The Lonely Hearts Club

Chapter 41: Clouds (Bree)

Hades takes my hand and leads me over to the picnic blanket.

"You know, I've been doing some thinking." He says.

"Mmm?"

"Yeah, it took you a lot to be vulnerable that night," He says as we sit down. "When you told me all that stuff, right?"

"Right." I narrow my eyes suspiciously, where is he going with this?

"So I was thinking...kinda like, for my apology and shit," he clears his throat. "To show you I'm actually sorry, I was thinking I could tell you things."

Oh?

"Like tell you personal shit that not many people know about." He winces.

"Okay." I say.

He looks down at our interlocked hands.

"And if you want to laugh or make fun of me and shit, I get it, it'll be deserved." He says.

What the fuck is he on about?

"I would not do that," I promise. "And if I did, it still wouldn't be deserved."

With the hand that's not holding mine, he covers his eyes.

"Fuck." He seethes.

"You can tell me as much or as little as you like, I'm not going anywhere." I say and he gently squeezes my hand.

He stays quiet for a moment.

The breeze lifts his hair and he sighs.

"My mom—" his voice cracks. "My mom, yeah, she was the best person in my life. She tried real hard to give me everything I could have ever wanted, she always tried her best."

He smiles.

"We used to come here," he looks around. "It was one of her favorite places to go to because it's quiet. I kinda feel closer to her here."

"That's so lovely."

"My dad...you know, he wasn't a good man, he was violent and stuff, but my mom always stayed with him. I think she was scared he would kill her if she left," he frowns. "In the end, it didn't matter anyway, he still killed her."

Oh my God.

"He killed my mom, Bree," he rubs his eyes. "Why the fuck did he have to kill her?"

"I'm so sorry."

What the fuck am I supposed to say to that?

"Nobody did anything about it," he says. "They let him get away with it."

"I'm so, so sorry." I say. I still have no idea what to say.

"I want to tell you something, something I've never told anyone," He says, looking at me seriously. "And I won't be upset if you never want to talk to me again, I'd understand, but if I'm gonna be honest with you, I have to tell you this."

He looks away.

"What happened, Hades?" I ask shakily.

A terrible feeling settles in my stomach.

"Hades?" I whisper.

"I killed him," He says. "I killed my dad and hid his body and made it seem like he ran away."

Alright.

That's um...

Right.

"No one else knows about this?" I ask.

"No one else."

I don't know what to say.

"I was sixteen," he says. "He was the first person I've ever killed."

The first?

"I'm a terrible person, Bree, I need you to know that."

I force myself to remember all the nice things Hades has done for me.

So he's a murderer, and maybe by default that makes him a terrible person...

Or maybe, he was just a sad kid avenging his mother's death because the Winterville Police Department did nothing to give his mother justice.

I pick up a vanilla cupcake and taste the pink frosting.

Hades watches me, waiting for my response.

"He deserved it." I say and Hades raises an eyebrow.

"I don't regret what I did," he says, looking at me nervously. "Shouldn't that worry you a bit?"

"He shouldn't have killed your mom," I say holding the cupcake out to him—kind of like a peace offering. "Now taste this."

He licks the edge of it.

"Good, right?" I check.

"It's good, but now are you so chill about this?" He frowns. "I just told you I killed my dad."

"From what you said, he was a bad person, and he was going to get away with killing your mom, that's not fair." I say and he looks at me thoughtfully.

"Do you want to tell me more about your mom now?" I ask.

Maybe he'll feel better if he talks about happy memories of her.

"What do you want to know about her?"

"Anything."

He leans back on his arms as he thinks.

"She liked rodents," his lips quirk upwards. "Like mice and rats and squirrels, our house was infested pretty bad, but she didn't care, she thought they were her friends..."

"She loved dancing, every time my dad was out, she'd play her music real loud and force me to dance with her, I did the waltz so many fucking times..."

"She was sick a lot and spent a lot of time bedridden, so I'd read to her. She liked when I'd read to her..."

"She used to take me to her drug dealer's house and yeah, maybe that sounds bad, but it was fun, I met some good people there and they taught me a lot about protecting myself..."

"We used to lay in the grass and look at the clouds and see what shapes they made." Hades looks at the sky.

A few moments later, we're both laying in the daisy-strewn grass, looking at the mostly cloudless sky and trying to come up with something little tufts of clouds could look like.

"That looks like Acorn." I say, pointing at a cloud that looks like an elongated, perhaps slightly squashed cat.

"We're looking at a different sky because there's no way that looks like a cat." He says and I laugh.

"What about that? Doesn't it look like a turkey, kind of?"

"Kind of," He lies. "That one looks like an angel."

"It actually does." I say, slightly amazed.

If you tilt your head to the side and squint, there's a pretty angel in the clouds.

She's got feathery wings and long hair complete with a halo.

I close my eyes and thread my hand in Hades's.

I breathe in deeply, the air is so nice here, I've missed clean, fresh air free of smoke and pollution.

"Now I'm thinking about it," Hades says after a while. "I probably shouldn't have taken you all the way out here away from civilization to tell you about my dad, I promise I wasn't trying to make this threatening."

"It's nice here," I defend. "And anyway, I'm glad you did."

"For real? So this this whole thing isn't stupid?"

"It definitely isn't stupid," I say. "And thank you for telling me about your mom."

"She'd like you." He says.

"You think?"

"Yeah, you make me happy," he smiles. "She loved when I was happy."

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A/N: PROGRESS PEOPLE PROGRESS!!!

I'm just waiting for the time when shit comes and hits the fan.....AHAHAHHAHAHAH.