Better Hollow {Finished}

Chapter 10

Chapter 10:

Ramona was sitting on the edge of her bed listening to the rain, twenty-four hours after the incident with James. Her phone lay beside her as she debated calling Mabel. She needed a friend, but her ego told to suffer in silence. Ramona flipped over her phone, slowly typing out a message to Mabel. "You were right," she typed out. There was a lot Ramona couldn't explain about her feelings, but she needed to talk to someone.

Twenty minutes later, Mabel was at the door. Ramona opened the door slowly, embarrassed by her actions with James. Mabel's hair was wet and her clothes were soaked to the point where they clung to her body. Mabel wrapped herself around Ramona, comforting her in one of the few ways she knew how to.

The pair sat down on Ramona's bed, Mabel hung her arm around Ramona's shoulders. "What happened?" she asked Ramona. Ramona stared off, not knowing where to begin or what to say. Ramona was seemingly frigid, it was like she was frozen yet her mind still ran.

"Things were great, we kissed every chance we got, I wore his clothes, he slept in my bed. I don't think I've known a happier time. When I'm with him, I feel like I'm on top of the world. It's like you could run me over, but as long as he's by my side, I'll still pop back up. With him, it's like everything makes sense again. I wanted to believe that if I stuck by him, he'd change his mind. I thought that maybe if I ignored the darkness, he'd come around. At first, it felt like I was getting part of me back, but now I'm emptier than I was to begin with," Ramona said as if she was narrating the past three months of her life.

"Ramona, I think you kept this up for so long because you wanted to fix him in ways that you couldn't fix Danny. You feel like you failed Danny, so you're spending all your time and energy on James so that they don't have the same fate. You spend all your time trying to fill this void, constantly trying to fix your mistakes of the past. What you don't realize or fail to accept is that there was nothing you could have done to save Danny. You're punishing yourself by going after a guy who has shown you time after time that he doesn't care. Ramona, you keep trying to give James the love that you never received, but the person that needs that love the most, is you. You're running from yourself, you're waiting to wake up one day and be fixed. When are you going to realize that you can't run? No amount of cigarettes or amount of abuse tolerated from James is going to change the fact that Danny is dead," Mabel told Ramona. For the first time, in all the years that Ramona has known Mabel, she'd never given such a speech. It became clear to Ramona that Mabel listened more than she thought.

"How do I make it stop?" Ramona asked, looking over at Mabel, Ramona's eyes welling with tears. "When Danny died, I was so lost. I still am lost, day and night I ask myself why he did it. For the first time, it was like I didn't need answers. I could finally breathe without feeling my heart rip further. When he died, the world kept spinning, but I stopped going with it. And sometimes I hate Danny for leaving me behind. He gets to be wherever he is, and I have to sit here and suffer. All these people told me that it gets better, but it's been almost six years and I still have zero clue as to what I'm doing. I can run from him when I'm awake, but when I close my eyes, he's all I see."

Mabel sighed, tears forming in her eyes. "I know that I should tell you to move on from James, but I'd be a hypocrite if I told you to stop waiting for a change that's never going to happen. However, I can tell you that it's okay to love someone from a distance. With both James and Danny, that's what you have to do. It's hard enough losing your brother, and then finally feeling like you're getting that love back, only to have to give it up again. Danny isn't coming back, but that doesn't mean that the love he has for you has left. As for James, he is never going to be happy regardless of whether he's with you. You can only distract him for so long," Mabel said, tears falling from her eyes.