Winning His War

23

Andrew's POV

To say Jem had been a little off this week would be a massive understatement.

He jumped at every little sound; a gun was strapped to his hip even when he was just making dinner, he hasn't slept for more than a few hours in days, and his usual youth pastor patience level was no where to be seen.

I honestly hadn't even seen him all that much these past few days. He used to hang out with Patrick and I every night but now all he does is hole up in his office, coming out just long enough to cook dinner before he's taking a plate back where he came from.

As far as I knew he hasn't uttered a word to anyone these past few days. I don't think he's left the house in a while either.

His hair was uncharacteristically messy, the bags under his eyes were just getting worse by the day, and he's been wearing the same wrinkled clothes since it got this bad.

In the nicest way possible, I could only describe him as an absolute mess but when I asked Barrett about it he only shrugged me off.

"He just gets like this sometimes," he had said with a wave of his hand as he continued to watch whatever show was on TV.

"And as his friend you don't see a problem with it?" I didn't bother trying to keep the frustration out of my voice.

His head whipped around to meet my gaze, a harsh glare painted on his face.

"As his best friend I know getting involved only makes it worse," he seethed out. "Just because you three are playing house together now doesn't give you the right to accuse me of not caring for him."

"You say that but look at him! He's all but manic neither of you are doing anything to help."

"What exactly do you want us to do? We take away his work and he gets anxious, we throw his schedule away and he gets pissed, we try to make him tell us what's wrong and shuts down even more. We help by doing nothing."

"How do you expect him to get better this way? By doing nothing you're encouraging it and allowing him to get worse every time he does it."

Barrett's glare worsens before he shakes his head with a sigh.

"You know what, Mr. Fix-It, you're the one with the degree. If you think you can do so much better than Dev and I, go right ahead. You know where his office is and yet you haven't done anything either so don't try to pin all the blame on us."

He doesn't allow me to say another word before he's marching down the hall. Only seconds later his door is being slammed shut.

Devon had given me a similar speech but he remained calm through all of it.

"We've tried everything we can think of," Devon said with a sigh, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. "We got him to see a therapist for a while but he plateaued and stopped going. We thought the schedule would help and for a while that worked too but now I wish we had never tried it; one little thing being out of the correct time slot can ruin everything."

"Was he ever diagnosed with anything," I asked hoping it would give me something to start with but Devon shrugged.

"He never told us how his sessions went or what happened during them. We just knew sometimes there were good days and others were bad."

The two of us stood in silence for a while until he cleared his throat and looked down at the ground.

"You think you're going to be able to fix him?"

"I think I'm going to at least try." I watched as he bit his lip, a nervous tick I noticed he had, especially when he was stalling or working up the nerve to say something.