Bully stepbrother

52. Thanksgiving. Part one

MADISON

It's late afternoon on a cool Thursday. To be more precise; it's Thanksgiving, but I found the weather entirely different from those I've experienced before.

Late November in New York has been cold and cloudy, but here it was clear and cool, very new for someone like me who was experiencing it for the first time. Granted it has also rained the past few days, leaving me mortified in the empty home that Caden never returned to since the hospital episode where he almost killed a man and appeared completely odd afterward.

At school, we meet, though he has avoided me as much as I do him. For me, I don't know why I felt the need to camouflage and elude him, but it became somehow an instinct.

I am grateful for the bike he got for me, though because it has great tires to race me away from him whenever I spotted as little as a shirt that resembles his, around the campus or sidewalks.

You see, I wasn't as strong as you thought I was, but I was surviving.

Sometimes you just need to breathe and put down your weapons.

But you wouldn't call me on it, would you? I mean after disgorging the L-word to someone I know would never accept them from anyone, much worse from me, I've decided to respect myself and take a very adequate step backward.

Caden doesn't want me; he made it obviously clear by abandoning his home to stay away from me, he made it unmistakably clear that he had spilled out and made me aware of how stupid I was for thinking there was a chance for him and me.

Yet I still feel every bit of him. Indeed, I am foolish, you can say it too. But I never knew those three words were real and very much alive until I spoke them out to the handsome tall man with a charming smirk. He was who I gave my first when I was completely conscious and mindful of what I wanted and what the aftermath could be.

Sad, how I thought rejection could replace that feeling with pain and animosity, but that exceptional feeling was stuck in me and only kept growing more intense every day I woke up to the smell of his skin on the duvet he sat on the last time he was here.

Honestly, I learned that particular feeling was very much alive ever since I gave it to him. Caden had claimed all the quantity of me and left me tainted by everything that was him. His eyes were a very brilliant hazel and his warm hug which held pledges, and those smiles, were full of mysteries.

Caden was my true disaster which I couldn't bring myself to run away from. He was my home quake and the hallucination in my haunted house, but without him, the home has only been so frigid and quiet.

I never called or left a text message, though, but I waited. I expected him every night that I began to leave the door unlocked in case he had lost his key and found it hard to get in when I was asleep. But every morning his room was just as we left it for the hospital the other day.

Until today, when I decided to clean the mess he had made and tidy up the room that had been driving me crazy. We all know how dirt has a part in it but it was more about something different. It was something I couldn't describe, but I knew I wanted to lay all day on his bed and sniff his pillow until sunrise.

After tidying up the room, my parents saved me with a lengthy video call in the mild and pleasant temperature of the day while we processed the cooking lessons from the laptop screen.

They chatted about a lot of interesting things, which was honestly fun, but none of them asked about Caden's whereabouts, not even my mom who tries sometimes.

This whole situation left me wondering why they never care when it comes to him. I mean he's part of his family, and it's Thanksgiving. I know he appears bold and claims to not have any emotion or feeling, but we are family, and the least mom and dad could do is have all their children together for this video call since we're almost six hours away from each other.