Layover

         Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump. You know when you’re standing in one position, staring at something for so long that your eyes glaze over and your vision’s all hazy and you lose track of time and lose perception of reality and suddenly the only sound in the world is the dull, but all-too-intrusive silence that’s slowly encroaching on your vacant mind? And then, a dim awareness of your heartbeat interrupts, or rather adapts, to the silence so the only sound in the whole world is the gentle whooshing of breath and the constant murmur of your heart?

         Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump. In just a moment, that one sound practically shattered my eardrums, rattling my brain back and forth in my skull; my entire body felt like it was being dragged at tremendous speeds from one side of a football stadium to the other in about .08 seconds. The haze that was preventing my eyes from focusing on anything in particular felt like it was spreading across several senses; my olfactory and tactile perceptions felt impaired… Could I feel anything at all?

         I became dimly aware, after what felt like an eternity, of a small, raspy sound. It was getting louder, beginning to fill in the blanks in my auditory senses. The sound slowly became more truncated, or rather separated. I was aware, now, of separations in the sound… words. The general babble slowed and came to a brief pause. It took one more word to recall me from my general system shutdown. 

         “Lily?” the small voice on the other end of the line enquired nervously. “Are you still there?” My fingers fumbled for the phone that had begun to fall to the ground. After a moment of shattering reality, I fully recollected what the voice had announced in the first place; I remembered why it was that my mind had ceased to function for about a forty-seven seconds.

         It all rolled back to me as if I had been separated from reality by a canyon-divide for decades, eons…



          Rain on window, eggs on stove, microwave beeping, steaming bag of popcorn, bad movie on TV, music on kitchen-radio…I hum along. I see a car drive through the rain past my house. I hear the neighbor’s dog bark, I smell the eggs, I taste the popcorn, I pour a glass of Dad’s vodka into a small glass, I stop humming. Eggs done already? Long day. Too much happening. The divorce, moving, college soon…too much. I chug the glass and eat a little more popcorn, helping myself to another, slightly fuller glass of the Grey Goose. I shouldn’t be drinking, but it’s not like I’m going anywhere, not like I need to worry about someone finding out. It’s just me tonight. I flip through the channels, looking for a better movie, for anything really.

         Looking for something. Maybe it’s the drinks, or maybe it’s the fact that I’m seventeen and have a regular session of therapy lined up every third Saturday of the month. Maybe it’s that my parents are getting divorced and I can’t be sure it’s not my fault. Maybe it’s because life is all about choices and it seems like I haven’t made a good one in a long time. Maybe it’s because when I lie awake at night and picture my life, I can’t see it going much further; am I supposed to die now? Is that what God or the universe has in store for me? How depressing is that—I was destined to live to be seventeen and then die. Fitting somehow. Had I ever done anything worthwhile? I guess the real question is why wait so long for it to happen? The alcohol is definitely what took this inward-monologue a turn for the suicidal.          

         Before I have a chance to compare the potential for life to the value of not existing, the eggs begin to burn. I stumble towards the stove and toss the burning rubble of another dinner into the sink. My head is swimming, but I’m still clear-headed enough to recall the comfort of being horizontal, so I lurch towards the couch in the living room. Dying room more like. I chuckle to myself; a strange sound. That’s not my laugh. I wonder at drunkenness. Am I drunk or just slightly inebriated? The ground is swimming with my head. The room is spinning, not unpleasantly. I smile as I close my eyes; how simple life could be if I wasn’t existing. But even in the depths of my stupor, I know that suicide is not an option. I’m not that selfish, not even today. The room drifts into a calm, quiet darkness. Still hours from sunset, though…Maybe I closed my eyes for a minute.

         Rain pounds at my head as I awake. God. Head. How much? Four glasses. Yeah. Drunk. Yikes. Rain doesn’t seem that offensive when your head isn’t throbbing in anguish. It’s dark. My eyes are open, and it’s dark. How long was I out? It was about 6 last night… I fumble for my cell phone. Gah. Twelve hours. Twelve hours? Twelve. Wow.

