To Break

XI

CRACK. Lightning. I flinch. Reece smirks.

BOOM. Thunder. I shudder. Reece laughs.

Lightning and thunder; two ingredients in my opinion. Just add a drop of rain and a gust of wind, turn the temperature down to 2°C and you have yourself the perfect storm. I strongly recommend cooking this up when you’re stuck in a creaky old shack of a farm house, seconds away from blowing over.

All we need now is an axe murderer to hack down the door and it’s the plot of  a horror film. I can already picture the advertisements:

Nightmare in farmhouse. Based on a true story.

At least our deaths would be remembered.

CRACK. Another shot of lightning stops me from wandering too far down the road of a scary movie, and instead brings me back to the shack. The ground is cold, the wind is seeping through the wood, the rain is pelting against the tin roof; unrelenting. I’m cold, and Reece and I are back to square one.

He has started singing. Well, more like humming words to songs under his breath in hope I can’t hear them. I can, and I can’t help realising all the songs he is singing are ones I introduced him to.

The first was The Parting Glass, followed by Fix You and now, Chasing Cars. I want to tell him to stop, but I won’t. It’s hard to know that those songs are still in his musical vocabulary, but it is a good distraction from Mother Nature’s war path outside.

“If I lay here,” Reece is singing, his voice enticing even under his breath. “If I just lay here. Would you lie with me and just forget the world?” I can’t tell if these songs remind him of me like they do for me of him, but I hope so.

I know I’m still mad. I’m still struggling to cope with the fact that he left like it was nothing, and now expects to come back as if it is the same. It’s not fair of him to expect that from me. I can’t stand that he thinks he can waltz back into my life without consequence.

Even though I struggle with all of that, it’s not what I’m angry about. I’m angry because I don’t understand. He was the one who left me. He has no reason to want to be friends again, which means he only wants that because of the situation. Then, when morning comes, when we go our separate ways, Reece will go back to pretending I don’t exist, and I’ll be the stupid one for believing anything different would happen.

The thing that doesn’t make sense though, is his honesty. Why would he tell me the truth about his dad – about his life – if he wasn’t planning to stay in mine? I don’t get it.

“Those three words,” his voice comes back into my consciousness. “Are said too much. They’re not enough.”

BOOM. More thunder. More shuddering. But this time, no laughing.

I glace across the shed in confusion; eyebrow raised, arms crossed. Reece sees me and shakes his head, his lips moving in sync with the song he’s humming. I huff and roll my eyes, sinking further into the ground.

CRACK. I let out a small yelp, before slapping a hand over my mouth. Still, no smirking, no laughing from the boy in the corner. Only pretty tunes.

“What, no laughing at my expense?” I question, capturing his attention. The humming stops.

“What?” He fires, angry but quiet. It’s as though he wants to yell, to scream, but can’t.

“The storm. You think my reactions are funny. Every time there’s been lightning or thunder you laugh or do something of the sort. Now you’re not.”