Addicted To You .L.S.

TwentyTwo.

Now (June)

The Styles house has blue shutters and white trim, and an apple tree been growing tall in the front yard since I could remember. I walk up the porch stairs carefully, the rail taking most of my weight as I balance the box on my hip.

Gem opens the door before I can knock, and for a second I think my plan has failed, that I she won't invite me in.
But then she steps inside, and I walk into the house. It's strange to feel unwelcome here. I've spent half of my life in this house and I know every nook and cranny: where the junk drawer is, where the extra goodies are stashed, where to find extra towels.
And all of Harry's hiding places.

"Are you okay?" Gem's eyes linger on the way I'm favouring my good leg. "Here." She takes the box from me and forgets herself for a second, reaching back for my arm.
She remembers at the last moment and stops, snatching her hand away. She rubs it over her mouth, then looks over her shoulder into the living room. "You want to sit?" She asks, reluctance in her words ringing through the room.
"Actually, can I use your bathroom?"
"Sure. You know where it is."

Like I'd expected, her attentions already fixed on the box of Harry's things. She disappears into the living room, and I go down the hall. I pause at the bathroom door, opening and closing it for effect, and tiptoe through the kitchen to the only bedroom on the ground floor. Harry had liked it that way. He'd always been a restless at night, writing until dawn, backing cookies at midnight, throwing rocks at my window at 3am, luring me out for mini road trips.

His doors closed, and I hesitate, worried about the sound. But it's my only chance, so I grab the knob and slowly turn in. The door opens and I slip inside.

When I thought up this plan, I worried that I might make it all the way up here, only to find all his things boxed up or gone already.
But it's worse: everything is the same. From the light blue walls, to the girly bed he begged for when he was twelve. His cleats are next to his desk, stacked haphazardly across each other, as if he just toed them off.
The room hasn't been touched. Harry's beds still unmade, I realize with a horrible swoop of my stomach. I stare at the rumpled sheets, the indentation in the pillow and I have to stop myself from pressing my hand to where his head rested, trailing my fingers through the sheets frozen in the curled shape of his last peaceful night.

I have to hurry. I drop to the floor and crawl on my stomach under the bed, my fingers scrambling for the loose floor board. My nail catches the wood and I lift it up and away, pulling myself further under the steel framework. My fingers searched below the floor, past some cobwebs, but I don't feel anything hidden. I dig my phone out of my pocket and shine it down the space under the floorboards. There's an envelope tucked in the corner underneath the loose board, way in the back. I reach down in the back of the space to grab it, crumbling the paper in my hurry. I'm putting the floorboard back when I hear Gem call my name from the hallway.
Shit. I snap the board back into place and push myself out from underneath the bed. I have to bite down hard on my lip when my leg twists the wrong way getting up and pain stabs down my knee. I want to lean against the bed for a second, deal with the pain, but I don't have the time. Breathing fast I shove the envelope in my bag without opening it.

"Lou? You okay?" Gems knocking on the bathroom door.

I duck out of Harry's room, closing the door quietly behind me before hobbling into the kitchen and grabbing a glass from the cupboard.

Footsteps. I glance up at her as I turn the faucet on and fill up the glass. I swig the water, trying not to look suspicious. "Water's supposed to help with the muscle cramps," I explain, rinsing out my glass and putting it in the sink. "Still doing the all-natural stuff?" She asks as we make our way into the living room. I sigh in relief; he doesn't notice that I'm out of breath. One of his books from the box lies open on the coffee table. "Mostly it's yoga and herbs. Cortisone shots in my back. Non-opiate pain pills."

We sit down on the stuck-in-the-seventies couch, a careful amount of space between us. Other than us, the only thing that's changed in the room is the mantelpiece. All through our childhood, candles and crucifixes had surrounded a large black-and-white photo of Harry's dad, Robin, beaming down at the room. When I was little, spending the night, sometimes I'd watch Anne light the candles. Once I'd seen her kiss her fingers and press them to the corner of his picture, and something churned inside my stomach, realizing that we'll all go away in the end.
Harry's pictures next to his fathers now. He stares back at me from his mass of black curls, the sly, secretive smile flirting at the corner of his mouth, his explosive energy just an echo in his eyes.
Some things can't be contained or captured.
I look away.
"Your mum—" I start.
"She's away, staying with my aunt," Gem says "she needed... Well, it's better for her. For right now."
"Of course, you going back to Uni in the fall?"
She nods. "I have to repeat last semester. And I'm going to commute. When mum comes back... I need to stay close."
I nod.
More excruciating silence. "I should go," I say. "I just wanted to give you the box."
"Louis," he says.

She says it so much like he used to. I know her. Every part of her, probably even more than I knew Harry, because Gemma's never bothered to hide from me. She's never thought she had to. I know what she's going to ask. What she wants me to do.
"Don't," I say.
But she's determined. "I have to know," she says, and it comes out so fierce. She looks at me like I'm denying her something necessary. Oxygen. Food. Love. "I've spent months with police files and newspaper articles and rumours. I can't stand it. I need to know. You're the only person who can tell me."
"Gem—"
"You owe me this."
There's no way I'm getting out of here without answering her questions. Not without running.
Running from Gem used to be easy. Now it's impossible. She's all I have left of him.

I rub at my knee, digging my fingers in the sore muscles between my kneecap and bone. I can feel the bumps of the screws if I press hard enough. It hurts doing this, but a good kind of hurt, like a healing bruise. "Go ahead and ask."
"The doctor who examined him... he said it happened fast. That he probably didn't hurt at all. But I think he was lying to me to make me feel better.."
I don't want to be near her when she does this to me—to both of us. I move to the end of the couch, tilting my body away from her, protecting myself from the onslaught.

"It wasn't like that, was it?" Gem asks.
I shake my head. It had been the opposite and she's known it all along, but when I confirmed it, I can see how it breaks her.
"Did he say anything?"

I wish I could lie to her. Wish I could say that he gave me a proper goodbye, that he made me promise to watch out for her, that he said he loved her and his mum, that he saw his dad waiting for him for him with open arms and a welcoming smile. I wish it had been like that. Almost as much as I wish I'd been over there instantly, so he wouldn't have been so scared. I wish that any part of it could have been peaceful or quiet or brave. Anything but the painful, frantic mess we became in the dirt, all breath and blood and fear.

"He kept saying he was sorry. He... he said it hurt." My voice breaks. I can't continue.
Gem covers her mouth with her hands. She's shaking, and I hate that I agreed to this. She can't handle this. She shouldn't have too.
This is mine to bear.

It would be so easy to drown this all with pills. The urge snakes through me, it's right below my skin, wanting to lash out and drag me down. I could make myself forget. I could snort so much that it wouldn't matter anymore.
But I can't let it take over. Whoever did this has to pay.

Nine months. Three weeks. Five days.

"I tried, Gem. I tried to get him breathing again. But no matter what I did—"
"Just go," she says tightly. "Please go." She stares straight ahead.

Theres a crash that makes me turn around before I can get to the front door. She's kicked the coffee table over, spilling the contents of the box onto the floor. She meets my eyes, and I throw the words at her to break her, because I want to in that moment. Because she made me talk about it. Because she looks so much like him. Because she's here and so am I, but he's not—and that's so unfair, I can barely breathe through it.
"Still can't hate me, Gem?"