         What should I do now? I’m not all that tired… I have nothing to do. I clean up the vodka ring my glass left on the counter and scrub the charred egg off the pan. After a total of seven minutes since I awoke in my miserable life, I decide aspirin’s a good idea. Aspirin. Some milk so my stomach won’t be empty. Again, I’m left with nothing to occupy my time. No one came home last night. I’d been expecting that, hadn’t I?

         Yes. No one was supposed to come home. Mom in Dallas for emotional-support from Aunt Esther. Dad in Toledo on “business.” Jane in London for school. Brian in Jacksonville for baseball. Lily at home for lack of a better place to put her. As I stand with no better place to be and no better thing to do, my mind wanders off to that same dark corner from last night. Not a suicidal tint to mar the depression; no real desire to off myself plagues my mind this morning. Just a vague desire to be in control and yet have decisions so vital taken out of my hands. I long to be a kid with a pet rock and a Barbie. I’d be good to go. No responsibilities, no obligations, no pain, no desire to be close, no need for affirmation, no spirit devoid of color. No need for Dr. Pat and her introspective questions and scribbled-upon clipboard. (I wonder idly if I should tell her that her clipboard has become a symbol of stress for me; I have nightmares where the metal clip is chasing me, trying to devour me, ripping my limbs off one at a time…) No need for pill bottles behind my mirror full of prescriptions of anti-depressants and stress-relievers. My literal chill pills. No need for guidance-counselors telling me what to major in based on my aptitude tests. No need for sex talks from PE teachers or drug confiscations by security guards or lectures on why you’re alive by the nuts from Team Life, a local youth mission. No need for relationships. What child has actual relationships? They just attach themselves to kind-seeming people and work from there, being satisfied with no more than a self-preservative kinship to that other person. As long as the kid’s fed and tended to on some basic level, the relationship is maintained.

         My mind wanders further away into a wordless void, no longer generating a happily pathetic scenario of free-existence. I’m adrift within myself. A sound interrupts my introspection. The phone? It’s six o’clock on Sunday morning. I walk to it and notice casually it’s on the diamond-pattern kitchen tile as opposed to in its cradle.

         “Gellar residence,” I announce, my finger just trailing off the receive button.

         “Lily?” Aunt Esther. Why would she…? “Lily, it’s Aunt Esther.” Her voice is hoarse. What’s wrong? “Lily your mom…” I’m gonna need more than that, Esther, I want to say. I want to yell at her for being so clipped. Can’t she spit out a goddamn syllable more than that at one time? Can’t she just tell me that I’m no longer the proud owner of a full set of parents? Can’t she tell me I’m pathetic for thinking my life was so tough a few seconds ago? Can’t she spit it out so I can hang up the phone. Somehow, the words still slap me in the face before a cool numbness sets in. “She’s dead.”

         

         “Lily? Are you there?” And I blinked. Back to reality, back from my brief foray into my recent past. Back from my small escape. Back into the dizzying present. “I need you to answer, sweetie.”

         “What happened?” I heard a voice unlike my own answer. Was that me? The voice was scratchy, thick…my face was wet. When did I start crying?

         “She got into an accident…a truck hit her rental car…” Esther sounded composed, for the moment, but had an equally thick quality to her voice. There was a muffled brokenness to her tone. I felt like her calling interrupted a private moment of loss I wasn’t supposed to be able to hear.

         “Lily,” she began again after a moment. I assumed she waited until I’d stopped my sob short. I had to wait ‘til she was gone to continue. Stupid tears. Stupid…I found no word to blame. “I called your sister; she’s flying home now. She’ll land in Atlanta tonight. I’m sending you a ticket so you two can meet me at Fort Worth International by tomorrow. I can’t seem to reach Brian though…” I admired her strength. She had to be the grown up here, since my dad was hiding somewhere in Ohio at the moment, probably with Vanessa, his ditzy replacement-girlfriend. Esther…she was stronger than I knew. She spit all that out in about twenty seconds though, so I imagined she’d been storing it up for a brief burst of composure; she was waiting for me to hang up as much as I was.

