Page 136 of The Blessing

This is news. I always thought Travis wanted to leave Colorado. “I thought you wanted to go to school out of state.”

“I don’t think I could deal with being away from Dean for that long,” he admits. “I mean, he’s my best friend and we know so many people at this university.”

Fuck, they must be fucking closer than I thought if Travis is willing to stay in state, a place he’s always claimed to hate, just to be near Dean. He changes the subject, transforming back into the perfect star athlete my mom’s fucking obsessed with. Sometimes, I want to be more like him. His life just seems so fucking perfect, while mine even seems like a fucking mess to me. However, I know I could never be that straight-edge. I admire the guy because I could never be that good if I tried.

The memory is fleeting; the Travis in my thoughts is such a stark fucking contrast to the Travis sitting before me right now. The man sitting in front of me is defeated to the point he’s unrecognizable. He’s allowed that one accident to fuck him up beyond repair. He’s transformed into a man who’s nothing like the boy I knew him to be growing up. I want to look away, but I don’t. I stay focused because I want him as calm as possible.

“I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t live with what I’ve done. Every day is a fucking living nightmare. It’s hard to get out of bed because I know it wasn’t a terrible dream. It’s my God damn reality, Trevor. I’ll never be able to take any of what I did back. It’ll always be a heinous fucking scar I’ll have to carry with me. I’m tired of lying to myself. I’m tired of thinking that one day I’ll wake-up and feel better again. You have no idea what it’s like to live with blood on your hands!”

I can see the hysteria brewing behind his irises; his haunted look takes my fucking breath away. Travis was practically Dean’s brother. Regardless of their friendship he looked Dean in the eyes, then made the decision to save his own ass by driving off—leaving my brother to die. He saw Dean was struggling to breathe, fighting for survival. He knew Dean was trapped in the front seat of his car. He had to accept he did that shit to my brother. I can’t wrap my mind around the guilt that must be eating him up. I thought my demons were bad, but his seem indescribable.

“I killed him,” Travis wails, tears spilling down his contorted face. “I killed my best friend! It all happened so fucking fast! I’d been drinking. I just wasn’t thinking when I got behind the wheel of my car. What were the fucking chances, you know? I fucking drove like that all of the time and nothing ever happened. I thought it was safe, no big deal, right? It was a late at night on the road of a dead-end town. I didn’t think anyone else would be out driving because of the late hour. I just got in my car and thought nothing of it.”

My stomach drops because I know this is the part I don’t want to hear, but I need to hear it. I need to know the truth, no matter what. Once he tells me how it happened, all of this will be fucking real. I’ll never be able to turn back time and forget the images that I’m sure his words will sear into my head. Things always tend to stick with me, and I know that this will fucking stick in my mind forever.

“I was drinking a beer while driving home and I dropped it. It spilled all over my phone and seat before it settled in the floor of my truck. I leaned over so I could reach down to grab it, unable to let the rest of my beer go to waste. That’s when I felt the impact of an oncoming car. Everything was a blur. The sounds of the car crunching, tires screeching, and the blood-curdling screams were all that registered in my mind. I could barely understand what was happening, but I could hear everything. The sound of the car’s steel crunching is something that has stuck with me all of this time; as well as the sounds of Cat’s screams as their car spun off the road and into that fucking tree. There was so much noise and movement, then nothing besides the faint whisper of my radio playing classic rock. When I turned my car off and stumbled out into the night, the silence was debilitating. How could there be screams one moment and dead silence the next?

“I was fucking horrified, Trev. When I got out of my car to check out the damage… to see the extent of what I’d done. I didn’t even recognize Dean’s car at first. However, there was this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, screaming at me something horrible was about to happen. I got to their car as fast as I could, but when I looked inside, my world fell apart. You should’ve seen them, Trevor. He was looking”—Travis stops for a moment, gasping for air— “right at me. He couldn’t talk, but everything he wanted to say was radiating from his eyes. He looked so fucking dejected. He was reaching for Cat, who looked like she was already dead. Some of the glass from the windshield had been busted inward on her. There were glass shards sticking out from her neck and torso. She was bleeding all over the place. My God, the way Dean was looking at her tore me the fuck up. Then he looked back at me…”

Travis wipes away his tears and shakes his head as if he were trying to shake all the unwanted images out of his mind. I’ve never seen a person look so broken and it’s so fucking unsettling. As he talks, I can’t take my eyes off the way his finger plays with the trigger; it’s like he’s ready at any moment to raise the gun to his head and end his own life.

“It was nearly impossible to look at him, but I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and tell him that everything was going to be okay. I wanted to be the one in his position more than anything. I loved him, Trevor. I loved him so much, but I couldn’t watch him die. I was such a fucking coward. I got back in my car and drove away, pretending I just hadn’t left him gasping for air in the front seat of his car. The only thing I could say to him before I left was ‘I’m sorry.’ I didn’t tell him that I loved him or anything else. I wish I fucking had now because ‘I’m sorry’ must’ve been the last thing he ever heard.”

“I loved him, too,” I say, trying to connect with Travis, letting him know that he isn’t alone in this darkness. “You’re not by yourself in this, Travis. We both lost him.”

