To Learn to Let Go | ✔

Chapter 35

I startle awake at around 4 am. For the first time in a long time I had a nightmare, I think it was about Adam but the longer I'm awake the less I remember. Trent's not there when I wake up, and I look around confused. His stuff is still here, so he hasn't left the house. I get up and groggily search the house for him. After checking every room upstairs I head down to the kitchen, where I find Trent curled up in a ball on my kitchen floor, a bottle of my dad's whisky in is hand. He's crying, and muttering to himself, so low I can't make out what he's saying.

"Trent, what the hell are you doing?"

"Fuck, I'm so sorry," he slurred, attempting to stand up but falling back down on the ground anyway. He wasn't drunk, not by any means, just tipsy and upset.

"Give me the bottle, what the hell were you thinking?" I take the bottle of Jack Daniels from his hands and set it on the counter. Trent looks down at his hands and sniffles, too ashamed to look at me. I feel bad, but I don't let up.

"That shit's fucked, Gray. It's real fucked."

"I know it is, but you can talk to me, we're in this together, okay?"

"It's just so hard to put how I feel into words, and it's so hard to sit here with these feelings."

"But you don't get to go backwards because of it. You're better than this, Trent."

"How did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Stop cutting?" I was slightly taken aback by his question. We hadn't talked about my self-harm in a while.

"I want to almost every day. I'll think about Adam, or something else that happened, and I'll just be so overwhelmed with emotion. But I take a deep breath, I use the techniques Dr. Meyer taught me, and I find something to keep me occupied."

"And it works?"

"Usually, sometimes I have to snap a rubber band on my arm because none of the techniques work."

"Don't you want to just give up sometimes?"

"Yeah, a lot, but I don't. You know why?" I ask. He looks up at me, his emerald eyes seem deeper from the tears.

"Why?"

"Because I have you, and my parents, and Nat. People love me and want me to be here and be better. And the same goes for you babe."

"God I'm so sorry, Gray."

"It's okay, I know how hard this is for you. Your complicated relationship with your dad just got more complicated. You have to deal with shit way beyond your years right now."

"I just... I had wished he would drink himself to death, I wished he had died instead of Mom. And then when it nearly happened... I don't want that at all. I just want a dad." I sat down next to Trent and pulled him into my arms. He cried on my shoulder and I just rocked us from side to side, smoothing his hair and occasionally kissing his head. Eventually we fell asleep like that, and I woke up to the house phone ringing at around six in the morning. I jumped up to answer it only to be immediately screamed at by my mother.

"Grayson Alexander Daniels you better have a good explanation as to why you skipped school yesterday?"

"Trent's dad is in the hospital." I could just imagine her face falling, that look when you realize you fucked up and jumped to too many conclusions.

"Oh my god, is he okay?"

"Yeah, it was a heart attack. He'll be alright, I just couldn't make Trent deal with the hospital alone, you know?"