Under Glass

Chapter 7- Impossible Situation

Chapter 8

Silence filled the room. It was loud as fuck. She'd never noticed that before. She lay flat on her back in her bed with her arms pressed to her sides. Caitlin counted the number of times one of the fan blades circled above her. Sleep had been evading her for three days and she was beginning to be delirious. The funeral was soon and she couldn't decide if she could go. It was eating away at her.

Death wasn't foreign to her, she knew death. Death introduced himself to Caitlin at a young age. Death was the only thing that had ever made her father cry death had broken Traylor's spirit, and death had taken her high school softball coach on the way to one of her games. She knew death.

However, this was something different, she couldn't wrap her brain around it. There were so many questions that remained unanswered. Why would someone with their entire life ahead of them chose to end it? She didn't want to ponder that question, she knew the answer. She was the reason.

Easing out of bed, she grabbed James's Zippo lighter and her cigarettes from her desk, and made her way to the back porch. She tried to be quiet, so that she wouldn't wake Traylor, who was asleep on the couch and had become a fixture in her apartment.

Traylor's presence was welcome. Caitlin didn't want and couldn't seem to be by herself. She inhaled slowly, deliberately. The night would creep by lasting what seemed like twenty fours hours. Her eyes focused over the edge of her balcony into the pool, not really seeing. It was quiet and tranquil- everything she wasn't. She was a roaring hurricane inside with no where to unleash her fury. She was a raging fire that wouldn't be extinguished. Caitlin felt like she'd lost herself when James died. He'd killed her too.

What-ifs filled her mind all the time.

What if she had agreed to marry James?

Would he still be here? Yes. She answered her own question.

What if she had gone about things differently? He would still be here, the voice in her mind replied.

Why hadn't she known? Maybe she was selfish and didn't pay attention to him and his feelings. She had no idea he would go to this extreme.

She had so many questions and no one could answer them. Not one single person could soothe her guilty conscience. It hurt to know she'd caused something so tragic. The knowledge that she'd never be okay again needled at her.

"Caitlin?" Traylor peeked out the door to the back porch.

"I'm sorry, I tried not to wake you," Caitlin's voice was flat, but she was suddenly aware she was crying. Using the back of her hands, she swiped away the tears that fell freely down her face.

"Oh Cait, don't worry about me." Traylor put her arm around her friend for a second and then moved to the opposite end of the small porch in order to face her. There were no words that worked to help. She'd tried them all. They all sounded like horseshit and she knew it. When her dad died, there was not one fucking thing anyone said that helped her.

"I can't sleep," Caitlin stated the obvious, frustration evident in her voice.

"Tomorrow I'll download that album of classics that's suppose help." Traylor reached over Caitlin and took a cigarette from the bend paper pack. They smoked in silence.

After a few minutes, Caitlin looked at Traylor through her tears. "What am I going to do?"

"Well, I'll tell you what you're not going to do... ." Traylor didn't know how to help her friend, but she was willing to try anything. "You're not going to sit around here wallowing in your guilt. Tomorrow after the funeral we are going to get out of here. You've been in this apartment far too long."