dear violet ➳ andy biersack (currently editing)

29

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chapter
twenty
eight
violet

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"Come on," I murmered quietly, jostling his shoulder to get him to stand up.

Andy took my hand, and the two of us rose as one.

I pulled a pack of bandages out from under the sink and shook one long strip out.

Wordlessly, I took Andy's wrist and began winding the gauze around his knuckles, going on and on until the blotches of bright red blood no longer showed through the fabric.

I could feel the gentle weight of his eyes on my face as I took his next hand and repeated the action, making sure to cover up all the nicks and cuts across his palm.

"Thank you." His voice was quiet, careful.

As if he wasn't sure quite where he stood, as if he didn't know how to behave around me anymore. It was saddening, to think that so much had changed.

"Of course," I answered in a voice almost just as quiet.

We stood facing each other for a moment.

A world famous rock singer and a homeless girl from New York City.

Andy's face was pale, the colour of alabster, and his eyes were still that haunted evening blue. The sky caught right between day and night, tipping the stars off to one end the sun off to the other. Still bruised, shaded indigo and navy.

He was a bit of a catastrophe, but then again; so was I.

And there was something I needed to tell him. I couldn't kill myself anymore if it meant leaving him; I was no longer capable of a damn thing that required leaving him.

Standing opposite me, beautiful and washed over in a dozen shades of black. In his hair, his ripped jeans, his chipped nail polish, the shadows contrasting his face - standing there, he was ethereal.

His cheeks were tear-stained, though his eyes were dry. He was shivering slightly, though the air was warm.

One thing I'd discovered about Andy: he was always cold.

I looked at him; the person who had written the lyrics I'd had stuck in my head for years, the person who'd pulled me back just as I'd tried to throw myself off the Macombs Dam Bridge, the person who'd saved my life perpetually, like clockwork, the person who'd actually told me he loved me.

He had done the infinite.

How the hell did I leave him?

The answer was stone cold solid: I couldn't.

In a world drowning in evil and madness, in a world jam-packed with millions upon millions of people all with blue veins and open eyes, we had found each other.

I wanted to die, but I didn't want to leave him. He had made it jarringly clear; I was not permitted to die anymore. Suicide had evaded me.

I had to stay alive.

It didn't matter that I still wanted to die anymore. I couldn't hurt him, and I couldn't go anywhere I wasn't sure we'd ever meet again.