         “Okay…” I stuttered. “What time is my flight?” It was the only question that popped into my head.

         “Your flight is 11:30 tomorrow morning. I’m sorry it’s so late; there wasn’t anything else available. Try to reach Brian. As soon as you do, call me; I already have a ticket for him for today out of Jacksonville International. I just hope he makes the flight…” I knew that we were both looking for things to say by that point, trying to remember what we needed to spit out before hanging up. Which one of us should say we’re sorry? Which one should comfort?

         “I’m so sorry, Aunt Esther…” I choked out. I shouldn’t have been the one. That’s not what the kid does. That’s not what the daughter does. I shouldn’t wish my condolences, but it seemed right… Esther knew her for forty-five years… twenty-eight before I did. They were sisters…best friends. But I shouldn’t have said it. Something about saying “I’m sorry” implies that the other person loved them more; it was like a spit in my mother’s memory. I shouldn’t have said anything. Esther didn’t seem to notice at all.

         “I love you, kiddo.” Finally, someone remembered I am a kid.

         “I love you, Aunt Esther,” my words were numb and barely squeezed from my lips. What was I supposed to do between now and tomorrow? Where should I go? My family…what was left of my horribly disjointed, dysfunctional family was spread across the hemisphere and beyond, and I was left alone in Chicago with no way of contacting anyone…Jane would be packing and hurrying to the airport. Brian? I should try Brian. I was too numb too stop moving. My fingers blindly punched in his number and hit send.

         “Please pick up…” I whispered. Tears silently slid down my face, but I realized that I hadn’t crumbled yet. Thank God.

         “Hello?” Brian answered coolly. He wasn’t expecting a call from home anymore than I’d expected to be calling him.

         “Oh!” I replied. I honestly hadn’t expected him to pick up. “Brian… you have to come home now.”

         “What’s wrong, Lily?” His voice changed subtly, an edge of brotherly concern I hadn’t heard in a long time ebbed into the cool-exterior he’d developed since graduating.

         “It’s mom,” I heard my voice reply. My voice…it couldn’t possibly be my voice. It sounded like someone grated my normal voice and then put the shavings into a blender.

         Brian didn’t reply at first. Was he too stunned or indifferent? I found it impossible to continue; like Aunt Esther, I couldn’t find the words or the strength behind them to continue. All I could manage was, “Call Aunt Esther. She’s flying you to Dallas.” My finger hit the end button and the call dropped. I was so selfish. I couldn’t help it. It only took a moment for the phone to be on the ground and me to be beside it, my face grinding into the linoleum. I was too far-gone to think, too far from reality to even hear the phone begin to ring again.



It was nine-thirty before I heard anything past my own sobbing and the dull ringing of the phone. After the three hours of weeping, my throat was coarse and scratchy. I heard the doorbell ring. It echoed through the empty house.

         My hand dragged up from my side and landed, palm-down, on the kitchen floor. My other did the same. I slowly pushed myself off the ground, blinking in the light that was new to me. My eyes had been closed or under the curtain of my hair for a while now. The doorbell sounded again, filling my head with a ringing that didn’t break for about two weeks. I was still hung over, after all.

         I approached the door slowly, the pad of my feet slapping into the wood floor that surrounded the entryway. A random flash of my mother, facing the wall mirror and putting in earrings in a cocktail dress filled my mind. The Chicago Lyric with Dad… three years ago. She smelled like Chanel number 5. The memory faded. I felt tears again as I stopped before the door, my fingers tracing the deadlock and then the knob.

         Blake. My friend, Blake Teison, like so many other things in my life, was a constant reminder of how inadequate I was. He was beautiful, long lashes covering dark eyes, toned arms, confidant smile, thick, dark hair, tall and fit… I was… well, not. And while I tried to pretend I was into my boyfriend Gene, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Blake was the best guy in the world. All of this seemed slightly irrelevant now, though. What did it matter if Blake never looked at me as more than a best friend? What did it matter at all?

