handle | dolan

12 - may 9th

Ethan Dolan

When I wake up I immediately get dressed, brush my teeth and make my way downstairs. Like I assumed Tara's up yet, making breakfast.

I stand in the doorframe for a while, watching her silently. The way she sweeps around dynamically, the way her hands move rythmically, it's like art. She's deep in thought, I can tell. A deep frown rests on her forehead. It seems like something is bothering her and I do not like it at all.

"Hey," I say, add beauty in my mind. She's madly beautiful, I almost can't handle it.

"Hi," she replies sheepishly and continues cutting the fruits. I hope she doesn't avoid my look.

"How are you?" I try to initiate a conversation; small talk, even though I hate this shallow, minor way of talking.

"Good, of course, good," she answeres, a little startled. I sigh.

"Could you please just tell me what's wrong? I can't stand this," I truthfully explain and sit down on a barstool in front of her.

"It's nothing. All good." With every time she says this word again it loses more and more of his true meaning. Then she sighs, too, probably because of my unconvinced look. "I'm just confused."

"Why?" I snitch a piece of apple from her and make my way around the kitchen island to get a glass of water. She takes time for her answer, I can sense that she doesn't desperatly want to talk about it.

Right when I want to take my question back and apologize, she begins talking. She turns towards me as I take a sip. Her eyes meet mine and she stops slicing. "Because of everything. You, Grayson, this house, my stay, the payment ... everything."

The guilt creeps back into my mind, just like everytime she mentions her stay. I want to tell her, I really do, but I know I just can't.

"Don't worry, please," I return weakly. It eats me up from inside.

She just snorts and turns to the fruits again. This time I know she won't answer to any of my rambling.

***

The situation is not at all light and happy. We're all kind of cool to each other, only responding with short sentences. Whatever it is, we don't want to talk about it nor sort things out. Lost in our own thoughts we all do something different to distract us from interacting with one another. Tara takes care of the dishes after strictly banning me from doing so, Grayson's on his phone and I stare into space.

It's noon by now, Grayson woke up much later than us, as usual. Surprising is that even he isn't himself today. Usually he'd chatter loudly, tell bad and dirty jokes and laugh around all day. He's a funny person indeed, just when it's about real feelings and showing true strenght, he can't behave any worse. His significant character traits that build up and define his life are complete shit.

Sad truth.

"Let's do something fun," Grayson suddenly exclaims, looking at Tara mainly.

"What do you have in mind?" Tara puts the last clean fork into the drawer and looks at Grayson. I think I've seen excitement in her expression.

"Hm ... Why not play truth or dare but without dare? We could ... We could have two minutes to ask the other everything we want. How about that?"

"Uh," Tara comtemplates for a while if she really wants to or not while going towards us, "I guess, yeah, why not."

"Yay!" Grayson puts his phone in the pocket of his pants and Tara sits down on the other end of the couch so she faces us both.

"You're playing too, right?" Tara looks at me, I'm not sure if she expects it anyways or just politely wants to ask.