donnybrook

riley

Before

Feburary 18th, 2018

He couldn't move, couldn't get out of bed, couldn't even stand on his feet to walk to the kitchen. Or the bathroom, anywhere out of his room really, and Grayson figured if he laid here long enough he'd merge with the bed, then he would be dead, and not have to live without Riley.

She wasn't dead, not how he was about to be, debatably. Grayson broke up with her, even though he loved her, his depression of having no friends, of school and of everything in general, made him into the kind of person that hurt other people. People like Eric. Like Daniel. Now Riley was single, with two stories to tell of abusive ex-boyfriends.

Brooklyn stopped talking to him two months ago when he told Eric where she worked. Eric was an inside joke between him, her, and Riley. The boy who was so desperate for a friend, he'd obsessed over Grayson just for being his partner. He was the boy who locked animals in cages and shot them with BB pellets, the boy who went to class and pretended he was high, the boy who googled himself in the cafeteria and sat with Ester fucking Cooley. A freak joke, and he made the mistake of telling him where Brooklyn worked when he started obsessing over her too: he found her online in Graysons recommended, a picture of them at the beach after their first project together.

He went into her work and ordered half the menu, watching her make it for two hours while he sat across the counter at a table. Brooklyn screamed at Grayson over the phone, and they haven't talked since.

After that he'd had nobody to talk to but Riley. Literally nobody, and he took all that out on her, snapping on her for small things and getting mad when she hung out with Brooklyn instead of him. Telling her off when she seemingly had the nerve to be as depressed as him and telling her to fix things he used to love about her. It was.. bad, but it was also over, and now, he was completely alone.

He couldn't hurt her anymore.

Grayson's phone buzzed again on the floor, and with half his face dug in a pillow and the other dangling off the bed, he blew hard enough to set the hair out of his face so he could see who—

He closed his mouth and shut the eye he had crusted open. It was just Riley, calling again. It wasn't that he didn't care, he did— he really fucking did, but if he answered he knew, he would get back with her.

Grayson loved her. He really, really did love her, so he had to stop himself from being with her. When you love someone, you don't tell them to stop seeing their friends. You don't tell them they should thank you for getting you out of an abusive relationship every time they talk about how you've hurt them. You don't tell them to stop crying when they're in the middle of a breakdown. You don't, you don't, you don't.

But he did, and now Brooklyn was calling him. The phone crusted to the floorboard buzzed with her face bright on front, and he shut his eyes back into rest, but kept seeing her contact picture in his head. Saw frizzy blond hair and a loud, wide grin.

Fuck it, he thought. Fuck it.

He sighed, stretching his arms and itching somewhere he'd meant to get at for a while. Grayson rolled his eyes slowly, but he picked it up. "Hello?"

"Who the hell do you think you are, breaking up with her? You think there's a single girl alive better than what you have?"
Something rises in his chest— this feeling of having missed the last step on the staircase.
"No, Brooklyn, that's kind of my whole thing."