         “Lily?!” his smile faded. I vaguely recalled we’d had plans that morning… No wonder he was here. My eyes closed again; I think I’d been waiting for arms to catch me. My eyelids fluttered shut and I was aware of being off my feet and in someone’s arms. And then on a leather seat. And then there were voices… or a voice, talking to someone else. And then bright lights and more voices. Oh, Blake… you didn’t, did you?

         I awoke to a bright light in my eye. Goddamn it, Blake…A hospital? Really? Blake was on the phone with someone, reporting that I’d fainted but the doctors said I’d be okay. Saying that I was under a tremendous amount of stress, that I should take it easy. Things I already knew. Things I was already quite aware of. I wondered whom Blake was relaying this to…

         “Okay, thanks, Mr. Gellar.” Oh, Blake. I wondered, then, if Esther had called my dad… Did he know?

         Blake hung up the phone and wandered back to my side. I decided it was time to wake up.

         “Lily?!” he said, a relieved smile stretching across his lips. “Oh, Lily!” he hugged me, gently, but firmly. My head was still kind of spinning.

         “Did you just call my dad?” I breathed. The sounds of the busy hospital almost overtook my small voice, but he was close enough to hear.

         “Yeah… I didn’t know what else to do … I couldn’t reach your mom or Jane…” A pang of guilt I couldn’t place met a wave of grief, and like two air currents, a deafening crack of emotional thunder erupted in my head.

         “Blake, my mom’s dead,” I whispered, almost sure he couldn’t hear that. But he did. Like this morning, my world shifted into an introspective monologue, choking reality into submissive silence. I deserved a few moments to myself. Confirming aloud that I was as good as an orphan was jarring. I would never wake up to my mother screaming my name down the hallway again. I would never watch her dial something on the phone before hanging up, and, with frustration, redial the same number, thinking she’d messed it up. I would never again see her laugh at stupid jokes or yell at Brian for getting a tattoo or another piercing. I would never…get to see her face when I told her I was getting married. Never get to hold her hand when I cried. Never get to whisper I was pregnant with her grandchild and hope she’d be as happy as I’d always imagined. Never get to move out of her house. Never get to say goodbye… All the things I’d always wanted or needed or pictured happening with us…it couldn’t happen. I didn’t even get the impression she’d liked me very much just before the end. I knew that I hadn’t liked her very much just before the end… She was always in lawyer mode, preparing on some level to divorce my father—her husband of twenty-five years. Wow. I’d never thought about the fact that she was only three years my senior when she married Dad… She couldn’t legally drink yet! She was so young… I never asked her what her dress was like, or their first dance song. I’d never asked her if she loved him. I never asked her if she would do it all again despite the fact they were getting divorced. I never asked if she was nervous…or if she wore something borrowed and something blue. Why was I such an idiot? Why…so many things why.

         Blake seemed as stunned as I had been. What do you say to that? “Lily… Oh, God, Lily…” He offered feebly. I didn’t mind that he fumbled with his words the way I had. It was only natural. I felt the dull sting of tears nagging at my eyes and I closed them, too angry at myself to reconcile the tears. I felt my closed eyes fill with the tears I hated so much. Why cry? Why do anything at all?

         Blake must have found the courage to act. I felt his arms cave around me like a giant teddy bear. He gave great hugs. I was mildly conscious of putting my arms around his shoulders and even less conscious of breaking down. I hated that. I hated breaking down and having someone else have to be there, have to comfort me. I hated making someone else stick out my crying with me.

         “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “You don’t have to.” I began to push his arms away, and he hesitated. After a moment of pushing, he allowed me to push him off.

         “I don’t mind, Lily,” he said, and he sounded sincere, but he let me push him off. I figured as much.

         “It’s fine… thanks though,” I wanted him to understand that I wasn’t going to drag him through this with me. I hated myself for that moment of letting him comfort me, be there for me. It wasn’t his job. Geez. My mom was dead. Beyond sad, it was weird. I felt another wave of regret for all the things I never said to her, all the times I didn’t tell her I loved her. Even more so, I wondered if I had loved her… I mean, of course I loved her, but I wondered if it was as deep and powerful as a child’s love for a mother should be. I knew that however much I loved her was about as much as she loved me. Did that make us even, or just equally pathetic?

