize now I’ve almost been waiting for an apology from my parents that will never come. This is new, and I don’t know how to react.
Sage climbs into my lap, and I hold my arms out, not knowing how to react to her sudden proximity. Her arms wrap around me, and I feel my defenses waning. She kisses my cheek and runs her fingers through my hair, burrowing her face in my neck as she tries to stifle her tears.
I hesitate for a moment, but I wrap my arms around her, too, completely enveloping her. This is strange. I haven’t hugged anyone since I was a child. It’s not something I’ve thought about, but looking back, the last person I hugged was probably Leah.
My entire body is tense as she holds me, and as the memory fades, I relax into it. Maybe this isn’t so bad. Two weeks ago, the idea of somebody hugging me would have sent chills down my spine, but now things are different. Sage is different.
I don’t know how much time passes, but the two of us sit on the couch together, letting our bodies meld as we hold each other. I have to admit, I kind of like it.