Numb Pain

Chapter 18

Lyrics used:

Stubborn Love - The Lumineers

Wipe Your Eyes - Maroon 5 [featured right]

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ETHAN'S POV:

I click the door shut behind me, dragging my feet as I walk through the miserable interior of what I used to call my home. It's not a home anymore. More a hostel of mourning for Ellie and myself. Everyday it breaks my heart to see the girl curled on my bed, streaks of tears forever stained across her cheeks, the sparkle in her eye gone to an absent stare. Each day that I rouse her from the bed and encourage her to eat, I will myself to speak. I never can. What words are there to say to a girl whose parents deserted her, was abused by her boyfriend who then got her pregnant and hung himself? Compared to Ellie, my life is uneventful. I lived a normal childhood. Both parents, plenty of friends, holidays abroad and barely anything of note to breech my happiness. I'm not even worthy of offering sympathy to Eleanor, and by the blank stare she's been giving me the past few weeks, I know she agrees. What breaks my heart the most is not perhaps the idea that Ellie has lost any will to keep trying but rather selfishly, the fact she has gone through so much that she may never be able to love me the way I love her. Each passing hour, I crave to wrap my arms around her waist, feel her breath on my chest and know that she is finally mine to keep safe and to love with all my heart. But now I am destined to house the barely living woman, to feed her, and yet to live on knowing I can never feel her lips genuinely on mine. The house is eerie in it's emptiness. Eleanor is at her scan, and though not a word is spoken when the bed is sunken with her weight, I feel stupidly alone. She's not due back for another hour, and so I collapse onto the worn leather sofa, watching the seconds tick by on my old grandmother clock. Ten minutes pass and I cannot sit any longer; I drag myself upstairs to make the bed, to busy my head. Atop the withered mattress, my eyes are drawn to a book. No, I shake my head, it's not a book. It's a photo album. The binding is tough, though messy, and the pages are laid across each other in a way that is anything but orderly. The paper is not white, but a dappled cream, like parchment, and edges of tape stick out from the cover. I know I shouldn't open it, I know. But when Ellie no longer has words to speak to me, am I not allowed to find a piece of her through pictures? The cover crackles just slightly as I turn it, revealing the array of photographs underneath. Photos of Ellie smiling, accompanied by a smirking Jai. My heart, though I expected nothing else, plummets. The monster who brought all of this to her. The monster who may as well have ruined her life. How did he deserve such an easy escape? He should've been locked up. I trace a gentle finger across Ellie's face in the photographs, overcome with desperation to find the girl locked inside of her emotionless body. My deft fingers turn each page of the book, finding and holding on to Eleanor's old memories because, though she sleeps here each night, they are the only smiles I have to keep. Downstairs, I hear the door slam back into its frame, sending a subtle tremor through the tired walls. I stand up with a jolt, knowing that Ellie finding me here would only infuriate her. Closing the book and laying it back on the mattress, I reluctantly stand, bringing myself to greet the girl at the bottom of the stairs. I don't quite know what I expected of her return, but it wasn't this. She glares up at me, her expression contorted between anger and grief. I raise my eyebrows in question, finding no voice to speak out with. 

"Twins."

One word. One, blunt, angry, simple word. I turn the corners of my mouth into a weak smile, not knowing whether she wants me to be sympathetic or happy, though inside I feel sick. After so long, all this time that I've given away to her so easily, catered for her and looked after her, all she can say to me is this. Fury flashes across my heart, though I push it back. I don't know how she feels, I'm in no place to judge her. She looks at me, as if sickened by my smile, and stumbles up the stairs. For a reason unknown to me, my hand reaches out for the girl who has abandoned me with just one word to cling onto. I'm not emotional. I've never been emotional. In fact, I've always been the guy they call heartless, because whatever I'm feeling, I can push it to the back of my head and somehow forget. I reach a finger to my cheek in utter bewilderment of the salty tear that slides across my skin. However much I thought we could make it work when I first saw her at the bank, however much I fell for her, dazzled by her beauty, she has broken me.