Travis’s face looks so fucking pained before he quickly looks away, hanging his head. “No, Trevor. I was in love with him,” he admits with a wistful smile. I don’t know what to fucking think about that shit. “Dean never knew, but I would’ve followed that man anywhere. I would’ve done anything for him. Or at least, that’s what I thought. I thought I’d give up everything for him, but I couldn’t even save his life. I was in love with my best friend, and it fucking hurt so much to watch him fall in love with someone else. I can’t even look at my Godson at times because he reminds me of his father. I loved Dean more than anything. How ironic is it I was the one who caused his death? I killed the man I loved.”

Tears are coursing down my face at his admission and I have no idea why. I’ve cried so much today, so I suppose it just fucking feels right. Part of me hates Travis for what he did, but another part of me just fucking pities him. If I lost Ronnie… if I was the cause of her death… I’d want to end my sorry ass life, too. I don’t know how he’s had the strength to go on for this long. I don’t know how he’s found it within himself to put on a brave face and lie to me every day.

“He’s gone now, and I have nothing left,” he says as his shaky right hand brings the gun up toward his head.

Time seems to slow down as I watch him with wide, horrified eyes. The gun inches closer and closer, his finger shaking on the trigger as if preparing to pull it at any second. My body seems to react before my mind does. I launch myself at him, tackling him down to the floor with me and we begin to scuffle over the gun. He cries out in anger, outraged that I’m preventing him from his desired outcome, and he begins to wail on me with the stock of his gun. My head is throbbing with pain and I taste iron as blood fills my mouth, but I don’t back down. I hit him back just as hard, wanting to knock some fucking sense into him.

“Just let me do it, Trevor!” he screams into my face. “Just let me die! I want to be with him!”

I can’t allow him to do that. I can’t watch him fucking kill himself right before my very eyes. I shake my head, looking up at his broken face with tears in my eyes. I wrap my arm around his shoulder, as if I was giving him a hug while trying to grab the gun with my other hand. He’s sobbing uncontrollably now; his eyes are filled with pure shame as he stares down at my beaten face.

“Give me the gun, Travis,” I say, trying hard not to beg.

“I can’t.” He violently shakes his head. “I need to pay for this.”

“You’ve been paying for it, man,” I quickly reason with him. “Now, give me the gun.”

He shoves his body away from mine, thrashing around above me. I catch him off balance and manage to flip him over onto his back, throwing myself on top of him. There’s no reasoning with him. That much is fucking clear. So, I decide to forcibly rip the gun from his hands. I’m not letting anyone fucking die today. There’s been too much death in my life already. My body is inches from his as I grab his hand and try to pry the gun away. He has his finger tightly wedged in the trigger guard, twitching on the trigger, but I don’t let it fucking scare me. I can’t let him die like this. I can’t have his death on my conscious, too. My eyes snap straight to Travis’s as the gun goes off.

The pain is piercing hot and unbearable, but it quickly numbs as my body shuts down. My ears are ringing. My head is throbbing, vibrating with sound. The room begins to spin as the colors begin to blur together. I hear Travis scream my name before my world goes black.

The muffled sounds of concerned voices, frantic footsteps, and an annoying consistent beeping stirs me into consciousness. It takes a moment for my body to play catch-up with my brain, but my eyelids finally flutter open. Nothing looks familiar to me. Everything is sterile and impersonal. My eyes dart around the room at the other beds lining the walls. I can hear moans from the other occupants in the room, but I can’t make them out. Everything is still one befuddled blur. The smell of iodoform and countless chemicals burn my nostrils, making me want to be anywhere but here.

I try to sit up, but my head is fucking aching worse than any hangover I’ve ever had. My head falls back against the pillow as my brain pulsates against my skull. I groan, noticing how dry my fucking mouth feels. I move my mouth around until some saliva manages to wet my tongue and cringe at the taste of disinfectant and medicine. My throat fucking aches. I realize my entire body aches as my world becomes less of a blur. What the hell happened?

“Look who’s awake,” an unfamiliar woman says, bending over my bed to get a better look at me.

Before I can register who the fuck she is, she helps me into a sitting position and hands me a cup of ice chips for my throat. My haze begins to lift as I suck on the ice, causing my vision to become clearer. I feel like I’ve woken up from a dream. An extremely bad and disturbing nightmare. I don’t remember much. I sure as hell don’t remember how I ended up here, but I remember finding Travis and trying my fucking hardest to save him. My eyes widen at the memory. I sit up further in bed, ignoring the pain that shoots from my head all the way down to my toes. I wildly look around the room for a glimpse of him.

“Sit back, Mr. Warren,” the woman, who I assume is a nurse, says. “Your surgery was successful, but now you’ll need to relax and take it easy.”

My surgery? Suddenly, I remember fucking everything. I’m quickly brought back to reality and everything over the last few hours quickly flood into my conscious mind. My eyes are finally open to everything and it’s fucking horrifying. My eyes scan down at my aching body, seeing that my right shoulder is wrapped up in bandages. Everything else seems to still be intact but bruising and swelling covers a large area of my body, adding to the dull pain of my aching muscles.