Can You Keep A Secret?

Chapter One Hundred and One

           

-Andy's POV-

            The time for the New York trip was set on my phone – There were officially only nine days left. I didn't have it set because I was going, or to torture myself – I had it set because I had a plan. But first, I had to make some preparations.

            "Rye?" I asked, interrupting him from editing a vlog.

            "Yeah?" He asked, lifting up one side of his headphones from his ear. I motioned for him to take them all the way off, and he did, setting his laptop to the side, as well. "What's up?" I took a deep breath, summoning up all of the courage that I had to ask the question that came next. Even so, my words were rushed.

            "Does your counseling help?" He wasn't expecting the question, but he took it well.

            "Yeah. You didn't think that I got to be this Yoda-like on my own, did you?"

            "What's it like?" I asked, and he patted the spot beside him, signaling for me to join him as he shut his laptop off entirely and closed it to make some more room.

            "It's difficult at times. A lot of talking, for sure, but we also discuss certain skills to use for situations that I find scary. It challenges me to make progress, to find what I need to get better within myself." He didn't question why I was asking, just told me what I needed to know.

            "So...Would you say that it's worth it?" I shifted my position, letting my motivation for asking out without saying it directly.

            "Yes. I hated it at first, but yes, and it gets easier with time." He took my hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. "I'm proud of you." He didn't criticize me for waiting this long, even though I'd promised him that I would weeks earlier. Even though I'd made plenty of mistake in the meantime.

            "How do you do it?" I asked, speaking my thoughts out loud.

            "What do you mean?"

            "I mean, you've probably been through more shit than any of us, and yet you deal with it, deal with us, the best out of anyone."

            "Well, for one, I'm certainly not perfect. I'm still struggling, and I know it seems braver that I'm trying to hide it, but it isn't. I still feel embarrassed that I'm afraid that one of yous might slip away when I close my eyes, or that I sometimes mistake Pepper for an intruder. I'm working on that, still." He stared off into the distance as he said it instead of looking at me. "And as for you guys, you're my brothers. And I kind of feel an obligation to look after yous. Like I need to pay a debt for letting all those lives be taken. I can't let it happen again, you know?"

            "You do know that it wasn't your fault, right? That there was nothing that you could've done?"

            "Maybe. But looking in retrospect, it certainly feels as if I could've done a whole lot more. So many people walked in there and never came back out, and, like, I'm still trying to figure out why I was one of the lucky ones."

            For the first time, I thought about how truly lucky that I was to be able to be sharing this moment with him. Looking back, it might not even be something that I remembered: Sitting side by side with him, talking about the stuff that matters. Maybe it wasn't something huge or important or groundbreaking, but it was something that the loved ones would never be able to share with the ones who had died ever again.

            "I think that you deserve to live," I said honestly. "And I mean that in more than just a 'I'm glad you're alive because you're important in my life' kind of thing. You've gained so much wisdom from this, and maybe it isn't all good. But, like, you know how to use all of it and put it together into stuff that makes sense. You're gonna seriously change some lives, beyond just being a band member for someone to idolize."

            "I think I've rubbed off my tendency for inspiring speeches onto you," He smiled. "You can do that too, you now. Change lives with who you are, with what you know from what you've been through. This is just the first step. You can take on the world, man. I mean it."

            "We can do it together."

            I didn't know whether or not he was right, but I knew that I couldn't do it on my own. The trouble with waging a war against yourself was that you had all of the control to decide how things would go. When I was at my worst, it was hard to want to work for something better. When you're depressed, you don't have the energy to work your thoughts around. It was much easier to give up, to convince yourself that that was where you were destined to be, anyways –When you think so lowly of yourself, it's easy to believe that everyone else feels the same. I was okay right now, but I knew that a low would come again. If my plan backfired, then it was going to be soon. This time, I wanted to be prepared.