         We were silent for a few minutes. This was way over his head. He looked sincerely upset, sincerely wishing he could make things better, but not enough to comfort me. Did I mean that little to him? No, that was stupid. It wasn’t that at all. He just didn’t know how to respond. I had to remind myself not to peg every human weakness to a lack of love for me. Maybe that applied to my mom, too… Maybe she did love me more than I could possibly imagine; maybe she was just so overcome with stress, with work, with the divorce, with my sister living abroad, with my brother living half a country away, with my father and his twenty-something girlfriend…with everything. But that felt like an excuse, an allowance. I thought for a moment. I could assign a million different stresses and pains to the way my mother interacted with her family, but I couldn’t completely erase the notion that she really was as selfish and inconsiderate as we all stated under our collective breaths each morning. A sick thought popped into my head: The divorce was as much her fault as my flighty, immature father.

         I also couldn’t shake the notion that I was possibly the worst daughter in the world. A quake of nausea shook my head. Gah.

         “Oh, my head,” I whispered. I needed coffee.

         “What’s wrong?” Blake asked, taking a step back towards the small hospital cot.

         “God, Blake. Can we leave, please?” I asked, almost laughing. “Why did you bring me to the hospital?” I asked, recalling my surroundings. “Seriously,” I continued idly, pulling an I-V out my arm. Ouch.

         “Well, what was I supposed to do? You passed out for a really long time…I guess I did overreact…” he seemed grateful that I didn’t want to linger conversationally on my mother’s passing. “What’s wrong with your head?” he asked after a moment, as I swung my legs over the edge of the cot and stood. Whoosh. Head rush.

         I moaned. My head was seriously not connected to my body. It was under some sort of…really big thing. Ugh.

         “What’s wrong with your head, Lily?” he repeated, steadying me as I swayed drowsily.

         “I just… had a really bad headache this morning.” He studied my face for a moment, seeing a hint of dishonesty. I had not lied by any means, but he knew it when I wasn’t telling him the whole truth. Something seemed to click for him though; he sighed– almost moaned–and closed his eyes.

         “God, Lily. Were you drinking?”

         I waited for a moment, wondering if I should plead the fifth, repent, or flip out. I didn’t feel like any of the above. I didn’t answer. Why answer? Did he even care?

         “Ah, Miss Gellar,” a moderately tall, moderately out-of-shape, moderately balding man in a white coat with a pair of square, wire-framed glasses blinked kindly at me. He looked like a turtle. Uncannily so. He retrieved my chart from the end of my bed and glanced at it for a moment, regardless of the fact that I had no apparent injury or illness. “I’m Dr. Salyer. How are you feeling?”

         “Fine, I swear…. I just… lots of stress,” I qualified after fighting through possible explanations. It was the truth, just coated in an oversimplified fib. What isn’t these days?

         “I see you already took care of your IV…” he frowned for a moment at the slight rip of skin on my hand but moved along quickly enough. “You were a bit dehydrated, which could have led you, in part, to faint… But, seeing as you’re now hydrated and fully conscious, you’re free to go,” he concluded with a genial, middle-aged smile. He dotted an ‘i’ and crossed a ‘t’ on my file before turning to go. I didn’t bother thanking him.

         Blake and I began a silent trek to the elevators when a nurse stopped me. “Sorry, honey. Hospital policy,” she drawled carelessly, pushing me gently into a wheel chair. I glared at Blake. Thanks, buddy. I want to spit at him. You fully satisfied I’m okay now? I wanted to shout and yell and rail and hit and scream. But my throat was dry, and my eyes were red and puffy and my fists, inexplicably, hurt, like I’d been pounding them against the invisible wall that was blocking my view of my once mediocre life.  Funny how loss can enlighten you to how lucky you were just moments before. God, I wanted to barf at how lame I had been. How absurd my “depression” had been. Blake pushed my wheel chair silently to the elevator. We rode it in silence to the parking deck floor. I stood silently and then, in silence, we walked to his car.

