Page 74 of Apathy
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It was the sound of rain that pulled me out from a deep slumber.
As soon as Dylan disappeared around the corner, going to the kitchen, I took my bag upstairs and took a shower, careful with the bandages on my left arm. Dylan didn’t come up before I went to sleep, and I had a feeling it was better that way.
He wanted to talk, and I wasn’t ready to relive that night all over again. He wanted me to tell him all my worries, all my issues, as if that would help any one of us. If I burdened him with my secrets, he would end up with the same scars I had, and that was the last thing I wanted.
This pain was mine to carry. These scars were mine to deal with, and brother or no brother, he didn’t deserve to feel like I did.
Helpless.
Scared.
Angry.
I didn’t want him to lose the good in him, and if he knew what our father was doing to me, the picture he had of him would shatter into a million tiny pieces, and I didn’t want that.
No matter what, our father was there for Dylan. He was teaching him about the family business, about other things he needed to know, and I didn’t want to destroy the idyllic picture Dylan had of him.
I shivered and pulled the covers higher up, covering my neck, only to realize that this wasn’t the usual temperature of the room. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I turned to the side, seeing the open balcony door and hearing the downpour of rain outside.
I definitely didn’t open my balcony before I went to sleep.
Maybe I should’ve learned from my past mistakes. As soon as I saw that door open, I should’ve run away from the room, but that anger was still coating my insides. Instead of calling for Dylan, calling for help, I threw off the covers from my body and stood up, going straight for the balcony.
“You seem okay,” a voice boomed through the night, mixing with the sound of the rain.
I all but jumped around, ready to face the intruder, and froze in my tracks when I realized who it was.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” That anger I talked about? That suffocating feeling, the one keeping me afloat right now, wasn’t just directed at the faceless man who destroyed my body and soul.
No. It was also directed at him—at Ash.
Sitting on the floor, in the corner of my room, his back pressed against the door, was a boy, a man—whatever you wanna call him—who wasn’t there when I needed him the most. Day and night, I waited for him to show up in the hospital.
I waited for him to bring his moody ass inside, to tell me that everything was going to be okay. I just wanted to see him, to feel him, to have that smell of pine trees, cigarettes, and rain infiltrate the entire room, to replace that horrible, horrible hospital smell of antiseptic and coldness.
But he never came.
Every time Lauren came to me, I expected him to be right behind her. Every night, when everybody else cleared out, when I was left alone with my thoughts, I expected him to sneak in, to do anything, really.
To fucking call me if nothing else.
But nothing. One big, fat nothing, that’s what I got from him.
I assumed he cared about me, at least enough to see if I was still fucking alive, but I guess that I wasn’t that important. Just another wrong assumption, another disappointment in my life.
He slowly stood up and walked to the bed, staring at the spot where I slept.
“I asked you a fucking question, Ash.” I slammed the balcony door shut and took a step toward him. “What are you doing here?”
But just as usual, I didn’t get an answer. Talking to him was like pulling teeth—painful and exhausting. I had enough time while in the hospital to really think about this shit that was going on between us.
I tried telling myself that what we had was nothing more but meaningless sex that one night, but I lied to myself. Nothing new there, except that I didn’t want to keep lying.
I cared about him. I cared if he was happy or sad.
I wanted to hear his thoughts on random subjects. I wanted to talk to him about his past, his parents, where he grew up, because I didn’t know anything about him.
