After two weeks of living off Dee's sofa, Ashton decided it was time he talked to his father. Not the same talk they'd had the first night he came in here, no that one was strange.
Diane would be smoking, hidden in the kitchen while Ash's father stared for hours at his son. Not a lot of words were exchanged, only the usual: "have you been to a game recently?" and "those freaking Sharks played shit yesterday-night." Football. If there was something to gather the Murphy family, it'd always been football and beer. But the latter was absent tonight.
"Dad, Ashton has been spending a couple months away lately," Dee had marked a pause, wishing for her brother to go on. But he didn't. And his dark eyes seemed to whiten as she waited for him. She exhaled slowly, almost as if to stop breathing and finally spoke the words. "And by that, I mean in rehab."
That dinner was clearly not the best one they'd had as a family, but weirdly enough it hadn't been the worst either.
But today, Ash won't wait for dinner. When the clock hits five p.m, Ash stands up in the living room, almost expecting his dad to rush through the door. Ava finishes her yoghurt in front of the Tv and waits until the cartoons are over before turning to him. "You staying with us now?"
Though he had already made up his mind, he had never spoken the words. He hears the doorknob turning and rushes Ava into the kitchen, wishing for this conversation to be private.
"Dad," he begins, before noticing Diane behind a couple grocery bags and her father. She greets Ash with a wide smile and drops the bags in his arms, heading back towards the trunk of her car. "There's more coming!"
Ashton leaves the house – empty handed – and gets closer to his sister, helping her. "I thought you would wait until you'd moved before grocery shopping that much again.
Diane almost falls dead. Her eyes widen, and her breath seems to slower as Ash grabs the boxes left in the backseat.
"Ava told me." He waits until Dee gathers herself and finally walks to the front door with her. "I want to come too."
Words are out.
***
Hayden leans her head against the small window hovering over her stack of pillows. She had pushed her bed against that wall in her bedroom about four months ago, when Ash had been sent to rehab. She had wanted to be able to see outside whenever she would want to, just to make sure that she wouldn't miss his return if he decided to escape or something. Escaping, like what he is doing today.
She scratches her nail polish off and keeps rubbing her forehead against the window, slowly starting to hit her head against it. She feels dizzy and can't see straight for her own sake. All she sees is blur. She finally shifts from her spot across the bed to her feet and walks straight past Ash, to her desk. He turns to her, following her every move. When he notices her livid glare, he goes for her hands, trying to keep them both in one of his.
"Don't do this Hayden, don't disappear. Come on," he says, fighting the urge to shake her whole body so she would react, "don't leave me here H."
"You're the one who's leaving. You are. You are moving out of Manchester, now of all times!" She doesn't lift her eyes to him when saying that, she does not try to argue anymore. She just lets the words flow around the air between them, not wishing to hear him say them again. But he does.
"I'm not leaving you Hayden, I'm just leaving that place, ok? It's freaking me out. I can't sleep anymore because all I can think of is Lou dealing in his garage a mile away. I can't eat in the morning because all I remember is the therapy. The fucking therapy Hayden. The way they would let us-" he trails off, not willing to explain to her what he saw, what he had to go through to get the drugs out of his system. "I can't even shower without hearing the ambulances in the streets and remembering it all. I don't want to remember H."
All she wants to do is scream, but that's way too obvious or cliché. Hayden doesn't believe in cliché. "I've been sober for days now, I did all of that because of you. It hurts like hell, it's disgusting. All I want to do is run down to Lou's and take a hit."
It's that sentence that makes Ash leave her house in the morning. The fact she claims she did that for him, not for herself. And while walking through this part of town feels nice on a dry November morning, Ash wishes to drown. Drowning might not always be a bad thing, feeling a weight being lifted off your shoulders, only to find it attached to your ankles. Killing you. Ash felt that way ever since he'd started helping Hayden get sober. It felt as if her whole world was crashing around him, not her. Now, that wasn't the way to go.
"Fuck!" he screams, turning left at the end of the street. He looks around for a second, hoping nobody heard him. Beswick sucks. It has always sucked and will suck until the end of days. But at least Deansgate – and Hayden – weren't so far away. The Northern Quarter, the city lights, the football. Everything was near. Lou's garage, the street corners, heroin. Northwich could not suck as much as Beswick. It wouldn't.
***
The few quiet and uncertain steps Hayden hears in front of her closed door tell her Avery is coming. She smiles as she closes her burgundy cardigan around her body before he knocks on the door. Even the knocks are uncertain. Her hand reaches for the doorknob and Avery slides in the dark bedroom, hoping not to find new scars on his sister's body. He pushes a hot cup of tea meant for Hayden on the side table, next to half a dozen of others he brought this week. He frowns as light enters the place, drawing attention to the mess Hayden has made during the week she hasn't left the house. Even the curtains feel heavy when he pulls them along the side of the bed.
He clears his throat "I thought you were not involved with him anymore, bet I was wrong."
She doesn't answer before a few seconds, letting the time pass between them. Time seems thicker than air lately. Finally, she sits on the bed, gathering her knees in her arms and reaching for the tea.
"He left in the morning, left me alone. He's obviously getting rid of his apartment. Says he's going back to live with his sister, and dad. Whom are suddenly both moving to Northwich." She pauses, closing her eyes and inhales the smoke from the cup, wishing for her lungs to close on her right now. But they don't. "He might even be getting rid of me." She whispers.
They don't talk about it.
Later that same day, she notices the college application is staring at her from the office desk. College envelopes are lying around like they just happened to be there, and her dad has even been leaving notes in the whole house with college names on them.
"Harvard?" Avery looks up from his typewriter and smiles a wide grin while Hayden gets the note from the fridge on her tiptoes. "It's in fucking America."
She throws – the now-ball-of – paper in the trashcan before sitting across from Avery at the kitchen table. "I can't do this, I can't just leave." Saying the words don't make the thought disappear though. They both remain silent, staring at some invisible dot on their white walls. Both are thinking the same: there is nothing to leave behind, after all. Family sucks and Ash doesn't seem to care that much anymore. But they don't mention it.
Hayden clutches her phone in her hand before stepping off the stool and walking to the hallway, "I'm not sure whether it's worth all this chaos, or not." She stares at Avery while saying the words, hoping for him to jump off and come running to her, hoping he'll finally say some amazing life-changing sentence, writer style. But he doesn't. All he does is having those shiny tears gather in his eyes. "Maybe I'm the chaos," she whispers, leaving.
***
"I wish you'd have called me." Ashton opens the door for Hayden to walk in, even though he seriously doesn't want her to. Boxes are already piled up in the apartment, ready to be shipped someplace else. It would freak her out.
"I wish you'd stay." She doesn't say it as much as she asks it. All her fears come to life when she thinks of Ash leaving Manchester. The way the city can swallow you whole, the way the lights can blind you. The way Lou's garage won't seem far anymore. "Look Ash, it's three in the morning. Let's get this done alright?"
YOU ARE READING
Settle Down
Romance"She came and it was two in the morning. She'd been crying. She started screaming in my backyard. She was yelling for me to let her in while I had never met her before. Mate, she was nuts. She wore that fucking purple dress. You know, the dark one...