         “I should call my dad back… He doesn’t know.” I stared pointedly at my feet as I said this, unwilling to look at him.

         “Lily,” he tried to begin again. He wanted so badly to help me, I could see it in his eyes. But something was holding him back from saying anything. Something… Honestly, what is someone supposed to say? He knew my mom about as well as our dog-walker did. Oh, crap. Sawyer.

         “I’m going to call Marie. Maybe she can drive up…” Marie, my best girl friend who’d moved an hour and half away and transferred schools last semester. The middle of her senior year. It had been rocky to try to maintain friendship when we were both so busy. Of course we still talked, still hung out on weekends, but before she moved we had been inseparable. She practically lived at my house, and vice versa. It broke my heart when she moved. That would help. At least he was trying to make me feel better.

         “I have to get back…Sawyer hasn’t been fed yet.” Our golden-retriever, Sawyer, was a four-year-old, overgrown puppy, who refused to grow up and get out of his ‘playful phase.’ He needed to be let out of his basement crate and jump around, piss, eat, and whatever else it is dogs do when they’re not locked up… probably just shift positions, yawn, and go back to sleep on a couch as opposed to the over-stuffed pillow in his over-sized, wire-mesh cage. I desperately hoped Marie could drive up. I hated depending on people, but if anyone in the world wanted to be depended on for things like this, it was Marie. She understood my relationship with my parents. She understood how complicated I’d be feeling. She understood…

         I realized when Blake hung up the phone that she wasn’t coming a second before he actually said it. “She’s in Georgia with her family and won’t be back until Wednesday,” he said quietly. I closed my eyes and let my forehead rest against the cool glass of the window as he drove. I sighed through my teeth.

         “You really shouldn’t drink,” he muttered, merging onto the expressway. Seriously? Why did he care?

         “God, Dad. Thanks. I get it,” I spat. Blake sighed again, his fingers tensing and relaxing on the wheel. A moment of silence filled the car before I popped it, another swell of frustration ringing in my ears. “Seriously, why do you care? Do you think it could ruin my life? Are you worried I’ll get into trouble?” I drove as much sarcasm into my words as possible.

         “You called me last night,” Blake stated quietly. Oh. My. God. What had I said? What did I do? Ohmygod. I really didn’t need this right now. A petrified silence rocked my head back and forth and I could practically hear my soul dying. “Look, it doesn’t matter, okay? Just… don’t get drunk. It’s stupid.” I really needed to know what I’d said. Or maybe I didn’t… But I did. I really did. I had to know the damage.

         “Blake,” I whispered. “What did I say?” I braced myself.

         He grimaced. “It doesn’t matter. You were drunk; I understand that.” He was offering me an out. My curiosity was still burning intensely, but maybe I should just take it. I thought for a moment and decided I should just take it.

         Silence again filled in the empty spaces, clogging up the nooks and crannies of the car as we sped down the freeway.

         “Thanks for um…helping me, Blake,” I muttered after a long while. He didn’t take his eyes off the road, but a faint smile curved his lip and relaxed some of the tension between his eyebrows.

         “No prob, Gellar.” His fingers twitched a little off the steering wheel, almost like he was about to take my hand, but before they so much as passed the little digital clock, they snapped back to the wheel. Oh, God. What had I said?

         “Your dad is coming home, by the way… I don’t think I told you… in the, uh…” he trailed off. My father was always a welcome houseguest. Just like I was a model daughter, and Brian was a model athlete and Jane was a model student and Mom was a model living person.

         “Yeah, I know,” I muttered. We were silent again. I think he sensed my tension.

         “How are you feeling?” He asked at last, trying to break the awkward edge that had corrupted our bubble of silence. It’s like adding a drop of food dye into milk: at first it’s just a little swirl, but if you don’t remove the dissipating drop, soon the whole glass will be blue, and you’ll be left trying to invent new ways of making it white again. Thank you, Blake, for trying to fish out the drop before it ruins our milk.

