All Too Well - Erik Menendez

I'll Be Waiting Decades For You

Princeton. NJ. 1988.

Lyles POV:

"These exams are going to fuck me. I'm telling you, I'm screwed man."

"Relax, your old mans just gonna have to deal with some shitty news, it's no biggy. It's one semester." Donovans reply is as nonchalant as all his other answers for every single thing.

Guys got no fucking idea.

The sun pisses me off. It's light infiltrates the room and it's blinding sight makes me cringe. Reaching over to shut the blinds, I  take a swig of the bitter, black coffee before me – the only thing that has gotten me through this morning after last night – before noticing Whisper, meekly standing against the door way.
Timid, careful, like she expects me to attack.

"Don, I'll call you back another time." I say through the phone, putting it down before he can even reply.

I beckon her over with a slight motion of my hand, and she pulls towards me. Immediately.

"Morning you." I say in the fresh forest of curls. Her embrace is warm, and intimate as her face rests in the crook of my neck. "You're up early."

I can only imagine how alarmed she must feel after all of that.. situation last night.

She pulls away, puppy-eyed, lost. "How was he last night?"

A sigh is my automated response, however I know that I need to give more. "He slept eventually."
The answer evidently brings no solace.

"What happened exactly?" My question makes her bow her head as she sits on the stool next to me. "I heard you both arguing but then I heard him yelling and – yeah."

Her hands aggressively rub her face, the exhaustion evident in her eyes.

"I said some things that I shouldn't have. I was upset and frustrated because I questioned him again about how he acts.. and about Craig–"

Her voice breaks off as a tear exits her eye.
I make way of grabbing the box of tissues from across the island, retrieving one and bringing it under her eyes. A grateful smile appears on her face as I pat the wet area dry.

"How he acts?" I question further.

"He's strange Lyle. And not like an introverted nerd type of strange, he acts weird, he always has since the day I met him. He dissociates all the time, he says things that contradict himself, he looks like he's seconds from falling apart all the time. He's making up these excuses about him and Craig–"

"What are the excuses?"

"He says he doesn't like guys, but he gets some sort of arousal from them, I guess something he got from Craig, I don't even know. He speaks in cryptic codes all the time – it's like he wants to say something–"

"But can't." Both our voices merge to finish off her sentence. She looks up at me with relief – relief that I've noticed the same things she has.

"Exactly!"

"He's sick, Whisper. He's sick." The admission knocks the life completely out of me. "He's not the same as he was seven months ago, he's not the same fucking brother I grew up with. He's sick and I don't know why, but I know it's something to do with that fucking bastard of a father!" 

I intake a heavy breath, desperate to calm the emotions that boil from that worthless man. That walking fucking catastrophe.

"Erik has always had these issues, but they've gotten worse over the years and I'm lost with what more I can do if he won't open up."