Addicted To You .L.S.

Ten.

Now (June)

For a long, frozen moment, Gem and I stare at each other. I'm caught in her gaze, hungry for the slightest glimpse of him, even if it's just similar features in a familiar face.

They always looked so much alike. It wasn't just there high cheekbones and straight noses, the way their green eyes eyes tilted up at the edges. It was in the way they smiled when they tried not to. They was they both fiddled with there brown curls when they were anxious, how they couldn't stop chewing their nails for anything.  Gem is all I have left of him, a handful of echoing characteristics buried underneath what makes her Gem: the honesty and goodness and the way she doesn't hide things (not like him, not like me).

Harry had loved her so much. They'd been inseparable since their dad died. And, when I came along, Gem had stepped aside to make room, though my seven-year-old only-child self didn't understand that. Just like I didn't understand things like dads dying and the tears Harry would sometimes shed out of nowhere.

When we were little, whenever he cried, I'd give him the purple crayon out of my box so he'd have two, and it made him smiles through tears. So I kept doing it. I stole purples crayons from everyone's crayon box until he had a whole collection.

She let's go of me and the feeling battles inside: relief and disappointment wrapped up in a neat, bloodstained bow.

I step out of the doorway into the sunlight and she backs up like I'm poisonous.
She stickers her hands in the pockets of her shorts, rocking on her heals. Gem is strong and tall in that way you don't really notice until she needs to use it.
"I didn't know you were home," Gem says.
"I just got back."
"You didn't come to his funeral." She tries to make it gentle, not like an accusation, but it hangs between us like one.

"I'm sorry."
"I'm not the person you need to apologise to," Gem says, and waits a beat. "Have you... have you gone to see him?"
I shake my head.
I can't go to Harry's grave.
The idea of him in the ground, sealed forever in the dark when he had been all light and sound and spark, horrifies me. When I force myself to think about it, I think he would've liked to disappear in flames, the brilliance and warmth all around him.
But he's in the ground. It's so wrong, but I can't change it.

"You should go see him," Gem says. "Make your piece. He deserves that from you."
She thinks talking to a slab of stone will make a difference. That it'll change something. Gem has faith in things like that, just like Harry had.
I don't.

The belief in her face makes me wish I could tell her yes, of course I'll go. I want to be able to do that. Once upon a time I loved her almost as much as I loved him. But Gem has never come first. She's always been second, and I can't change that now or then or ever.

"You think it's my fault, too."
Unable to meet my eyes, Gem focusses on the kids playing on the jungle gym a few years away. "I think you made some big mistakes," she says, tiptoeing around the words like they're land mines. "And Harry paid for them."
It hurts more than I expected to here her confirm it. Nothing like the shallow cuts my parents have left in me. This is a blow to the heart that was never quite hers, and I almost crumble beneath her disappointment.

"I hope you're clean." She backs away from me like she doesn't even want to share airspace. "I hope you stay clean. That's what he'd want from you."

She's almost down the walk when I ask; I can't help myself. "Do you still hate me?" She turns, and even from this far away, I can see the sadness written on her face. "That's the problem, Lou. I never could."