         The potential problem with changing the subject is that the new topic will be even less favorable then the original one. I blinked a few times, wondering how to answer. I considered, briefly, remarking on my headache, but then remembered that topic was officially taboo if I was continuing to accept his out. Then, I considered saying tired, which is, I suppose true enough, though it was still the morning and I probably wasn’t realistically that tired. I finally landed on hungry. After all, it had been a while, and I was moderately hungry.

         “Hungry,” I answered hastily, trying to cover the fact it took me about fifteen seconds to come up with it. He surveyed me over the rims of the sunglasses he’d put on to phase out the sunlight.

         “Lunch at Angelo’s?” he asked conversationally, as if my world wasn’t falling apart. I considered that for a moment, wondering idly if I’d be able to forget for a few hours that my life was over.

         “Sounds good,” I tried to smile. It came out a feeble grimace. Tears were welling up in my eyes for the millionth time that day. It wasn’t as if lunch was a special time of day, not like my mother and I had frequented Angelo’s and called it ‘our place,’ but during that brief expanse of time spent in the car with Blake, I had kidded myself into thinking that little distractions like drunk-dialing could really pale my vibrant shades of mourning at all. Those moments of agony thinking I might have spilled my feelings in a drunken spout to the guy of my dreams were like a sitcom, playing on split screen with a war documentary. I longed for those stolen moments to distract me again. Wanted so desperately to be free again, free to feel petty emotions and indulge in frivolous high school drama…

         “Hey, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Blake resolved, observing my tears cautiously. “I can just take you home, if you want,” he added. I could clearly see him warring with himself, whether he should comfort me or not.

         “No, no,” I said quickly. I hadn’t actually begun to cry yet, just a few tears slipping through… “I really don’t want to go home,” I explained. “And I am hungry. Really, this is fine,” I tried to lie. It was a half-ass attempt.

         After about thirty seconds of indecision, Blake decided to believe me. He got out of the car and came around to my side to help me out. I closed my eyes and took a tremendously deep breath, one that actually rattled my ribcage a little, before opening my eyes and squinting into the light as he opened the door. You never notice how tinted a car window is until you compare it with the reality of the sun. Blake stepped in the way, blocking out the sun so I could see better; he extended his hand.

         Absently, I took it and let him help me out of the car. He was very close to me as he pulled me onto the sidewalk. It took me about three seconds too long to let go of his hand, but for once in our friendship it took him that long to let go, too. He let go, but continued to stare into my eyes. I was confused. I couldn’t think… couldn’t rationalize.

         “Blake,” I began, leaning back against the frame of the car. “What did I say last night?” I really did have to know. Not asking was just another attempt of kidding myself out of reality. Or maybe I was just trying to buy more time, distract myself for a few more precious seconds.

         I could tell he would answer before he did, he just took a little longer in doing it. He squinted at me; the sun was reflecting off my pale skin. “You told me you loved me,” he admitted sheepishly but squarely. I swallowed. There it was. Out for him to see. Our eyes didn’t break contact for about ten seconds before he backed down, or again, was offering me an out. “But I understand that you were just drunk, Lil. Really, I do.” Is that what he wanted me to say? Did he want to stop me from making this mistake? The way I figured, it was already out there, so I might as well damn myself even further.

         “And you couldn’t tell I was drunk?” I tried to joke, another wave of tears threatening to ruin my weak façade. I smiled half-heartedly, a line still wrinkling my forehead. “I was drunk,” I admitted. Something seemed to darken in his eyes; they shifted downward, examining something on the ground passively. I took that as all the encouragement I would ever get from him. “But I meant it,” I added, continuing to stare at his downcast eyes. They flickered up to meet mine.

         “Lily,” he said before I kissed him. I couldn’t help myself… I couldn’t help any of it. It was like being set on fire; after the pain disappears, after all your nerve endings are too burnt to feel anymore, you feel a tragically delightful blaze of heat caressing your skin. I was burnt beyond recognition. I couldn’t feel anymore… I just wanted to feel the blaze… I just wanted to step back and watch myself burn.