I Broke The Girl I Loved

The Nightmares

•TW• (it's only in his nightmares)

I tend to push my feelings away, bury them deep within myself and act as if nothing is wrong. I've done this for as long as I can remember. The anger and the pain would build up inside me and if one person set me off on the wrong day they'd get a punch to the face. That is how I got temporarily suspended in sixth grade and expelled from two different high schools before we moved. If you didn't know the reasons behind me lashing out then you could just say I just had anger issues and maybe I do. The fights I got into weren't the only thing that came from me burying my feelings; there were nightmares too.

Most of the storylines were the same but the people in my dreams varied. The person I loved most dearly at that point in my life would be held captive somehow. I'd do everything I could to free them and right when I was about to, they'd get shot in the head. The blood would ooze out of the hole in their heads and drip down the sides of their faces. Their eyes would be open, staring directly into mine, letting me know I had failed to save them. That was around the time I'd wake up, sometimes in tears or sometimes dripping in sweat. I would realize it was only just a nightmare but I usually wouldn't be able to go back to sleep because I could never stop thinking about the lifeless look in their eyes.

The first nightmares I had were of my mom. I was five or six and I loved her a lot not realizing that she wouldn't come back. When I was eight and she never came back, I started having nightmares about my dad because he became the person I loved the most. The final person that I had nightmares about was Megan. I loved her and I was stupid to think she loved me back. After we broke up my nightmares gradually stopped occurring.

That is until now.

This nightmare was different though. It was focused on my dad and I. We were driving somewhere; my hands were only the wheel and my eyes were focused on the road while my dad was sitting in the passenger's seat, looking out the window at the blurry green trees passing by. I had received a call from Darla so I took my eyes off the road to pick it up. I answered but I ran a red light and a truck hit the car from the right side, right where my dad was. He was killed instantly at the impact and I was left there, a bloody mess, trying to save my dad when he was long gone. In this nightmare, in this version of his death, I was the one who caused it.

•••
My body jerked awake and I sat up. I was breathing heavily but was able to get it under control in order to not wake Aydrian up, who was still sound asleep beside me. There wasn't a clock on either of her bedside tables and my phone was still in my car which was still at the hospital, so I had no idea what time it was but judging by the fact that it was still dark outside I figured it had to be sometime between one and five in the morning.

I felt uncomfortable sleeping in the same bed as Aydrian; it felt like I had crossed some invisible boundary even though she allowed me to sleep there. We barely knew each other and it didn't feel right so I grabbed the pillow I was using and set it down on the floor. Thankfully for me her room wasn't too cold so I didn't need a blanket. I laid down on the white fluffy carpet she had spread out on her floor. It was a bit uncomfortable but the longer I laid there the more I got used to it.

My nightmare wasn't all that bad but this is how it starts. The first couple nightmares aren't horrible but by the fourth or fifth they get gruesome. More death, more blood.

I thought that I wouldn't be able to get myself to fall back asleep so I picked up one of the many books surrounding Aydrian's bedside table and began to read it. I had read about ten pages before my eyes got droopy and eventually closed.

•••
"Jayce? Jayce, wake up."

I grumbled and threw the pillow that was under my head at the person trying to wake me. That didn't stop them.

"Jayce, I made breakfast," the voice was sweet, like honey and I already recognized it to be Aydrian's.

"You're cute, now let me sleep," I grumbly replied.

"No, come on. I planned out the whole day."

This piqued my interest as I sat up and stared at Aydrian.

"What about school?" I questioned with a stern look on my face.

"Well I figured since your dad died you wouldn't want to go to school," she said each word with so much ease that it scared me. I must have made some kind of sound when she said it because she quickly added, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, it's a sensitive topic. I am here if you want to talk about it."

"It's okay, Aydrian. I'm good, besides you were saying something about a planned out day?" I replied, doing my best to avoid the topic of my dad.

"We'll go when you get your lazy butt up."

                                        •••
Aydrian had me out of the house in a flash. She made me eat the waffles she made in her parents car and as soon as I finished she put a blind fold on me. One of my favorite things about going for drives is looking at the scenery but Aydrian had prevented me from doing so. The whole car ride I was seeing pitch black, and not the enjoyable kind like the sky when the clouds cover the moon. This was the kind of pitch black that makes you wonder what lurks within its thick blanket of darkness.

"Are we almost there beautiful?" I asked for the fifth time in the last two minutes.

"The answer is still the same, no," she replied.

I kept quiet for the next couple minutes and just as I was about to ask again she said, "we're here."

The next thing I knew she was out of the car and opening the door for me. She wouldn't let me take the blind fold off so she grabbed my hand to help me out of the car and held it to direct me around wherever we were. Finally we stopped walking and she let me take the blindfold off and as soon as I did I wanted to put it right back on and get back in that car.